The first chicken on my chopping block is Eisner/Miller. Will Eisner was, at the time, comics’ oldest living Renaissance man. Frank Miller has become an elder statesman in his own right, though he comes off as a young maverick by comparison. I’m familiar with much of their work. I’ve read from Eisner:
- A collected volume of The Spirit
- A Contract With God
- The Dreamer
- The Big City
- The Building
- City People Notebook
- Invisible People
- A Family Matter
- Minor Miracles

And from Miller:
- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
- Batman: Year One
- Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again
- All seven volumes of Sin City
- The first couple issues of All Star Batman and Robin
- A smattering of 300

The book is an extensive Playboy-esque interview with the two masters. It’s a conversational affair, conducted in 2002. Eisner sadly didn’t live to see the book’s publication in 2005, though I find that it stands as a remarkable document of his perspective on life and comics in his final years. For Miller’s part, it’s fun to see him in a dual role as both gadfly and gadfly victim. He and Eisner frequently disagree with, provoke, and otherwise agitate one another, though it’s always in the spirit of friendliness. There is a tremendous undercurrent of mutual respect between the two of them.

I’ve read the book a few times, though this is the first time I’ve read it with a defined goal in mind. I’m specifically reading with an eye for useful technical information. Given the wide-ranging nature of the book, there are large sections that won’t yield much of this information, and others that will yield an abundance of it. As far as what I agree or disagree with, I certainly can’t begrudge either of them their own personal working quirks. I’m sure I’ll find out in due time which techniques work for me and which do not. My own work in comics so far only amounts to a couple of silly projects for my own amusement.

I suppose my major hanging question at this point is, “What questions should I be asking that I’m not?” Every piece of potentially useful information is a revelation, not only of answers to my questions, but of questions that I didn’t think to ask in the first place.

Halfway through my current read-through, I’ve adopted a certain strategy in pulling out information that I believe will be useful. Rather than organize notes page by page and chapter by chapter, I’ve attempted to structure them by subject. Each note is annotated with a certain technical theme—“color,” “lettering,” “format,” and so forth—to maximize its usefulness when it comes time to apply what I’ve learned. Those themes will form the sub-headers under which I’ll group the notes in my entries.

THE TRADITIONAL FORMAT

“The traditional format,” as Eisner and Miller refer to it, is a 32 page pamphlet, constructed essentially of sheets of newsprint (size 8.5x22) folded in half and stapled together. This has been the predominant way of the major publishing houses for decades, though they’ve started to adopt higher quality glossy paper in recent years. The current typical price for a monthly issue is $3, up from 10 cents in the 1930s.

Miller argues that the vertical orientation of the traditional format takes its cue from prose books, whereas a horizontal orientation would bring it closer to an art book or a Sunday comic strip. It is also his contention that stories involving broad, visually important landscapes are better served by horizontal orientation, as in his book 300. The human eye has developed to deal with landscape in a horizontal way.

Eisner and Miller discuss different sizes as well. Eisner’s preference was for smaller page sizes, which they believe to have a more intimate, personal relationship with the reader. Larger page sizes create a more communal atmosphere, like an art book. There is also the purely functional concern that smaller-sized books are easier to carry. Miller complains that the traditional format is stuck somewhere in between, that it is neither here nor there. (pp. 11-14)

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COLOR VS. B&W

Once again, Eisner brings up intimacy, this time in the context of color—or lack thereof. One of the interesting commonalities between Eisner and Miller is that both have worked prominently in black and white. Most of Eisner’s work since his return to comics in the 1970s was done in black and white (or, on occasion, brown and white). Miller’s Sin City series deals primarily with black and white, though he does some experimentation in selective coloring in later volumes. They discuss what they believe to be a quality of greater intimacy that black and white possesses. Artists using black and white are forced to be especially mindful of shapes and lines, which gain greater purposefulness in the absence of color.

