Visionary Will Eisner Quote

In The Ten-Cent Plague, the forthcoming book about the 1950s comic book scare and the next book I'm reviewing for The Austin Chronicle, author David Hajdu reprints this paraphrase of Will Eisner from the Philadelphia Record, October 13, 1941:

The comic strip, he explains, is no longer a comic strip but, in reality, an illustrated novel. It is new and raw in form just now, but material for limitless intelligent development. And eventually and inevitably it will be a legitimate medium for the best writers and artists. It is already the embryo-- Eisner apologizes a little for the trite phrase-- of a new art form.

I always respected Eisner as an artistic visionary but this was 1941! Wow! Sterling North's "A National Disgrace" (Chicago Daily News, May 8, 1940), which begins "Virtually every child in America is reading color 'comic' magazines-- a posionouas mushroom growth of the last two years" was still very much in the public consciousness, making Eisner's pronouncement even that much more amazing. It took over fifty years, but damn if he wasn't right. And thankfully, he did get to see some of the realization before he died.