Authors: Michael Schumacher
100 “I can’t keep”: Maggie Thompson, “Will Eisner,”
Golden Age of Comics #2
(1982).
100 “It made for”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: A doubly heralded new year,”
The Spirit #65
(CB).
100 “Maybe I had”: “A Listing of Jules Feiffer Scripts,”
Panels #1
(summer 1974).
100 “Our fights were always”: Interview with Jules Feiffer.
101 “the left intellectual”: Jules Feiffer,
Backing into Forward
(New York: Doubleday, 2010), p. 53.
102 “Kanegson was brilliant”: Dave Schreiner, “Stage Settings: Looking in memory’s closet,”
The Spirit #33
(CB).
102 “To me, lettering”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: The Spirit at work and play,”
The Spirit #61
(CB).
102 “There’s always been”: Dave Schreiner, “Stage Settings: Summer in the studio,”
The Spirit #34
(CB).
102 “the first visible hippie”: Maggie Thompson and Cat Yronwode, “Will Eisner, Part II,”
Golden Age of Comics #2
.
102 “I said”: Ibid.
103 “I was always faced”: Dave Schreiner, “Stage Settings: Summer in the studio.”
103 “I don’t think”: Interview with Jerry Grandenetti.
104 “It will take you”: Will Eisner, “Ten Minutes,”
The Spirit
, September 11, 1949.
104 “That was mine”: “Jules Feiffer Talks About The Spirit,”
Panels
#1
(summer 1979).
105 “The philosophy”: Maggie Thompson, “Will Eisner,”
Golden Age of Comics #2
.
105 “really a Spirit story”: Feiffer,
Backing into Forward
, p. 68.
106 “It goes like this”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: Toys, time, love and death,”
The Spirit #48
(CB).
106 “baptism of reality”: Dave Schreiner, “Stage Settings: The beginnings of a roll,”
The Spirit #20
(CB).
106 “We’ll have a little”: Ibid.
106 “I
caught
your
stuff
”: Ibid.
107 “I always harbored”: Ibid.
107 Fredric Wertham and comics censorship: Bart Beaty,
Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), pp. 155–164; Goulart,
Great History of Comic Books
, pp. 268–274; Hajdu,
The Ten-Cent Plague
, pp. 250–295; Jones,
Men of Tomorrow
, pp. 270–277; Amy Kiste Nyberg,
Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), pp. 53–128.
108 “We found”: Judith Crist, “Horror in the Nursery,”
Collier’s
, March 29, 1948.
109 “Wertham was a nest”: Hajdu,
The Ten-Cent Plague
, p. 99.
110 “the greatest intellectual”: Marya Mannes, “Junior as a Craving,”
New Republic
, February 17, 1947.
110 “the marijuana of the nursery”: John Mason Brown, “The Case Against Comics,”
Saturday Review of Literature
, March 20, 1948.
111 “This is a public service”: Will Eisner, “The Spirit’s Favorite Fairy Tales for Juvenile Delinquents: Hänzel und Gretel,”
The Spirit
, July 13, 1947.
111 “This was before”: Schreiner, “Stage Settings: The beginnings of a roll.”
114 “I walked a tightrope”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: The Spirit that almost wasn’t,”
The Spirit #52
(CB).
116 “The stories with her”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: The guarding of the change,”
The Spirit #69
(CB).
116 “The thing about women”: Will Eisner, “Thorne Strand and … The Spirit,”
The Spirit
, January 23, 1949.
116 “When I did”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: Back in the U.S.A.,”
The Spirit #58
(CB).
117 “It was the first time”: Dave Schreiner, “Stage Settings: Some of the great ones,”
The Spirit #35
(CB).
117 “Do not weep”: Will Eisner, “The Story of Gerhard Shnobble,”
The Spirit
, September 5, 1948.
119 “I had been wanting”: Dave Schreiner, “Stage Settings: Looking in memory’s closet,”
The Spirit #33
(CB).
119 “You didn’t need”: Will Eisner, “Reminiscences and Hortations,” transcribed by Steve Freitag, edited by Gary Groth,
Comics Journal #89
.
119 “I guess I could be”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: On the road again …”
The Spirit #54
(CB).
120 “
Baseball Comics
was”: Dave Schreiner, “Rube Rooky triumphant,”
Baseball Comics #1
(Princeton, WI: Kitchen Sink Press, 1991).
