Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [61]
According to Eisner, he generally came up for an idea for a story during his more reflective moments, such as when he was deep in thought while taking the train home from work, and he would then discuss the idea with Feiffer and the others working at the shop. Producing the story became a cooperative effort, from Eisner’s rough penciling to Feiffer’s dialogue balloons to Abe Kanegson’s lettering. The popularity of “Ten Minutes”—it became one of The Spirit’s most frequently reprinted stories—probably had more to do with the disagreement over authorship than anything.
In his memoir, Backing into Forward, Feiffer admitted that he intentionally mimicked Eisner when writing the Spirit stories and that “Ten Minutes,” like the others that he ghostwrote for the feature, was “really a Spirit story that was really a Jules story in Eisner drag.
While I was the writer on The Spirit, I was by no means its auteur. That was Eisner. Every scene I conceived, no matter how it turned out, started out as if I were he. Later, when I was throwing in more and more pieces of myself, nothing went in that didn’t exist comfortably with Eisner’s sensibility.
He and I would first talk story. I’d do a layout of story line that was broken down into panels and dialogue. He’d okay it with changes, and I’d write in the copy. Next, I’d sketch a crude layout on sheets of Bristol board that, when completed, would be the final art. Before the lettering was inked in, Will went over and revised, rewrote, and sometimes reconceived as he saw fit, seldom without discussion, sometimes even argument.
“It goes like this a lot with us,” Eisner said in 1988. “Sometimes he always thought I wrote a particular story and I thought he did it. I guess we may never know for sure.”
Whenever possible, Eisner injected humor into The Spirit, which humanized his characters and took the edge off some of the stories’ violence. Every so often, as a change of pace, he’d present a story that was almost entirely humorous, and he’d even dabble with parody. This was the case when he published “Li’l Adam,” a send-up of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner that in time Eisner would call his “baptism of reality in the comic book world.”
It started innocently enough, with a phone call from Capp, who proposed that he and Eisner stage a feud through their respective work. The loud, blustery Capp, one of the most popular daily comic strip artists in the business, had become famous for his feuds, real or fictitious, which, after the first one with Ham Fisher, he used for publicity.
“We’ll have a little running feud,” he suggested to Eisner. “I think that would be good for us.”
Eisner, by his own admission, was starstruck.
“I thought it was great,” he said of the proposed feud. “We would take potshots at each other’s characters.”
Eisner might have known better; his previous encounters with Capp had been less than stellar. They’d met briefly at a function when Eisner was in the army and working at the Pentagon. Capp had invited Eisner to one of his exhibitions in Boston, supposedly to get together and tour the city, but he was a no-show when Eisner flew up for the meeting. They crossed paths again a couple of years later, shortly after the end of the war, at a meeting of the National Cartoonists Society. Milton Caniff had invited Eisner to the gathering—a true honor for Eisner, since comic book artists, considered inferior by the daily strip artists, were excluded from the society.
As Eisner recalled, Capp approached him and, in his booming voice, made a big production of their meeting:
“I caught your stuff in the Philadelphia papers,” he said. “It’s really good stuff. You’re quite talented.” Of course, I was impressed.
“But,” he said, “you’ll never make it in this business.” Inside, I collapsed, and said, “How come?”
He said, “You’re too goddamn normal!” Then he threw his head back and gave a bellowing laugh.
Rather than being put off by Capp’s showboating, Eisner felt anointed. As he