Saturday 11 March 2017

Will Eisner Week 2017

1-7 March,  2017

COLIN LONGCORE:
Greetings from Portland, Oregon. I wanted to take a moment to let you know I attended an engaging panel discussion about the influence of Will Eisner on the contemporary world of comic books. On the panel were Diana Schutz, Jim Valentino and Dan Schkade. The dialogue was moderated by the well versed Charles Brownstein of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. This program was a part of Portland State University's Comics Studies department. I find it amazing that such a thing exists.

I was also pleased to hear that the conversation about Creator's Rights which Dave Sim was a central player in has endured and taken hold in the current generation. The heart of presentation concerned Eisner's advancement of the graphic novel and his developing ideas about autonomy for the creative team. Cerebus was mentioned once the conversation turned to Denis Kitchen and Phil Seuling. Also recognized were Wendy and Richard Pini of Elf Quest and a couple others I am blanking on at the moment.

I made a point of attending this talk because I was curious about Diana Schutz having heard about her plenty in the pages of Cerebus. She sounded like an important and significant figure. I wasn't disappointed. I was heartened by the fact that she has taken an interest in education these days.

3 comments:

Barry Deutsch said...

I was on a different panel at this event! We were discussing Ebony White. Diana wasn't on the panel, but she was in the audience.

Travis Pelkie said...

Cool.

Dan Schkade looks like he's about to take off if he keeps flappin' them wings ;)

Unknown said...

People are going to be discussing Ebony White as long as comics exist. Sandeep had heard so much about THE SPRIT that he asked me if he could read some of it. So I pulled out some of my Warren reprints and give him those. He definitely quit as soon as he got to Ebony. Which I definitely can't argue with. But, it's not as if I'm going to throw MY Spirit reprints away or anything.