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This collection of conversations between Frank Miller and Will Eisner is quite good they cover a lot of topics and present their views well. Clearly they are passionate about comics. A little more depth on comics aesthetics and maybe some more personal info or opinions on some non comics issues and this would be 5 stars. Charles Brownstein did a good job of organizing and editing for publication the original conversations probably lasted much longer nad would havetaken up many more pages
If you like either Will Eisner or Frank Miller, you will likely enjoy this book. Frank Miller writes a nice 2005 Introduction, kidding about Eisner's love of argument, because supposedly that is what old Jewish men love to do, argue. Eisner discusses how THE SPIRIT format was based on the standard newspaper insert sizes of those times, way back then. I am not a big fan of Frank Miller, (his work is too violent and raunchy for me), but Frank and Will together have plenty of interesting insights during this extended conversation between the two comics legends.The book is nearly 350 pages of text and b/w photos and artwork. It reminds me of the extremely long, in-depth interviews from Fantagraphics and their COMICS JOURNAL, (but without the overtly hostile, liberal overloadings that downgrade the COMIC JOURNAL, to me). It is a real page-turner if you enjoy comics and/or Miller and Eisner. I have been a fan of Will Eisner since the 1970s Warren Magazine reprint series of THE SPIRIT. It is a friendly, joking introduction, and Eisner would have enjoyed it, judging by other comments inside this book.Throughout the book, they talk and argue about many topics: other friends and acquaintances from the comics industry and fun anecdotes, how the business started and evolved, how to break-in for a newcomer (or maybe not how anymore), art and page composition, color versus black & white, working methods of operation, inking, washes, character and story creation, who else's work they admire and why, zipatone, the Comics Code Authority and the 1950s witch hunts against EC and comics, the history of pre-comics and pre-comics characters, etc.Eisner prefers to pencil and finish a completely inked page of a story, then on to the next page; while Miller likes to do mass quantities of penciled pages, then mass quantities of basic inked pages, then mass quantites of fine tuned, detailed inking to finish the pages.Miller hates the size and shape format of standard comics, which we learn is derived from the size of standard press room sheets, from the 1930's, or so.
I read it all in a single weekend, well spent time and money.In fact, the book itself was recorded over a weekend, in Florida, at Eisner's home and office, then went through a transcription and a couple of rounds of approvals, updates, corrections, and such. The book came out after Will Eisner passed away. Actually, after reading this book, I found Frank Miller to be a little more substantial in my opinion, not just all about gratuitous sex and violence like his SIN CITY comics; while I was a little disappointed with Will Eisner's careless remarks about his religious viewpoint, which seems to come off as negligible, from my reading of this book.It's a nice, intelligent read for any adult comics fan. This book is from Dark Horse Books, and I'd like to see more of this type of stuff from Dark Horse--in-depth but more balanced than the COMICS JOURNAL's stuff.All and all, this is a worthy purchase and read for any grown up comics fans, and I would be interested in buying more of this type of book from Dark Horse, if and when they decide to do a similar book with different professionals featured.
Its a great book, interesting gossip. A complaint in some reviews is that it emphasizes too much the business of comics, but in the end, the oral history of comics is extremely illuminating on how the industry has developed into what it is. Its an intruiging read, well worth the $20 I spent at the comic shop.
An outstanding, interesting, insightful and complete conversation between two of the comic mediums biggest creators. Don't pass this one up.
When I heard that Eisner's comic strip was going to be made into a movie by Frank Miller, I bought this book to see what ideas they had about comics and I hate to say that I am not impressed. Miller has no idea of storytelling, he writes stories that are not much above porn, and now he wants to do a movie on the comic strip, The Sprit, I laugh at the whole absurd idea. Like they couldn't find a real film maker to do it. Also Lionsgate films is releasing it, I guess no real movie studio wanted it either.
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