Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [129]
With the exception of the novel’s villains, who are largely caricatures motivated by greed or a lust for power, Eisner’s characters in A Life Force are complex individuals trapped in a harsh world of daily survival, forced to make decisions that under other circumstances they might never have faced. They are the victims of life—not the one they were raised to believe was possible, but the one they are forced to live. The Depression and the European immigration to New York City brought on by Hitler’s persecution of the Jews brings into fine focus the way otherwise decent human beings discover sometimes shady ways of surviving. People find ways to rationalize their behavior and overlook the behavior of others, all for the sake of survival. They are no different from the cockroaches scurrying around the dark corners of the city, struggling to stay alive.
Lengthy installments of A Life Force appeared in the first five issues of Will Eisner’s Quarterly, but unlike Signal from Space, which Eisner essentially wrote on the fly to accommodate each individual installment’s deadline, this new graphic novel was carefully plotted in its entirety before the first installment’s publication. At 139 pages, the story was easily the longest Eisner had yet created; and with a demanding historical setting that covered the Depression and the origins of World War II, Eisner had to make use of every storytelling device in his arsenal—including newspaper clippings, handwritten letters, weather reports, and lengthy passages of prose—to construct his narrative. Images weren’t enough. He had employed some of these devices in Signal from Space with mixed results. Comic book readers, he was learning, weren’t interested in reading long passages of prose. The images were the main attraction. “We have two mediums which are not necessarily meant to replace each other,” he concluded. “Visuals can’t entirely replace words; they can replace descriptions and actions, often in exciting ways.”
After reading A Life Force, Robert Crumb contacted Denis Kitchen, first by telephone and then by mail, to tell Kitchen the profound effect the book had on him. Kitchen made a habit of sending Crumb regular samplings of new Kitchen Sink publications, though he never bothered with Spirit magazines or comic books, since Crumb had no interest in superheroes or adventure stories. He did send Crumb Eisner’s graphic novels, however, but Crumb had never commented on them. A Life Force was the exception.
“Robert told me on the phone that, at that point in his life, he was very depressed and contemplating suicide,” Kitchen recalled. “He said, ‘I got the package and it really motivated me to continue in the business.’ Then he followed up with a postcard.”
The postcard, reprinted in its entirety in Kitchen Sink Press: The First 25 Years and excerpted in Kitchen Sink ads, didn’t repeat Crumb’s feelings of depression. Crumb did admit that he hadn’t expected much when he started A Life Force. “It’s really an uplifting book!!” he wrote, calling it the best work recently produced by an artist of Eisner’s generation. “You can tell ’im I said so!! Sort of a masterpiece!!”
Certain that Eisner would appreciate Crumb’s compliments, Kitchen photocopied the postcard and forwarded it to him. Eisner and Crumb had met on one previous occasion, at a restaurant in New York, but they found then that they didn’t have much to talk about. According to Kitchen, Crumb spoke directly to Eisner only once, after the two had been together for some time in silence, when a beautiful young woman passed their outdoor table. “Look at those gams,” Crumb remarked, pointing at the young woman. Eisner didn’t know what to make of him.
Crumb’s postcard was different.
“He knew that Crumb didn’t hold him in particular regard,” Kitchen recalled, “so for Crumb, the leading guy in his generation, to go out of his way to compliment him was