Obit: Will Eisner

I put this off because I didn't want to turn this blog into a "hey, look at who died today" kind of publication, but someone rather important to my pop culture career died yesterday, and I didn't know what to say about it. Still don't, actually.

Will Eisner was hailed by . . . pretty much everyone in comics as a deity of sequential art. Turning comics from "junk" into "art", revolutionizing the medium, creating the modern graphic novel, establishing storytelling styles that set the stage for years to come, and on and on.

I can't really add to anything that anyone else has said, but when I was re-reading "Invisible People" today, this is something that popped into my head: I don't know of anyone else, in any other medium, that is so universally respected and acclaimed. Every musician, every film director, every actor, has someone who doesn't like them. I don't know anyone who likes comics who doesn't like Will Eisner. That's pretty impressive.