Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [31]
To top this off, Bob Kane, Eisner’s old high school chum and former Eisner & Iger freelance contributor, had teamed up with a gifted writer/artist named Bill Finger to create a costumed character that was about to become the next big thing. As a character, Bat-Man, as he was initially called (the hyphen would later disappear), was more complex and fully realized than Superman. He was a human with no superpowers, reliant on his wits and gadgets he stored in a utility belt, and while Superman’s heroics were witnessed in broad daylight by throngs of adoring citizens, Bat-Man was more a creature of the night, a loner, part detective and part vigilante. Unlike Superman, he didn’t have to find ways to duck away from his day job to go out and save the world; under the dark cowl hiding his true identity, Bat-Man was a wealthy, mansion-dwelling socialite, totally self-sufficient and capable of heading out on a moment’s notice.
Bat-Man made his debut in Detective Comics #27, and readers responded favorably—not in the frenzy that built so quickly with Superman, but enough to salt away Bob Kane’s legacy in comics.
Will Eisner was nothing but gracious when discussing Kane’s success, but those closest to him knew Eisner to be extremely competitive and, on occasion, envious of others’ good fortune. He never hid his opinion that Kane, as an artist and creative individual, was vastly inferior to others working in comics; on a personal level, he could take Kane only in limited doses. In Eisner’s view, Kane was far too loud for his talent.
There was no debating that Bat-Man, coupled with the overwhelming popularity of Superman, had changed the direction of comics while making National the top comic book publisher in the business. Eisner & Iger continued to produce huge volumes of material for Fiction House and other publishers, but as 1939 drew to a close, Eisner was aching for a change of direction, for something that would advance him beyond the juvenile audience that restricted his talents and vision. He believed to his core that this could be accomplished in comics, but he was stumped by how that might happen.
The solution was nearby, and for one of the few times in his life, Eisner didn’t have to invent it himself.
chapter four
A S P I R I T F O R A L L A G E S
I guess I’m like a guy with a mission who believes that what he’s doing is right. I felt, not immortal, but I felt like a guy who is going into combat, believing the bullets won’t hit him.
In late fall 1939, shortly before Christmas, Eisner heard from Everett “Busy” Arnold, publisher and editor of Quality Comics, one of the leading comics producers in the business. Arnold, who couldn’t stand Jerry Iger and wanted no part of him, wanted to meet Eisner alone.
Eisner and Arnold had known each other for more than a year. Arnold had been tossing the Eisner & Iger shop a fair amount of work, even though he had his own staff of artists. Eisner liked Arnold, who was a genial presence in a business of loudmouths and posers, and Quality Comics was an enterprise that lived up to its name. Arnold cared about the material he published.
Born in Rhode Island in 1899, Arnold took an interesting path to his position in the comic book business. According to Dick Arnold, Busy’s son, the family lineage could be traced back to Benedict Arnold. Accounts of how Everett M. Arnold earned his moniker vary: perhaps he was tagged “Busy” because he was always on the go as a child, or perhaps he was such a chatterbox that he was called a busybody. In any event, the nickname fit a boy who was active, intelligent, and very athletic.
After graduating from Brown University with a history degree in 1921, Arnold moved to New York and took a job with the press manufacturer R. Hoe and Company; a short time later, he became a sales representative for the Goss