Founded by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, many of comic books' most significant creators, including Jack Kirby, entered the field through its doors.
According to Eisner, the demise of Wow prompted him to suggest that he and the out-of-work Iger form a partnership to produce new comics, anticipating that the well of available reprints would soon run dry.
So we had lunch at this little beanery, and I told Jerry Iger about this idea and said I'd like to form a company with him and we'd produce the original art for these comic books.
(laughs)[2]Renting a one-room office on East 41st Street in Manhattan for $5 a month (the first three months' rent fronted by Eisner, who'd just been paid for a one-time commercial art job for a product called Gre-Solvent),[7] Eisner & Iger began, with the former as the sole writing and art staff and the latter handling sales and also lettering the comics.
He also did sports drawings that I syndicated with my other materials throughout the U.S. ... Universal Phoenix Features had gone into a "holding pattern" because I had gone into a brief partnership with Will Eisner in mid-1938 only to buy him out in 1940 when Will was drafted [sic] into the Army to do military posters.
1, including the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner and the Angel) and the quirkily named Harry "A" Chesler's studio.
Powers, reportedly a former U.S. government agent whose beat was South America, had founded the company when he retired, and provided Latin American newspapers with comics strips, cooking features and other material in exchange for ad space that he would in turn sell to U.S. companies.
After expanding to other countries, Editors Press Service had a British client, the magazine Wags, for which Eisner and Iger, under the pseudonym "W. Morgan Thomas," created the leggy, leopard-wearing jungle goddess Sheena.
That much-imitated "female Tarzan" would become famous stateside in 1938 when writer "William Thomas" and artist Mort Meskin took over her exploits in Eisner & Iger client Fiction House's Jumbo Comics No.
Turning a profit of $1.50 a page, Eisner claimed, "I got very rich before I was 22",[12] later detailing that in Depression-era 1939, for example, he and Iger "had split $25,000 between us",[13] a considerable amount for the time.
Eisner sold his share of company stock to Iger in late 1939 or early 1940 in order to leave and launch The Spirit.
[15] A number of notable creators stayed on at the company after Eisner left, including Alex Blum, Toni Blum, Nick Cardy, Louis Cazeneuve, Fletcher Hanks, Charles Nicholas, Bob Powell, and George Tuska.
Other creators who packaged comics for the Iger Studio include Matt Baker, Al Feldstein, Dick Giordano, Jack Kamen, Joe Kubert, Al Plastino, Don Rico, and Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel.