Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [54]
As rewarding as this victory was to Eisner personally, he still might not have pulled it off if he hadn’t used the diplomacy he’d learned in business. “I had to assure the adjutant general that what we were doing would not replace these technical manuals, only supplement and enhance them,” he said.
Eisner discovered that he enjoyed dividing his creative energy among the different kinds of duties and publications assigned him by the army, whether they involved designing a poster for general distribution, a Joe Dope strip for Army Motors, a technical manual for the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, or illustrations for articles in Firepower. He easily adjusted to the requirements and demands of the different types of work, and the variety added depth to his art. Up until his entry into the service, in all the years he’d devoted to producing commercial comic book material, Eisner had been anchored to an assembly-line style of planning and production and to a broad target audience ranging in age from adolescent to adult, and despite his many innovations, this limited the range of his art; most notably, before the army he was responsible only for entertaining. His work in the army extended his range of style, point of view, and narrative—all of which served him well when he returned to commercial comics after the war and, later, when he worked extensively in educational comics.
But perhaps more significant than its broadening of his talent, Eisner’s time in the army broadened his life beyond comics. It was a badly needed escape from New York, his family, and his very limited social life. He still kept in close contact with his family—especially when his brother, Pete, was drafted and he tried to use his connections at the Pentagon to keep Pete out of harm’s way, or when a financial crisis demanded his help with the bills—but his physical removal from New York gave him room to grow. He had his own apartment, a new set of friends, and, toward the end of the war, his first serious relationship with a woman.
The woman’s name was Leona, and not surprisingly, Eisner met her through work. Army Motors had moved its offices to Detroit, ostensibly to be closer to the companies manufacturing the trucks, tanks, and other vehicles used in the war effort, and Eisner often traveled to Detroit to work on assignments or deliver artwork for the magazine. Leona worked as a staff writer for Army Motors, and she immediately caught Eisner’s eye because, as Eisner explained to biographer Bob Andelman, she was not only “blonde, slim, and attractive, a gung-ho girl,” she was also strong, independent, and intelligent. “She caught my eye because she was one of the staff writers who would go out to the testing field and drive two-ton trucks around.”
Like so many wartime romances, this one was doomed by time and geography. The two saw each other whenever Eisner was in Detroit, which was often enough, and while they fell in love and even spoke of marriage, both understood the reality of their situation: he was a Jewish comic book artist from New York, she a Gentile writer from Detroit, and the war was going to end sooner or later. It wasn’t going anywhere. But while they waited for the war to end, they went ballroom dancing and enjoyed going nowhere, together.
chapter six
F L I G H T
I want to get my reader by his lapels, and I want to make him think and I want to make him cry because of what I’m telling him.
The war did end, and Eisner was discharged from the army. He had reason to be both relieved and optimistic about the days ahead. His fears about the fate of his career had been unfounded, and The Spirit, in a holding pattern while he was away, awaited his attention.
Eisner had a new perspective that he was prepared to apply to The Spirit, and it was evident in the feature. Later, much would be made about