They agree that comics done in colorful have an almost musical quality, comparing bright colors with the grandness of opera. Eisner argues that many comics don’t utilize color purposefully, that it is more of a marketing tool designed to grab the reader’s eye in the store. He argues that some stories would be better served by black and white, using the metaphor of Edith Piaf being accompanied by full-scale operatic music.

Miller observes that, in the advent of limitless computer colors, modern mainstream comics have acquired an unattractive aesthetic, that they’re too “airbrushed,” “tight,” and “brown.” He finds that consciously limiting the use of color can lend colors a greater weight and importance. Eisner also posits that black and white comics are read like books, whereas color comics are looked at—or “absorbed porously,” in his words. (pp. 16-21)

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Aside from intimacy, the especially bold use of black and white can really grab the reader “by the lapels,” as Frank Miller puts it. (p. 43)

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BALLOONS AND LETTERING

In discussing Eisner’s lettering in A Contract With God, Eisner and Miller decide that oversize lettering imparts an almost childlike quality to the reader, which draws them in and engages their curiosity. (p. 22)

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Eisner harkens back to the 1930s, when many newspapers were actively deciding to improve the quality of their comic strips. Their basic strategy was to bring in good illustrators—for example, Alex Raymond (of the Flash Gordon comic strip). The incoming crop of artists was given the goal of improving the comics and making them appeal to a broader, more sophisticated audience.

One of the tricks they tried was experimenting with typeset, as opposed to the standard hand lettering. The comic strip Barnaby featured dialogue balloons that were lettered in typeset. A more modern-day example would be Hal Foster’s series Prince Valiant, which features typeset lettering exclusively, and also does away with balloons entirely. Eisner and Miller are both critical of this decision, arguing that typeset creates a sterility that clashes with the hand-drawn aesthetic of comics.

An artist whom Eisner and Miller single out for his distinctive, expressive lettering style is Al Capp (Li’l Abner). The size and weight of Capp’s lettering wax and wane, depending on the emotional content of the words being spoken. With its enormity and boldness, some of Capp’s dialogue practically “shouts” at the reader. (pp. 29-39)

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ATMOSPHERE/ENVIRONMENT

Evoking atmosphere is an important aspect of comics storytelling. Rather than merely relating the story to a passive reader, a comic with a strong sense of atmosphere draws in and engages the reader actively. It makes the reader feel things. Eisner and Miller use the example of a character walking in the rain, which they’ve both made prominent use of—Eisner in A Contract With God, and Miller with the first Sin City story. Purely with the visual, they craft the atmosphere and build a sense of tension.

They also discuss techniques by which atmosphere can be dealt with, and cited Milton Caniff’s method of creating snow as an example. If Caniff wanted to draw a house in the middle of a blizzard, he’d simply do the dark shape of the house, against a white background, blot it out with a few snow-shapes, and throw in a couple of white squares for windows. It’s the simplicity of the illusion that makes it work. (pp. 22-27)

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One of Eisner’s tricks for creating a sense of atmosphere, which Miller used prominently in his early 1980s work on Daredevil, was drawing floating bits of paper to indicate moving air. Another tried-and-true Eisner technique is the use of rain. The reasoning is that everybody knows what wind and rain feel like, so implying a sense of wind and rain in the drawings will draw viscerally upon those associations. Drawing flies above a garbage can will imply to the reader that there is a stinky smell afoot. Drawing visible beams from a car’s headlights can imply dust or fog. There are other feelings an artist can find ways to refer to as well, such as heat or cold. (p. 42)

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In much of Eisner’s later work, he uses wash (broad brush strokes made with a mix of ink and water) to create “soft” backgrounds. This implies a sense of depth. The technique mimics the way that the human eye and cameras both tend to focus only on objects at a certain distance, with everything else appearing out-of-focus. Miller refers to this as “depth of field,” borrowing the term from photography.

