Darwyn Cooke welcomes The Spirit into the DC Universe with this outstanding cover featuring Will Eisner’s legendary creation, facing off against… well another pretty well-known comic book legend.
Cooke’s take on The Spirit is one of my favorites, and this entire double issue, with inks by J Bone and colors by Dave Stewart is simply wonderful. It definitely deserved its Eisner award (so appropriate) for best single issue of 2007.
This cover is the only Spirit art that Darwyn penciled and inked himself, since this issue, and the subsequent ongoing, was inked on separate blue-line by Bone.
Fun fact: The cover was solicited for sale in its original version, and then ultimately flipped for actual publication. Makes sense, since the title is Batman/The Spirit, not the other way around.
“Bombshell, ” Spirt Vol. 2, #18 (Unpublished) DC Comics, December 2011
The Third and final part of our “Will Eisner Week” Spirit series features the noirish ending to this unpublished Spirit story “Bombshell” by Chip Kidd and Dave Bullock.
80 years of the Spirit, from his first newspaper appearance to the 80th celebration by Clover Press.
“Bombshell, ” Spirt Vol. 2, #18 (Unpublished) DC Comics, December 2011
Part two of our three-part “Will Eisner Week” series features the action heating up in the middle of the unpublished Spirit story “Bombshell” by Chip Kidd and Dave Bullock.
“Bombshell, ” Spirt Vol. 2, #18 (Unpublished) DC Comics, December 2011
The first week of March is “Will Eisner Week,” an annual event celebrating the life and works of one of the fathers of graphic storytelling.
And that means… it’s time for our own contribution to Will Eisner Week as well.
This year, we feature a terrific unpublished Spirit story by Chip Kidd and Dave Bullock featuring Bombshell. Unpublished… because DC cancelled its First Wave version of The Spirit before the story saw the light of day. (And shortly thereafter, the Spirit moved to Dynamite.)
Great storytelling along with beautiful wash tones by Bullock make this an especially unfortunate casualty of commercial considerations.
Part one of this great story appears today, part two on Thursday, and the conclusion on Saturday.
As for the dialogue?
Let your imagination soar.
I see a possible theme here — Bullock contributed this great Deadman story to DC’s Wednesday Comics in 2009.
Rocketeer Spirit #1 and #2, (Cover Preliminary Art) July/August 2013
Continuing our celebration of “Will Eisner Week,” with other creators’ takes on the beloved and influential character, The Spirit.
As noted last year, the late Darwyn Cooke was likely the closest modern creator to fully realize Will Eisner’s legacy. Darwyn was an astonishing storyteller, designer illustrator, letterer and more. (Among dozens of awards and nominations, he also received an Emmy nomination for his work on the 2008 animated film Justice League: New Frontier.)
DC launched its ongoing Cooke Spirit series with a Batman / Sprit crossover, and this Spirit / Rocketeer crossover (covers only) brings some closure to that brief run.
The covers are designed to form one single unit, and a limited variant wraparound cover might exist, although I can’t find it in my collection — or on-line. ( I can’t recall if we ended up printing it or not.)
As for these prelims? They are oversize on real art board… and they are spectacular.
“I can remember it was one of those days when I was thirteen, and I was in a comic store, and there was nothing that I wanted to get. On the wall was a copy of Warren’s Spirit magazine. I think it’s number three, where he is running down the elevated track straight at you, and the train is behind him. It’s just one of the most exciting images I have ever seen…”
-Darwyn Cooke interview From Will Eisner: A Spirited Life by Bob Andelman
Dropsie Avenue is the third (and final) graphic novel in the Contract With God Trilogy.
As noted previously All Contract With God did was change the face of comic book storytelling and popularize the concept, and phrase, “graphic novel.”
Eisner’s career remains fascinating. He had all but given up on comic book work after he discontinued the Spirit in 1952, but the growth of comics’ fandom convinced him to return in the 70s. He did indeed revisit The Spirit, but more importantly, he realized his personal literary aspiration of creating something completely unique and personal with COG, its sequels, and other graphic novels he produced until his death in 2005.
Dropsie Avenue (1995) tells the evolution of a fictional street and its residents in New York’s Bronx Borough — spanning more than 100 years, beginning about 1870 One of the many reasons I enjoy this page is that it features a street pole with the name of the street, and hence the title of the graphic novel.
Eisner owned outright nearly all the comic book material he created in his lifetime. He had great foresight to retain his intellectual property, and remain a true independent until his passing.
Will Eisner’s Quarterly #2, Spring 1984 and A Life Force, 1988
We continue with our month long celebration of the “Independents” — Independent creators and projects that continue to impact the comic book medium.
A Life Force is the second graphic novel in the Contract With God Trilogy.
Contract with God? All that did was change the face of comic book storytelling and popularize the concept, and phrase, “graphic novel.”
Autobiographical and journalistic. Sometimes harsh, sometimes uplifting. Mature, and in places, unflinching. Eisner described his narrative, an “exercise in personal agony,” a way of dealing with the death of his daughter Alice (from Leukemia) years earlier.
