CHRISTOPHER IRVING: What made you decide to let others do The Spirit,
after about fifty years of doing the stories yourself?

WILL EISNER: The answer has to be a little complicated. For years,
Denis Kitchen has been after me, pushing and prodding for me to do
another Spirit story. I was never interested in doing it, because my
plate is too full with  new material that I  feel necessary to do.
Finally, I agreed to allow him to do a Spirit story,
provided he would get some top people in the field to do it.
        The only condition that I made was that they would not try to
be Will Eisner, because every attempt I have ever seen of continuing a
strip, like  Caniff’s Terry and The Pirates, were a failure. It would
be a
failure  I reasoned if they were to attempt to be Will Eisner. I said
if they were willing to do a series of stories based on their own
interpretation and their own take, I would be willing to allow it. It
worked out very well.

CI: Have you set any limitation --

WE: The only limitation I set is that, #1: I would not be expected to
edit the material or be involved in the creative process. The second
condition that I made was that I would review all material to be sure
that they
would not warp or defame, or otherwise alter the basic concept of The
Spirit’s character. The rest of it was to be their take on The Spirit,
and that's what it is really all about.

CI: The Spirit himself seems still rooted in the 1940's. Do you think
that the charm of the character is in the fact that he has not been
"updated" for modern times?

WE: I think that what we have here in The Spirit, (at least now that
I’m able to look at it with a little more perspective now than when I
was doing it) is that we have something like the Sherlock Holmes
series, where the period is not important. It’s the story that is
really important. I guess it accounts for the survival of the
character himself. As far as The Spirit is concerned; he’s real, he’s
not a superhero.
Consequently, his reality is what survives, or his believability, if
you will.

CI: How did you get your start in comics?

WE: Actually, my first comic strip, was done in high school for the
school paper. In the professional world of comics, the first
assignment I got was for a
magazine called Wow, in which I did a thing called Scott Dalton. That
started me in the field.

CI: What about Muss Em Up Donovan?

WE: That was a comic I did immediately after that one, when I formed a
company. When Wow magazine died, two issues after I started with it, I
formed a company called Eisner and Iger, which I convinced the former
editor of the defunct Wow magazine to come in as a partner, and we
would produce contents for comic book publishers coming into the
field. One of the things we did was daily strips for small newspapers,
and so forth. Muss Em Up Donovan was a feature in one of the
magazines which I recall, was a successor to the pulps.       At that
time the pulp magazines were dying, and their publishers were looking
around for other things to publish within that genre. That was how we
got them
interested in comic books. Muss Em Up Donovan was one of the
characters [and] features that I created for these publishers.

CI: Back when you did some characters for Quality Comics, being their
superhero line, Uncle Sam, Black Condor, The Ray, and Dollman. Did you
ever think those characters would go anywhere, or was it just another
job to you?

WE: No, in those days, people working in this field never thought
their characters would go very far. By then, Superman and Batman were
already becoming very popular, so everybody thought in terms of those.
Actually. in Quality Comics, I was a partner with "Busy" Arnold, who
was the publisher for Quality Comics. We published a couple magazines
together, where I created Uncle Sam and Police Comics and Hit Comics,
and things like that. I never thought really that those characters
would go beyond what they were doing at the time.

CI: How many graphic novels have you done?

WE: I think I’ve done about ten to twelve. If we take out the two
textbooks, Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling, we come
to about twelve.

CI: Is there any one of those that you feel you1ve injected the most
Will Eisner in, the most personal work?

WE: The most personal work is Heart of the Storm, which was
autobiographical [and] the first real attempt at autobiography that I
tried. The book that really started it all was Contract with God,
which is still a favorite of mine, obviously. It seems the first
attempt to produce a serious editorial, very adult and substantial
material in this medium.

CI: What do you think of the comic field today?

