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By David Irvine

Comic strips aren’t always funny — sometimes they can even carry a serious message.

During World War II, comic strip artist Milton Caniff interrupted the story line of his comic strip, “Terry and the Pirates,” to offer a Christmas tribute to the pilots ferrying supplies from India to our Chinese allies. On Dec. 25, 1944, his strip was titled “White Christmas–Himalayas Version.” It pictured a transport plane flying between snow-covered peaks. Caniff wrote that the pilots were doing their job so the folks back home “can look at the American sky and see nothing more dangerous than snow.”

That was the start of an annual tradition. Each year, Caniff devoted the Christmas installment of “Terry”–and later of his other creation, “Steve Canyon”–to a special message. He combined pictures and words into a continuous theme of support for our troops, acknowledging their sacrifices and remembering those who died–and relating it to the meaning of Christmas.

After the war, Caniff’s Christmas messages focused on returning veterans and those who didn’t return. In 1946 he pictured a wife gazing at her distracted husband and cautioned: “Don’t be too surprised if your particular good joe seems to be thinking of something else at times today. … But it is on occasions like this that the swiftly fading faces of men, who will never see another Christmas tree or hear a kid laugh, start to parade across his memory. … Give him the present of a little time with old friends who are being forgotten all too soon.”

Then suddenly there was another war–the Korean War–technically not a war at all, just a “police action” by the United Nations. But men were dying, even on Christmas Day. The Dec. 25, 1951, “Steve Canyon” strip shows four soldiers struggling through the snow. They tell us: “Our situation today is like when a big fire breaks out in a small town. … There’s a fire going on in the world right now and we happen to be the age group that gets the nod to answer the alarm. … Okay, that’s the way it goes. We’ll make it.”

Then between wars, Caniff turned to the fallen. On Christmas Day, 1955, he pictured a military cemetery and indirectly connected it with the Savior who was born and died years before: “These men would not have wished to dim your Christmas with sombre thoughts! They wanted you to be happy and free from fear. And wasn’t that the mission of a certain other Person who perished violently on a mountainside long ago, far from the town of his birth?”

And Caniff remembered those soldiers who survived the wars but were still dealing with the aftermath in veterans hospitals. In 1957 he wrote: “The men who are still paying off on the human price we paid for victory in the past would be grateful to know that they are not forgotten. … A visit from you to the nearest VA hospital will buy a lot of silver to line what can often be a very gray cloud.”

During the Cold War, Caniff honored the men and women carrying out lonely duties far from home. Addressing those service people on Dec. 25, 1959, he wrote: “How shall we ever know the number of Sarajevos, the Pearl Harbors, the Koreas that have been prevented by the mighty host of such lonely men as you, too many miles from all precious things at this holy time? Man can endure wracking tortures if he has hope. Just as this day is a symbol to great masses of devout Christians, so is the American flag and uniform a beacon of friendship to millions.”

Caniff also remembered the widows, the sometimes forgotten casualties of war. In 1962, he pictured a woman who lost her husband 20 years before: “You’re pretty good at keeping a company face, until some wisp of song or half-forgotten phrase unlocks old dreams.” Those are dreams they never had a chance to share.

And then still another war, this one in Vietnam. It became America’s most unpopular war, and anti-war sentiment caused a loss of readership for “Steve Canyon,” which featured a career-military leading character. But Caniff’s focus was on the people serving in the military, not the political issues.

Men were again dying to defend the nation in 1965 when he wrote: “For the missing faces at our festive board we’ll sound a Requiem, even as we do for another Warrior, who fought so long ago–and died violently–that men could Go In Peace.”

Caniff died in 1988. He didn’t live to see America at war in the Middle East. But many of the sentiments he expressed in his “comic” strips relate to the present. They can speak to us on this day, helping us remember our service personnel–those who returned whole or not so whole and those who didn’t return at all–even as we celebrate Peace on Earth.

Contact the writer at dirvine@hendersondispatch.com.