For a long time, and to this day in the mainstream industry, it was considered professionally standard to be able to draw complete backgrounds, in every panel at any angle. Eisner’s approach is to the contrary. Rather than spend so much time and attention on backgrounds, he takes the most important parts of the scene—objects, characters, or whatever—and constructs the scene and the background around them. He uses a few significant details (like a desk with a lamp on it, to use their example) to imply what kind of room it is, what era it’s in, what’s happening, who lives there, and so on. As an influence, he cites the old low budget Works Project Administration theaters that he went to during the impression, which made use of fairly Spartan stage settings.

It is Eisner’s contention that he and Miller work alike in this way. Their artwork is similar to the way that the human brain remembers things, which is impressionistic and tends to emphasize the key details of events and moments.

This approach also subtly works to draw the reader in through active engagement. When presented with an incomplete set of details, the reader will subconsciously work to fill in the blanks. In a more general sense, this is what comics do as a whole, presenting a series of “snapshots” that the readers connect together as ongoing action in their minds. (pp. 59-62)

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WHAT COMICS CAN DO

In discussing the unique traits of comics, Miller cites a trick he often uses in his work on Batman, which is to create a single overriding image (such as a page-size drawing of the character’s face) and then intersperse several small panels of separate moments within. This creates a sense of instantaneousness, as though there are many individual events happening simultaneously. Miller likens this to the experience of channel-surfing on television.

Eisner discusses his own work in terms of live theater, where the compositions aren’t necessarily viewed from subjective angles (whereas they are in most comics, as well as in film and television, for that matter). He tends to go from a more objective point of view, which is nevertheless subject to the sort of artistic manipulation that wouldn’t be possible in actual live theater. This is in contrast with the style he worked within during his days of The Spirit, using subjective viewpoints which Eisner referred to as “cinematic.” As cinema was the budding popular art form of the times, he felt he would be conversing with the audience in the language that they were familiar with. (pp. 87-93)

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WHAT COMICS CAN’T DO

While the masters of comics will loudly and proudly advocate for what comics can do that other media cannot, Eisner and Miller also discuss the practical concerns of what comics can’t do. It is therefore important that a comics storyteller be able to imply certain things that they can’t deal in directly. Among those things are sound, motion, and the passage of time. (p. 27)

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One way that storytellers compensate for the lack of sound in comics is through the dialogue balloon, which Eisner refers to as a desperation device. It is a utilitarian way of indicating which characters are talking and what they are saying, which is still in use mainly because artists who have attempted to improve upon them or do away with them (including Eisner himself) have found their efforts frustrated. In the end, the best way to handle balloons is to ensure that they’re as unintrusive and as connected to the action as possible.

There are things artists sometimes do that violate the connection between the balloons and the action (and, by extension, between the balloons and the reader), such as so-called “umbilical balloons,” which are multiple balloons joined together in one passage of speech. There is also the use of typeset in balloons. Eisner criticizes Harvey Kurtzman (of EC Comics in the 1950s) for doing both. (pp. 30-35)

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In dealing with the absence of motion, artists must often exaggerate their drawings to convey the illusion of motion. For example, Frank Miller discusses his frequent drawings of moving cars in Sin City, pointing out that a realistic drawing of a car will look like it’s parked, whether it’s supposed to be moving or not. His Sin City cars are often drawn ten feet off the ground as they’re careening over a hill, an image which tells the reader that it must be in motion. Most readers have ridden in a quickly moving vehicle, which will sometimes give the gut feeling that its wheels are leaving the ground. It is this impression that Miller wishes to give his readers. Nobody gets that feeling while sitting in a parked car, at least, not normally. (p. 39)

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When implying time, the artist must be mindful of pacing. Comics has no intrinsic control over pacing—the reader has full control—but there are things the artist can do to induce the reader to take the material in at a certain rate. As Miller says, the line drawings in many of today’s mainstream comics has a very dense aesthetic, which many people mistakenly think of as very detailed. (As Miller cautions, detail and density of line are not the same thing.) Higher line density tends to slow the reader down, while very simple, wide open, airy drawings tend to encourage the reader to speed up. (p. 65)

