Happy 94th birthday, Will Eisner!
On this day in 1917, Will Eisner, American comics pioneer and creator of The Spirit, was born. He would have been 94 today.
To celebrate, Google has devoted its Doodle to him today, and Scott McCloud (his Understanding Comics is the intellectual heir to Eisner’s Comics And Sequential Art) writes up a tribute at the Official Google Blog.
It’s tough to say Eisner is having a renaissance when he’s never been away in the comics world– from the current retrospective at MoCCA complete with a birthday party and film screening tonight (I don’t think they’re showing either adaptation of The Spirit, but I could be surprised) to the Eisner Awards handed out at San Diego– but it’s nice to see the master getting the respect he deserves in wider circles. One hopes that it comes through when the film version of A Contract With God is completed.
As for me, I plan on celebrating by curling up with a Spirit Sunday strip or seventy.
The saddest thing about Miller’s film is that, years ago, before he did The IronGiant and The Incredibles, Brad Bird was pitching a Spirit animated film.
One can only imagine What Might Have Been.
OTOH, if he’d made The Spirit, would we also have gotten Iron Giant and The Incredibles?
And would i be willing to make the tradeoff, if i could?