Now that you’ve read this Christmas article, it’s an excellent to visit (or revisit) past years’ offerings: the Christmas card art of Dik Browne, the Christmas card art of Arnold Roth, the Christmas card art of Mort Walker, the Christmas card art of Roy Doty, a smorgasbord of various cartoonists’ Christmas cards, another set of various cartoonists’ Christmas cards, and our first Christmas treat, the Christmas card art of “Little Orphan Annie” creator Harold Gray.

If you want to read the fascinating article about “Invisible Scarlet O’Neil”–the first female superhero–and the career of her creator Russell Stamm, subscribe to the print edition of Hogan’s Alley and receive issue #18 right away!

And while you’re here, be sure to read the other Web Extras for Hogan’s Alley #18: about Harry Haenigsen’s “Penny,” about Dudley Fisher’s marvelous “Right Around Home,” and the cartoon character restaurant menu!

If you want to read the fascinating article about “Penny” and the life of Harry Haenigsen, subscribe to the print edition of Hogan’s Alley and receive issue #18 right away!

And while you’re here, be sure to read the other Web Extras for Hogan’s Alley #18: about Russell Stamm’s “Invisible Scarlet O’Neil,” about Dudley Fisher’s marvelous “Right Around Home,” and the cartoon character restaurant menu!

If you want to read the story behind this unique item–and read many other articles and interviews about comics and cartooning–subscribe to the print edition of Hogan’s Alley and receive issue #18 right away!

And while you’re here, be sure to read the other Web Extras for Hogan’s Alley #18: about Russell Stamm’s “Invisible Scarlet O’Neil,” about Dudley Fisher’s marvelous “Right Around Home,” and about Harry Haenigsen’s “Penny”!

If you want to read the article about “Right Around Home” and the career of its remarkable creator Dudley Fisher, subscribe to the print edition of Hogan’s Alley and receive issue #18 right away!

And while you’re here, be sure to read the other Web Extras for Hogan’s Alley #18: about Harry Haenigsen’s “Penny,” about Russell Stamm’s “Invisible Scarlet O’Neil,” and the cartoon character restaurant menu!

We’re pleased to present some of the pages contained in Hogan’s Alley #18. The issue will contain much, much more than these articles, but they will give you a taste of what’s in store. And if you like it, you can subscribe to receive #18 hot off the presses later this month!

And since you’ve all been such good boys and girls this year, here’s another holiday treat: the NEA Christmas strip sequence from 1940, “The Quints’ Christmas” by Brandon Walsh.

Now that you’ve read this year’s Christmas treat from Hogan’s Alley, it’s an excellent to visit (or revisit) past years’ offerings: the Christmas card art of Dik Browne, the Christmas card art of Arnold Roth, the Christmas card art of Roy Doty, a smorgasbord of various cartoonists’ Christmas cards, another set of various cartoonists’ Christmas cards, and our first Christmas treat, the Christmas card art of “Little Orphan Annie” creator Harold Gray.

Now that you’ve read this year’s Christmas treat from Hogan’s Alley, it’s an excellent to visit (or revisit) past years’ offerings: the Christmas card art of Dik Browne, the Christmas card art of Arnold Roth, the Christmas card art of Roy Doty, a smorgasbord of various cartoonists’ Christmas cards, another set of various cartoonists’ Christmas cards, and our first Christmas treat, the Christmas card art of “Little Orphan Annie” creator Harold Gray.

Hogan’s Alley: What inspired you to begin creating your own Christmas cards each year? After all, you stay plenty busy, so it’s not like you have all this spare time.

Arnold Roth: I started to freelance in 1951. At that time, sending a Christmas greeting to clients and prospective customers served the purposes of celebration of the holiday spirit and a reminder of the senders and the service they might provide. In the case of artists, it also serves as a portfolio piece that displayed their particular approach to the subject matter.

The first one I sent–in 1952 or ’53–was the bird walking into the fellow’s yap. It made sort of a hit, and most recipients remembered it. “All I could taste all through to New Year’s was feathers!” was the usual reaction. I never had known how many people knew what feathers tasted like.

