The Last Book I Read

Back in the 1970s I remember reading a book by Jules Feiffer called The Great Comic Book Heroes, which talked about (and reprinted old adventures of) a lot of familiar costumed characters like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. The one character that was new to me, though he too dated from decades earlier, was The Spirit. That single sample was a real eye-opener, with both art and story that were noticeably more sophisticated than that of most of the others included in the anthology. A short time later, I discovered that Spirit stories were being collected and reprinted in a Warren magazine, and I gobbled them up. Eventually Kitchen Sink took over the reprinting and began to include considerable new material by the Spirit's creator Will Eisner. It was remarkable to see that someone who was present at the birth of the comic book genre back in the 1930s was still a creative force in the medium, and eventually became one of the guiding forces behind the emergence of graphic novels which moved comics clearly in a more adult and literary direction. Michael Schumacher's biography of Eisner does a great job of telling this story, linking Eisner's personal evolution to that of the medium itself-- totally appropriate given the influence he wielded both as an artist and businessman who operated his own shop employing many other fine creators over the years including Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, Wally Wood, the aforementioned Feiffer, and a lot more. It's no coincidence that the most prestigious awards in the industry are named after Eisner, who always saw comics as having greater potential than almost anyone else, and then worked hard to help them reach that potential, right up to his death just a few years ago. It's hard to imagine that someone unfamiliar with Eisner's work would find his story as interesting as a long-time fan like me, but by the same token I'm not sure there's another book out there that does such a good job of summarizing the history of comics so effectively from the 1930s to the 2000s, even if it is mostly through the prism of one man's career. That certainly speaks to the key role played by Eisner in shaping that history.