The Spirit In Color!

Despite looking fantastic in black and white, The Spirit has always looked good in color as well. Of course, the character was presented in color throughout the 40's and 50's. Then in the 60's we started to see black and white presentations. Then both Kitchen Sink and Warren brought out black and white versions of the character and those looked fantastic. 

Warren saw that and often presented the character in lush color supplied by Rich Corben. These stories were collected in a limited-edition volume of 1500 copies and available only through mail order or back issue stores. I don't own The Spirit Special, though I want to. 

In reverse, Poorhouse Publishing put out a black and white volume featuring classic Spirit splash pages, intended for the fan to color. I would never dream of actually doing that to my copy The Spirit Coloring Book. 

Will Eisner's Color Treasury is to my eye the finest collection of pure color Spirit. Included in this volume is one full story, the plates from the art portfolio, and Eisner's own color versions of his original art for the Warren magazine covers as well as all the Kitchen Sink Magazine covers. This was published in Denmark. 

Also published in color in Denmark was Will Eisner's Color Albums. There were three of them in total. The first collected a gaggle of some of the best Spirit stories such as "The Perfect Crime", "Hanzel and Gretel", "Cinderella", "Life Below", "The Guilty Gun", and "Ten Minutes". It also reprints the revised origin story for The Spirit Eisner created for the Harvey collections years before. 

The second volume focused on romance and presents all the stories featuring the somber Bleak and the lovely Sparrow, two young lovers who have to overcome some real issues to be together.  Also included are "War Brides", "Lurid Love", and the Sand Saref set of stories, among others. 

The third and final volume of the three volumes focuses on The Spirit's large case of femme fatales. We get "Nylon Rose", "Silken Floss", "Wild Rice", "Plaster of Paris", "Thorne Strand", "Satin", and several more. There's also a piece from The Spirit Magazine where some of these dames get together and compare notes titled "The Spirit's Women Club". 

All of these are handsome volumes if you can find them cheap. 

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