Birthday Boy Will Eisner (born on this day in 1917) in his birthday suit! In my forthcoming book Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings I will be presenting this Will Eisner nude self-portrait! There will be other “dirty drawings” by Eisner as well. Will Eisner is, of course, the creator of the well-known, ground-breaking, beloved, highly regarded comic book crimefighter…Doll Man! If I’m not mistaken, I even think Frank Miller is scripting a Doll Man movie for Hollywood! Eisner was always a great encouragement to me, generously giving me advice and material for the first Arf book, Arf Museum. But I never saw him like this:

BTW Will also created this other much lesser known and regarded hero, The Spirit. Will drew a picture (below) of this Spirit character for my book “Weird But True Toon Factoids” (you can order an autographed copy of this by clicking on the cover in the left-hand column). The weird fact involved something that Maggie Thompson pointed out to me years ago and more nudity: The Spirit never wore socks! It doesn’t matter, anyway, The Spirit being a very minor hero next to the great Doll Man!

The Spirit… ho-hum.

Doll Man (complete with requisite phallic symbol)…COOL!
Denis Kitchen lent me the nude self portrait of Will Eisner for the Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings book. Denis was Will’s agent for many, many years. I assume he held sway over Eisner because he had this revealing picture of him. But now it’s out for the world to see! Now if I could only unearth a pic of Doll Man in the nude–how cool would THAT be!?!

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— C. Yoe (in the funny papers)