CHAPTER SEVEN: ANN
122 Epigraph: Will Eisner, in the documentary
Will Eisner: Profession: Cartoonist
, produced and directed by Marisa Furtado de Oliveira and Paulo Serran, Scriptorium, 1999.
123 Will Eisner and Ann Weingarten: Interviews with Ann Eisner, Carl Gropper, and Allan Gropper; Blake Bell,
I Have to Live with This Guy
(Raleigh, NC: (TwoMorrows Books, 2002); Jon B. Cooke, “Just My Will,”
Comic Book Artist
2, no. 6 (November 2005).
123 “Did you promise”: Interview with Ann Eisner.
123 “Susan and I”: Ibid. All other direct quotations in this passage are from this interview.
125 “I saw a different”: Ibid.
126 “Sammy and Delilah”: Interview with Ann Eisner; Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: On the road again,”
The Spirit #54
(CB).
126 “I was sitting”: Interview with Ann Eisner.
126 “They claimed”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: On the road again.”
129 “I felt there was”: Mike Barson, Ted White, and Mitch Berger, “… And I Threw in a Hat … ,”
Heavy Metal
, November 1983.
129
P
*
S
magazine: Paul E. Fitzgerald’s self-published book,
Will Eisner and PS Magazine
(Fincastle, WV: Fitzworld.US, 2009), is the most complete, comprehensive look at Eisner’s work on the magazine available, with copious illustrations, interviews with
P
*
S
staff editors and artists, extensive commentary from Eisner, and more. See also Cat Yronwode, “Eisner’s
P
*
S
Years,”
The Spirit Magazine #33
(February 1982).
129 “It was a very”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: Sam Spade and the Nature Boy,”
The Spirit #82
(CB).
130 “Army personnel”: Fitzgerald,
Will Eisner and PS Magazine
, pp. 15–16.
131 “he felt as if”: Ibid, p. 21.
133 “it was a dilemma”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: Stabilizing the Spirit,”
The Spirit #74
(CB).
133 “The obvious was”: Will Eisner, “An Introduction to the Wally Wood Spirits,”
The Spirit Magazine #20
.
133 “last gasp”: Will Eisner, “Reminiscences and Hortations,” transcribed by Steve Freitag, edited by Gary Groth,
Comics Journal #89.
134 “Looking back”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: Stabilizing the Spirit.”
CHAPTER EIGHT: OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM
135 Epigraph: Eisner,
Will Eisner’s Shop Talk
, p. 23.
135 Comic book hearings and Comics Code: Beaty,
Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture
, pp. 155–164; Goulart,
Great History of Comic Books
, pp. 268–274; Hajdu,
The Ten-Cent Plague
, pp. 250–295; Jones,
Men of Tomorrow
, pp. 270–277; Nyberg,
Seal of Approval
, pp. 53–128; Simon,
The Comic Book Makers
, pp. 118–130.
137 “The comic-book format”: Fredric Wertham,
Seduction of the Innocent
(New York: Rinehart, 1954), p. 118.
138 “I think Hitler”: Senate hearings, as quoted in Hajdu,
The Ten-Cent Plague
, p. 264.
139 “I felt that”: Frank Jacobs,
The Mad World of William M. Gaines
(Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1972), p. 107.
139 “my only limits”: Senate hearings, as quoted in Nyberg,
Seal of Approval
, p. 63.
139 “Do you think”: Senate hearings, as quoted in Nyberg,
Seal of Approval
, p. 63.
140 “We are constantly”: David Gallagher, “The Portrait of a Sequential Artist: Will Eisner,”
Comics Bulletin
(online), n.d.
141 Shake-up at
P
*
S
magazine: Paul E. Fitzgerald,
Will Eisner and PS Magazine
(Fincastle, VA: Fitzworld.US, 2009); interview with Paul Fitzgerald.
141 “I have never known”: Fitzgerald,
Will Eisner and PS Magazine
, p. 19.
143 “I don’t think”: Ibid., p. 30.
144 “If you moved”: Interview with Ann Eisner.
144 “It would reach”: Interview with Paul Fitzgerald.
145 “I was fighting”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: A new Spirit world,”
The Spirit #73
(CB).
145 “When I learned”: Ibid.
146 “1. Effective immediately”: “Memorandum of Record, June 28, 1955,” as reprinted in Fitzgerald,
Will Eisner and PS Magazine
, pp. 82–83.
146 “Some bureaucrat”: Heintjes, “Stage Settings: A new Spirit world.”