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Another way that Eisner and Miller discuss to create an illusion of slowed pacing is to charm the reader’s eye—to create an image so compelling that the reader will be induced to linger for a moment, in contrast to images that are designed to be viewed and released quickly. Similarly, the image could be used to induce confusion in the reader, to momentarily bewilder the eye in such a way that it takes a moment to make sense of it. This is a much riskier option, in that a momentarily confusing image could easily just be a confusing image, period. And, other things being equal, a scene with a lot of dialogue will move more slowly than a scene with very little dialogue, or none at all. (p. 93)

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THE WORKING PROCESS

When embarking on a new story, Eisner likes to start with the characters. He spends time “casting” them, sketching their faces, figuring out their names, who they are, how they relate to each other, and so on. For works that span a very long period of time, such as The Name of the Game, he puts together a timeline to figure out where they are and what they’re doing at any given time period. When he has that figured out, he’ll put together a basic biography of each character to figure out their development over time. On a personal note, this may work for Eisner’s broad approach at characterization, though I’d be more personally inclined to start with the character biographies and then figure out how they play out over time, because I fear turning my work into an obviously plot-driven artifice. But that’s just me, and to each his/her/its own.

From there, Eisner develops a list of scenes, or “incidents.” He doesn’t necessarily do this chronologically; in fact, he tries to keep the ending in mind from fairly early on. Miller has a similar method with developing his plot. He puts each individual incident on a Post-It note, and then puts all the Post-It notes on his wall. He’ll then spend some time rearranging them until he feels they’re in the right order for his story. If he gets lost, confused, or unsure at any time, all he has to do is look at the wall for the complete picture.

In relations with the publisher, Eisner shows his early artwork, whereas Miller tends to relate where he’s at and what’s happening in his story verbally. This perhaps evinces less trust for authority on Miller’s part, which is probably unsurprising to anybody familiar with his work.

Neither Miller nor Eisner think of pencil drawings as finished artwork. Pencil drawings are either sketches or a mere early stage of finished artwork, functioning more as a document of the art rather than the art in itself. It’s worth noting that other artists have experimented with using pencil drawings as finished artwork, though it’s not a widespread approach. The most common way is to start with rough pencils, then tight inking of the lines (with perhaps a stage of tight pencils in between), then inking of the broad, flat black areas.

Eisner figures out where his balloons go at an early stage of the drawing, to ensure that they mesh well with the whole composition. He spends a lot of time on character postures, gestures, and other such small details. He tends to work on one page at a time, from pencils at the beginning to the fully inked final art.

He also prefers that each page end on the completion of an action, rather than dividing actions between pages. He feels that his way is for the best, in terms of rhythm.

Miller’s process is idiosyncratic. He works in blue pencil, which is designed so that it doesn’t show when the finished artwork is photographed. When doing the inks, he does the broad, flat black areas before the fine lines, which is the opposite of what most professional inkers do. He tends to do each stage across all pages, meaning he’ll do the pencil drawings of every page, and then revisit every page for each stage of inking. He refers to the excitement of the momentum this creates during the last stage, during which he’s producing finished pages at a very fast rate. (pp. 71-87)

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NOTABLE QUOTABLES

“You got to us. We started regarding ourselves as novelists. It’s as if you said, ‘These’ll be permanent.’”

- Frank Miller on Eisner’s groundbreaking A Contract With God (p. 44)

“Technically, I currently work from live theater because I no longer worry about getting bird’s-eye views and special camera angles. When people talked about the cinematic quality of The Spirit, that was because I realized… that movies were creating a visual language and I had to use the same language, because when you are writing to an audience that is speaking Swahili, you’d better write in Swahili.”

- Will Eisner on the difference between the “cinematic” quality of The Spirit and the “live theater” quality of his post-comeback work