Art For Art’s Sake #282: Celebrating Will Eisner’s Spirit

by Richard Bruton

Another week goes by, you’ve worked hard all week and it’s finally time to take the weight off – well, what could be better than perusing a little comic art? Well, okay, you could win the lottery, that would probably be better. But hey… Art for Art’s Sake first!

Okay then, the plan was that I was going to start with a couple of the gorgeous Darwyn Cooke & J Bone work on The Spirit and then pivot to a bit of Will Eisner Spirit and then go for a random round up of art.

Well, you know how that goes. A bit of Internet searching and suddenly I’m drowning in way too many Spirit images from way too many great artists… So, shall we do an all-Spirit A4AS?

Created by Will Eisner in 1940, The Spirit is one of those essential comics for anyone interested in comic art, with Eisner’s line and layouts praised by all. Originally published in full comics inserts in newspapers, The Spirit’s popularity kept it published through to 1952, with Eisner using a lot of art and story assistants particularly through the war years when Eisner was serving and during the latter years of the strip, including Jules Feiffer, John Spranger, Jerry Grandenetti, Jack Cole, Joe Kubert, and Wally Wood.

Following the end of the series, we’ve seen various reprints over the decades from Harvey Comics (1966-1967), Warren Publishing (1974-1976) and Kitchen Sink Press (1973 and 1983-1992). And we’ve also seen modern Spirit tales, keeping the [ahem] spirit of Eisner’s character alive from DC, IDW, and Dynamite.

Right then – time to get going with the art, starting with those Cooke & Bone images that sent me off down this particular rabbit hole…