I have always, and still do, favored the ideas and good feelings of Christmas, though I am not a Christian. My wife is. Combining our lists, we eventually sent 600 cards every years–always in a stamped envelope–for many decades. Due to attrition and being long-lived, the list has swindled to about 450. It’s a fairly arduous exercise, but a rewarding one.

People reply–usually in their following year’s greeting–”I think I understood the idea of your card.” “That’s another Christmas you ruined for our entire family!” “Your card is still pinned to our mantle. Nobody has figured it out yet!” Oh, me! I mean well–and it’s better than the taste of feathers. I guess.

HA: Is there a certain time of the year when you begin working on that year’s card?

Roth: I try to get the paste-up to the copiers by mid-November, but it can be mid-December. Last-minute, nerve-wracking deadlines are no strangers in my life. I do the drawing, reduce it to size on my copier–lessening the quality of the line, sometimes–and paste four copies on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet. A professional copy printer prints and cuts the cardstock sheets. I sign them. My wife and I envelope and stamp–she addresses most of them. Another Christmas ruined for friends, clients and aged ingestors of feathers.

HA: I notice that some of your cards have a topical aspect, like the Muslim bringing Islamic-style greetings in 2003. But overall, there’s not a lot of topical commentary. How do you decide when to incorporate commentary into your card?

Roth: I try to do an idea that connects to something that had occurred that year, from world politics to family occurrences. Last year’s [2008] indicated voters, who don’t usually vote, turning out for the Obama election. Some years, it’s just Christmas.

HA: Some of your cards are undated. Clearly, you weren’t thinking of future archivists when you designed them!

Roth: My most intense professional concentration has always been producing cartoon drawings. As an individual producer, it was incumbent on me to keep orderly financial books. Everything else was left to some future where it would sort itself out. That wasn’t a conscious choice. Necessity dictated it. Hiring someone to create order was not practical. It seemed that by the time I advised someone else what was what, etc., I might as well do it. Of course, being bent over a drawing board every day for long hours precluded doing much of anything else. Eventually the disorder caught up to me.

Early on I could remember which Christmas card followed the others. But I stayed in business so long and became so unexpectedly successful that confusion and guesswork replaced accurate memory. So I started dating them. Many people claim to have saved them all. Many people are smarter than I am.

HA: In the card from 1991, what is Santa putting in the stockings? Condoms?

Roth: Yes! With the spread of HIV and the burgeoning of population everywhere, the placement of condoms next to the candies in front of the cash registers in family drugstores–they were the perfect gift for everyone who didn’t catch everything. Yet! And it would be a strange-looking child who could slip one over its head.

HA: You produced two designs for 1999. Did you have two designs you particularly liked, or are you just a hopeless workaholic?

Roth: My wife wanted an alternative to send to aged, more conservative, easily shocked and/or disgusted folks. Now, I can’t remember which was which.

HA: Your Santa Claus is something of a dissolute free spirit. In that sense, is he a stand-in for Arnold Roth?

Buy Hogan’s Alley Christmas cards and postage, featuring vintage holiday art from cartooning’s giants!

Roy Doty

Hogan’s Alley: The first impression upon looking at your cards in one sitting is that producing these cards represents an enormous effort! When do you begin working on each year’s card?

Roy Doty: I really start thinking about them in September, with the constant fear that there is no new idea for a Christmas card. The right, or wrong, idea usually goes concrete about Nov. 1, then I go to work on the card until it’s finished. I try to avoid doing any kind of “gag” card–I’m really not a gag cartoonist, though I’ve done them many times. I try to design something new that is funny, enjoyable and different and has some design value. Sometimes I make it…sometimes I don’t. Never really happy when I’ve finished, but I try. Come to think about it, I feel that way about most of my drawings.

HA: When you began creating these cards more than 60 years ago, you probably had no idea what a monster you were creating!

Doty: When I did my first card in l946, the year I started freelancing in New York, all the artists did their own cards at Christmas. It was a tradition to do so. Over the years fewer and fewer cartoonists do them, though there have been more of them lately now that they can print them out from their computers.

HA: Now it’s something of a privilege to be on Roy Doty’s Christmas card list. How many correspondents are you up to each year?

