It's Andy Fish!

Will Eisner was my professor for a number of years, I found him to be a strict but kind and considerate instructor. My first interaction with him had more to do with fashion than with art.

Our assignment was to do a pantomime narrative– I threw all the bells and whistles in my limited arsenal into it. I did mine as a take of Poe’s THE RAVEN with long angles, melting and moody candles, heavy shadows and stark lighting.

Eisner looked at my pages as he flipped through the pages in a portfolio– I think it was a six page sequence. He complimented my storytelling abilities in moving the narrative from panel to panel.

“Your real strength here is light and shadow, you have a masterly…” he stopped mid-sentence as he looked at me. “Are you making fun of me with the sports jacket?”

In the two weeks before this session Eisner always dressed what could best be called business casual– a collared shirt with a v-neck sweater, but he wore a sports jacket too. A sports jacket is not a NY JETS or PATRIOTS jacket– it’s a blazer– the top half of a suit. Blazers are different than suits.

“No sir. This is how I dress.”

Looking around the room at classmates in various dress of punk rockers and typical college kids I admit I looked a little different. I dealt with this at Clark University too- I’ve always worn blazers, mostly as outer jackets. The nice thing about them over a windbreaker is you don’t look odd if you keep it on, and more importantly you aren’t asked to take it off in classrooms like you would with a regular jacket.

He nodded his head and went on with his critique but he never finished what I have a ‘masterly’ grasp of– in fact when I would ask him some weeks later where he was going with that he couldn’t remember but emphasized that he could see the influence Film Noir had on my work.

Eisner was a brilliant professor, he’d see right through posers, I used many of his techniques as I later taught on a collegiate level.

Thankfully at some point he mentioned if any of us had anything we’d like him to sign we were free to bring it in. I don’t like to fanboy anyone and I seldom ever ask for a signature, so it was great to be able to bring in a NM Copy of THE SPIRIT MAGAZINE #1 for him to sign.

“Do you want this personalized?”

Of course I did. It hangs proudly in my studio.

So we wrap Eisner Week, look into his work, almost all of it remains in print including 27 or 27 hardcover reprints of his run on THE SPIRIT. His personal graphic novels, especially A CONTRACT WITH GOD are extremely powerful narratives and just maybe it will get you to embrace comics as a medium.