Comic book great Will Eisner is perhaps best known for his later works, which included the likes of A Contract With God and The Spirit. While fans might know earlier works than that, very little is known about Eisner's teenage years and early adulthood — until now, that is.
Comics created by Eisner as a teenager have been discovered, with Locust Moon Press having started a Kickstarter campaign for the creation of a book containing these early comics.
The comics themselves were discovered by New Jersey artist and antiques collector Joseph Getsinger, who acquired around 10,000 early '30s cartoon printing plates. He followed a hunch that there might be some valuable plates among those collected. Two works in particular sparked his interest, credited to "Carl Heck" and "Willis B. Rensie."
As it turns out, both of the names were linked to Empire Features, a company that had provided printing plates to a number of newspapers. Eisner & Iger Studios, which was a partnership between Jerry Iger and Will Eisner to distribute some of their early comics, was a customer of Empire Features.
After this connection was made, another piece of the puzzle was put in place. "Rensie" is "Eisner" spelled backwards. Experts then confirmed that the works were the work of a teenage Will Eisner, a master of the comic book. Many of the names were published under the names of "Harry Karry" and "Uncle Otto," both of which were also aliases of Eisner.
This particular project will be the first of Locust Moon Press' archival projects. The company says that it intends "to salvage vital pieces of comics and art history from the sands of time."
Those interested in helping fund the project can donate anywhere from $1 to $1,000 to the Kickstarter campaign, with $25 getting the pledger a copy of the book and $1,000 getting the pledger one of the original plates themselves.
Source: Kickstarter