Doty: Well, the list keeps growing. I guess most of the people on my original list are dead now, but new friends and clients grow every year. One of the problems is both a sad and a joyful one. Many cartoonists die, and before the next Christmas I get a letter from their widows that they’ d like to be kept on the list. I love that–then the widows have passed on, and I get requests from their children to keep them on the list. So it grows and grows. This year’s list is just over the 500 mark, and I’m an old fashioned type: I still address them by hand like my mother told me to do with Christmas cards. Printing and postage are killing me, but it’s a wonderful feeling. One of the joys of Christmas.

HA: Of course, intricacy and detail have always been hallmarks of your work. Are there any cards that stand out for you in terms of the ambitiousness of their design or rendering?

Doty: No, I don’t have any favorite one. I just wish some of them had been better.

HA: You always stay plenty busy. Has there been a year when you confronted the possibility of just not being able to produce a new card that year?

Doty: I wouldn’t dream of not doing a card in the coming year ! Even if I only had a mailing list of twenty or so, I’d do a new one. Why should I give Hallmark more money? They never gave me any.

HA: You’re about to send out your 2008 card. How long until you start noodling out an idea for 2009? I guess that’s the price for beginning a cherished tradition–you have to keep it going!

Doty: Well, my mind already has an itch way back somewhere in my cerebellum sort of tinkling with a thought about next year’s card. I hope nothing jells…it might be better than this year’s card, and then I’d really hate myself.

Will Eisner was a cartooning visionary when the notion seemed preposterous. Now, having produced work that has been published in eight different decades, Will Eisner has become the E.F. Hutton of the comics industry: When he talks, people listen. As one who has explored every facet of producing comics—he has at various times been a packager, publisher, editor, comic-strip artist and comic-book artist—Eisner has seen the industry’s fortunes rise, fall and rise again often enough to know that the form’s health and continued vibrancy lie in its ability to conform to changing circumstances.

Eisner had a singular role in developing elements that have over the years become standard components of cartooning’s vocabulary: pacing, staging, perspective, plot construction, character development and the incorporation of a compellingly philosophical perspective. Now 83, he continues to produce work that appeals to readers outside the superhero ghetto, even as DC Comics is repackaging both his 60-year-old Spirit stories and his trailblazing series of graphic novels so that a new generation of readers can appreciate the craftsmanship in whose shadow countless comics artists work. The retail reaction to the first volume of DC’s Spirit series—shelves wiped clean in a matter of days—demonstrated that, in the right hands, everything old is indeed new again. Never one to be content, Eisner produced Last Day in Vietnam, a memoir of his wartime experiences recently published by Dark Horse Comics, and is adapting classic literature to the comics form, which NBM is publishing.

In a time when technological and societal forces are again changing the way comics are marketed and consumed, Eisner’s observations about the industry—both what it does well and what it needs to do better—are more relevant than ever. Cartooning fans and the industry’s decision makers would be wise to remain mindful of what he says; Will Eisner has been right too long not to. —Tom Heintjes

Tom Heintjes: What challenges do you see cartoonists facing that they traditionally haven’t had?

Will Eisner: Before we can discuss any challenge facing a cartoonist, we’ve got to decide what we’re talking about: Are we talking about his art form, or are we talking about the publication that will carry his work? Cartoonists have always worked for publication, as opposed to painters, who work for galleries. It’s the final vehicle that often determines “the challenge,” as you put it. A painter’s vehicle is the gallery. The painting he makes is “the product.” The cartoonist, however, is creating something for reproduction. This has an effect on the challenge.

Let me step back here and answer the question in two parts. The cartoon art form—the art of treating an image impressionistically—will not fade. It will keep growing in popularity, because a cartoon is able to convey an idea as an image, and images are the means of communication that are proliferating. Communication in the future will be based on imagery, the transmission of ideas by images. The vehicle of transmission is changing under our noses and will influence how the artist deals with the medium. He’ll configure his work to suit the method of transmission. Historically, print has been the major vehicle. The arrival of the Internet has provided the cartoonist with another vehicle of transmission, which has a different set of requirements. The relationship with the reader, which is primary to the entire business of communication, has to be accommodated. In print, you can count on the fact that the reader will either glance at your work or dwell on it for a great length of time. You therefore can develop what I call a “contract with the reader” during the time he or she has it in their hands. In electronic transmission, we have no way of knowing how long a readers stays with you or what their retention time is. We’re dealing with a totally different relationship.