Eisner’s career is fascinating. He had all but given up on comic book work after he discontinued the Spirit in 1952, but the growth of comics’ fandom convinced him to return in the 70s. He did indeed revisit The Spirit, but more importantly, he realized his personal literary aspiration of creating something completely unique and personal with COG, its sequels, and other graphic novels he produced until his death in 2005.
A Life Force was first serialized in Will Eisner’s Quarterly starting in 1984. The innovative storytelling and artistic detail on this page (i.e the classic line cross-hatching) makes it a keeper.
Eisner owned outright nearly all the comic book material he created in his lifetime. He had great foresight to retain his intellectual property, and remain a true independent until his passing.
Continuing our celebration of the 80th anniversary of The Spirit, with additional creators’ takes on the beloved and influential character.
Tim Bradstreet — with Eisner’s blessing — redraws some of the Spirit’s backstory in Will’s style for the cover of The Spirit New Adventures #6.
The foreground? Bradstreet reimagines The Spirit a bit more hardboiled, a bit darker, less whimsical version of the character. And he sports possibly the greatest comic book trench coat ever.
(As you can see from the original vs. published cover, The Kitchen Sink trade design cropped much of the background.)
The complete collection of the New Adventures, which includes contributions by Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and others is available from Dark Horse Comics.
On June 2, 1940, Denny Colt made his debut… and promptly died.
Eisner
introduced his detective with jaunty body language, lots of attitude and
over-confidence, and a close relationship with Police Commissioner Dolan (and
that was all in the first half dozen panels.) The cartoonist already knew his
character well. Colt went off to capture the villainous Dr. Cobra and was found
dead, drowned in a flood of toxic chemicals. After his funeral, Colt woke from
suspended animation, dug himself out and assumed a new role as the Spirit,
haunting Wildwood cemetery and keeping his city safe with Dolan’s connivance.
— Paul Levitz, summarizing the Spirit’s origin in his book, Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel
The classic film noir trench-coated detective: Alan Ladd with Veronica Lake in This Gun For Hire; Robert Mitchum (with Jane Greer) in Out of The Past; and Humphrey Bogart — in pretty much everything. (Ladd would have made an excellent Spirit back in the day.)
Continuing our celebration of the 80th anniversary of The Spirit, with additional creators’ takes on the beloved and influential character.
David Hine (Spider-Man Noir) authors a clever tale where pretty much every page is a splash — with the Spirit title included as part of the art. John Paul Leon hits the concept out of the park successfully homaging Will Eisner’s original brilliant splash pages with innovations of his own.
On this page, the final one of the story, Leon perhaps finds inspiration for the logo from 1946 — from the classic tale, “The Man Who Killed The Spirit” AKA “The Last Trolley.”
Fun fact: This issue — and this entire series — was edited by the ultra-talented Joey Cavalieri, a pal of mine for nearly 50 years. Joey and I first met as kids hunting down comics in the candy stores, newsstands and luncheonettes of the lovely seaside town of Long Beach, New York.
Variations on a theme: The original 1946 Spirit strip with the blowing letters — and two later (and slightly different) reprint versions.
Continuing our celebration of the 80th anniversary of The Spirit, with additional creators’ takes on the beloved and influential character.
Perhaps the artist with the most specific style similarities to Will Eisner is Mike Ploog, who worked for Eisner briefly in the early 1970s, on Eisner’s PS Magazine for the military. Ploog credits his initial Eisner influence on the 10 years he himself spent in the Marines reading and copying the magazine.
Ironically, as a
kid, Ploog was not a comic book fan, so he had no idea who Eisner was, or the
history of the Spirit.
But that obviously changed as Ploog discovered Eisner, The Spirit and comics’ lore in general. On this page from 2007, Ploog, aided by inks from vet Dan Green, captures Eisner’s Spirit — and adds his own taste for a horrific milieu.
Ploog spoke with journalist Jon B. Cooke about the early part of his career in an interview for Comic Book Artist #2 in 1998. Read the full interview here.
CBA: How’d you get the call from Will? Ploog: I was working for Hanna-Barbera, and the guy in the room with me belonged to the National Cartoonist’s Society. He got a flyer Will had put out, looking for an assistant. He looked at it and said, “Ploog, this looks like your stuff.” I looked at it and said, “It is my stuff.” [laughter]. I called Will, and two days later he was in L.A. and interviewed me…the following week I went to work for him.
CBA: When you first burst upon the scene in comic books, you had a style very reminiscent of Will’s work. Did you start developing that style through osmosis, just being around him? Ploog: It was very difficult for me, because I hadn’t done that much work. I really didn’t know what a “style” meant. When Will saw my work, he said, “This guy can adapt to what I’m doing easily.” Obviously whatever I had, it was adaptable to him. I could emulate Will right down to a pinpoint on an occasion…I’m sure from working with Will, it developed in that direction…
I love Will; he’s a dear, dear old friend. He’s been an enormous influence on my work both in comics and film.
-Mike Ploog, 1998
Early Ploog Marvel work — he was a breakout star from pretty much the beginning of his comics career, although he ultimately spent more of his professional life working in film.The Ploog art book is a must have for any fan of Mike’s — or simply for those who like great looking art books.
