Dean Poling
Will Eisner created a comic-book legend with his tales of The Spirit, a regularly dressed Joe for the 1940s and '50s, who wore a Lone Ranger-style mask. The weird thing for many comics readers, especially those who were children in the '60s and '70s, is they often heard more about Eisner and The Spirit than they actually had the opportunity to read the comics. There would often be an ad about ordering books of The Spirit in the pages of comics such as "Spider-Man" or "Batman." If you were a kid who did most of his comics purchases at the 7-11 with the change in his pocket and you and your friends had never heard of The Spirit, you thought the ad was interesting but not so interesting to go through the hassles of ordering a copy for what was then a whole lot of money for an unknown comic. Of course, we were kids, how were we to know that 20 to 30 years earlier Eisner had revolutionized the comics form with his groundbreaking Spirit in the 1940s and '50s? How were we to know that The Spirit was decades ahead of its time in terms of illustration and use of the comics form as a pure medium for storytelling? How were we to know that those books of "The Spirit" reprints from the far distant past were better than many of the new and original comics we were purchasing with our hard-won allowances? How could we know that Eisner would coin the phrase "graphic novel," for more prestige packaging of comics with a more prestige bent toward literary storytelling? Well, we know now if we've stuck with comics through the years. Many long-time comics fans have either come across those collected tales of "The Spirit" in friends' collections or we've purchased them ourselves. Now, DC Comics has released a fine trade paperback of nearly two dozen tales of "The Spirit" called "The Best of the Spirit." Eisner told his tales of The Spirit through seven- to eight-page vignettes. He often invested in these stories a slip of irony in the O. Henry short-story tradition. Eisner crammed his stories with humor, pathos, sad tales, funny stories, odd tales. His pages were crammed with beautifully illustrated panels that kept a sense of the cartoon while striking home a more realistic style of illustration. He also took the reader through odd angles and strange perspectives, even gave the reader a murderer's eye view in one tale. "The Spirit" tales were about crimefighting like most comics, but they were like episodes of TV's "Gunsmoke" in that many stories were more about that tale's one-time character, with The Spirit making an all-important appearance to conclude a story similar to Marshal Matt Dillon's role often in "Gunsmoke." If you're looking for a great read for the first time, a return to "The Spirit," or a book of comic historical impact to add to your graphic-novel collection, "The Best of The Spirit" is the best of all three worlds.
