In the Times' Sunday Calendar book review section, Josh Lambert, a New York University assistant professor and author, took a look at "Backing Into Forward: A Memoir" by Jules Feiffer, a popular cartoonist, satirist and author who also penned scripts for Will Eisner's "The Spirit." Though Lambert laments the dissolving popularity of comic strips in relation to graphic novels, Hero Complex thinks they can co-exist.  Here's an excerpt:

Whether newspapers live or die, the prognosis for the comic strip doesn't look promising. The extinction of the form not much more than a century after its birth would represent only a very minor tragedy too, given the rise of the graphic novel -- who would shed a tear for "Hägar the Horrible" in the age of "Fun Home" and "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth"? -- except it would also mean we no longer live in a world with a berth reserved for the likes of Jules Feiffer.

True, Feiffer created much more than just comic strips. He has written two novels and a handful of children's books, illustrated Norman Juster's children's classic "The Phantom Tollboth" and scripted off-Broadway plays as well as the films "Little Murder" and "Carnal Knowledge." His first collection of long-form comics, "Passionella and Other Stories," made the bestseller lists in 1959, and the animated short based on his military satire "Munro" garnered an Oscar. Yet Feiffer's legacy will be his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip, which ran weekly in the Village Voice and in some hundred other papers for more than four decades. As he declares in the expansive, charming memoir "Backing Into Forward," he was, from the start, "heart and soul, a newspaper strip man."

A fearful nebbish born half a year before the stock market collapse of 1929 -- "one of the few boys in the history of the Bronx who lived through an entire childhood without a bone fracture" -- Feiffer floundered in school but repeatedly charmed mentors into supporting him generously. Will Eisner permitted a teen Feiffer to pen scripts for "The Spirit" and then offered him a one-page strip of his own. During the Korean War, an enlightened supervisor of the Signal Corps Publications Agency encouraged the budding cartoonist to write and draw "Munro," his first longer comic-strip narrative, on the government's time.

READ THE REST

-- Josh Lambert

RECENT AND RELATED

Meet the new action heroes: Lincoln, Da Vinci, Dickens and Queen Victoria

The Mad Hatter prevails! Author Frank Beddor sizes up an icon

'Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' stakes claim to greatness

Captain America and Spider-Man meet ... Abe Lincoln?

ARTIST AT WORK: Adam Bryne conjures up 'Lovecraft'

Ron Howard: 'Lovecraft' comic is 'new territory' for me

Neil Gaiman dreams: 'A Sandman movie is an inevitability'

Del Toro: 'Swamp Thing' among the last Holy Grail projects

H.P. Lovecraft and Hollywood, an unholy alliance?

Del Toro aspires to adapt Lovecraft

Jack Bauer with fangs? It's 'Blood Oath'

Stephen King digs up 'American Vampires'

There's a wonderful profile of the great Jules Feiffer at the always smart and savvy Graphic NYC blog. Here are a few excerpts, but I heartily recommend taking a click trip over to the source material and reading the lengthy piece in its entirety. Kudos to the author, Christopher Irving.

“I was a creature of the newspaper comic strips, which I worshipped, and they were iconic,” Jules Feiffer says from his studio in the Upper West Side, a corner room in his apartment, with windows affording a view of the city. Built-in bookcases line the walls, packed with an assortment that includes some copies of his own work, as well as the work of the classic cartoonists he grew up on. “This was extraordinary talent doing extraordinary stuff, and with comic books, it was more like early rock ‘n’ roll – we felt anybody could do it. These were artists, particularly in the early days, who drew very crudely, particularly Joe Shuster (who I loved, particularly in his early Superman and before that Slam Bradley and Spy), whose stuff I could imitate and almost do as well at. It was that way with others: Bob Kane could barely draw."

I also smiled at this quote:

“...I loved comic books and, if you read enough of them, they’d give you a sort of caffeine high. I loved The Human Torch and I loved the Sub-Mariner, particularly because he was, before Spider-Man, the first really complicated hero who did bad things.”

