I hope David Apatoff will excuse me for borrowing the title from one of his recurring series, but I wanted to share this.
This panel comes from The Name of the Game (this is the italian edition, called Le Regole del Gioco) one of Will Eisner's last graphic novels and, in my opinion, one of his most accomplished.
I used to be a Will Eisner enthusiast, as all lovers of comics should be at one point in their life.
I've always been aware of his place in the history of the medium: I was introduced to his works by anthologies or articles stressing the importance of his work, but more than the praise, what captured me was the appeal of his style in The Spirit: the noirish use of shadows, the weird angles, the use of depth and layers in a single panel...
The fact that he wrote, penciled and inked his own work, the fact that he started producing personal graphic novels at a relatively advanced age, his convinction about the artistic mertis of the form, all this made him a hero in my eyes.
Whenever I would have the chance, I'd introduce Eisner's comics to friends and aquitainces
I remember how my friend Taiyo and I both smiled knowingly when the character of Hogarth shows a Spirit comic to his alien friend in Brad Bird's The Iron Giant.
I even had a very brief email exhange with him once (he gave me very simple and sensible advice, which I should have taken).
With time though, my feelings towards both his work and his persona has become a little more complex.
I started noticing some flaws in his drawings, the writing would strike me as pedantic at times, I missed the more experimental stuff he used to do with The Spirit that he abandoned in his later work.
A bit of the childish admiration I had for him was eroded when I realized the Spirit stories, although fully under his control, were the product of a studio effort that counted other writers, pencilers, inkers, colorists and letterers (although I totally get why and besides, that was the common practice for all cartoonists working for daily newspapers).
I won't discuss here other more controversial aspects about Eisner (I will in a future post), but even after all this caveats, I must say that I still go back to his work every so often (and that I second the choice to name an important award after him).
His job was personal and littered with little gems like this one.
It's a simple drawing, a panel of little importance in the narrative (although it encapsulates a few of the themes of the graphic novel), but everying about it is appealing.
The two men nicely fill the panel, leaving the right amount of 'air' to accomodate the speech balloon.
The difference of physical stature is used effectively to stage the moment.
The style of their wardrobe quickly conveys both the characters' status and time-period
I love how stylized the Sydney's face is (he's the tall one on the left) providing a nice contrast with Conrad's exaggerated facial expression on the right.
All this in a minuscule, spontaneous drawing that probably did not take long to draw and that will be quickly glanced over in the time it takes to read the short dialogue.
