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The Life & Art Of Will Eisner

On Monday, March 23, comics writer and critic Danny Fingeroth will give an illustrated presentation about the life, work, and influence of writer and artist Will Eisner.

Taking a tour through Eisner's life-in effect, a journey through comics history-the presentation will serve as an introduction to those who'd like to know more about how the graphic novel phenomenon (which has spawned hit comics-based movies like THE DARK KNIGHT and WATCHMEN), and will offer new insights for those who may already know the work of Eisner and his creative descendants.

Born in 1917, Eisner was raised in the tenement Bronx of the Great Depression. He was a pioneer in the creation of comics of the “golden age” of the 1930s and '40s, achieving immortality with his noir crime fighting superhero, THE SPIRIT. In 1978, Eisner reinvented himself-and the medium-with his graphic novel A CONTRACT WITH GOD, the first of a series of works focused on early 20th century Jewish life in America. At the time of his 2005 death, Eisner was working on THE PLOT, a comics-form refutation of the resurgent Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

A longtime writer and editor at Marvel Comics, Fingeroth has spoken about comics at the Smithsonian Institution and The Metropolitan Museum. He recently curated and moderated an enlightening series of talks with comics creators (AL JAFFEE, JULES FEIFFER, and HARVEY PEKAR) at the YIVO Institute. He's the author of DISGUISED AS CLARK KENT: JEWS COMICS, AND THE CREATION OF THE SUPERHERO (Continuum) and THE ROUGH GUIDE TO GRAPHIC NOVELS (Penguin).

Monday, March 23 at 8 p.m. at Columbia University (Broadway and 116th Street), Schermerhorn Hall, Room 501, New York, New York.

Free admission.

For more information, call 212-854-2581 or email mg27@columbia.edu.

Dates 
Monday, March 23, 2009 - 11:00am to 7:00pm
Submission Deadline 
Monday, March 23, 2009 - 12:00pm
Location 
New York
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