New Eisner Work, Paperback Series Due from Norton
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on November 28, 2006 Sign up now!
by Kate Culkin, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 11/28/2006
W.W. Norton is fulfilling one of the final wishes of the legendary Will Eisner by re-releasing the 14 graphic novels that make up the Will Eisner library in a series of newly designed trade paperbacks, as well as his two self-published instructional manuals. The company also announced plans to publish a new, unpublished instructional work, Will Eisner's Expressive Anatomy, penciled just before his death in January 2005. Norton has had a brisk sale of the foreign rights for Eisner's works, indicating that his reputation continues to grow almost two years after he died.
Since securing the rights to the Eisner library in December 2004, Norton has moved quickly to release the works. The hardcover A Contract with God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue, which collected A Contract with God, A Life Force and Dropsie Avenue, appeared in November 2005. Eisner provided over 20 additional illustrations and wrote a new introduction, in which he explained for the first time that the death of his daughter inspired Contract. In May 2005, the house also published The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a new hardcover work by Eisner that explores the historical roots and cultural longevity of the notorious anti-Semitic tract.
Last month, the company published a hardcover compilation of four classic Eisner works under the title Will Eisner's New York, which includes the classic works Life in the Big City; New York, the Building, City People Notebook; and Invisible People. In December, Norton will release separate paperback editions of the three books that make up the Contract with God Trilogy, with print runs between 10,000 and 15,000 copies each. The books' design, by Paul Buckley, received second place in the Bookbinder's Guild of New York's New York Book Show in November. The company will roll out new paperbacks each fall, eventually publishing all 14 volumes of the library, including the books from Will Eisner's New York.
Norton has also purchased world rights to Eisner's three graphic instructional books in a deal negotiated by agents Judy Hansen and Denis Kitchen, who represent the Eisner estate. The books will be released in fall 2008. The classic Comics and Sequential Art, which Eisner's own Poorhouse Press published in 1985, will appear under the title Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art, and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, published by Poorhouse Press in 1996, will become Will Eisner's Graphic Storytelling. The redesigned editions will be in a two-color format. Together the previous editions of these volumes have sold over 150,000 copies; until Norton releases the new edition, they will remain in print with F&W as publisher.
Most significantly, Norton will also publish Eisner's final unpublished work, Will Eisner's Expressive Anatomy, which Norton executive editor Robert Weil said focuses on "how to draw faces, expression, character." Eisner had finished penciling the book before his death. Artist Peter Poplaski, recommended by Hansen and Kitchen, will ink the work. Poplaski, who worked on the R. Crumb Handbook, also posthumously inked new illustrations for the Norton edition of Will Eisner's New York. Weil called the volume an important addition to the graphics instructional canon. "It you want to learn how to draw graphics, you go to McCloud or Eisner," Weil explained.
"There has been an explosion of interest in how to draw graphics" on campuses in recent years, Weil said, adding this market will embrace the Eisner manuals. Norton's 60 college sales reps, who visit schools across the country, will target the educational market. The books will receive a heavy marketing campaign and will be distributed to book, art supply and comic stores. The instructional titles will be ready for the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con.
Eisner is generally considered among the first to use the term graphic novel and pioneered the form with A Contract with God, originally published in 1978. He proposed that Norton purchase the rights to the Will Eisner library from DC Comics in 2004 while working with Weil on The Plot, while making it clear his groundbreaking comic The Spirit should remain at DC. In an interview with PW Comics Week, Weil stressed that Eisner "loved DC and had great relations with them to the end. What he did was separate The Spirit from his literary works—he wanted a separation of the two, to get his books into bookstores. He wanted his novels with a literary house."
To market the paperbacks, Norton will give out samples to reps and to literature, history and graphics teachers. Weil also explained, "We have developed the best galley list: people who venerate Will Eisner, people who love Will and write about Will." The company will send the initial three paperbacks from the Contract with God Trilogy to the approximately 125 people on that list. Libraries have been a strong market for Eisner, although there is no plan to market specifically to them beyond featuring the books in the Norton catalogue. "[Librarians] come to our catalogue because they know about us," Weil said.
Norton also makes note of the outstanding sales of foreign rights for Eisner's books. Since October 2004, the company has made 38 rights deals with publishers in countries ranging from Croatia to Brazil, with translations to appear in 14 languages; 13 of the rights deals have been for The Plot. While some of the publishers, such as Germany's Carlsen Comics Verlag, specialize in comics, others, including Editions Grasset et Fasquelle in France, are just now branching out into graphic novels.
"Eisner's books are used to combat prejudice," Weil noted as part of the explanation of their international appeal. He continued: "Will is more and more being recognized as a pioneer in one of the most explosive areas in publishing right now. The international interest is the affirmation of Eisner's place as a great 20th-century author and artist."
