Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [81]
The army wasn’t happy with the way things were going at the magazine in any event, and shortly before the end of Norman Colton’s tenure at P*S, in an effort to restore order to a situation that was spiraling out of control, officials brought in Jacob Hay, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, to work as managing editor. After the departure of Colton, Hay was made acting editor, but he was so shocked by the disorganization at P*S that he quit his post after two months in September 1953, took a position at the Greensboro Daily News, and a short time later wrote a six-part exposé on just how bad things were at the magazine.
This dark period couldn’t have arrived at a more inopportune time for Eisner. He and Ann were expecting their second child, he’d just purchased a new home, and while American Visuals had other clients bringing in income, P*S was supposed to be his meal ticket. Thirteen years earlier, when he’d gambled and left Eisner & Iger for The Spirit, his business and artistic instincts had been rewarded. Now, here he was, working for the government on an army publication being issued during a time of war, a venture that should have been solid enough, but his future looked shaky.
Fortunately for Eisner, the army made an excellent move with its selection of the magazine’s third editor. James Kidd, a thirty-three-year-old veteran of World War II, teaching journalism at West Virginia University when he was offered the job at P*S, was as different from his predecessors as one could have imagined. Quiet, soft-spoken, straitlaced, and no-nonsense, Kidd brought stability and credibility to the chaos that had been P*S magazine. Twice decorated for valor during the war, Kidd was an officer and he knew the army, and with his recently earned Master of Arts degree to go with his Bachelor of Science Journalism degree, he knew reporting and editing. Not given to cursing, raising his voice, tossing things around the office, or showing much of any emotion, for that matter, Kidd took a laid-back approach to business that greatly contrasted with the kinetic energy that seemed to bounce off Eisner, yet there was never a question of his authority. Eisner took one look at Kidd and declared, “I don’t think I want to play poker with that guy.”
He would, however, work well with him for the next eighteen years.
The first issue of P*S magazine under Jim Kidd’s guidance was published in January 1954, and from that date until Eisner left the magazine in 1971, 212 issues were published, with only two delays. Kidd and Eisner disagreed frequently, but Eisner never doubted Kidd’s professionalism or intentions. For his part, Kidd acted as an effective buffer between Eisner and the army brass.
The magazine was a work in progress throughout the Korean War. The format remained the same: a five-by-seven digest-sized magazine, forty-eight pages, with a four-color wraparound cover done by Eisner in comic art, eight color pages of maintenance-focused stories by Eisner in the middle, and the rest devoted to articles, charts, and other graphic material related to preventive maintenance. Shortly after joining P*S, Kidd hired Paul Fitzgerald, a World War II vet and one of Kidd’s former students at West Virginia University, to work as the magazine’s managing editor. Fitzgerald assisted with the post-Colton office restructuring as well as some of the fine-tuning of the publication’s content.
These were trying times for Eisner, who never adapted easily to change. (“If you moved his socks to another drawer, it was a crisis,” his wife would joke.) He had to adjust to a new