Graphic Novelist Will Eisner Dies at 87

By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2005

Graphic novelist Will Eisner, who created The Spirit and Sheena Queen of the Jungle, died January 3 in Fort Lauderdale, FL, after complications from quadruple heart bypass surgery. He was 87.

The Spirit, a masked crime fighter without superpowers, first appeared in June 1940 as part of a syndicated comics section and featured detective Denny Colt, who was killed and then reborn as the Spirit. At the height of its popularity, The Spirit appeared in 20 newspapers, reaching 5 million readers every Sunday.

Eisner is also considered the creator of the first modern graphic novel, A Contract with God (DC Comics, 1978), which tells the story of a Jewish immigrant who becomes a slumlord in the Bronx.

Born in Brooklyn, NY, on March 6, 1917, and raised in the Bronx, Eisner published his first comic in 1936 in a publication called Wow, What a Magazine! While there he met cartoonist Jerry Iger, and together they created the comic-book outfit Eisner & Iger, which employed, among other artists, Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, and Jack Kirby, one of the creators of the Fantastic Four.

"At a time when no one took comics seriously, [Will] wrote a story that proposed comics should be a part of libraries, and help teach children to read," says Denis Kitchen, Eisner's former publisher and agent of 32 years. "He saw [comics] really as a literate medium."

While Eisner's early years were spent inventing superheroes, he saved his experiences as a young adult during the Depression and World War II for fodder for his great graphic novels, which he didn't begin to create until he was in his 60s. Eisner was finishing up his last novel, Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of the Zion (Norton, 1995), just before he died.