Thursday, March 01, 2012

Will Eisner was aware of Islamic anti-semitism

I made a most amazing discovery about the late cartoonist Will Eisner, who produced some of the first book-length comics to be described as "graphic novels" in his time in a February 2004 New York Times article at the time he was completing his last book, The Plot. As told here:
What do you do 25 years after creating a new artistic genre? If you are Will Eisner, you do the same thing again in your late 80's.

''A Contract With God,'' set in the tenements of his Bronx youth and published in 1978, established Mr. Eisner as the father of the graphic novel. Now he has taken the adult comic-book format a step further, with a graphic history that applies his dark, 1930's-style illustrations to real events of a century ago.

This latest work, called ''The Plot,'' tells the story behind the creation of ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' the infamous Russian forgery that purported to reveal a Jewish plan to rule the world. Mr. Eisner, the son of Jews who fled Europe, has reached into the past to say something about the present: a time, he says, when anti-Semitism is again on the rise.

''I was surfing the Web one day when I came across this site promoting 'The Protocols' to readers in the Mideast,'' said Mr. Eisner, 86. ''I was amazed that there were people who still believed 'The Protocols' were real, and I was disturbed to learn later that this site was just one of many that promoted these lies in the Muslim world. I decided something had to be done.''
Wow, isn't that something. He understood what was going on in the Islamic-dominated world. And he wasn't afraid to say so. Incredible.

I found this through a now inactive blog called Thought Balloons once run by the CBR contributor named Kevin Melrose, who's since signaled that he's more than willing to apologize for Islamofascism. And it made wonder: if Eisner were still alive today, and made statements like these, or wanted to publish a book similar to Frank Miller's Holy Terror, how would the establishment in the comics medium react today? Yes, the same people who attacked Miller and want to blacklist him now? How indeed?

As I write this, I've also found that blatant anti-conservative Islam apologist Andy Khouri, who did me the flattering honor of making his nasty little screed against folks like myself has just posted about the documentary Masters of Comic Book Art on leftist Comics Alliance, and it's worth noting that not only Eisner was interviewed for it, but also other Jewish creators like the late Jack Kirby, Bernie Wrightson and Harvey Kurtzman. Even Miller was featured, and Ohio novelist Harlan Ellison, who may have once said that Fredric Wertham declared "jihad" on comics back in the day* as his way of criticizing the well-meaning but flawed [Jewish] refugee doctor from Munich, was the host. If we were to take him as an example, it's facinating to wonder whether he'd end up hating Eisner for even remotely slamming the Religion of Rape at least a year before his death, or does. Likewise, what would all the other Khouris, Melroses, Chris Sims, Laura Hudsons, David Hines, Brigid Alversons and other dhimmis in the comics world say if not only had Eisner, himself a possible mentor for Miller, wanted to embark on a similar project to Miller's, but also slammed the Occupy movement like Miller did?

My first guess would be that, if Eisner or any other veteran of his standing had done so, they might leave them alone, presumably because famous figures like them deserve a respect that later generations are denied. But if this speculation has any meat to it and they would give Eisner the pass they won't give Miller, then the question is - why?

However, my second guess is that unfortunately, there is a possibility that they would turn against Eisner with the same venom that they've already reserved for Miller, and even if they don't wish him ill on the surface, they might underneath, and might even be willing to call him a "racist" and use his ill-advised renditions of Ebony White in the Spirit comic strip as a weapon of "proof", even though he already apologized for it long ago, and acknowledged his mistakes in the introduction for Fagin the Jew in 2003. But that only begs the question of why they're even bothering to back other Jewish creators when they too could or have written not especially flattering depictions of jihadists and Islamic regimes in their time.

These are interesting questions that are decidedly well worth pondering, and help give some clues as to just how laughable those leftist would-be comics fans and reporters really are. Obviously, we can't read their minds and don't know just why they want to associate with an art form that plenty of Jewish industrialists helped make famous in the past century. But it can help to tell that clearly, those moonbats really can be very strange people.

For now, let me be clear here that Eisner is to be congratulated for having the courage to speak up about a very serious subject like the Religion of Rape in the year before his death. For that Eisner should be remembered well as a guy who, while not without flaws, did have the ability to recognize challenging subjects.

* In the now defunct American Film journal circa 1989.

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