The Spirit Of Warren!

In 1974 Warren Magazines, famous for offering the finest in horror comics in magazines Creepy and Eerie and horror with some sex appeal with Vampirella gave the readers a real swerve. The Spirit magazine debuted, reprinting in glorious black and white and color as well, the finest of Will Eisner's classic Golden Age newspaper series.

But before the magazine Warren gave the readers some tantalizing peeks. 

These exceedingly handsome advertising and promotional items appeared in Eerie #54. It's a nice example of the horror material Warren was producing at the time, but the reason It features The Spirit's debut at Jim Warren's publishing house. The Spirit magazine from Warren was a watershed event for me as a comics reader. I'd read of The Spirit, even seen a rather bland example of the comic in Jules Fieffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes, but I didn't appreciate the magnificence of Will Eisner's creation until I got to read the reprints from Warren.

And then there's this.

Here is the back cover ad for the upcoming Spirit magazine in the very next issue of Eerie, issue #55.

When The Spirit finally appeared, the magazine was unusually handsome, featuring a slick modern straightforward logo and a lush Sanjulian painting over an original Will Eisner comics image. 

The chaps at Warren even went so far as to create a Spirit cameo in the fiftieth issue of Vampirella.  Admittedly that's not a classic Eisner story. (See yesterday's post.) 

Here are the fantastic covers for the Warren run of Spirit magazines with a special surprise at the bottom of this post. 

(Limited Press Run)

To read the entire Warren Spirit run check out this Internet Archive Link. 

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