San Diego Comic-Con Museum celebrates comics legend Will Eisner on Saturday

BETH ACCOMANDO
This weekend, San Diego ComicCon Museum is participating in the Will Eisner Week. And I have here Jackie Estrada, who has been running the Eisner Awards through Comic Con International since 1990. So, Jackie, to start off, remind people who Will Eisner is and why it's important to remember him.

JACKIE ESTRADA
Well, will Eisner is one of the pioneers of graphic storytelling. He started in comics back in the 30s, doing what we call now the golden age of comics, doing comics like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and Blackhawk. And then he came up with the idea for his own character, The Spirit. And that was kind of pioneering, too, because it became a Sunday comics insert to newspapers. There would be his story would be the lead story with The Spirit, and then there would be some other comic stories, but they were in comic book format, not comic strip format. He was in the service in World War II. And when he got out, the comics industry had changed a lot. And he ended up using his graphic storytelling for a lot of other purposes, educational purposes and things for the military. And in the late 1960s, people rediscovered The Spirit. And Eisner came back on the scene as somebody that was an innovator many decades before. And then he went into a second part of his career, which was doing graphic novels. And that term was not really around too much before then, but his 1978 book, A Contract With God. A lot of people think it's the seminal thing to graphic novels. And he was 60 years old when he did that, and he did many more graphic novels afterwards. And he also taught graphic storytelling at school, visual arts, he wrote books about it. So many aspects of the comics industry were influenced by Will.

BETH ACCOMANDO
And Comic Con has really made a mission of making sure people remember him. And one of those things is the Eisner Awards, which you have been running for years, decades. And explain what the Eisner Awards are.

JACKIE ESTRADA
Well, they're compared to the Oscars as far as being the main awards of the comics industry. They're given out in a gala ceremony during Comic Con every summer and in categories both for best graphic Album, best continuing Series, Best reality based Work, best international Work, and then also for individual categories like best writer and best henceler Inker and things like that. So there's over 30 categories that we give out awards in.

BETH ACCOMANDO
And now that ComicCon has a Museum, it allows them a venue where they can do events year round instead of just during the summer. And right now, the Comic Con Museum is going to be participating in Will Eisner Week. So explain what that is.

JACKIE ESTRADA
It's an annual event that was started by the Will and an Eisenhower Foundation, and it encourages libraries, institutions, people around the world to, at minimum, read a graphic novel. This week, March 6 was Will's birthday. So the first week of March is traditionally Will Eisner Week. They have what they call it is events celebrating comics and sequential art, graphic novel literacy, free speech, and a legacy of Will Eisner. So any of those topics could inspire some kind of program or event.

BETH ACCOMANDO
And you will be participating in one of the panels that is going to be occurring this weekend at the Comic Con Museum. And what will that be?

JACKIE ESTRADA
Well, there's four panels. Three of them have been organized by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and they're on topics like using Willisner's work in other comics in the classroom, censorship during Eisner's era, and also something called Looking at US through Eisner's lens. So those are the topics they'll be covering, and they have creators, academics, et cetera, participants that are some of them are in person. Some of them are Zoom. My panel I call and now for something completely different because it is about Will Eisner's vision for what could be done with the graphic storytelling comics medium. He felt that we're just scratching the surface on the things you could do with words and pictures. And I have three panelists will all be in person who were judges for the Eisner Awards last year. And what we're going to each talk about is works that we think really well would have been excited about because of the things that they do exploring the comics medium. Some of them are things that just do comics in a box with a bunch of different elements that are different sizes from Chris Ware. And then we have things that use different techniques and materials, like cut outs to make their pages. A fantastic book that I'm going to be talking about is Mr. Invincible, which is his superpower, is that he can move around on a comic book page so he can go down a rope from the top panel to the bottom panel, pick something up and bring it back up to the top in order to beat up a criminal or whatever. So there's just such a variety of things. And we'll have a PowerPoint show to show examples of all of these works and also a handout with the list of not only the things being discussed, but also the one things we just couldn't get to that are also exploratory and experimental and interesting.

BETH ACCOMANDO
And for you, what kind of sums up Will Eisner and his work? Is there one work of his that you are particularly fond of, or is there something about his style that really you connect to?

JACKIE ESTRADA
The story I like to tell is that when Will was at conventions, I would walk around with him sometimes and people would come up to ask for autographs. And a lot of times when you see a popular celebrity, the person will say, oh, sure, I'll give you an autograph. Thank you. Yeah, I am great, aren't I? But Will was do you do any comics? Do you write or draw? Do you have anything with you, can I take a look at it? So he would go back to them and be interested in what they were doing and that's something that I've carried with me that I always like to find out. Well, what do you do and what are you interested in? Encourage them.

BETH ACCOMANDO
So I think that's kind of my takeaway from will and to people who may not be familiar with his work or familiar with the comic Con Museum, what would you tell them to entice them to come to this event?

JACKIE ESTRADA
Not only will you be able to, with your admission to the Museum, Go to this event, but you can see the exhibits that are on display there and there's a brand new one opening this weekend. In fact, the Dave Stevens Rocketeer exhibit for those might not be familiar with Dave Stevens Or probably know who the Rocketeer is. This is the 40th anniversary of the creation of a rocketer in 1982 And Dave Stevens was a local kid back in those days of the 70s and worked on ComicCon and moved up to la and got involved in animation. He did storyboards for the thriller video for Michael Jackson. He did storyboards for readers of lost arc, but he also created this character and did comics. And then in 1991, the movie came out from Disney and so there's going to be props and things from the movie but also fantastic artwork from Dave on the wall. And then there's other continuing exhibits. There's a Gene Roddenberry exhibit, there's an Archie comics retrospective. There's a Pacman thing. There's lots of other stuff going on at the Museum Besides just the programs on that day.

BETH ACCOMANDO
And what do you think Will Eisner has to say to a contemporary audience right now or to a young audience who may not have grown up with those comics?

JACKIE ESTRADA
Well, I don't think he would be saying read my stuff. I think he'd be telling people, do you like TV? Do you like movies? There's so many different kinds. Well, there's the same thing with comics and graphic novels. There's something there that you are going to find and you're going to love and we'll try to make it available to you, but you have to check it out and see what would be of interest to you Because your life will be better for having this entertainment and in many cases also slip in some educational stuff.

BETH ACCOMANDO
All right. Well, I want to thank you very much for talking about Will Eisner and Will Eisner week.

JACKIE ESTRADA
Thank you, Beth.