Heavily Illustrated Essays about How Comics and Sequential Art Communicate
Customer Rating: 
My guess is that a hundred people have heard of this work for every one who has actually read it. At the time the book was developed, you could only find this information by taking Will Eisner's class at the New York School of Visual Art.
Unless you haven't been paying attention to comics, you will probably find that you already understand most of the key messages: words and illustrations combine to form imagery; time elapses between panels and the pacing of the time involved affects how you react to the story; the frames around the panels and pages as a mechanism for tying the story together; using anatomy and expression to extract emotion from readers; how to combine words and illustrations for best effect; the potential to use sequential art in more than comic strips and books; and new technologies for making comics and sequential art.
As for me, the only section that I found rewarding was the extensive middle section on panels. Maybe I'm obtuse (I probably am), but I've often found it difficult to follow and understand the choice of panel structure on pages in Golden age comics. Mr. Eisner thoughtfully provides extended sections from The Spirit to demonstrate why he made the choices he did and what he hoped to accomplish. It was like a Rosetta Stone for translating what some of those odd pages are supposed to do. For that section, it was worth reading the book. The other sections I could have skipped and not missed anything.
I also recommend you read Scott McCloud book's about comics and sequential art: They are more rewarding in terms of setting out the issues and opportunities.
The Sequential Artist's Bible
Customer Rating: Hey, why not take the analogy further? Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics' is the Sequential Artist's New Testament... and Fredric Wertham's 'Seduction of the Innocent' is the Sequential Artist's 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'.
'Understanding Comics' didn't exactly make 'Comics & Sequential Art' obsolete - in many ways they compliment each other, and they take somewhat different approaches to explaining this wonderful and fascinating art, although of course there are many similarities (McCloud clearly states that Eisner's work was his biggest influence, and it shows in the text). McCloud's book is more entertaining and reader friendly, that's for sure, and in many ways covers more ground and goes deeper - but it's important to remember that McCloud had the benefit of an extra decade in which the medium developed more rapidly than ever before, as well as that of Eisner's work as a reference. Eisner's work is the first true academic examination of sequential art and its potential as a medium, and was written at a time when the big revolution in comics - which he himself helped agitate more than fifteen years before - was just reaching its crucial stages.
Aside from giving solid ground to several definitions - sequential art, graphic novel, the Gutter - which would become basics of the medium - Eisner's work took deeper consideration than anyone before him of the enormous potential the form has, and was an integral part of the artistic revolution is so-called comics. By many it was considered definitive; such a thing, of course, does not exist. 'Understanding Comics' builds on Eisner's work and in many ways is more complete, just as another, more complete work, may appear ten or twenty years from now. McCloud, of course, had the benefit not only of Eisner's work but also of artists like Dave McKean, who stretched the very same ideas that Eisner talked about to new extents. My main complaint about Eisner's book, in fact, is that he uses only his own work to illustrate his points, rather than draw some examples from great contemporaries like Robert Crumb or Art Spiegelman.
While 'Understanding Comics' is friendlier and better suited for beginners and casual readers, 'Comics & Sequential Art' is more complex and more academic, and directed at those with an artistic background - after all, the material was taken from a series of lectures Eisner gave in the School of Visual Arts in New York. If you're new to the business, 'Understanding Comics' is a better pick, but if you have professional interest in comics, then both these works are essential reading, and 'Comics & Sequential Art' is remarkably important and inspiring.
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