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Feature Review #5

Simply the Best Advice, from One of the Greatest Comics and Sequential Art Will Eisner

Will Eisner either invented or refined most of the techniques of storytelling that "modern" comics depend on. Before this book, one way to learn How To Write And Draw Comics (aside from attending a good school) was to read, if you could find it, the entire run of Eisner's incredible "Spirit", which, fifty years after it ended, is still one of the most incredible examples of sheer bravado virtuosity in the medium. Since this book's publication, the "read the 'Spirit'" method -- while still, probably, the most pleasurable way to study -- is no longer the best. Now the best way to really learn how and why comics work is to get this book,and to allow one of the true masters of the craft to share with you his sixty-plus years' worth of experience and innovation. Learn how and why comics resemble film - and why they don't. Learn pacing, narrative and page beakdowns. It's almost like having Eisner himself standing there, pointing out what to do and what not to do. And anyone who thinks that Eisner must be irrelevant to comics because his most famous work was so long ago need look no further than the splash page of the fourth issue of DC's "Harley Quinn" (March 2001)... nor past the ending of the same comic, which subtly pays tribute to the "Spirit" story about an ordinary man named Gerhard Schnobble -- the one that Eisner has called his own favourite of the strip's entire run. You want to do comics and you don't have access to professional training? Buy this book. You want to do comics and you do have access to professional training? Buy this book, anyway..