The Spirit Archives, Volume 16

In my review of "Spirit Archives" Vol. 15, I wondered if Will Eisner had reached his peak, or if there was better still to come. The answer is found in this volume. Covering the first half of 1948, Vol. 16 demonstrates that Eisner still had plenty of ideas and the energy to express them. In this volume, the Spirit encounters old enemies like the Octopus, femme fatales Satin and P'Gell, ghosts, haunted guns, exotic locales, all with the wink-and-nod that Eisner had perfected throughout the series. There's not much more to say, really. It's good stuff for everyone.

Will Eisner is gone. His charming & arresting art, his skilled storytelling, & his firey Dangerous Dames will be with us always, but he is gone. His heroes never tried to save the world--they saved PEOPLE, darnit! People with NAMES! With FACES! With LIVES! With STORIES TO TELL...which began before the heroes & villains showed up, & often went on after they left; or at least that's what you'd believe, after reading Will Eisner's brillant work. Comics like these are why they called it "The Golden Age Of Comics". Buy this. Read it. See what you've been missing. Make your life RICHER.

I have just finished reading Volumes 15 and 16 and will buy more when I can afford them. I do know that his best period was said to be the two or three years after World War II and that is what I am concentrating on now. The books read like a film noir movie with a touch of William Powell, Robert Mitchum, Batman, and the Bowery Boys. The stories are still fresh today and the art is excellent. You can see the influence Eisner had on MAD, DC and Marvel. Unfortunately The Spirit was not available by the time I was teaching as I would, have used the series, as I did various other comics, in the classroom. The Spirit is sort of The Lone Ranger, though why the mask was needed no one knows despite the explanation that the first publisher wanted it. Only the inspector and his lovely daughter, clearly modeled after Betty Grable, and Ebony know who he is for sure. Some may think that a black kid as a side kick named Ebony is racist, but for the 1940's this was pretty advanced. Ebony himself deserved a comic strip and he is a true right hand man for The Spirit. They've made movies of The Saint (plus TV series), radio's The Shadow, and all kinds of comic heroes. The Spirit would seem the most logical one to be made into a film as it already has everything there.