Will Eisner

Will Eisner (1917-2005) is an artist, author, and comic industry legend.  “A Contract With God”, his 1978 masterwork, is generally considered to be the first graphic novel to use the term on its cover, leading to a common misappropriation of the term to the man himself.

He is also considered to be a strong advocate for both literate criticism of sequential art and of comics evolving as a media in order to qualify for academic consideration. Concerned about the apparent lack of self-respect amongst artists in the field and that the art form itself was considered “frivolous”, he sought to adjust terminology by coining phrases with different psychological imprints. Believing the term “comics” to be inaccurate, for example, he coined the term “sequential art”–art, arranged in a deliberate sequence in order to tell a story.

Biographers even claim that Eisner did not like the term “graphic novel”, preferring the more accurate “graphic story”, although the term apparently never took off.

A major award within the comics industry, the Eisner Awards, are named for him.