This week, on Invisible Cities, Umapagan Ampikaipakan takes you on a journey to Will Eisner's New York. To that place where fire hydrants and brownstone stoops are given life and personality, where people on trains fantasise about one another while never making eye contact, where two pairs of feet come together and move apart in a wordless narrative, where little moments of witnessed connection, of humanity, display an abiding tenderness in a city often known for its cantankerous nature

Invisible Cities is an all new series that seeks to take you on a journey to a different place, to a different time, to a different world, to one of those invisible cities that only exist within the pages of a good book.

Show Notes:

i) Longtime comics writer, editor, historian, and former president of DC Comics Paul Levitz has written an extensive profile of Eisner in which he also tracks the history and origins of the graphic novel. The book is called Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel and you can read an excerpt here.

ii) Will Eisner passed away in 2005. Here's what The Guardian wrote in his obituary.

iii) In 2012, Wired magazine ran a series of op-eds called "Comics as Literature." Part 3 focussed on Eisner's "The Contract With God Trilogy" - widely considered to be the first American graphic novel. Read the article here. 

iv) Uma spoke to Paul Levitz in an episode of When We Last Left Our Heroes. They talk about everything from Paul's early years at DC Comics, to just how the comic book business has changed in 2015, to how American myth-making has since gone global. Download the podcast here. 

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Tags:  will eisner,  new york,  books,  invisible cities,  Bookmark,  novels,  graphic novel,  big apple,  city