An ongoing presentation and discussion of selected art as related to "the missing middle years" of Will Eisner and the six-decade history of the U.S. Army's "PS Magazine," the most successful and longest-running communications program utilizing sequential art to convey technical and motivational information.
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.
In the 227 issues of PS Magazine for which Will Eisner provided creative art and pre-press production services, there was only one instance in which he inserted himself as a character in a continuity. That was in PS 117 (August 1962). Eisner appears there five times in the role of a TV interviewer. This montage reflects three of the five self-images that Eisner chose to share with his military audience. The complete continuity is reproduced in Will Eisner and PS Magazine.
This is Joe Kubert's front cover for the current issue (No. 685) of the U.S. Army's PS Magazine, the 107th issue for which he has created art and provided pre-press production services since first being awarded the PS contract in February of 2001. The monthly publication is now in its 58th year of utilizing sequential art for conveying technical and motivational information.
This front-back Christmas cover-spread for PS Magazine Issue No. 50, in 1956, is from the period when Will Eisner was beginning to "push the envelope" for the U.S. Army's preventive maintenance publication, using cross-gutter art and wall-to-wall bleeds. Will Eisner and PS Magazine includes a detailed display and discussion of this progression.
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