Monday Morning Quote – Will Eisner on Obligation and Imparting Knowledge

Today’s Monday Morning Quote combines storytelling, imagination, and a whole lot of respect for the talented Will Eisner.

All professionals should teach at some time in their career because they are obliged to pass on what they have learned. - Will Eisner Creator of superheros

Recognized as “the most influential comic artist of all time” by Wizard Magazine, Will Eisner’s career in comics covered a period of nearly seventy years. One of his most popular creations, The Spirit, was first created in 1940. This series introduced protagonist Denny Colt to the world. In typically superhero form, Colt’s second identity, the Spirit, “attracts the most seductive and dangerous femmes fatale and wages a never ending war against streetwise crooks, criminal master-minds and otherworldly beings…with only quick wits, sharp humour and his two gloved fists.”

Eisner was also known for his entrepreneurial skills. The Spirit was presented in an unprecedented format: a 16-page comic book that was included in twenty major Sunday newspapers, reaching a readership of 5 million at its peak. New creations of The Spirit series stopped in 1952; in 2000 DC Comics Inc. published reprints of all of the Spirit’s adventures into a 26-volume series.

In the late 1970s, Eisner published A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories, the first graphic novel of the time. Four short stories make up the 196-page long graphic novel: “A Contract with God”, “The Super”, “The Street Singer”, and “Cookalein”. The backdrop for all four stories is a Bronx tenement in the 1930s, with the last story “Cookalein” also carrying over to a summer retreat for Jews. The stories are categorized as semi-autobiographical, with the first story “A Contract with God” inspired by the death of Eisner’s daughter in 1970 from leukemia. Last year, it was announced at Comic-Con International that the graphic novel will be adapted into film.

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