Tribeca Film Fest: Part I.ii

I am a fan -- from way back -- of comic art. Back in the day, when I was still in my teens, or perhaps just before, I discovered the Chicago Tribune archives on filmstrips at the main branch of the Chicago Public Library. I would sit for hours pouring over all the Moon Mullins, Bringing Up Father, Smokey Stover, Dick Tracey, Blondie, etc. comics I'd missed. I loved comics. And I stuck up for them: they are as much literature, I would declare to any passing adult, as any Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield, Little Women, or Moby Dick around. And the adults would snicker knowingly, pat me on my head and send me on my way. And then at long long last along came Maus. And I have been vindicated. Oh, but before Maus, apparently, there was ...

WILL EISNER: PORTRAIT OF A SEQUENTIAL ARTIST
What I knew about Will Eisner before seeing this film you could, as my father used to say, put in your right ear and have room left over for an extra bowlful of wax. This film, thank you very very much, did a wonderful job of filling me in on this creator of what is arguably the first graphic novel, A Contract With God, certainly the first published graphic novel ... although the first one for *me,* and I suspect many others, was Art Spiegelman's seminal and super-popular Maus. The film, as I say, was a good biography. But I kept waiting -- in vain -- for it to be ... more. More than talking heads (Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Will himself among them), more than a montage of snips and pieces from his work, more than a PBS offering, however interesting and informative that is. I thought ... wanted it to be ... something deeper, more compelling, something ... I don't know ... dramatic, I guess, something placed more firmly in context perhaps, something to give the bare facts more humanity, more meaning. Something that would bring those not already fans of the medium into the theater and then send them out into the bookstores to explore further. Though it did do that to some extent for me: there I was, later in the week, seeking out A Contract With God, which I found, not at the crowded & lively Forbidden Planet where I expected to find it, but at Barnes & Noble on a bottom shelf in the well-stocked but forlorn graphic novels section. Dear reader, I thumbed through the tome but left without it (I do want to read it, just not at that price).

CELEBRITY SIGHTINGS: Outside the theater, while waiting in line, there by the curb chatting with friends was Samuel R. Delaney, the subject of the previous film at that theater. I recognized him by the photo in the Film Guide. I smiled, remembering my sci-fi-fan-days way back when. Inside the theatre, though, after the film, Art Spiegelman answered one of the Q-and-A questions from his seat just across the aisle from me. Oh, Lawdy, I couldn't help myself: hadda give him my fangirl bow-of-appreciation. Embarassed the heck out of me and I'm sure he thought how tacky but what's a tongue-tied fangirl to do? And he was very gracious.