Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [151]
And so it went, for more than a year. Eisner revised, and Schreiner pushed for more. Finally, Eisner was reaching the end of his patience. On September 4, 1990, he sent what he considered to be the final draft, with a terse note: “Enclosed: it’s The Book !!! Note I’ve settled on a shorter title ‘To the Far Off Thunder’—based on your advice. Hope you can work on this before your wedding—I really cannot expect you to take this book on your honeymoon.”
Pending nuptials didn’t prohibit Schreiner from reading and responding. After the difficulties he and Denis Kitchen had experienced with Eisner over the lengthening of The Dreamer, Schreiner recognized, in the stubborn tone of Eisner’s letters and telephone calls, that Eisner felt he had reached his limit. Schreiner was very fond of the book, but he still felt compelled to toss out a few final suggestions that he hoped would strengthen it. Most were of the technical variety: the newspaper headlines that Eisner used were often incorrect. In one panel, for instance, Eisner had a headline with the Nazis invading Belgium in 1942. “In 1942,” Schreiner informed Eisner, “that battle was over for two years. I suggest … NAZIS ADVANCE IN NORTH AFRICA.”
This was small but important stuff, as were the misspellings and typos. But Schreiner still had big problems with Eisner’s title, and he now made one last ditch effort to convince him to change it.
“My major misgiving is the title,” he stated. “I still don’t like it. It just doesn’t reach out and grab me. Are you open to suggestions for change, if we can find a suitable one? Please say you are: by far and away, the weakest part of this book is its title … It would be a dirty shame if people were not drawn to this book because of its weak title.
“This is your strongest work to date, Will,” he continued. “I know you seem to care more for the writing than the art, and ordinarily I do, too. I don’t even feel competent usually to comment on art. But I know good art when I see it, and I can’t let this opportunity pass without saying that I see it here … I think you’ve done a particularly masterful job this time.”
To Schreiner and Denis Kitchen’s great relief, Eisner relented and retitled the book To the Heart of the Storm, putting an end to one of the longest-running disagreements he’d ever had with his editor and publisher. The work on this book signaled Schreiner’s finest hour as Eisner’s editor, and Eisner seemed to recognize it. “My gratitude to Dave Schreiner, who edited this book and persevered with me through the painful revisions,” he wrote in the book’s acknowledgments. “His judgment is unfailingly dependable.”
The reviews ran the spectrum from lukewarm to breathless. In one that probably made Eisner wince, Publishers Weekly praised Eisner’s story but objected to what the reviewer dismissed as “schmaltzy” and “melodramatic” graphics, calling the book “a vivid but flawed work from an acknowledged master of the comics medium.”
Don Thompson was much more generous in his review in Comics Buyer’s Guide, one of the industry’s most influential publications. “This is an outstanding work even by Will Eisner’s standards,” Thompson wrote. “Don’t miss this. Keep a copy handy for any truly intelligent friend who asks you why you are still reading comic books at your age. If this doesn’t answer him/her, maybe he/she is less intelligent than you thought.”
Eisner was often asked where he came up with the ideas for his graphic novels and how he chose his