Having said all of that, I suspect that the Internet cartoons will increasingly begin to resemble animation. In the end, we may wind up with animated cartoons, because the rhythm of reading on the Internet is not like that of a hand-held page. It requires a dimension of realism to abet a continuation of the action suggested by the image.

Heintjes: One of the pleasures I get from enjoying cartooning is a tactile one, and I miss that on the computer screen.

Eisner: I have the same reaction. I enjoy the brush work, and I enjoy inspecting the pen-and-ink techniques. But I’ve been in debates with some younger cartoonists who argue that the day of the paper cartoon is coming to an end. They believe there will come a time when readers will have lost the experience of looking at things on paper, so they won’t have the same frame of reference that we do today. They’ll only have looked at things on a screen. I argue that the tactile experience of holding a book will be very hard to diminish, but it is an argument that a lot of Internet-oriented cartoonists do not easily accept. I was having this very same sort of discussion last year at a panel at the San Diego comics convention, and one of the cartoonists told me I sounded like a medieval monk who sneers at the future of this guy Gutenberg with his movable type.

The bottom line is, technology is doing something to the comic-book business. Comic books as we knew them in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s are experiencing a continuing drop in sales.

Heintjes: Do you think that the difficult economics of publishing traditional comics is hastening cartooning’s retreat to the Internet? People can publish their work online for very little cost.

Eisner: Well, there’s no viable economic model for publishing comics online. Obviously, cartoonists are always looking for a new reader, a larger audience. They know now that a website can secure 100,000 hits overnight, but no one has figured out how the creator can make money off of that. This is not encouraging cartoonists to leave print. In fact, there are more cartoonists looking for print work than there ever have been. Perhaps the marketplace for cartoons is shifting. I’m not wringing my hands, because it’s simply a new phenomenon that we have to deal with. I’ve probably been looking at this as a cartoonist and find it very hard to abandon print, so the more I look at it, the more it looks like animated cartoons to me. Now, the computer is a tool that can provide a tremendous amount of technical support—you can get all these colors, you can morph and combine images.

A young cartoonist I know showed me how he works on a computer. He was doing a magazine cover, and he was shifting all the elements around on his screen until he got the composition he wanted.

Heintjes: Isn’t that like doing roughs?

Eisner: That’s what I said. I told him, “I don’t need to do that because I do a few quick pencil roughs to get to what I want to do.” My biggest problem is how to execute the idea I have in my head. In comics, very little happens accidentally. It’s not like Jackson Pollock dripping paint on a canvas—“voilà, this looks good, I think I’ll save it.”

A lot of students confuse the technology with the art itself. There’s a separation that must be understood between the execution of the art and the business of executing that art for a specific medium.

Heintjes: But to clarify my question: Is cartoonists’ retreat from traditional print publication hastening the demise of the printed comic?

Eisner: It isn’t the cartoonists who are hastening the demise of printed comics. It’s the competition from the new technology. The audience is moving toward electronic media. The best evidence I can give you is the absence of “kiddie” comics, the Mickey Mouse type of comic books. They’re no longer around. The retailers I talk to tell me that they don’t get young kids coming into the store anymore. They’re home playing with the computer games, or they have Nintendo or whatever.

Heintjes: Nor can kids go to the corner drugstore to get their comics, and that used to be the point of entry for kids’ interest in comics.

Eisner: That’s also another thing. It’s the same problem that newspapers are struggling with. Newspapers used to be sold in kiosks on street corners. My father used to stop off on the way home from work and pick up a newspaper in the subway. That no longer happens. It’s delivered to your door, so it’s a totally different kind of distribution that has evolved. It affects the reader relationship.

