Will Eisner - Textbooks

Source: The List (Issue 616)
Date: 30 October 2008
Written by: Paul Dale

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Comics and Sequential Art
(Norton) ●●●●●

Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
(Norton) ●●●●

Expressive Anatomy For Comics and Narrative
(Norton) ●●●●

Undoubtedly what editor Denis Kitchen calls the 'primary treatise on the theory and mechanics of modern comics', Eisner's influential textbook Comics and Sequential Art and its two companion guides get a makeover for the digital age. Honed from lectures Eisner used to give at New York's School for Visual Arts, this educational trilogy was first published by Poorhouse Press, a tiny cheapo imprint overseen by Eisner's brother Pete. Those (now highly prized) editions were made without any modern technology, and Xeroxed paste-ups often sat next to shoddy Photostats. For these new editions, illustrations were scanned from Eisner's original artwork and grammatical errors were corrected. The biggest change is the new sidebars (courtesy of James Sturm at the Center for Cartoon Studies and others) of contemporary graphic art from an 'ever changing digital comics world'. None of which detracts from Eisner's universal, revealing and generous scholastic legacy. These are essential purchases for anyone interested in a career in graphic storytelling.

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