After starting it early last year, I got bogged down in reading Will Eisner's vintage 1930's comic strip Hawks of the Sea, but finally I got around to finishing it this past spring. I had some notion early on that I'd read a page a day to approximate the sense of a comic strip experience, but like so may well-laid plans it didn't work.
The strip is early Eisner (going by the name of "Rensie") and you can see him grow a bit as the strip unfolds. His storytelling is adequate, though there isn't the classic Eisner snap to the visuals. This is a plot-driven affair with a sturdy hero (The Hawk) and some decent sidekicks like Sagua a dour Indian who sadly talks in the cliched lingo, but who kicks butt everytime he shows up. The Hawk battles slavers, looks for treasure, takes a young lad under wing to raise, and finds romance and even a princess.
It's only for those folks who really like Eisner's work I'd imagine. The strips are clean but the reproduction is unfortunately too small to do the work full justice. Apparently the strip was reprinted in tabloid form one time, and that would be interesting to see. All I had was the Dark Horse volume, handsome as it was.
The strips too are incomplete with some pages missing and some missing half or so. There is a really nice forward by Al Williamson about this comic strip really influenced him as a young boy in Bogota, Columbia. Trying to read these strips through his eyes was a challenge as I progressed through the storylines.
It's not for everyone, but for an Eisner fan it's a must.
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