Feiffer also spoke about his archivally minded 1965 book, "The Great Comic Book Heroes":

“The book was taken seriously, so the form gained a new lease on life and new respect, none of which interests me particularly, except in what I did to redeem Will Eisner’s career. That was, for me, a major interest in that this was a guy who was no longer heard of, was completely forgotten, had forgotten himself and was no longer doing comics. I was happy that, in a sense, I was able to bring him back from the dead or, at the very least, from exile.”

Again, you can find the entire piece right here.

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

Golden Age flashback: 1940s Marvel house ads

For sale? The world's most valuable original art collection 

Great Ceaser's ghost! Joe Shuster's sordid secret identity

VIDEO: Wild card: Jerry Robinson on the creation of the Joker

Frank Miller and the spirit of Will Eisner

"The Spirit" movie that could have been

Fred Hembeck salutes Captain America 

For every movie that makes it to the screen, there are a thousand projects that fall to the wayside. Later this month, "The Spirit," finally, hits theaters after plenty of failed attempts. Steven Paul Leiva was a key figure in one of those failed attempts and in this guest essay for Hero Complex he talks about the film that could have been. This photo below shows Leiva, Brad Bird and the late Will Eisner at the comics icon's White Plains, N.Y., home in 1981.

Frank Miller’s film version of Will Eisner’s innovative 1940s comic book, “The Spirit” opens on Christmas Day.  It will be stylistic and hyper-visual, a hoped-for perfect melding of film and “sequential art,” a term coined by Eisner.  What it will not be, however, is revolutionary.  Comic book movies are now the meat and potatoes -- not to mention several side vegetables -- of Hollywood.  And even its green screen, scene-simulation style is just part of a Miller continuum that started with “Sin City.”

But if the world had turned a little differently, if fate had been a little kinder, a “Spirit” feature film would have debuted in the 1980s that would not only have been revolutionary but -- those of us involved in it were convinced -- a huge hit, possibly the first $100 million-grossing animated feature.  And the futures of such filmmakers as Brad Bird, Gary Kurtz, John Musker and John Lasseter might have taken alternative paths.

In 1980, I was a freelance publicist specializing in animators I admired.  My clients included Chuck Jones, Bill Melendez and Richard Williams.  However, I was not particularly happy with the state of animation itself.  Previously I had been executive secretary of the animation society ASIFA-Hollywood and an animation programmer for the Los Angeles International Film Exposition (FILMEX), and so had been exposed to a lot of great, classic American animation and exciting foreign animation.  I had become frustrated that animation in Hollywood had fallen into the doldrums of sub-standard Disney, awful Saturday morning TV cartoons, and too-cute-to-stomach exploitations of brightly colored bears and other sugarcoated creatures.  And I had become tired of anthropomorphic animals as the dominant fauna of American animation.  Not that there was anything intrinsically wrong with them, it’s just that I was a Homo sapiens chauvinist and felt that American animation as an art form would never mature (as Japanese and European animation had) until it learned to tell human stories directly, and not through the filter of talking animals.

Given all this, I knew I had to move from publicity to producing, with an eye out for projects that could alleviate my frustration.

It didn’t take long for one to fall into my lap.

I was at a FILMEX screening at the Cinerama Dome when a fellow Filmexican, as we were called, David Konigsburg, who owned an animation camera service, told me that I just had to see an animation pencil test he had shot for two friends of his, ex-students from the animation program at Cal Arts.  He said it was brilliant, but I was skeptical.  Ever since I had let it be known that I was looking for projects, I had been shown a lot of proposals, all of them just variations on the same old, same old.  But as David’s camera service was just a few blocks from the Dome, it was easy to go over there after the screening and take a look.

