Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [156]
“He was determined that he would have me in his book, and I was just as determined that I wasn’t,” Gaiman recalled, “because my attitude is that you can’t do a Spirit story as good as the classic Spirit stories that burned my brain.
“I remember the moment he closed me, and it was like being closed by a really good salesman. You had no plans to buy that car, and you walk out of there with the keys in your pocket. We were in Gijón in northern Spain at a week-long convention. All of the events took place at night, so you didn’t do very much in the afternoon. And one of those afternoons, Will told me we were going for a walk. Will and Ann and I walked for several miles on the beach and stopped at a little café. Will and I had this very, very long conversation, in which we both wound up realizing that what I wanted to do with The Sandman was what he’d done with The Spirit, which is create a character who is a machine for telling stories.”
The two talked on and on about comics—about their history, the direction they were taking, and The Spirit. Eisner kept trying to convince Gaiman that he was a good candidate for writing a new Spirit story and Gaiman kept resisting until Eisner finally closed the sale by promising Gaiman the original cover art to the published issue of New Adventures containing Gaiman’s contribution. Eisner was doing the pencils for the covers and letting others ink and color, which led to an awkward scene when the issue with Gaiman’s story appeared.
“I had this really weird and embarrassing conversation with [inker and colorist] Mark Schultz,” Gaiman remembered. “I said, ‘Can you send me the cover?’ And Mark said, ‘Will promised me the cover.’ I mentioned it to Denis, and shortly thereafter he sent me the pencil sketch for the cover—Will’s sketch, which I honestly preferred to the finished thing, because it’s Will’s pencils. The way Will sent it to me was absolutely fascinating. He just rolled it up and taped it. There wasn’t even a cardboard tube. I thought that was wonderful, how little Will valued that part of the thing.”
Eisner bristled whenever he heard criticism that his books were too sentimental. He admitted that his own philosophy of inherent human goodness had been influenced by his boyhood reading of Horatio Alger, but he did not find anything objectionable about depicting triumph over adversity, or survival in urban grit. He saw nothing wrong with giving his books happy or wistful endings. He could have chosen another route, one reflecting the hardships of his life, and while some of those difficulties had been addressed in A Contract with God, A Life Force, and, most recently, To the Heart of the Storm, bitterness was something that he felt was best left to others. He could point to any number of his Spirit or other graphic stories that had ended unhappily, but his harshest critics didn’t seem to notice. Family Matter*, the darkest original story he would ever produce, and the last graphic novel he would submit to Kitchen Sink Press, seemed to be a direct response to those critics. Readers would have to look hard to find anything uplifting about it.
The story, about a family’s gathering for its patriarch’s ninetieth birthday, contained disturbing elements of greed, lust, euthanasia, incest, alcoholism, and violence—all told over a brief period of time, through flashbacks and some of the most pointed dialogue Eisner would ever write. Placing this dialogue in the familiar comics balloons, Eisner realized, was problematic in a novel so serious. He knew that to much of the public, dialogue balloons not only gave comics their distinctive look, but had the unintended effect of making otherwise adult subject matter appear to be something less than good, valid work.
“I’m coming to the reluctant conclusion that there is a stout wall of prejudice