Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel
By Paul Levitz
Abrams ComicArts, 224 pages, $40

It took me a while to figure out that Will Eisner has been a part of my comic reading life since I was perhaps seven or eight. Mom found Jules Fieffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes at our local library and brought it to me to read. I understood these were older works but I still recognized the main characters in the book. The final story, though, threw me. I didn’t get it, didn’t like it. I was clearly too young and not yet sophisticated enough to appreciate the Spirit section reprinted there.

But he was important enough for Feiffer to include and a few years later, when I was reading Steranko’s History of the Comics, I began to understand how important Eisner and his creation were.  By the time I got to meet Eisner, he had established himself as the premier graphic novelist and educator in our field. It was during the 1982 San Diego Comic Con when we were introduced and two days later, I was in the audience to hear his panel when I was suddenly asked to fill in for moderator Shel Dorf and interview Will on stage. We chatted about, I believe, The City and some of his other works and considering there was no time to prep, it went well enough. As he was with most everyone working in the field at the time, he was always friendly and welcoming whenever we saw one another.

It’s a real shame, though, that despite his pioneering efforts and visionary faith in the power of comics, Will Eisner has eluded the mass media fame he deserved. While there have been a few biographies (including a YA one I wrote in 2008) about Eisner, this book is the first exploration of his role in the birth of the modern day graphic novel.

Former DC Comics publisher Paul Levitz and I have known one another for over forty years but I have always admired his keen intellectual approach to the business of comics. Here, in his first work unrelated to DC, Levitz walks the general reader, not the fan, through the evolution of both Eisner as a creator and of the graphic novel. There had been many attempts at long-form graphic stories prior to 1978’s A Contract with God, but as he argues here, it is the first work that captured the admiration of his peers and encouraged them to follow his lead. Later in the book, there is a transcript of a panel discussion that examines why Feiffer’s Tantrum¸ released at almost the same time, didn’t attract the same level of interest.

We watch as Eisner drifts from making most of his living from comic book material, but never gives up on the medium entirely. While he focused on other projects, including a lengthy run producing P*S Magazine for the army, the comics field was evolving, first with the arrival of the Marvel Age of Comics and then the rise of the undergrounds. By the time Eisner discovered them, he was lured back at a time he was needed the most. He saw what was currently happening, jumped right in with a revival of The Spirit, but more importantly, took a teaching role at the School of Visual Arts, training and influence the next generation of major creators.

By 1978, when Contract was released, the direct sales distribution channel was gaining importance so as Eisner was encouraged to produce more, a growing sales channel was ready for him, setting the stage for the graphic novel and collection edition (two separate types of books but treated as one by the masses) explosion that followed. If anything, I had hoped to read more detailed explorations of Eisner’s 1980s output which sometimes get lumped together.

Levitz, though, does his homework, getting collaborators and friends to help him trace why Eisner has endured and how his efforts helped shape the publishing world we currently live in.

The book measures 11.5” x 11”, an odd size to be sure, but one that allows Wisner’s work to be examined without crowding the words.  Designers C.S. Fossett and John Lind get credit for selecting a handful of the most familiar images and then stuffing the book with many other examples of Eisner’s strong storytelling and design. Much of it is shot from the original art and printed on heavy stock, looks wonderful.

Although Eisner died eleven years ago this month, his works remain in print and his influence can be found in monthly periodicals and the plethora of sequential stories aimed at all ages, covering all manner of content. The book does a fine job celebrating Eisner’s contributions and is written in a way that fans and the general public can appreciate.

Nnewts Book Two: The Rise of Herk
By Doug TenNapel
202 pages, Scholastic Graphix, $19.99 (hc)/$10.99 (pb)

I admire Doug TenNapel’s imagination and productivity. A new year and a new book from the cartoonist. This year’s offering is the second instalment in his new Nnewts universe, a follow-up to last year’s Escape from the Lizzarks.

It’s a colorful, imaginative world of varying races and creatures but the basic battle between good and evil remains recognizable to readers. The Nnewts are one of the predominant races and poor Herk was intentionally born with weak legs, all part of some master destiny. He gains magical powers and is called upon to use them to protect Amphibopolis from the threat of the vile Snake Lord.