These are the forces that are altering what the creators are doing. Remember, the creator’s primary function is to provide the material for “the vehicle,” and I consider the Internet to be a vehicle. When I was doing comics for the newspaper in 1940, the paper that we were printed on was so rough and porous that the artistic style everybody used was rigid. There were no vignettes, so the flat benday coloring could be contained. Reproduction today permits oil painting or air brushing. Cartoonists have always learned to accommodate the technology as it changes. The reader also has different demands. Today’s reader has been exposed to MTV and has grown up on a fusillade of images. Their life experience is different. The books I write are for people with some life experience. Not artificial or virtual experience, but real life experience. A large part of the young audience today is getting life experience artificially through the television or through the computer. These are experiences that are contrived.

Heintjes: What effect do you think today’s media have had on the way people perceive stories?

Eisner: The media have had a tremendous effect on storytelling. A young reader’s sense of wonder is very quickly satisfied by electronic media. It will generate things that a more limited medium like comics can only allude to. For example, a comic strip about space travel cannot compete with the experience delivered by the film Star Wars. So you have to deal with this generation in terms of its own experience, and part of that experience is MTV. I’ve been trying to watch MTV to figure it out, but I can’t watch too much of it or my eyes bump into each other. What they’re doing is using visual clichés over and over. You can connect into their message by using the experiences you’ve had watching other films or videos. The message doesn’t come from your own real-life experience. It comes from artificial experience. But those of us who are trying to tell a story must pay attention to that.

Heintjes: Historically, when comic books entered periods of slumping sales, one survival technique was to have a broad appeal, so you had material geared toward a variety of demographics: funny animals for children, romance comics for girls, teenage comics for young teens, as well as the usual superheroes, monster, western, war and science fiction material. Now, with a few exceptions, mainstream comics have given themselves over almost entirely to superheroes.

Eisner: Perhaps that may explain the malaise. It’s interesting to look at Japan. Some of their comic books sell at the rate of 8 million copies a week, and the subject matter is enormously diversified. They have comics for expectant mothers, comics for adults, boys and girls, all different ages. It’s a huge industry, but their culture has grown up with a language that is basically pictorial.

Heintjes: Japanese comics don’t struggle with the social stigma that ours do.

Eisner: That’s a big problem. I’m involved in that struggle. Rumor has it that I write comics for people who don’t read comics. My readers don’t come into comic-book stores. Here in the United States, comics is a despised art form, way down at the bottom of the artistic hierarchy. In Europe, a cartoon is regarded as a higher form of art, because it occupies a greater historical role. You had cartoonists like Daumier taking up arms against political oppression, so they’re regarded as important creators. I remember talking about it to Harvey Kurtzman in the ’60s after we had come back from Europe. He said, “Wasn’t that wonderful? They treated us like real artists!”

Heintjes: How different are your experiences as a creator in the United States compared to those in Europe?

Eisner: I seem to get a warmer response to my work in Europe and in Latin America. I think the difference comes down to content. Superheroes are not as popular in Europe as they are here. My stories deal with the human struggle for survival, and that seems to be a subject closer to the European world view than it is here, largely because most European countries have a history of being under the unremovable thumb of an aristocracy or dictatorship. In this country, politically, we can change the rulers we don’t like. We have this freedom so we can alter this condition.

Heintjes: You’re doing some work for European markets that is also being subsequently published here.

Eisner: One of the books that was just published in Europe and in Brazil—Don Quixote—is being published here by NBM. Usually, after I finish a heavy book like Family Matter, I find that doing something very light is a great antidote. For a long time I’ve wanted to adapt classics to comics form. My Danish publisher, who is also my agent over there, has tried for a long time to get me to do this series, because I had these stories in dummy form. And his market had changed dramatically. The bulk of the sales was in libraries, and they were looking for classics.

Heintjes: I understand the European comics market is also slumping.