WE: It's a very difficult question to answer because the comics field,
as does any similar form of popular literature reflects our society.
On a broad scale, it is a mirror of our social values. Whatever you
think of
our modern society, with it's emphasis on instant gratification and
shallow reaction to limited life experiences, comics appears to
respond to that.
But the comic MEDIUM itself is, I think, thriving, even though the
distribution is in trouble. The problem with comics today is
distribution.
        The price of comic books has grown very large. Furthermore the
competition for reader attention has never been greater. Comic books
get crushed between
television, radio and computer games and so forth.  We have  kind of a
collision now in the distribution world, and I think that is one of
the things that we're suffering from.
        I think comics are going to respond to this as they did once
before, you’ll see better comics.  People involved in comics today are
better: more skilled, more intelligent [and] more professional than
they ever
have been. I think that that's going to produce better material. I’m
rather optimistic, in the midst of what seems to be an era of great
disaster.

CI: I think the death of the newstand; there aren‘t too many spinner
racks in drugstores anymore, and I think that's been hurting comic
books.

WE: Hurting the broader sales of comic books anyway.

CI: Yes.

WE: The quality of comic books is still going to grow, and I think
we’re  in the midst of a change; real tektonic change similar to the
one that occured in 1970, when the underground people appeared in San
Francisco. At that time, everybody considered that comics were on
their way out, and look what’s happened since then: the whole form of
distribution changed, news stand distribution  was replaced by what
they call alternative comics stores. In 1970, there were 100 comic
book stores in the country. Today, after the
attrition that’s been going on, there are still 3,000 comic book
stores in the country. Things are in transition, and we have to be
aware of that.

CI: Are there any comics that you pick up?

WE: No. What I do, is I get maybe twenty to forty comic books a week,
something like that. I just scan through them, I don’t have the time
to read them. As a matter of fact, I have difficulty reading many of
the comics,
because the rhythm has been changing so tremendously, so I find that I
don't spend as much time reading comics as I did. I scan them  and
that’s about as much as I can say.

CI: Are you working on any graphic novels right now?

WE: Oh yes, as we talk, I’m working on a new one. In June, a new one
will be coming out called A Family Matter, which has an adult theme
dealing with family relationships in response to the modern  dynamics
of the family. I’m also exploring a book now on the whole family
genre. I’m really fully at work.
        Last year, I did as kind of a vacation, two childrens books.
One was Grimm’s Fairy Tale The Princess and the Frog, and then an
adaptation of Moby Dick. I don't know if they'll appear in America,
They’ve been published in about six countries in Europe, so I’m busy.
(Laughter)

CI: Do you ever miss the kind of crime drama setting of The Spirit?
Have you ever wanted to go back to an action/ adventure strip again?

WE: No, I never want to go back. I enjoyed it at the time. Whenever I
get the feeling that I want to go back, I lie down until it goes away.
(Laughter)
        I don’t like to go back, I’m constantly in a forward momentum,
looking to explore...I just don’t have time to think about, or wishing
I could go back to do something I’ve done before.

CI: Back to the Spirit,...in The Spirit in Damascus, he was wearing a
white suit. Did he start off in a white suit?

WE: He started off in a blue suit. Basically it was his uniform, or
costume.

CI: Why was he wearing a white suit?

WE: I was merely trying to develop or expand the  realistic quality of
the Spirit for the most part. I was dealing in realism. The Spirit
himself, wasn’t a super hero. His costume was not terribly important
to me. Many people don’t understand that The Spirit as a character was
a peg on which to hang the whole thing  so he wore a white suit
because that was appropriate for that story.

CI: Because a blue suit would have taken in too much light and heat?