The story is also about family, the one made from blood and the one made from love. He’s been separated from his brother Zerk, raised by Pikk and his mother but Zerk found by their sister Sissy. When the three meet up late in this second volume, it’s an explosive confrontation.

In the meantime, the Snake Lord is back, but stuck in the form of a radish (don’t ask, Doug’s not explaining) and manipulates events to bring about the Spell of Spells, using the Blakk Mudd to turn everyone in the city into Lizzarks, cementing his rule. Of course, Herk and his newfound magical abilities, stand between him and victory.

The book moves along at TenNapel’s usual frenetic pace, mixing action with comedic bits, and never lingering too long on one set or set of characters. It moves quickly which is probably why his work does so well with the 8-12 year old it’s aimed at.  His visual design, aided by Katherine Garner’s excellent color work, no doubt entices readers. The finale between the bestial Megasloth and the Snake Lord’s avatar is pretty cool.

As with most Graphix series, I feel there need to be recap pages since readers may not recall key details or characters when there’s a year between volumes. TenNapel does fill in the background in the book’s first third so does better than some of his compatriots.

On the other hand, like the other series, there’s a cliffhanger so it’s not a complete story with several threads leaving readers hanging until 2017. For the price, there should be a more complete tale and fewer threads.

Norm of the North is the worst movie I’ve ever seen in a theater. There was not a single aspect of this movie that indicated that any more than the minimum amount of effort was expended by anyone in the production process. It’s a lifeless dud all the way around; the kind of movie that had me wondering if I could get away with walking out after the first half hour and reviewing the delicious burrito I ate for lunch instead. But I endured, and instead I’m here to tell you about this wretched disaster of a movie.

I have no stomach for lazy animation. Norm of the North is some of the worst animation work I’ve ever seen. The character models have a bizarre lack of detail and the textures often feel slapped on. There’s a killer whale character in the first act of the movie that looks like a concept drawing for an Alien xenomorph. The environments are flat including the most lifeless depiction of New York City I’ve seen on film since I Am Legend. There’s no activity in the background unless it is going to directly involve itself with the scene. Everything about the visual language of the film communicates that this is a dead world inhabited by haunting marionettes made by someone who had never seen a person or an animal with their own eyes. I don’t think Pixar, Dreamworks, or Disney would put out animation this bad for an interstitial scene on a mobile app, let alone a feature film, because it would be too embarrassing, I wish Norm of the North felt the same shame.

When my father saw substandard animation he would often say it would be better off as a radio play, and that is absolutely not the case with this film. This movie strains my suspension of disbelief at every turn in a way that a movie about Dracula running a hotel never did. The events and character motivations never feel organic or even like they follow naturally from the scene that preceded it, just like it was picked from whatever goldfish bowl passed for a rewrite here. It’s not clever, it’s not funny, it’s not provocative, and it’s just there because something needs to happen. There’s a hodgepodge of attempted morals that are adopted and dropped as soon as the scene is over it doesn’t even seem particularly committed to the stated goal of protecting the arctic.

I’m almost okay with Norm of the North being a terrible movie— mistakes happen even if they seem to involve two production companies and a major distributor having no idea what a coherent film are— but this isn’t just a bad movie, this wants to be a terrible franchise. The lemmings seem designed to be a spin-off property like the Minions before them (they got almost all of the laughs in my audience) and God forbid we allow those things to happen organically anymore. The “Arctic Shake” dance numbers come out of nowhere and have no service to plot or character, so I can only conclude there’s a nefarious piece of merchandise around the corner or some desire to go viral.

Reading that last sentence I get that I sound a little unhinged, as if I’m suffering from some sort of acute Norm of the North derangement, but that’s where I’m at with this movie. It was bad, worse than normal bad movies, worse than Pixels (the movie I just named the worst of 2015), it’s a movie so horrible that I find it hard to believe it’s a simple failure and instead begin to see it as an elaborate conspiracy to make a movie so insulting to the taste of any reasonable viewer. I would believe this move was the result of a bet between two executives about how bad a movie could be and still make a profit. I would believe this was some kind of Producers-esque scam and has been financed several times its budget only to be a surefire failure. Anything is better than believing this is an honest effort to make a good film, because it’s so heart wrenching to imagine that the gigantic team responsible for an animated movie could fail so spectacularly. It hurts to think of years of collective effort turning out this boring, ugly, nonsense.