Saturday, December 26, 2009

'PS' Time-Warp Refuge



During its nearly six decades of publication, PS Magazine has survived numerous close-calls in confrontations involving art style, characterization, and reflections of military life that were considered by some authorities to be "to the prejudice of good order and discipline." Most of these dustups occurred in the magazine's first 21 years, the period when Will Eisner held the contract for providing creative art and pre-press production services. Some were resolved with abject capitulation, compromises were reached in others, and in many the solutions came from Eisner's artistic nimbleness and fancy footwork. The most effective and on-going solution was a strategic retreat into a time-warp or the worlds of literature, entertainment, and folk-lore. This Civil War front-back cover-spread for PS 78 (April 1959) is an early example. Will Eisner and PS Magazine devotes a chapter, "Safe-Haven in Never-Never-Land," to a discussion of this concept that continues today as a staple element of PS creative approaches.