Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [12]
When Bill Eisner first set foot in the Wow, What a Magazine! offices, he was not stepping into the nerve center of a modern publishing magnate. The magazine, like so many comics magazines of the time, operated on an extremely limited budget, with the understanding that the current issue could very well be its last. The magazine’s editor, Samuel Maxwell Iger, who preferred to be called “Jerry,” was, to be charitable, a dynamic presence, a one-man show who sold ads, worked as the magazine’s distribution director, hired freelancers, edited copy, dealt with printers, and, when necessity dictated, did artwork.
The Wow offices reflected the magazine’s borderline existence. Located on Fourth Avenue in Manhattan’s garment district, the offices were little more than a shoebox. John Henle, the magazine’s owner, wanted to be a publisher; he had enough business acumen to know that shirts were a safer bet. Henle gave Iger control over the magazine, but he made it clear that there was only so much money he could sink into it.
Iger was the kind of man who desperately wanted to be everything he wasn’t. He would have liked to be six or so inches taller, better looking, wealthy, and much less harried. He would have liked to be a better draftsman, when in fact his lettering was only passable and his cartooning was embarrassingly rudimentary. He was broke, overworked, and in the process of divorcing his second wife. Yet his bluster could take paint off a wall.
He got by—partly on his exceptional salesmanship, partly on unadulterated chutzpah. He had a way of balancing his personal books by living over his head by night and pinching pennies by day. He liked to be seen at the right places, with a beautiful woman or two (often prostitutes) at his side, and he talked as if he owned a sizable chunk of Manhattan. People would see through it, but that didn’t prevent Iger from carrying on.
Nick Cardy, who worked for both Eisner and for Iger in his early years in comics, recalled a time when he was asked to deliver drawings to Iger’s apartment, only to get a firsthand look at the way Iger tried to impress people in ridiculous ways.
“I went up to this little apartment—it must have been eight by ten—and this fella opened the door. He was the butler! I mean, how would you use a butler in an eight-by-ten room? He said, ‘I’ll see if he’s in, sir.’”
If not for Eisner’s persistence, his initial meeting with Jerry Iger would have fallen through. Eisner had just begun showing his portfolio when Iger picked up the phone and learned that he had still another crisis on his hands. There was a problem at the engraving plant requiring Iger’s immediate attention.
“I don’t have time to talk to you now,” he told Eisner. “I’ve got a serious problem. Come back another day.”
Eisner knew better than to go along with that. It was tough enough to get an editor to glance at your work; there were no guarantees that Iger would see him at another time, let alone remember talking to him. As the two took the elevator down to the lobby, Eisner suggested that he might show Iger his portfolio while they walked to the engraving plant. Iger reluctantly agreed. Eisner presented his work as well as he could while they walked briskly down the sidewalk, but Iger’s attention was elsewhere.
At the engraver’s shop, they found several men standing at a huge stone table in the center of the room. The engravers used the table to inspect the plates when they came out of the acid bath. The problem here was that the plates were punching holes in the mattes used in the reproduction process, and the men were at a loss as to how they might correct the problem.
Eisner listened to the discussion before clearing his throat and addressing the group.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Does anyone have a burnishing tool?”
“I had been working for years in a print shop on Varick Street, and I’d seen this before,” Eisner told the Comics Journal in