What David showed me was a black and white pencil test in the form of a movie trailer for an animated feature based on Will Eisner’s superhero noir character, “The Spirit.”  At the time, “The Spirit” was as obscure as any item of pop culture could get.  But I recognized it as I had read Jules Feiffer’s “The Great Comic Book Heroes,” in which he had devoted a chapter to Eisner’s creation, reprinting one of the original stories from the ‘40s.  Even with having seen only this one story, it was obvious to me that Eisner was an incredible artist and draftsman, far superior to most comic book illustrators of the time.  His humans were not awkward and stiff, but were fine and fluid renderings of form and personality.  If any comic book humans begged to be animated, these were they.  His layout of panels, his use of cinematic techniques, only added to the case that “The Spirit” was perfect for the screen.

But how had these young animators done in bringing Eisner’s characters to life?  David had not misled me.  The pencil test mock trailer was brilliant.  Not only in its form and execution -- it quickly told the origin of The Spirit and displayed clearly the tone of the proposed film -- but it was the finest human character animation I had ever seen.  Like Eisner, it was fluid and full of personality, each bit of movement communicating exactly what needed to be said about the characters and the situations they were in.  It was not stiff and unreal like Saturday morning limited human character animation, nor weirdly “real” like rotoscoped human animation.  It was exaggerated, pushed, caricatured movement that seemed perfectly real, or, better said, perfectly true. It was the best example I could imagine of a point I had been making to anyone who would listen, that good character animation was not a graphic art, but a performance art.  It was great acting expressing a range of emotions.

“Who are these guys?”  I asked David with dropped jaw.  “I’ve got to meet them as soon as possible.”
The test was conceived and directed by a guy named Brad Bird, he told me, and animated by him and other ex-Cal Arts students, some of whom were now working at Disney.

David managed to set up a meeting with Brad for the next day.  Brad came with Jerry Rees, who had been integral to the making of the trailer.

We talked. It was obvious we shared a philosophy about the direction we thought animation should go.  I told Brad and Jerry what I thought of the trailer, that “The Spirit” was exactly the kind of project I wanted to be involved in, and asked what I could do to make it a reality.

EXCLUSIVE

The big Holiday Sneaks issue of the Los Angeles Times Calendar section hit the street today and it's got amazing stuff in it. (It will probably be selling on EBay for $20 in a few weeks for the "Twilight" coverage alone.) The editor of the special section, Elena Howe, sent me up to the Bay Area a few months ago to get the lowdown on "The Spirit," the Christmas Day release that will mark the solo directorial debut of Frank Miller. Here's the story I came back with (although you can expect to see at least two more articles in The Times and more posts here at Hero Complex; I have a lot left in the notebook). --G.B.

SAN FRANCISCO -- No comic-book creator has seen his work brought to the screen with more reverence than Frank Miller, whose ultra-violent graphic novels "300" and "Sin City" were adapted to film practically panel by panel. "It is very strange," Miller said, "to draw something and then have it come alive in front of you. You start to feel like a low-rent god, but, in my case, one with major feet of clay."

This minor deity, who favors fedoras and Winston cigarettes, is now attempting a new type of Hollywood trick and it starts on Christmas Day, no less; that's the release date of "The Spirit," the superhero film that Miller hopes will complete his unlikely transformation from comic-book artist to successful movie director, a career path that did not seem possible even at the start of this decade. "The Dark Knight" and "Iron Man" may have racked up historic box-office numbers this summer, but if Miller succeeds with this particular pop-culture leap, it will be the most dramatic proof that comics have become hard-wired into the circuitry of Hollywood.

Interestingly, Miller, the most important comic-book artist of the last 25 years, chose to make his solo directorial debut with somebody else's superhero, and a relatively obscure and vintage one at that. The Spirit was created in 1940 by the late, great Will Eisner, a beloved figure in comics who brought a cinematic flair to his drawing board that influenced several generations. No one admired Eisner more than Miller -- in 2005, shortly after Eisner's death, the book "Eisner/Miller" hit shelves with 350 pages of collected conversation between the artists as a sort of comic-book-sector version of the landmark 1967 film book "Hitchcock/Truffaut."

