Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [108]
As promised, Eisner delivered a variety of non-Spirit material to flesh out each issue. He submitted reprints of Lady Luck, the feature that had appeared in the Spirit Sunday comic book, as well as reprints of Jules Feiffer’s Clifford, a clever, sardonic comic featuring precocious kids that pre-dated Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. Clifford, like Lady Luck and Bob Powell’s Mr. Mystic, had been part of the Sunday comic book. In future years, Eisner would broaden the magazine’s scope by serializing his graphic novels, writing a series of instructional pieces on sequential art, and conducting workshop interviews with leading comic book artists under the heading “Shop Talk.” If there were any doubts about Eisner’s return to the comics arena, they were settled in the magazine, which found him moving forward while offering up hefty selections from his past.
One might imagine that for a financially secure man hitting sixty, Eisner might have considered his commitment to The Spirit Magazine more than enough work to keep him occupied. But he was only getting started. With obligations to American Visuals and P*S magazine no longer part of his daily routine, Eisner was free to pursue projects that he might otherwise have had to put aside. He liked the idea of publishing a book of prose, and with the Spirit back in circulation, he used the character’s newfound popularity to knock off The Spirit’s Casebook of True Haunted Houses and Ghosts, a book of paranormal tales narrated by the Spirit, lavishly illustrated, and published by Eisner’s newly created company, Poorhouse Press.
The press was another of Eisner’s innovations with business roots dating back to his days in the old comic book studios. He wasn’t interested in publishing his non-comics work in the traditional way, which amounted to a loss of creative and financial control. Rather than going through the usual submission and production processes, Eisner could approach a publisher with a finished book, written and illustrated and laid out the way he wanted to see it in print, and upon accepting the project under consideration, the publisher would print and distribute the book, giving Eisner a better cut of the profits than the standard royalty rates. The publishing house imprint also enabled Eisner to market his books wherever he chose, he would no longer be tied down to a particular house.
According to Ann Eisner, the company’s name was a humorous reference to the uncertainty and risks of the publishing business. “They had to make up a name for it,” she said of the publishing imprint, “and Will said, ‘Well, this is the best way I know of going to the poorhouse,’ so he decided to call it Poorhouse Press.”
Eisner, shown here in his Manhattan office, took great pride in his business acumen, often joking that he kept one foot at the drawing table and one foot under his desk. His skills in negotiating contracts kept him from experiencing the kind of money and ownership troubles that plagued most of the early comics artists. (Courtesy of Denis Kitchen)
All joking aside, Poorhouse Press was a safe enterprise. Between 1974 and 1985, Eisner cranked out every type of novelty book imaginable—more than twenty all told, most published by Poorhouse Press, with an occasional offering to another house, such as Baronet Press, Scholastic Books, or Bantam—bearing such titles as Gleeful Guide to Living with Astrology, Gleeful Guide to Communicating with Plants to Help Them Grow, Gleeful Guide to Occult Cookery, and How to Avoid Death & Taxes, and Live Forever. There were also two instructional books (Comics and Sequential Art and