ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: How did the film Citizen Kane influence Will Eisner’s comic The Spirit?
Will Eisner was one of the pioneers of American comic books and graphic novels. He was born in New York in 1917 and died in Florida in 2005. At the beginning of his career he co-created and scripted many popular 1930s adventure comics with Jerry Iger. Eisner’s signature comic is The Spirit (1940-1952), a detective comic that gained a cult following for its innovative, unpredictable storylines and visual execution. In the second half of his career, Eisner produced educational comics for the U.S. army, before reinventing himself once more as “the godfather of the graphic novel.” Recurring themes in his work are the 1930s, city life, prejudice, family issues, Jewish identity and existential angst. Eisner paved the way for many graphic novelists, writing theoretical books about comics, of which ‘Comic & Sequential Art’ is the most iconic.
Moisés Hassan Bendahan grew up in Madrid and later relocated to New York, where he received his PhD in Spanish and Latin American Language and Literature from The State University of New York at Stony Brook. His thesis was about how Asians and Latinos are represented in American comics. His book Will Eisner: Un siglo de arte secuencial (“Will Eisner: A Century of Sequential Art”) was recently published in Spanish by Editorial Base in Barcelona.
