Will Eisner on "A Contract with God" and the phrase "sequential art"

YRONWODE: And then there's the book...
EISNER: Ah yes, that's the other project. I worked on that for two years and it's also out now -- the book is called A Contract with God. This is what I've devoted my major serious efforts of the last few years to. It's something that I've wanted to do for a long time. In the foreword of the book I explain why I did it and how it came to be, so there's really no sense in repeating that - hopefully people will buy the book and read the foreword and then they'll know what my reasons were. For the purpose of this interview I must say that I am still the same Will Eisner of 1942-43, trying to expand the horizons of my medium, my medium being a sequence of pictures on paper. I believe that sequential art is the oldest communicating art form, I think it has the validity of any other art form -- and while it may not have the breadth and dimension of motion pictures and it may not have the ability to cover abstracts the way lines of words do, and it may not be able to do a lot of things -- it has served humanity since early man because it has the ability to transmit a story. So I am at work now, hopefully not singlehandedly -- I'd like to be joined by other artists -- in an effort to produce literature in sequential art form, or what you would call "comic art." I've been struggling with the word "comic book" for 30 years now...
YRONWODE: It's a bad word...
EISNER: It's a terrible word - but every time I try to change it, I find that people force me back into it. I had finally settled on the term "graphic novel," thinking that would be an adequate euphemism, but the class I teach is called "sequential art" -- and of course that's what it is -- a sequence of pictures arranged to tell a story.