I was woken up this morning, with the news that Will had died last night, aged 87, and I’ve let a few friends know, and already had to speak to one journalist about who Will was and what he did (“It’s as if Orson Welles had made Citizen Kane and redefined what you could do in film, and then carried on making movies until now,” I said, wishing I could come up with a better analogy, and knowing that that didn’t explain it. And I didn’t mention how proud he was of any of us who did good comics — how much he cared about the medium — or how glad I am that I got to tell him that I wouldn’t have written comics if it wasn’t for him. There’s a reason that the Oscars of comics are the Eisner Awards.)
I have been reading more and more comics and books about comics (Scott McCloud’s two books are great resources[“Understanding Comics”, “Reinventing Comics : How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form”]), and I was just notified this morning that Eisner’s Comics & Sequential Art was waiting for me at my local library branch. I also just learned — from Neil Gaiman’s postings — that Eisner’s studio was just a few miles from where I spent my formative years: I’m sure he wasn’t working there when I grew up, but I recognized the address as one I must have passed hundreds of times.
If I were the type of person who makes public resolutions, I could say safely say that this year I hope to create more, be it in writing, pictures, whatever — even crummy programming code.
Now playing: Overture to La Forza del Destino by Giuseppe Verdi from the album “Verdi: Overtures and Preludes”