Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [153]
“In relating the story of Herman, who became the unwilling prize in a clash of wills, I hoped to evoke the helplessness of a person caught in an intersection of the traffic of life,” Eisner wrote of the story. “Herman’s dilemma is one of the dangers of group living.”
Coming on the heels of such a lengthy, ambitious work as To the Heart of the Storm, Invisible People seemed like a minor work retracing steps already taken elsewhere. Eisner worried about this in a letter to Dave Schreiner. “I expect I’ll be criticized by the younger critics for repeating myself,” he predicted. “But I’ve wanted to deliver myself of these themes for some time—maybe on the next book I’ll try some new arena.” Schreiner, aware of the inspiration for the stories, was sympathetic. “You have to let these things out or they keep on bothering you,” he advised. “You are an artist and writer and, while you can’t do these things in a vacuum, I think it would be very dangerous to let a critic guide you. You wouldn’t be true to yourself then.”
Eisner labored over the three stories, from the naming of his characters to the titles of the stories themselves. He knew what he wanted to accomplish, but he seemed lost as to how to get there. “Sanctum” went through numerous drafts as Eisner struggled to fit the message of the Carolyn Lamboly story within the framework of his tale about Pincus Pleatnik. He drew several different rough pencil covers for the proposed single-story Pincus book, using such titles as “The Hider,” “Safety,” “Sinkhole in the City,” “Sinkhole,” and “Invisible,” before eventually settling on “Sanctum.” But he grew so frustrated that he wrote Schreiner and begged for help. “Still flailing at the title,” he told his editor, undoubtedly remembering his issues with Schreiner over the title for To the Heart of the Storm. “For heaven’s sake pick one and help me go on with this monster in peace!!!”
The Invisible People trilogy was marketed with a unified cover design and logo, with Eisner’s name prominently displayed on each of the three covers, each book distinguished by its different art and title. However, readers weren’t as compelled to buy all three books as they might have been if it had been a continuing story, and sales lagged behind expectations. The sales figures were similarly disappointing when the stories were gathered into a single volume. It could be that Eisner had gone to the proverbial well one time too often, that readers weren’t drawn to the book as intensely as to some of his earlier efforts, as Eisner had originally feared, or it could have been that a downturn in the market affected sales. Whatever the reason, Invisible People, for all Eisner’s passion and the work that went into it, was now officially a minor work in the Eisner line.
When Eisner celebrated his eightieth birthday on March 6, 1997, Ann marked the occasion by throwing a surprise party at the International Museum of Comic Art, a huge affair attended by friends, family, and business acquaintances. Eisner was in remarkably good physical condition for someone his age—or even two decades younger—and he was producing more than ever. Nearly twenty years had passed since the publication of A Contract with God. In the years since the book’s publication, he had produced more graphic novels than anyone in the business. He had reached the age where he was the subject of career retrospectives, he’d received more awards than he could keep track of—including the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995—and the