A Spirited Year!

If this blog was one of my kids, it would be driving and considering which colleges to visit. We kick off the seventeenth year here at the Dojo and the focus will be on one of the greatest talents and characters in the entire history of the comics medium.  It was expensive, but I'm still glad I did so last summer. I've long wanted a set of The Spirit Archives and now they are mine. DC published these handsome tomes soon after they acquired the rights to the character in the early part of this century. The Archive editions arrived over the next decade. Unfortunately, I was not in any position to make such an outlay for books of his kind at that time. Now I have them, or at least most of them. 

Now what to do with them. Read them, I guess. And then tell you guys about the experience, if you would be so kind as to indulge me. "Spirit Sundays" will be the Dojo reporting out on one of these volumes every other week throughout the year. I might speed up if I find the reading goes more quickly than I expected, but I'm a bit leery of burning out, so I want to pace myself and savor each volume. 

I have all the Spirit stories in some format or other and for the volumes I've been unable to gather up, I will read from those sources, so all volumes will be covered if only by proxy. Even assuming there are no gaps or delays this will take most all of the year to get around to all twenty-six volumes and all of the Spirit Sections which ran from late 1940 to late 1952 for a total 646 weekly sections in select newspapers such as The Baltimore Sun and The Philadelphia Record. 

I will be also reading as much of Will Eisner's later works as I can get hold of. I own a ton of it already. I've been a Spirit fan since I first saw one of his strange adventures in Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes, and jumped onto Warren's reprinting the stories in the 70's. 

(My very first Spirit encounter.)

That led me to Kitchen Sink where the Eisner scholarship. Kitchen Sink published a great deal of Eisner's newer material, stuff which was less heroic and more realistic.  And I want to take a look at stuff as well works that continue Eisner's Spirit adventures at multiple publishers or seem singularly inspired by either The Spirit or showcase a vivid Eisner influence. 

(Uncle Sam, Hawks of the Sea, Spirit & Sheena)

I'm not averse from exploring some other products of the Eisner & Iger shop such as Blackhawk and Sheena, among others. That's not all you'll see for the next several months, but those things might well be occasional visitors to the proceedings. 

When it comes to what to expect this coming year, I want to do all kinds of things and I'm not making any promises other than this, only to change my mind. My singular mission this coming year is to read Will Eisner's legendary comics material and other things of his as I take a notion.  Other than the Will Eisner stuff, I want posts this year to be surprises, for you as well as myself. So, I don't anticipate any monthly themes. (But I've learned you can never say never.) It promises to be a wild ride, I hope you'll hang out here once in a while and see how it's going. 

(Connie Rodd from P.S. Magazine)

A Note: The Dojo has operated on a daily basis for nearly all of its rather long existence. Don't be startled if I skip a few days here and there this year. I've said this before, but sometimes the daily rigor makes the blog feel too much like a job of work. As a retired gent, having a bit of a job to do is rewarding. But if I cut back, just know I'm relaxing a bit more or attending to other important matters. On the other hand, sometimes I have trouble fitting in all the things I want to do and maybe every day will be filled, and this note will be utterly superfluous as usual.

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