Will Eisner was a comic book writer and artist whose best-remembered creation is the Spirit. The book above is a collection of Spirit stories. Called (arguably) The Best of the Spirit, it is a good primer on Eisner's work. Although this week's book is a DC Comics production, The Spirit was not published as a comic book, but rather as a color newspaper insert in Sunday papers from 1940 to 1952. Wikipedia tells us that Eisner was assisted by other well-known names in comic arts, like Jack Cole and Wally Wood, and had even stopped drawing the stories in the late forties, but Eisner's was the vision behind a truly distinct comics hero.
Eisner was inventive, even for his day, when the comic book hero was a relatively new phenomenon -- Superman had burst on the scene only two years before the Spirit, Batman one. Eisner played with the form, like a true artist. Whereas Superman's famous arched title barely changed over the years, to help identify publications in which he appeared, Eisner's introductory pages famously used all sorts of ways to show that the story was a Spirit story. (Please pardon the scan quality; had to set everything back up again with the new laptop and I never write any steps down because I'm smart that way.)
No surprise that there's a major comics award named after him now.
So who was the Spirit? He was Denny Colt, a brilliant and tough police officer from the slums, who was nearly killed by Dr. Cobra and his gang. He was actually stuck in a state of suspended animation, and when he woke up, he came out of his grave (okay, so they didn't bother to embalm the body -- hey, you can believe a man can fly, you can buy this). He decided that he would stay officially dead, and fight crime as the Spirit, able to do things the police legally could not. He had no superpowers, no gadgets and gizmos, and he lived in a crypt in Wildwood Cemetery.
Spirit stories had a different feel from most comic book hero tales. They often focused on other characters, crooks or victims or bystanders, bringing in the hero just for the close. Eisner said that he felt the Spirit was used as a "identity" for the stories, in a way contemporary radio programs like The Whistler did. A tale might involve a lone psychopath's shootout with police, and spend most of its pages figuring out how he got to this point; then the Spirit comes in to break the standoff. Eisner liked to look at what leads people into evil. Most of his opponents were small-timers, cracksmen and embezzlers and truck hijackers and miscellaneous punks and guys who snap and shoot their wives.
The stories were very street-level, even when the Spirit traveled to exotic locales (he did some intelligence work during the war). And he drew the worst-looking slums in comic art. But even in scenes of pure ugliness, the use of color in storytelling is amazing -- the color itself wants to gloss over what you see; in dim places it goes to a tinted darkness, just as we lose color perception in the dark.
But the women in stories tended to be extremely visual, very easy on the eyes in fact, very adult -- I mean wow. This collection has a number of them, all with great names, like Sand Seref, P'Gell, Skinny Bones, "Wild" Rice, Lorelei Rox, Dulcet Tone, and his true love/true hate, the dangerous Silk Satin. And Eisner could draw 'em.
The Spirit's relationship with the law was off and on, although I'm not sure why. He was pals with Police Commissioner Dolan (whose daughter Ellen was also a hottie), and in at least one adventure Dolan told Denny that he was surrounded by police and about to be arrested. The Spirit knocked out the light and escaped in the confusion. Dolan lit his pipe and laughed.
The Spirit was endlessly resourceful. One story I wish I still had, from the Kitchen Sink reprints long ago, featured a jailbreak; the guards have fled, and some of the city's most ferocious felons are running for the open gate, no one to stop them. No one but the Spirit, who throws down a puddle of gasoline and sets it ablaze, halting the criminals in their tracks -- but for a few that tried it and burned for their trouble.
The action throughout the series was pretty realistic, and the Spirit himself got stabbed, shot, and slugged many times. His suits were always getting ruined. It doesn't help when you chase guys into the sewer, either.
It could also be exceptionally funny. One story I also no longer have was an attempt to fix a boxing match, and while the Spirit is talking about it to Dolan, the boxer is flexing his giant muscles, ripping phone books in half, doing various feats of strength. Then, just to make a point, the Spirit pokes him on the chin and drops him like a rock.
Eisner's world was so rich that he even wrote a song that continually popped up in barroom scenes, "Ev'ry Little Bug," and copyrighted it.
But there is something that works against the spirit's popularity in modern times.
Yeah, it's Justin Trudeau. No, no, it's Ebony White, the janitor and the Spirit's dauntless friend and resourceful helper. No surprise that he appears only once in this Best of collection, in a story that had to be included because it introduced Satin. But sho' nuff, despite Ebony's intelligence, he's made out like a minstrel show, prevalent for black cartoon characters of that era. Eisner dropped the character later, but the damage was done. A lot of classic Spirit stories aren't going to see the light of day now.
And if that doesn't kill the Spirit, the crappy 2005 film version of the Spirit will do it. Somebody thought Frank "Dark Knight" Miller would be the perfect choice to write and design the story. They also thought that Samuel L. Jackson would be a great pick for the Spirit's unseen nemesis, the Octopus. Exceptionally wrong on both counts.
There was also TV movie in 1987 that tried to get the Spirit off the ground as a TV show. You can guess how well that worked.
Ebony didn't appear in either, by the way, but the TV show had a helpful character named Eubie, which I think was likely a big improvement.
Eisner struck me as a genius who was always a genius when he wasn't thinking he was a genius, but that's just my take. I have little interest in most of his other work like the Contract with God series. I get the feeling he was hard to work with, and I don't think I would have liked him, but they say never meet your heroes.
Other creations and co-creations of Eisner's, well-known to comics fans but not much in the public mind now, include jungle queen Sheena, Uncle Sam (as a comic book hero), the Blackhawk Squadron, Doll Man, and Black Condor. Blackhawk was made into a movie serial in 1952 starring Kirk Alyn (better known as Columbia Pictures' Superman); Sheena was filmed in 1984 with Tanya Roberts in the starring role; there was also a TV series about Sheena from 2000-2002. So his work has had limited success in popular media since the Spirit's heyday.
As I got older, I started to be irritated with the ever-increasing stakes of small-minded heroes of modern comics, who bicker endlessly while saving the world eight times a month in between striking poses. I came to love the Spirit more. One day maybe an animated film that follows Eisner's style and subject preferences could be made, but that day isn't today.
Too bad -- would love to see Silk Satin on the big screen.
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