Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [106]
His biggest issues with Warren were over the covers, which he would design and pencil and others would color. Eisner wasn’t fond of the arrangement, which he felt was a slight to his talents, but where Eisner viewed the covers from an artistic perspective, Warren approached them from a marketing angle.
“Jim had a different taste in cover art; he didn’t feel that watercolors had enough power to sell,” Eisner said. “He needed something that was brighter and more attractive. My paints are a little bit more subtle or pastel.”
As part of his agreement with Warren, Eisner kept the right of final cover approval. As a practice, he refrained from touching up or changing any of the colorings, tempting as it might have been, but there were occasions when Eisner complained to Warren or DuBay about the way an artist colored his work. One particular cover infuriated him. The colorist lit Eisner’s fuse by using what Eisner later called “circus colors,” prompting a stormy meeting with Warren and DuBay in Jim Warren’s office. “Over my dead body!” Eisner shouted.
“The cover was pretty awful,” he would remember, “and I put a stop to it very quickly.”
The first issue of Warren’s Spirit magazine sold 175,000 copies, rewarding Warren’s faith in the reprint’s potential and Eisner’s decision to leave Kitchen Sink Press for a bigger distributor. This was, however, the high-water mark for the magazine. The numbers fell off beginning with the second issue. Collectors gobbled it up, but the overall sales figures suggested that the Spirit, as a character, was more of a novelty than a serious contender for newsstand supremacy. Kids wanted their costumed superheroes; older readers were more attracted to the oddball material being published in Mad, the underground comix, and, on college campuses, the National Lampoon. All told, Warren published sixteen issues of The Spirit Magazine, plus one summer special, between April 1974 and October 1976.
The magazine might not have been an overwhelming financial success, but it served a higher purpose in Eisner’s career. With Warren, Eisner was now back in the entertainment comics business, working steadily in a field he had abandoned long ago, learning more about the purchasing habits of comics fans, and preparing himself, even if he was unaware of it at the time, for his entry into the ultimate in comics for adults—the graphic novel.
chapter eleven
A C O N T R A C T W I T H G O D
I had trouble re-reading what I had written. Being honest is like being pregnant—there’s no such thing as being “a little bit” honest. Once you start, there’s no turning back.
Eisner wasn’t finished with The Spirit. The sagging sales figures for the Warren reissues might have discouraged less determined artists, but after seeing enthusiastic responses from those who did pick up The Spirit Magazine, Eisner concluded that there still might be more life for The Spirit in the reprint format. He called Denis Kitchen and asked the Wisconsin publisher for his opinion.
“Are you kidding, Will?” Kitchen responded. “It may not be for newsstands, but I’m confident there is an interest in it in the collectors’ market. I’d be happy to continue it.”
Eisner and Kitchen had remained close, despite the awkwardness of Eisner’s transfer of The Spirit from Kitchen’s publishing house to Jim Warren’s, and the two had stayed in touch over the years. In 1974, a few months after Warren began publishing The Spirit Magazine, Kitchen had attended Phil Seuling’s New York convention, staying as a houseguest with the Eisners in White Plains. Eisner was brimming