Eisner: Yes, it is. If someone stopped me on the street, grabbed me by the lapel and asked me, “What’s causing all this?”, my quick response would be “content.” The content of comics is not keeping up with the demands of the readers. In Europe, as in the United States, the novelty of comics has worn off. It’s no longer a novelty. When my former company in the ’60s, American Visuals Corp., was selling comics for industrial and educational purposes, one of my salesmen called up American Motors and said, “We’d like to do a booklet for you on the new Social Security laws,” the man at American Motors replied, “We already have a booklet.” My salesman said, “No, we’re going to do it comics form.” The guy at American Motors said, “Oh, great! We’ll be glad to talk to you about that.” To them, comics was a novel vehicle and a novel medium. The idea of a comic book is no longer new. You can’t sell it just because of what it is. You sell it because of what it contains.

There was a time when movies were novel simply because they were moving pictures. Now, you take the medium for granted. You don’t go to a movie because it’s a movie. You go because of the content. That’s the one thing I always tell students and other young cartoonists: It’s content. If you have nothing to say, then you’re just selling wallpaper. It’s almost like pornography. They’re not selling a story; they’re just selling images.

Heintjes: Why do you think Europeans, with their own rich artistic history, have such a special appreciation for the work of certain American creators such as Carl Barks, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby and yourself?

Eisner: As for myself, I can tell you that the reception I get is based on my stories, not so much on the artistic technique. The other creators you mention are all important representatives of major genres that are big over there. Jack Kirbyrepresents America—the thrust and the drive and the excitement. Crumb is highly esteemed in Europe. He’s only the second American to win the annual prize at the Angoulême festival.

Heintjes: Who was the first American to win it?

Eisner: Will Eisner. [laughter]

Heintjes: Oh, him.

Eisner: When I first saw Crumb’s stuff, he was still doing undergrounds, and I didn’t quite get it. I thought it was just bigfoot stuff, very crude illustration. Then I read one of his stories, “Yutta,” and it blew me away. I began to pay attention. He’s done some very sensitive stuff, like the poster he did, “A Short History of America.”

Heintjes: You’ve produced most of your recent work through Kitchen Sink Press, a company that gave you creative carte blanche. Now that Kitchen Sink is no longer publishing, do you see getting that same degree of creative autonomy in today’s turbulent marketplace?

Eisner: I will have absolutely no trouble retaining creative autonomy. I’ve signed a contract with DC Comics to reprint The Spirit, and they’re keeping my graphic novels, collectively called “The Will Eisner Library,” in print. We also have a handshake deal in which I give DC first look at any new books I do. Of course, I’m still an independent. For example, the children’s line I’m working on is with Terry Nantier at NBM.

One of the reasons I’m giving DC the first look is because they have the best chance of getting my work into bookstores. Of all the publishers today, they have the most muscle, and they’ve done very well with the Vertigo line.

Heintjes: You like the Vertigo line?

Eisner: I like the editorial thrust of the Vertigo books. The fact that Vertigo is producing the kind of stuff they are is a plus. It’s helping the industry by publishing material that would not be generated by the old DC or the old Marvel or any other major publisher. As they said in Death of a Salesman, “Attention must be paid.”

Heintjes: You had always been reluctant to allow The Spirit to be reprinted in a deluxe format. Why now?

Eisner: The reason I finally agreed is that, with the death of Kitchen Sink, the possibility of The Spirit being reprinted is almost out of the question. I originally objected to it with Denis [Kitchen, Kitchen Sink’s publisher] because I felt that a big Spirit book would be like a mausoleum. Then I finally agreed to allow him to do a series of new Spirit stories in The Spirit: The New Adventures.

Heintjes: How did you feel about that series?

Eisner: It was a little like putting your child up for adoption. I was astounded at what some of them were doing with him. Clearly, I would never have done stories the way these guys did. Guys like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are very much in touch with today’s reader, and they were talking to them in that vein. I had no sense of violation or concern; they just saw The Spirit from their perspectives. When I created The Spirit, I never had any intention of creating a superhero. I never felt The Spirit would dominate the feature. He served as a sort of an identity for the strip. The stories were what I was interested in. The Spirit was just a walk-on in a lot of the stories. Sherlock Holmes is an example of what I mean. You read Sherlock Holmes stories for the stories. The stories endure, not the idea of a super-detective. The Spirit stories are very much like the Sherlock Holmes stories: The stories endure despite their setting in a world long ago and far away. At least, that’s what I hope.

