Any other fans of Will Eisner's "The Spirit"?

[mac56]

http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Essays/Eisner/essay_Eisner.htm

This is a great review I found.

"Eisner was in those years the comic-book equivalent of Orson Welles: he was the first complete master of a young and heretofore unformed medium. And, like Welles, he devoted his energies not so much to telling compelling stories as to showing us how comely his Cinderella was, now that he had waved his wand over it. We should not regret that Welles did not make something more "serious" than, say, "The Lady From Shanghai", an endlessly fascinating film whose tangled script would have been a stupefying bore in anyone else’s hands. If he had, his subject matter could have restrained him from showing us all the tricks in his magician’s bag. Likewise, if Eisner had tried to do more with The Spirit — if he had tried to tell stories with greater moral and emotional weight — he probably would have done less. By concentrating on what is so often dismissed as superficial — as "style" or "technique" — he revealed his medium’s unsuspected capacity for expression."

image cred: davegibbonsfansite.com

[Tummler]

1. Most definitely!

I haven't been buying the expensive collected editions of "The Spirit," but I read the reprints in comic form that were published in the '80s (by Eclipse Comics?).

Eisner's importance to the art form cannot be overstated. On top of the formal aspects of his work, he's been turning out entertaining yarns for decades, from "The Spirit" all the way up to his revolutionary graphic novels.

Long live Will Eisner!