Will Eisner was born on this date in 1917. Eisner was a transformative artist in the Golden Age of Comics in the 40's and 50's. He became a force in the Indy market with his graphic novels and before that worked for many years for the U.S. Military. He created an important figure for us all - the focus of today's Dojo celebration and my year-long reading -- The Spirit.
When Harvey Comics revived The Spirit in the 60's they got Will Eisner to produce a few new stories to freshen the tales from earlier decades. One such tale was retelling of how Denny Colt became the Spirit and the other purported to tell of how The Octopus came to be. Below is that latter story from the original artwork of Eisner himself. Enjoy!
The last page asks, if this story was the end of the Octopus and of course it wasn't.
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Interesting to see the original art for this. My copies of Harvey's The Spirit are in about less-than-good condition as I read them over and over. My favorite was the Gerhard Schnobbel story, I think because of its tragic irony. It got skewered by The Comics Journal for its saccharine sentimentality, but as we all know, critics are like "you know what" -- everybody's got one. I learned later that it was also one of Eisner's personal favorites.
ReplyDeleteThe beauty of the Spirit at its peak was that Eisner gave us a noir crime drama one time, a sentimental fable the next, and some dandy comedy after that. The Comics Journal flowered during the Indy age and their tastes seem always to reflect that flavor.
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