The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Bit of an Eisner-a-thon right now:

Paul Pope has a blog post on the late, great Will Eisner concentrating on some of his design work, as featured in Baseline magazine. (The issue in question is from 1990 and will set you back £40 here). Click on the picture for a bigger version via Pope’s website – well worth it.

And Eddie Campbell has a long and, as usual, well-written blog post on Eisner’s missing years:

“The usual summary of comic book artist Will Eisner’s career follows the formula that he drew the Spirit all through the 1940s except for the war years and a bunch of ‘graphic novels’ from 1978 till the end of his life in 2005. There’s a long missing period between 1951 and 1978 during which he packaged and adapted cartoon art to commercial purposes, which has not been readily available for our scrutiny or pleasure. It is sometimes summarily dismissed as being of little interest.”

And then Campbell goes on to skillfully explain, in some detail, exactly how good this missing period was. He also points out that the entire run of the Eisner illustrated Preventative Maintenance magazine is available online here. All 21 years of it.

There’s a new book on Eisner’s PS magazine by it’s managing editor from 1953; Paul Fitzgerald out as well – and Campbell gives it the once over here and finds it very much to his liking.