If for no other reason, this book will be noted and remembered because it was Will Eisner’s last. He had no equal in any other media, and few in the graphic medium were held in as high esteem by its community of creators and fans. When comics were new and its publishers, to paraphrase Eisner, were dedicated solely to robbing ten year olds of their dimes, he saw an art form as capable of expressing artistic excellence and social relevance as any other.
Among the achievements he was best known for were as the writer and artist for his, creator owned, comic The Spirit, creating the splash page technique, and writing the first graphic novel. The graphic medium’s award for excellence is named in his honour. He wrote the book on how to make a comic — literally, it is called Comics and Sequential Art.
In his last book, The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Eisner exposes the origins of one of the past century’s most influential lies. In a secular world anti-semites could no longer cloak their hatred in religion. This book gave them a new focus. It claimed to prove that there was an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
The origins of the document lie in the political wrangling of the last Czarist court. Those opposed to political reform were losing the Czar’s ear to their more democratic opponents, so they decided to play on Czar Nicholas’s anti-semitism. The secret police employed men to manufacture evidence to use in court against dissidents. Countless lives were ruined by these forgers. One of these police plagiarists was Mathieu Golovinski. When his patron at the Russian court fell from favour, Golovinski left for Paris where he joined the Okhrana (the Russian secret police). He was still in Paris when he was asked to produce the necessary “proof”.
To do this he rewrote an existing French book, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Montesquieu was a French political philosopher and advocate of reform. The Dialogue’s author, Maurice Joly, hoped to use it to expose the machinations of the government of Napoleon III and spark a revolution in France. He failed. He would probably have been forgotten if Golovinski had not used his book. Joly’s original was not anti-semitic. Its only concern was French politics. But Eisner provides seventeen pages of comparative text demonstrating that the Dialogue is the true origin of the Protocols of Zion.
The Protocols succeeded in their original purpose, but quickly gained a life of their own by revitalizing anti-semitism. With the rise of communism in Russia, copies made their way West with refugees and were translated and disseminated throughout the world. It wasn’t long before it was exposed as a fraud, but the book continued to spread. Continues to spread! It seems to crystallize something anti-semites want to believe so much the facts cannot be allowed to spoil it.
What Eisner wants to do is clearly debunk the Protocols in a book aimed at the general public. And he succeeds, laying out the history of the document clearly and vividly characterizing many of those who have played a role in its development. He also shows the unwillingness of many to accept that it is a lie.
Besides a preface by the author, the book includes an introduction by Italian novelist and scholar Umberto Eco, an afterward by Prof Stephen Eric Bronner, endnotes and a bibliography. Bronner’s afterward starts with “Before his unexpected death at the age of eighty-seven”. A strange statement. Eighty-seven is pretty good! Should an eighty-seven year old’s death really be described as unexpected? But it really was. Eisner was such a vital presence that even those of us who never met him felt a great loss last January. I am glad that his last book could be one that marries his aspirations for this medium to a cause that is so important. The book succeeds, not because of the importance of the topic, or of the sentimental value of being a master’s last work, but on its own merits. A good and recommended read.
