The Spirit, Will Eisner, Understanding Comics

The issue of the spirit we read really underscored him as a radically different kind of comic book hero for the time. In a time when comic books were absolutely dominated by "masked heroes" using super powers to fight larger than life villains, the world of the spirit seems just a bit smaller,more identifiable as our own. In the pages of the spirit, I noticed an interesting sort of cross between earlier, iconic "cartoons" and the more gritty realism that is visible in many more contemporary comics. Interestingly, because of the nature of the photocopy, I did not really recognize the nature of the character Ebony in the comic until we watched the documentary on Will Eisner. The character came off as a strange little man, and I became confused as to weather he was a child or some strange deformed creature or what.Of course it all made sense in watching the film.
The documentary pointed out that Ebony, in many ways, represented popular entertainment of the time, which was full of characters that were, to say the least, racially insensitive. Eisner himself didn't seem to realize, at the time of original writing, that Ebony represented something wrong. It's interesting to see how actively icons of a period embed themselves in the entertainment media, often without pause or second thought given until much later.
I was surprised to see Michael Chabon interviewed in the documentary. I read his book, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" this summer, and had really enjoyed it, even without knowing all of the comic book history I learned from the documentary. The novel is about two young Jewish men in Brooklyn in 1939, who decide to make comic books to earn a living. Clearly, these characters were inspired by the likes of Eisner and the other early comics pioneers. I enjoyed the way the documentary followed all of the ins and outs of Eisner's career, from his early days writing the spirit to his career in illustrating U.S. Army manuals to his arrival at the first comics convention, meeting underground artists like Art Spiegelman. I found an interesting Juxtaposition between Spiegelman and Eisner. Speigelman seemed very much the artist, concerned with the integrity of his work and the underground movement as an expressive form. While Eisner, through much of his career, seemed to view comics primarily as a job. He wrote the best comics he good, and acknowledged the expressive power of comics, but it still seemed primarily an occupation.
Eisner's influence is clearly seen throughout "Understanding Comics", wherein Scott McCloud cites Eisner's work constantly. McCloud's book, in the latter half, makes a number of fascinating revelations about the nature of time with the two dimensional plane of the comics page. Particularly interesting was the segment about the way the eye travels across the page, taking in a single panel, but also absorbing panels in the "past" and "future" to the left and write. In this way, the senses and events actively bleed across through the gutters. McCloud makes a strong argument for comics as an utterly unique medium, in which art and words must compliment each other, striking a delicate balance of icons and exposition.