Overview of the Collection The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library William Erwin Eisner Will Eisner Collection 1934-1983 7 boxes, with portfolio recordings. Art originals, ca. 230 items. The collection includes original and published work by Will Eisner, and by various artists who worked for him, as well as correspondence, articles, and commercial publications. SPEC.CGA.WEE English. Biography of Will Eisner, b. 1917

William Erwin Eisner is an American cartoonist, writer and businessman. A pioneer of the comic book industry and one ofhte most influential innovators of sequential art, Eisner studied art under George Bridgeman at the New York Art Students' League. His early employment was with Eve magazine; his first comic book was for WOW, What a Magazine (1936). He then founded a company with Jerry Iger to produce comics and comic related products and formed Universal Phoenix Features to market their work overseas. In 1939 Eisner joined Quality Comics Group to produce a comic newspaper supplement for the Des Moines Register-Tribune Syndicate, at which time he originated the comic strips The Spirit, Lady Luck, and Mr. Mystic. During the war, 1943-1946, Eisner as an enlisted man did the Joe Dope series for Army Motors. In 1950 Eisner formed the American Visual Corporation and for close to thirty years he was involved in commercial art products--office manuals and magazines in comic book format, giveaway comics, and educational materials. In 1973 he began teaching at the School of Visual Arts and more recently has published graphic novels, including A Contract with God and The Building. Eisner is known for the strip The Spirit, in which a masked detective fights crime. His work on the strip dates as follows: October 13, 1941 (first appearance) through May, 1942; December 23, 1945-August 12, 1951. Reprints of the comic book appeared in 1966-1967; since 1972 Kitchen Sink reprints have been published. Among his many awards are the National Cartoonists Society's Comic Book Artist of the Year award, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1987. He received the National Cartoonists Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.

 Scope and Contents

The collection consists of original art, in a variety of media, and includes tearsheets, proofs, posters, mechanicals and photographs of Eisner's works; general papers; business correspondence; fan mail; educational materials developed by Eisner, such as the series Grammarfun; comic books; examples of his commercial products; books illustrated by Eisner; scrapbooks; magazine articles by or about Will Eisner. Included are works by artists who worked for Eisner, such as Jules Feiffer, Andre LeBlanc, Klaus Nordling and Fred Schwab. Numerous works by Eisner, including PS, are cataloged separately.

 Related Material

The Cartoon Research Library card catalog contains entries for additional works by Eisner, under the name Eisner, Will. Miscellaneous clippings about Eisner may be found in the library's biographical file under his name.

 Index Terms

This record series is indexed under the following controlled access subject terms.

Persons: Will Eisner Jules Feiffer Jerry Iger Andre LeBlanc Klaus Nordling Fred Schwab Document Types: Comic strips Comic books Occupations: Cartoonist Universal Phoenix Features Quality Comics Group American Visual Corporation Acquisition Information

Gift of Will Eisner, 1984. Additions to the collection are expected.