You're Hired!

Will Eisner has always left me cold. Sacrilege, I know. He's always one of the first to be mentioned in the canon of comics, and it's certainly well deserved, but his work has never done much for me. It's, as Johnny Ryan calls it, the broccoli of comics. Actually, he's never said it specifically about Eisner, but it's his term. The theory is basically that as a cartoonist or fan, there are things you are supposed to like and accept under any terms. Actually, I shouldn't say I dislike Eisner. I do like the Spirit comics of the 40s and 50s, but after that, I don't care much for it.

In between the time he did the Spirit and his comeback in the 70s, he did all sorts of instructional pamphlets. Or authorized them at least. There is much contempt for cartoonists having a shop or using assistants, but anyone prolific enough does it, and I consider it their work if the finished product bears their stamp. Think of them as auteurs.

Here is one such instructional pamphlet from 1969, reissued in 1973.