The Will and Ann Eisner Family Foundation sponsors Will Eisner Week each year during the week of Eisner’s birthday, March 6.
This year's theme is "Read a Graphic Novel!" with events presented across the nation by universities, colleges, art schools, libraries, museums, bookstores, comic book shops and online.
Will Eisner's career spanned decades, from helping define the comics industry in the 1930s to reinventing the medium in the 1970s with his first graphic novel, "A Contract With God." Each year, Comic-Con International honors his legacy with the Eisner Awards. This Saturday, Comic-Con Museum will host a series of Eisner Week panels that highlight his impact on comics by focusing on what’s happening in the industry today.
One of those new trends is reflected in the panel “Graphic Memoirs by Women,” moderated by Jackie Estrada,
"Most recently, graphic memoirs by women have been garnering lots of attention and awards," Estrada noted. "One, Tessa Hull's 'Feeding Ghosts' — even won a Pulitzer! And I had just finished reading Carol Tyler's "Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief," which is a heartbreaking yet inspirational work. There are plenty of other acclaimed titles that are ripe for discussion — even ones that have been made into plays and films — in fact, it has been difficult to narrow down our list to about a dozen."
Estrada's panelists will be Mary Fleener and Mimi Pond.
"I love graphic biography and autobiography," Pond said. "I find them particularly affecting and personal. I'm just interested in finding out about people's lives and how they managed to get through hard times and keep going. It's just comforting to read about how other people figured it out."
Pond fell in love with comics through her father, who was an amateur cartoonist.
"He was showing me everything he loved before I could even read," Pond recalled. "Everything from 'Pogo' and Al Capp, and particularly for me, Jules Feiffer's 'Sick, Sick, Sick,' which really blew my mind and introduced me to the idea of being autobiographical. Then when I got the Signet Paperbacks of the E.C. 'Mad' comics, that was all she wrote. I mean, that stuff is just so exquisite and just so dense. Every panel is just staggering. And the subversiveness of it all."
But Pond recalled getting "nothing but shit" for making comics when she was in art school. "An art school, by the way, that now has a master's program in sequential art, where you can pay some crazy figure like $50,000, $75,000 a year to study graduate-level comics. And I'm like, what the fuck? I'm still bitter about that, but it's great that comics have gotten more acceptance. I still don't know that it's really reached a mainstream thing because I still find myself having complete existential angst over when I try to explain to people — who have no knowledge of comics whatsoever — about what I do."
Pond will be signing copies of her graphic memoirs "Over Easy" and "The Customer Is Always Wrong."
"Whether they admit it or not, I think everyone likes comics," Pond said. "It's just so much more engaging and inviting to look at pictures than to have to read a bunch of words on a page. You're looking at pictures. It's primal."
Estrada, who just retired after 35 years overseeing the Eisner Awards, knew Eisner personally.
"Will produced a wide variety of works over the course of his life, including several memoirs," Estrada said. "'To the Heart of the Storm' (1991) is a deeply personal graphic novel detailing his childhood, the rise of antisemitism and his experiences leading up to World War II. 'Last Day in Vietnam' (2000) is a collection of short stories based on his own experiences as a consultant for the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, exploring the personal and often harrowing realities of soldiers. And although fictionalized, 'The Dreamer' (1986) focuses on his time in the 1930s at Eisner and Iger studios, with real figures like Bob Kane and Jack Kirby appearing under pseudonyms. It's a fictionalized account of his experiences as a young cartoonist before World War II, exploring the birth of the comic book industry."
Eisner's work in graphic memoirs provided the perfect jumping-off point for the panel.
"Graphic memoirs have been around for a long time, covering all sorts of topics from war to health, disabilities issues to situations on the job," Estrada explained. "For the Eisner Awards, books along those lines were included in the category of Best Reality-Based Work when it was made separate from Best Graphic Novel in 2006. One of the first books to win in that category was Alison Bechdel's 'Fun Home,' in 2007. Each year as submissions came in for the Eisner Awards judging, a larger and larger number of Eisner-worthy memoirs piled up in the Reality-Based category. So in 2021 the Eisner judges established the Graphic Memoir category to accommodate this trend."
Comic-Con Museum and Eisner Week showcase the appeal and the diversity of comics today, and how Will Eisner helped encourage both.