Heintjes: DC Comics is owned by Time Warner, and big media companies are interested in synergy between properties. Has there been any discussion of doing anything else with The Spirit? Will we be seeing The Spirit join the Justice League of America?

Eisner: There’s been no discussion about that. The preservation of The Spirit as a character really means very little. What’s important to me is the 300-and-some-odd stories that I wrote myself. Nothing will change those. They’ll still be around. If DC came to me and said, “How about a crossover between The Spirit and Batman?”, it would depend on how they intended to handle it and who would do it. If I were doing it, The Spirit might make a fool out of Batman [laughter].

Heintjes: After all you’ve accomplished in your career, what continues to drive you?

Eisner: Oh, there’s so much that is undone in this medium. I want to do it. I’ve got a book coming out called Last Day in Vietnam in which I eschew the use of balloons altogether. It’s a collection if true incidents that happened to me in my visits to Vietnam and when I was in Korea. But it’s done with a totally different approach. I only used this once in The Spirit, where the reader is a participant, and the characters are talking to the reader. At the time, I felt it was successful, but I never followed it up. I’m constantly experimenting. As we’re talking, I’m dummying up another book that has to do with folk tales back in Dropsie Avenue.

Glenn Miller used to say he was still looking for “the sound.” That’s how I feel. Actually, I’m still looking to achieve what I set out to do 50 years ago: to achieve a literary level in this medium. One of the problems is in marketing. Maybe one of the problems is that the adult reader is turned off by the form. He sees a lot of pictures, and he sees balloons, and he sees a book that he pays $14 for, which gives him maybe a half-hour’s worth of reading time. For that same money, he can get a book by Stephen King or John Updike that would give him hours and hours of reading time. Perhaps the solution is not in form but in content. This is something I’m struggling with, trying to seize the adult reader.

Heintjes: What trends do you see in the work of today’s aspiring cartoonists?

Eisner: A preoccupation with special effects. A lot of them are preoccupied with creating new superheroes. Recently some young black creators showed me a new ethnic superhero. What a waste of creativity! We don’t need another ethnic superhero—we’ve got plenty of them. Show me something about ethnic life in America today. That’s what we don’t have enough of. But they’re thinking of where the money is as, and they know they’re not going to get anywhere fast by doing my kind of stuff. They’re going to get instant money by doing superheroes of some kind.

Heintjes: Looking back at your body of work, which are you proudest of? By the way, you’re not allowed to say, “My next one.”

Eisner: You intercepted me [laughter]. It’s hard to say, but . . . I guess A Contract With God is like my first child. “Gerhard Shnobble” in The Spirit1 is a favorite story, because it was the first time I attempted a philosophical point. From a technical point of view, I think A Life Force was well structured. Dropsie Avenue was, for me, a technical tour de force because I attempted something I didn’t think was possible in this medium, and that is to do a proper history of a neighborhood. In each case, I’ve always attempted to climb a hill, and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don’t.

Heintjes: Of course, we all want you to climb many more hills, but when the time comes for Will Eisner to live with The Spirit in Wildwood Cemetery, what provisions have you made for your literary estate?

Eisner: I’ve made provisions in a will to leave my work to certain places and to certain charities. I have a son, and he’ll oversee my estate. And my wife will oversee it as well. In the case of my graphic novels, DC is committed to keeping them in print, so they’ll be around. That’s important to me, which is one reason I went with them. Oh, Tom—the whole subject is premature.

Heintjes: Well, I hope those mortal considerations are a long way off. You realize that you’re eventually going to be the one who writes the history books—no one’s going to be around to contradict anything you say. It’ll just be you and Al Hirschfeld.

Eisner: Someone was pointing that out to me the other day [laughter]. It’s not a bad position to be in.

1- “Gerhard Shnobble” was published on September 5, 1948.

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