"I adored Will Eisner and took a real 'Don't tread on me' approach when I came to this movie. At the same time, I was willing to tread all over it. I knew Will always wanted to do something fresh and new, not some stodgy old thing that aspires to be revered. I don't want anybody to bow to this movie. I want a ripping good yarn. It is not an antique."

The Sunday Review: "The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics"

Edited by Paul Gravett (Running Press, softcover, $17.95)      

Earlier this year, there was quite a stir of attention (and appropriately so) for author David Hajdu's latest book, "The Ten Cent Plague: the Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America," which delved into the quirky and alarming crusades against comics in this country that reached their shrill peaks in the 1940s and 1950s. In a piece I wrote in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, I admired the research but had some problems with the focus in the final analysis. That said, the book and its tale really stuck with me, and I think it should be on the bookshelf of anyone who loves comics history. And you know what should go right next to it? "The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics" and not just because both have oddly long and stilted titles.

If Hajdu gives us the motivation for the pop-culture offenses, this book, edited by Paul Gravett, gives us the crime-scene photos, so to speak. The book arrived in the mail the other day and the first thing I noticed was the heft; you get your money's worth with 480 pages of two-timing molls, square-jawed cops, doomed losers and booze-soaked ciphers. There's an impressive array of talent surveyed here, too, with classic names such as Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Bill Everett, Joe Simon, Jack Cole, Bernie Krigstein and Johnny Craig. More than that, "Best Crime" brings its lurid mission well into the contemporary decades, with comics work by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Charles Burns and mystery novelist Max Allan Collins (whose "Road to Perdition" comics spawned the film of the same name).

There's also the comics work of Mickey Spillane, who is no stranger to killers in trenchcoats, and best of all, some of Dashiell Hammett's "Secret Agent X-9" comic strip from 1934, which was drawn by Alex Raymond, the graceful illustrator who that same year would launch a little strip called "Flash Gordon" that would end up doing quite well.

I had the honor of interviewing Will Eisner once. I was a student at the University of Florida and, after being named the editor-in-chief of the large and powerful campus newspaper there, I decided I would reward myself with a splashy vanity project. So I gave myself three full pages of space and devoted them all to a profile of Eisner, who was living further south, down in Tamarac, at the time. This was almost 20 years ago now but I still remember how Eisner -- after I told him that I was a student -- began to speak with such passion about teachers, schools, the years of life spent learning, the entire aura of a focused campus life. These were the days, by the way, when the aging artist flew up to New York every week to teach at a prestigious school. It wasn't for the money, believe me.

Anyway, I was thinking about that today when I heard about a pretty nifty move by Tim Palen, Sarah Greenberg and their marketing team over at Lionsgate. They've reached out to art schools around the country and they're using student work to promote "The Spirit," which is due on Christmas Day from Odd Lot and Lionsgate. This past weekend down at Comic-Con International, the first student-designed campaign hit the streets with these cool posters you see above. I saw them everywhere -- but not for long, all the fans gleefully snatched them. They were the handiwork of students from the Art Institute of California-San Diego. It's a great idea and I can tell you it's one that Eisner would have absolutely adored.

To read a lot more about this program and the schools involved, you can find the press release after the jump.

-- Geoff Boucher

Image courtesy of Lionsgate

Samuel L. Jackson explains what "BadMoFoKos" are, pays homage to L.A. comics haven Golden Apple, and decides who would win in a battle between the Octopus and Jedi Mace Windu.

-- Denise Martin

Samuel L. Jackson just delivered the best line of the day at Comic-Con:

"Aw c'mon, toilets are always funny!"

That was the payoff line in the wild fight scene from "The Spirit," which for a few minutes at least, appears to meld the physics of Wile E. Coyote with the vivid noir of "Sin City."

