The 100 Greatest Brooklynites of All Time: 80 to 71
The highest honor in comics is called an Eisner Award, named after this Brooklyn-born dean of comic books. Best known for creating The Spirit, which ran for 12 years starting in 1940, he was also around long enough to become a leading figure in the legitimization of the form. With work like 1978’s A Contract with God, Eisner helped turn disreputable “comic books” into “graphic novels,” a kind of literature.