Gary Groth on Will Eisner’s Career

Taken out of the context of a special issue containing tons and tons of more focused pieces on different aspects of the late Will Eisner's career, my former full-time employer Gary Groth's longish essay on Will Eisner might seem overly self-reflective, but it's a really good piece overall and this kind of work almost never shows up on-line. Particularly entertaining is the appropriately light-on-its-feet analysis of The Spirit in terms of the movies of its time. Unlike most discussions of film's influence on comics, Groth acknowledges the literary short-story influences rather than avoids them, yet makes his case anyway by going deeply into several potential sources rather than only those that have had the good fortune to stay in our collective memory since that era. Saying Cary Grant could have played the Spirit is one thing; suggesting the Cary Grant of Arsenic and Old Lace might be a near-perfect choice is a lot more fun and definitely more intriguing.
 
posted 7:32 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives