Published for the first time as a trilogy, the form in which they were originally conceived, Will Eisner’s comics instructional books—Comics and Sequential Art, Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative and the posthumously completed Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative—have been revised and released in new editions by W.W. Norton. Based on Eisner’s lectures and classes at New York City’s School of Visual Arts, the books explore the minute details of creating comics, from panels and timing to the printing process. The books have been updated and revised, as per Eisner’s wishes for the books to remain relevant. Eisner’s editor, Norton executive editor Robert Weil, and contributing editor, Denis Kitchen, oversaw the process. .
W.W. Norton acquired the rights to the books in the fall of 2006. Eisner previously held the rights and self-published Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative through his own imprint, Poorhouse Press, which he ran with his brother Pete. Comics and Sequential Art, the most famous of the three books, was first published in 1985. The book was revised several times; has gone through thirty previous printings and has around 200,000 copies in print. The second book in the series, Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, was first published in 1996, under the original title, Graphic Storytelling. There were 150,000 to 200,000 copies of Graphic Storytelling in print before the Norton editions.
The new Norton edition of Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative, the final book in the series, is actually the book’s first publication after being left unfinished when Eisner died in January 2005. Eisner was still working on Expressive Anatomy in the last months of his life and planned for the book to be complete by the spring of 2005. The narration and penciled first-draft of Expressive Anatomy were finished when he died.
Expressive Anatomy is not an anatomy book in the traditional sense; instead, while Eisner explains the basics of skeletal and muscular structure, he also focuses on the importance of gesture, posture and facial expression to conveying the storyline. Denis Kitchen, a noted cartoonist, comics publisher and agent, told PWCW that Eisner allowed his images and characters to tell the story and he said Eisner believed the characters in a comic should be like “the actors on the stage.” Artist, writer and archivist Peter Poplaski, who previously worked with Eisner, worked to complete the unfinished book, finishing the inking and drawings and assisted in polishing the final text by listening to recordings of Eisner’s lectures at SVA.
Aside from the completion of the unfinished Expressive Anatomy, the two other books were given a “face lift,” according to Kitchen. The original books published by Poorhouse Press, were not produced with care and most of the images were derived from Xeroxed paste-ups. However, in the new Norton editions the images were scanned from Eisner’s original art. Along with the rescanned artwork, the text was revised and anachronisms or awkward phrasing and terminology was removed. “The books were not meant to be fossils,” Weil said, emphasizing that contemporary information on the use of computer technology in comics, such as scanning and drawing tablets, has been added, as well as information on web comics. Also, each book provides a list of colleges that teach cartooning.
The most noticeable non-Eisner additions are the inclusion of examples of contemporary comics artists in Comics and Sequential Art and in Graphic Storytelling. Most of the examples in the books are of Eisner’s own work, largely from his ground-breaking color newspaper comics strip, The Spirit. The new creators integrated into the books include Jason, Alison Bechdel, Kevin Huizenga, and Bryan Lee O’Malley. Denis Kitchen oversaw the new additions with the assistance of artist/professor James Strum from the Center for Cartoon Studies. Kitchen wanted to include cartoonists that a new generation sees as “role models.” Strum consulted with his students, and through consensus picked examples to illustrate Eisner’s principles.
Norton’s ability to market the books to schools and colleges was an integral part of why they were chosen to publish the books. According to Weil there is an “explosive interest in graphics and how to draw them,” and he said there is a large demand for the books at colleges excited by these new editions. Eisner, who never went to college himself, was a natural teacher, Kitchen says, and he utilized the principles he taught at SVA, along with his own mastery of the medium, to figure out which lessons worked and which didn’t. Eisner was the first to use comics as an educational tool in the 1950’s when he redesigned the U.S. military’s maintenance manuals into a comics format.
Besides colleges, Norton intends to market these books to traditional trade book stores and art stores. Eisner has 10-15 foreign publishers and Weil noted a large foreign interest in the books. Each book has a first printing of 15,000 copies and Weil expects the books to go back to press soon.
The books were revolutionary for their time and even though the first book is a little over two decades old, “the understanding of anatomy and storytelling is the same and the basics of comics and storytelling doesn’t change,” Weil says, “all that needed updating was the technology.” Kitchen says that along with Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, Eisner books are “the cornerstone for understanding comics,” useful to both artists and readers, and will “stand the test of time.”
