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Still,[...] in all forms of comics the sequential artist relies upon the tacit cooperation of the reader. This cooperation is based upon the convention of reading and the common cognitive disciplines. Indeed, it is this very voluntary cooperation, so unique to comics, that underlies the contract between artist and audience.

Will Eisner

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Will Eisner
Age: 87 †
Born: 1917
Born: March 6
Died: 2005
Died: January 3
Cartoonist
Comics Artist
Comics Writer
Drawer
Illustrator
Novelist
Painter
Publisher
Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
William Erwin Eisner
Willis Rensie
Willis B. Rensie
W. Morgan Thomas
Erwin Williams
Wm. Erwin
Mr. Heck
Ford Davies
Still
Reader
Contracts
Relies
Audience
Cooperation
Disciplines
Reading
Rely
Voluntary
Common
Forms
Cognitive
Upon
Indeed
Convention
Artist
Discipline
Contract
Sequential
Form
Based
Comics
Underlies
Stills
Unique
Conventions
Tacit

More quotes by Will Eisner

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Thus, sped by currents of curiosity afloat the swift river of rumor do secrets sail to strange ports.
Will Eisner
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Ive spent my whole life working in a medium that was regarded with contempt largely because of historical reasons.
Will Eisner
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The term comics long ago became obsolete and inaccurate. It merely defined the content of the early joke-based comical strips. Sequential Art is a more accurate description of the form. I first suggested it because I believed something needed to be done to correct the feeling of inferiority by artists and writers in this field.
Will Eisner
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Before World War II, I was living a very cloistered existence, as most cartoonists do. The work I was pouring out did not come from any real, personal life experience this was all the residue of the accumulation of Rafael Sabatini, O. Henry, all the short-story writers that I'd been reading.
Will Eisner
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I write about what I know and what I have experienced. This keeps me an honest writer.
Will Eisner
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Comics, which are really best described as an arrangement of images in a sequence that tell a story - an idea - is a very old form of graphic communication. It began with the hieroglyphics in Egypt, it first appeared in a recognizable form in the Medieval times as copper plates produced by the Catholic church to tell morality stories.
Will Eisner
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A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.
Will Eisner
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We have this history of impossible solutions to insoluble problems.
Will Eisner
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I want to point out to adults that there is a world of good material available to you now in comic form - in this medium - and learn to give it your support because the more you support it, the better the material will be as it comes out.
Will Eisner
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[Before the Spirit] I had been producing comic books for 15-year-old cretins from Kansas [I wanted to aim for] a 55-year-old who had his wallet stolen on the subway. You can't talk about heartbreak to a kid.
Will Eisner
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Superheroes are mostly aimed at young teen-age males concerned with their manhood. The medium will have to address itself more to content. . . . I see 22 year olds draw massive Schwarzenegger types, outfitted with metal studs, pressing a mostly naked woman to their breastplates. And I think Poor girl, thats got to be cold.
Will Eisner
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As for me, I am in pursuit of excellence. I have no time to get old.
Will Eisner
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Humor has historically been tied to the mores of the day. The Yellow Kid was predicated on what people thought was funny about the immigrant Irish. When you're different in a society, you're funny.
Will Eisner