Tag: will eisner

Fagin The Jew by Will Eisner

Wilsonknut.com Fagin the JewWill Eisner is obviously the genius and father behind the birth of graphic novels. As Alan Moore says, “Eisner is the single person most responsible for giving comics its brains.” He has captured the existential joy, striving, desire, and despair of everyday life in his comics from the beginning. In many works, Eisner focuses on the lives of working-class Jews. In Fagin The Jew, Eisner does the same, but different. Oh, the paradox! Right?

Counter-Narrative

Eisner presents a counter-narrative to Charles Dickens’ caricature of Fagin, the trainer of a gang of young thieves in Oliver Twist. Dickens portrays Fagin in the racial stereotypes of his time. This is an interesting graphic novel to study, especially with the racial tension and examinations we see in today’s culture.

In the foreword, Brian Michael Bendis explains the impetus of this graphic novel. Eisner wrote a comic called The Spirit in the 1940s, which included a character named Ebony. Ebony was a racist caricature, plain and simple. As time went on and Eisner experienced more of life, he felt guilty about it. Bendis says he thinks he was even haunted by it.

Bendis writes:

Will took his complicated feelings about race and caricature and applied them directly to his feelings about Judaism and how Jews have been reflected in the media for hundreds of years, by sinking his teeth directly into the classic Oliver Twist and one of the most famous Jewish stereotype characters in all of fiction… Fagin.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Eisner has Fagin present his counter-narrative directly to Dickens as he waits for the hangman. Fagin tells of how he grew up in London’s Ashkenazi community. A combination of systemic anti-semitism, cruel fate, and poor decisions force Fagin into crime in order to survive. Unfortunate circumstances follow Fagin throughout his life. Although he wants to do good, fate places stumbling block after stumbling block in his way.

Eisner’s sepia artwork gives Fagin the Jew the visceral grime and glory of 19th century England. Eisner captures expressions and gives life to characters like no other. Unfortunately, the narrative device tends to drag and over-simplify in order to work in the events of Oliver Twist, plus Fagin’s own story. In terms of narrative, Eisner seems to have tried to cram too much into a short format and does more telling than showing. Regardless, Fagin the Jew is worth the read. You can pick up a copy here.

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud

Understanding Comics

I was sixty pages into Understanding Comics when I realized it had already earned a spot  in my top-ten favorite nonfiction books.  Don’t ask me what the other nine are because I had never thought about my top-ten favorite nonfiction books until that moment.  I just know that Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art is one of them.  This is a graphic novel about the theory, history, and art of comic books.  What hooked me though was McCloud’s presentation of how the human mind handles images and language, and he does it within the comic format.  It is nothing short of genius.

McCloud begins the book trying to answer the question “what is comics?”  The definition he comes up with is “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” He goes on to examine that definition by looking at how comics have evolved through human history, from the Aztecs to the 1400s to modern day.  What we often consider to be a childish form of entertainment today is a form of communication that seems to have been natural to humans since our beginning. And McCloud argues that comics are a legitimate art form that has largely gone unstudied.

It is chapter two that begins to look deeper into how images affect us.  I found it fascinating, and like I said, by chapter three I was hooked.  McCloud’s theories are not really new.  Marshall McLuhan, Will Eisner, Neil Postman, and others have written about how media affects us, but McCloud’s presentation makes all the difference for me.  What’s Marshall McLuhan’s famous saying?  The medium is the message?

McCloud goes into the theory, the nuts and bolts if you will, of comics making- panel arrangement, the different types of transitions, the style of art, time, line, and color.   What keeps all of this accessible to those of us who aren’t artists is the fact that McCloud always brings it back to how the reader is a participant in all of this.  A discussion on how time is handled in comics didn’t mean much to me until I saw how I create the time and motion from the ink on the paper.

Another recurring theme is how all of this is a relatively new art form in terms of being examined and pushed to its limits.  Novels, poetry, music, art- virtually everything that could be done has been done.  McCloud argues that comics still have a lot of unexplored territory.  He touches on how some artists and writers have experimented with the aforementioned aspects of comics, like time and color. He encourages new writers and artists to do more.

I would have loved to have used this book when I taught High School English.  I’m sure it would have saved the lives of some of the gang members I taught.  As an English major, I feel slightly cheated that this wasn’t in the curriculum.  It should be required reading in College English classes, but as McCloud states, new art forms are judged by their predecessors.  Any study of language, art, and what it means to humans would greatly benefit from Understanding Comics.  Am I laying it on too thick?  I can’t say enough good things about his book.  Art Spiegelman, author of Maus,  writes this:

Cleverly disguised as an easy-to-read comic book, Scott McCloud’s simple-looking tome deconstructs the secret language of comix while casually revealing secrets of Time, Space, Art, and the Cosmos! The most intelligent comix I’ve seen in a long time.

The Cosmos, people.  It doesn’t get any better than that.  Check out Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art here.