Author: Andrew Wheeler

Will Eisner is one of the giants of 20th century comics; a figure whom reviewers always say “needs no introduction,” but then gets an extended explanation anyway. I’ll be brief: Eisner founded what became a major packaging studio in 1936, at the very beginning of the comic-book business, then launched the unique Spirit newspaper insert section in 1940. Starting in the ‘50s, he ran his own company, American Visuals Corporation, which created instructional materials in comics form, mostly for the government. In the late ‘70s – in his sixties, when most men are retiring – he started writing and drawing long-form stories that are now often called the first graphic novels, starting with A Contract With God in 1978. He died in 2005 in Florida, where he’d lived for the previous twenty years.

Will Eisner’s New York is the second omnibus volume of Eisner’s stories from W.W. Norton, a highly respected publisher of mostly non-fiction, after 2006’s The Contract With God Trilogy, collecting that original graphic novel and two related works. New York itself collects four separate books – New York, The Building, City People Notebook, and Invisible People – which are loosely related to each other and also vaguely set in the same city as the Contract With God stories. The “Contract With God” stories were set in a fictional Bronx neighborhood, but the stories in New York range more widely – a lot of them feel like the Bronx, but some are more Manhattanesque. (There’s not a whole lot of Brooklyn or Queens in here, though, and no detectible Staten Island. Eisner’s New York, like everybody’s, is specific and parochial.)

What strikes a new reader first is the question of dates; the stories in New York were originally published from 1981 through 1992, but the New York they depict is mostly that of the 1930s, with occasional bits from later decades. The “Dropsie Avenue” stories, like A Contract With God, are deliberately set in Eisner’s youth, but the tales in New York appear to be aimed at contemporaniety, but don’t feel any more modern than about 1966. It’s possibly too much to ask that a man in his sixties and seventies, living in Florida, be completely up-to-date with a city he already knows very well, but Eisner’s New York wasn’t a contemporary city even in 1981. This was the city he remembered, and recreated in ink from those memories.

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The Montclair Times (of New Jersey) profiles comics legend Joe Kubert. [via Journalista]

Woodland Progress profiles graphic novelist Joshua Hale Fialkov, whose book Elk’s Run was published by Random House earlier this year.

Comic Book Resources chats with Garth Ennis about Punisher #50.

Comic Book Resources also talks with Durwin Talon about his new creator-owned series Bonds.

BlogTO interviews cartoonist and illustrator Patricia Storms (who did the great “The Amazing Adventures of Lethem & Chabon” strip, among many others.)

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Now that the movie’s been released, the articles are slowing down a bit, so Harry Potter Mania! will probably go on hiatus for a week or so — but you can be sure that local papers all over the country (and around the world) will be ready to run inane local stories on the 21st, when Deathly Hallows is published. (So, for now, enjoy another picture of Daniel Radcliffe taking note of his co-stars…accomplishments.)

The Hindu Business Line interviewed the CEO of Penguin India to learn about Harry Potter plans in their country. (Which are, honestly, not all that different from anyone else’s.)

AZ Central, not wanting to be left out, talked to some local booksellers (local in Arizona) about their Harry Potter plans and filed Standard Harry Potter Publication Story #3.

SF Scope puts on its reading glasses to parse a long Nielsen report on Harry Potter sales across many media. Short form: it makes a lot of money.

The Washington Post profiles Arthur Levine, J.K. Rowling’s US editor. [via GalleyCat]

Publishers Weekly’s Book Maven blog tries to spark some discussion, and create yet another version of the fabled list of books that teenagers won’t be able to stop themselves from reading, in the wake of yesterday’s big New York Times article about Mr. Potter.

What all the cool kids are linking to: A Hole in the Head has scanned a feature () from a 1947 issue of Life magazine in which major strip cartoonists of the day (Milton Caniff, Chester Gould, etc.) first draw their most famous characters normally…and then try it again, blindfolded.

Comics Reporter tries to explain how Stan Lee Media came to sue Stan Lee, and who else is suing whom and about what.

Comics Reporter also reviews Rick Geary’s latest entry in his “Treasury of Victorian Murder” series, The Saga of the Bloody Benders.

Graeme McMillan, of The Savage Critic, finishes up his reviews of last week’s comics.

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