Pattymooney · CC BY-SA 3.0
Will Eisner
American cartoonist, writer and entrepreneur
1917 – 2005aged 87
One of American comics' founding figures, whose series The Spirit spent over a decade experimenting with what a comic strip's panels, angles and shadows could do. In 1978 he popularized the term "graphic novel" with A Contract with God, and his 1985 book Comics and Sequential Art helped establish comics as a subject worth studying seriously. The industry's top honor, the Eisner Award, carries his name.