147 “When I went”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: Stabilizing the Spirit,”
The Spirit #74
(CB).
148 “I stayed with”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: Refried fiends,”
The Spirit #81
(CB).
149 “I became far more interested”: Will Eisner, “Reminiscences and Hortations,” transcribed by Steve Freitag, edited by Gary Groth,
Comics Journal #89
.
149 “There were all kinds”: Dirk Deppey, “Mike Ploog on Will Eisner,”
Comics
Journal #267
.
149 “We used to get”: Ibid.
151 “Drawn as if”: Jules Feiffer,
The Great Comic Book Heroes
(New York: Dial Press, 1965; updated 1977), p. 35.
151 “For some reason”: Ibid.
151 “It was kind”: Maggie Thompson, “Blue Suit, Blue Mask, Blue Gloves—and No Socks,”
Golden Age of Comics #2
.
151 “Eisner’s line had”: Feiffer,
The Great Comic Book Heroes
, pp. 34–35.
151 “Alone among comic book men”: Ibid., p. 37.
152 “I knew Will”: Interview with Jules Feiffer.
152 “I wasn’t training”: Heintjes, “Stage Settings: A new Spirit world.”
153 “One guy”: Ibid.
153 “We had other”: Tom Heintjes, “Stage Settings: Few regrets,”
The Spirit #76
(CB).
154 “The differences”: Heintjes, “Stage Settings: Refried fiends.”
154 “He lied to me”: Interview with Ann Eisner.
155 “Saigon was like”: Will Eisner, introduction to
Last Day in Vietnam
(Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 2000), p. 5.
156 “He had a wife”: Interview with Ann Eisner.
156 Eisner as father: Interviews with Ann Eisner and Denis Kitchen.
156 “He did whatever”: Interview with Ann Eisner.
157 “He said”: Jon B. Cooke, “Just My Will: An Interview with Ann Eisner,”
Comic Book Artist
2, no. 6 (November 2005).
157 “He didn’t cry”: Interview with Ann Eisner.
CHAPTER NINE: BACK IN THE GAME
159 Epigraph: Mike Jozic, “Will Eisner: The Godfather of Comics,”
Meanwhile
(online), interview conducted March 7, 2000.
159 “I want to invite”: Interview with Denis Kitchen.
159 “Mr. Eisner”: Ibid.
160 “Come on down”: Jon B. Cooke, “Will Eisner: The Creative Life of a Master,”
Comic Book Artist
2, no. 6 (November 2005).
160 “Never let it be said”: Interview with Denis Kitchen.
161 “straight as they come”: Ibid.
161 “Had the pants”: Ibid.
163 “what may have been” and “publisher by default”: Ibid.
164 “In 1964”: Eisner,
Will Eisner’s Shop Talk
, p. 286.
164 “In 1968”: Ibid.
166 “Will Eisner wants to meet you”: Interview with Denis Kitchen.
167 “I was impressed”: Denis Kitchen, “How I Met Will Eisner, Businessman,”
Comic Buyer’s Guide
, November 29, 1996; reprinted under the title “A Kindred Spirit” in
Comic Book Artist
2, no. 6 (November 2005).
167 “To a buttoned-down type”: Will Eisner, as published in Dave Schreiner,
Kitchen Sink Press: The First 25 Years
(Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1994), p. 32.
168 “Will saw it”: Interview with Denis Kitchen.
169 “To be successful”: Interview with Stan Lee.
169 Comix history: Interviews with Denis Kitchen, Paul Buhle, and Jay Lynch. Robert C. Harvey,
The Art of the Comic Book
; Matthew J. Pustz,
Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1999).
169 “All the old meanings”: Gary Groth, “The Straight Dope from R. Crumb,”
Comics Journal #121
.
171 “That’s
exactly
”: Cooke, “Will Eisner: The Creative Life of a Master,”
Comic Book Artist
2, no. 6 (November 2005).
171 “Enclosed is a sampling”: Letter from Denis Kitchen to Will Eisner, July 14, 1971.
171 “You are quite right”: Letter from Will Eisner to Denis Kitchen, July 27, 1971.
172 “He liked it”: Interview with Scott McCloud.
173 “Maurice is at work”: Letter from Will Eisner to Denis Kitchen, July 27, 1971.
173 “Send me a draft”: Denis Kitchen, “How I Met Will Eisner and Signed My First Contract,”
Comic Book Artist
2, no. 6 (November 2005). The rest of the dialogue from this exchange is from this source.