“I don’t remember comic strips in the forecast.”
Will Eisner: A Comic Biography [FCBD preview]
NBM Graphic Novels (2025)
Stephen Weiner & Dan Mazur
This is a sample for a graphic novel in the Comic Biography series, and only touches on part of the story. Still, they managed to make a snippet that works for a done-in-one feel while still teasing the full graphic novel, which I very much appreciate.
In this portion, Eisner is looking for work. He finally gets a job making advertisements for New York American until Herst merges it with the New York Journal, but during this night shift job Eisner eats “lunch” on the roof and wonders about the stories of the people below. After a time he gets another job, after helping solve an issue with the printing plates he remembered during his time working for a print shop. Unfortunately, Wow, What A Magazine is shut down when the owner gets bored, but Will gets another idea: a company that distributes comics to publishers. If it gets shut down, just continue with a different comic magazine. Will calls his old Wow boss, Jerry Iger, and they work out how to make it happen.
What they got right: For a Free Comic Book Day entry, there are some minor events that I didn’t get to summarize because quite a bit happens. I’m going to complain about the small panel count, but there’s a lot of stuff that happens in those few panels. The art, while simplistic, still has a lot of detail, including the night scenes as Eisner questions if comics could tell the stories he dreamed the people below were having. As someone with a simplistic style myself I wish I were this good and it’s kind of inspirational. The part where Eisner figures out a printing plate issue at Wow includes a description of how printing was done back then, so today’s readers get an understanding on just what the problem was and what Eisner did. That’s a great attention to detail that benefits the reading experience. (Take notes, Tom Clancy’s Op-Center ghost writer.)
What they got wrong: I did say I was going to mention the panel count. Maybe the graphic novel is smaller than this comic or something, but there does seem to be potential for more panels on the page depending on how they made it. I have to assume black and white was a choice given that the boxes explaining the printing issue and the cover of Wow, What A Magazine with Eisner’s Captain Scott Dalton on the cover are both in color. It does stand out but it’s also weird when you think about it. If you’re me, anyway.
What I think overall: This comes out after my birthday and I would love to check it out. I’d accept a late birthday present but I’d rather find a way to make BW profitable or sell off all that stuff I’m trying to declutter. Will Eisner is a comic legend, and getting to read how he became one during all the problems back in the 1930s at the start of the Golden Age of comics should be fascinating, as this preview demonstrates. It looks really good thus far.
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