The fight scene is in a junk-strewn mud flat between Jackson's character, the villain called The Octopus, and the title hero, portrayed by newcomer Gabriel Macht.

They whack each other with cinder blocks, then a crow bar and then the hero takes a savage blow to the crotch from a giant spanner wrench. Then, in a scene that looks better than it sounds, the Octopus slams a toilet down over the hero's head, pinning his arms to his side.

The movie, by the way, is not based on a true story.   

The Christmas Day release will be watched closely by comic-book purists because it adapts the most beloved and enduring character of the late Will Eisner, an anointed figure in comics (he is so revered as the "grandfather of the graphic novel" that the industry awards are called the Eisners).

His Spirit is coming to the screen in the solo directorial debut of Frank Miller, the graphic novelist behind "Sin City," "300" and "The Dark Knight Returns." The problem might be the Spirit losing his comic and sentimental edges in the gritty hyper-reality that has marked Miller's work when it reaches the screen. (He was co-director of "Sin City" with Robert Rodriguez.)

I was the panel's moderator and, looking out over 6,800 fans, I realized how nerve-wracking it is to be on that stage. Miller brought three clips plus a trailer, which is a LOT (that's why there were no questions from the audience) and the reason was Miller and his people wanted to show that the movie included romance and comedy (like the classic Eisner newspaper inserts and comics). 

Jackson stole the show on the panel, which also included Miller, producer Deborah Del Prete, Macht and starlet Jaime King (Lorelei). He talked about his favorite action figure of himself during his long career in genre films (he loves Mace Windu figures and wonders why he didn't get an action figure of "Jurassic Park" when almost every else in the cast did) and commented on his upcoming portrayal of Nick Fury, originally a white character in the comics, by saying that America gives anyone the chance to "become a black man."

-- Geoff Boucher

Related:
The hair club for Sam (slideshow)

Photos: Top, Samuel L. Jackson hugs "The Spirit" writer/director Frank Miller before the start of the panel with producer Deborah Del Prete and stars Gabriel Macht and Jaime King, who gathered to show an exclusive preview of the new film based on the classic comic by Will Eisner at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 25, 2008. Right, "The Spirit" panel moderated by Los Angeles Times writer Geoff Boucher, left. Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times.

UPDATE: An early version of this post had the name of Robert Rodriguez spelled wrong. Sorry for the mistake, that's what can happen when you write a post on your Blackberry backstage!

I'm going to moderate the panel on "The Spirit" film down at the International Comic-Con Friday (July 25), and I'd like to open up the Hero Complex comments board to any fans who want to post some suggested questions.

There's a lot of excitement about the panel and I know firsthand that there are some surprises planned by Frank Miller, who makes his solo directorial debut with the film, and his close partner in the project, producer Deborah Del Prete.

The hour-long panel begins at 2:45 p.m. at Hall H. In addition to Miller and Del Prete, attendees at this point include cast members Samuel L. Jackson (who portrays the Octopus), Gabriel Macht (Denny Colt/the Spirit) and Jaime King (Lorelei Rox).

(No, Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes are NOT part of the panel, due to scheduling issues. It's just as well, really, I would have a hard time putting coherent sentences together if those two and King were all sitting next to me.)

I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and visited with Miller and Del Prete and sat in while they worked on the visual effects post-production process, and the movie, much like urban fever-dream of  "Sin City," has a striking, hyper-reality to it. That's going to make a lot of fans of "Sin City" (which Miller co-directed, of course, adapting his own comics work) happy, but he already knows that fans who adored the late Will Eisner and his grand, often sentimental work on "The Spirit" are already sharpening their knives. "I'm prepared," Miller told me, "and I'm making the right movie, I know that."

-- Geoff Boucher

You can read the Sunday Calendar cover story I wrote about Miller last year after the jump.

photo of Samuel L. Jackson as Octopus via Lionsgate