WE: No, because a white suit was the appropriate costume for that
environment...He wore a blue suit and a mask because I was forced into
it. As I was creating the character, the Register and Tribune
Syndicate publisher called me one night when I was working on it, and
asked ”How is it going?”
       I said "I’ve got a character whose going to be a freelance
detective and he will be outside the police system, but will be able
to get us into stories that we wouldn’t be able to get into with any
other type of structure." He said “Does he have a costume?”
       In those days,”costumed characters” was the word they used for
what we call superheroes today. I said”Well...,” he said “He’s got to
have a costume, we can’t sell this unless he has a costume.” I was
sitting at the drawing board when I was talking on the phone, and I
had the Spirit's face there, so I put a mask on it and said “Oh, he’s
got a mask.”
        He said “That’s good.”
        “He’s got gloves and a blue suit.”
        “Oh, that’s fine, that’s okay then.”(Laughter)
        I always had trouble with the mask, it got in my way over the
years, it didn't help the story, and interfered with what I considered
the reality. When
you draw a character walking down the subway wearing a mask and a blue
suit, and he’s being ignored or accepted by the people in the subway
... that’s a little far-fetched.

CI: Yeah, it's not Greenwich Village. (Eisner laughs) I know that he
was quite a big success when he came out with the syndicates. Was
there ever talk of a movie serial?

WE: In late 1940, Columbia offered to do a serial and I turned it
down,...Warner Brothers did a Spirit one-hour pilot for television in
1984, and it was a failure, so we licensed it to another group of
producers. They have it now.

CI: Wow, whatever happened to the pilot? Are there still copies
floating around?

WE: It’s floating around somewhere, we have a copy in the vault here,
but that’s the only copy I've seen. I know some people have had it. It
appeared on ABC television and promptly died.

CI: So you weren't too happy with it?

WE: Frankly, I’m very unconcerned about a movie. I was sorry for them,
because I felt that they had turned out kind of a bland piece of work
and  spent about a million and a half dollars doing this pilot. I felt
that they made an uninspired movie, and it didn't
surprise me that it was a failure and didn't catch on. I have a very
indifferent feeling about film.
       I’m not interested in film, as a medium.  I get
nothing other than money, I suppose, out of a Spirit movie. It just
means very little to me. If it’s a success, it’s to their credit; if
it's a failure, it's their failure, not mine.

CI: Was he ever modeled after anybody?

WE: The Spirit was my caricature, or my take, if you will, on the
classic casual American hero: the Cary Grant type of character. I was
interested in a stereotype. When the Spirit was created, that
type of hero, the sort of sophisticated Scarlet Pimpernel kind of
hero, was pretty much the standard at the time. I didn't base him on
any specific actor.

CI: Do you have any say in who gets to do the current Spirit book?

WE: I approve their choice. I can veto their choice under extreme
circumstances. But I don’t interfere. I do not select or recruit.

CI: Can you tell me who we can expect to see any stuff from?

WE: I just got a list the other day, [and]I’m pleased to see that
Moebius agreed to come on.  Frank Miller has agreed to do one, as have
a couple of other well-known people. Quite a number have agreed to do
it. It surprised me, and I’m pleased to no end, because these are men
who enjoy an important status in the field. We’ve had Alan Moore with
Dave Gibbons do the first one.

CI: That was excellent.

WE: Yes, that was a good one, it was very well received.

CI: The second issue as well. That was a very good read, too,
especially Neil Gaiman and Eddie Campbell's story.

WE: Neil is a good friend of mine, and I really like his writing very
much.

CI: The EC comics were reprinted in this black and white format, in a
series of hardcovers. Have you ever thought of doing the same thing
with your old Spirit strips?

WE: Yes, Denis Kitchen and I have been talking about this for some
time. I’ve been hesitating until  now but I finally consented. At
first I felt it was a kind of mauseleum, and I still thought of the
Spirit series as being very much alive. You see  it has been reprinted
in sequence over three times in this country alone. They just
completed a complete run of 200 stories in  four years in Spain, and I
just signed a company in Brazil to run a Spirit series. It's still
very much
alive, as far as I’m concerned.
        I was afraid a big mauseleoum book would terminate the series.
Denis Kitchen convinced me that it won’t, so I've agreed to do it. I
don't know when they1ll come out with it, it's a big investment.