THAT'S THE SPIRIT!:

Will Eisner Draws a Rebuttal (STEVEN LEE BEEBER, 2/23/04, NY Times)

What do you do 25 years after creating a new artistic genre? If you are Will Eisner, you do the same thing again in your late 80's.

A Contract With God, set in the tenements of his Bronx youth and published in 1978, established Mr. Eisner as the father of the graphic novel. Now he has taken the adult comic-book format a step further, with a graphic history that applies his dark, 1930's-style illustrations to real events of a century ago.

This latest work, called "The Plot," tells the story behind the creation of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the infamous Russian forgery that purported to reveal a Jewish plan to rule the world. Mr. Eisner, the son of Jews who fled Europe, has reached into the past to say something about the present: a time, he says, when anti-Semitism is again on the rise.

"I was surfing the Web one day when I came across this site promoting `The Protocols' to readers in the Mideast," said Mr. Eisner, 86. "I was amazed that there were people who still believed `The Protocols' were real, and I was disturbed to learn later that this site was just one of many that promoted these lies in the Muslim world. I decided something had to be done."

Who knew he was even alive still, never mind surfing the Web and making a difference.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 23, 2004 10:00 AM