Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [172]
Eisner enlisted the help of others with his research. Benjamin Herzberg, who acted as an adviser on Fagin the Jew, acted in a similar capacity on the new project, to the point of helping Eisner restructure the book when it seemed to be losing its compass. N. C. Christopher Couch, a former senior editor at Kitchen Sink Press, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, and coauthor (with Stephen Weiner) of The Will Eisner Companion, a book examining all of Eisner’s work from The Spirit through his graphic novels, translated the Joly book into English and charted a page-by-page comparison of The Dialogue in Hell and The Protocols. Upon receiving the comparison, Eisner took on the laborious task of committing the comparison to the printed page, devoting side-by-side illustrations of the text. For Eisner, it was utterly important that readers of his book see the extent of the plagiarism.
The more he worked on the book, the more he believed that this was one of the most important projects he had ever taken on. It was the ultimate marriage of subject matter and sequential art, a work that could influence the way people felt about a compelling topic. Finding the right publisher became critical, even more so than it had been with Fagin the Jew. Once again, he wanted to avoid publishing with a company specializing in comics. He wanted as large an audience as possible, but perhaps more important, it was crucial that the publishing house be highly respected, one certain to entice international sales, especially in the Middle East.
After reading the manuscript, Judith Hansen agreed that this was an important book and needed the right publishing house to market it properly.
“I submitted his book’s proposal to selected houses, held an auction, and two houses, Metropolitan Books and W. W. Norton wound up with matching bids,” Hansen recalled. “I was looking for a publishing house that would be interested in later picking up Eisner’s graphic novel backlist if the rights could be reverted from DC, and I advised Eisner to speak to the editors from both houses. After talking with them, Eisner settled on Norton, one of the most prestigious houses in the United States.”
Robert Weil, Eisner’s editor at Norton, said: “He told me that he was looking for someone who had a history background because he felt very passionate about the subject and knew his graphics, but he needed someone who knew history, and he was comfortable with my knowledge of history. He knew that I knew a lot about European history.
“We worked very, very closely on that, and I made him redo it many, many times. Part of my job was to vet it for him. I sent it to two experts, one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast, because I didn’t trust my judgment. We went over the language in those [dialogue] bubbles many, many times. There was this section where he compares the 1864 work by the French author to the false version, laid out page by page. I told him he had to cut it down. He said, ‘I have to show this. No one will believe it.’ And I said, ‘No one’s going to read it. I won’t read it, Will.’”
This section became a bone of contention between Eisner and those reading the different drafts of the book. In his past projects, Eisner preferred to maintain secrecy about what he was working on, showing drafts to Denis Kitchen and Dave Schreiner but no one else. This book was different. Eisner sent drafts to people whose opinions he trusted, hoping for feedback that would improve the book. No one seemed to agree, especially on the prickly issue of the comparisons.
“I need your opinion,” Eisner wrote Schreiner on August 21,