SPIRIT Splashes

[dr_hermes.insanejournal.com]

Every now and then, I'd like to do a little gallery of splash pages from THE SPIRIT. The strip appeared as an insert in syndicated newspapers (and as such, the Spirit had an astonishing circulation; many thousands who never picked up a comic book read THE SPIRIT every week). This impromptu selection leaves out several of the types of stories Will Eisner did so well. There were his satires on advertising and consumerism and current fads; there were his whimsical fantasy or science-fiction romps, his tough gangster sagas and locked-room mysteries; the little misadventures that Ebony or Sammy went off on their own; and so many that are hard to classify. You just never knew what you would find when you opened your Sunday paper.

It flummoxes me how heartbreakingly good Sunday comics used to be. From the 1930s to around 1960, you might pick up a paper that had THE SPIRIT, POPEYE, PRINCE VALIANT, TERRY AND THE PIRATES, POGO, MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN, GASOLINE ALLEY, KRAZY KAT... Then the size of the pages started to shrink faster and faster, the quality of the printing and coloring dropped, the era of high adventure and screwball humor faded away.

Comments

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

Oh, man. Over the weekend, on 4chan's /co/ board, someone trying to start something posted a youtube link of the a local cable access show hosted by Stan Lee called "The Comic Book Greats," or somesuch. The episode featured a half hour of Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane "designing" a character based solely on a name provided by Lee: Overkill.

I'm sure you can imagine how it went from there. The responders pointed out how retroactively hilarious every line uttered was. Lee ribbing these "Comic Book Greats" and being claiming he'll take all the credit. Anyway, in a half hour, these two "Comic Book Greats" draw the visual equivalent of brain vomit.

Then someone in the thread posts the first video of the second third of a "Comic Book Greats" with Will Eisner, and I watched the whole thing. In 30 minutes, he proceeds to sketch 11 figures with more life and style than anything Todd and Rob could ever imagine, and in the last *9* minutes, Lee asks him to draw something finished. I cheered, personally. He draws a headshot of the Spirit. It is beautiful.

Oh, and the whole time Eisner's drawing the last 6 figures and the final drawing, he and Lee are arguing story-telling philosophies!

[jesidres.insanejournal.com]

If you can find that link to Will's episode, it would be awesome.

And yeah, of course Will could draw elaborate circles around those tossers. He was able to tell some of the most riveting stories still unparalleled today...in eight pages. If not for the restrictions, I'd post some of my favorites here- the problem is that no a single panel is wasted, so you CAN'T post it without including all.

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=04264E59AE7244CF&search_query=comic+book+greats+will+eisner

Links to all 8 parts.

[dr_hermes.insanejournal.com]

This is true. I re-read a half dozen Spirit stories and gave up on trying to post just two pages out of an eight page story. It was too hard to select, the stories were too tightly written. The best I could see was a panel or sequence with a nice visual gag or portrait of a character, and the splash pages are good examples.

[jesidres.insanejournal.com]

The only stories that one COULD post singular pages from are the Jack Cole or Jules Feiffer stories, and what's the point in that?

[tilly_stratford.insanejournal.com]

Ooh, I approve of this post! Old S_D made a Spirit fan out of me, and I've been reading the stories chronologically from then on (I've come as far as 1948!)

His use of light and shadow is just... beyond description. I spend ages just looking at splash pages like those.

[dr_hermes.insanejournal.com]

It's wonderful art and storytelling. I don't follow current comics, but I'll always post THE SPIRIT, PRINCE VALIANT, POGO, KRAZY KAT.. stuff like that.

[thebat_man.insanejournal.com]

These are great. Particularly the Sand Saref splash with the shadowy noir lighting.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

If you ask me, that's where the downfall of newspapers began - back when they stopped providing stuff only they could provide. Even before the Internet, newspapers were hardly an unassailable form of media - TV and radio can also provide news, and there are always the people who prefer not to know what's going on, and who just don't buy the things. It was comics that made the newspapers unique - anyone can put ink on paper and call it news, but you can't forge a comic strip - not unless it was a really crappy one. A lot of people, me included, flip to the comics section first - and back when there were some real works of genius being published, that really meant something.
Nowadays, though, that has vanished. Oh, there are still some great strips out there, but they're not as great as they COULD be, because the papers keep shrinking them down. Moreover, they've lost their nerve - newspaper comics are rapidly being sanitized down to the point of bloodlessness, and strips get added and dropped from a paper at the speed of light - all except the 'old classics', almost none of which are a shadow of their former selves. (I still enjoy 'Blondie', but Dennis the Menace? Was that EVER good?) People started predicting this years ago - there's an old 'Bloom County' strip where someone has a nightmare about a future where the comics are shrunk down to the point where you literally can't read them - they're just a large black blot in the middle of the page. There's stuff on the internet which is about a million times better than what you get in the Sunday funnies.
If papers would only start paying more attention to their comics page, they might actually be able to attract more readers, and draw them away from the siren call of the internet. It'd be pretty simple - just don't post any of the daily strips on the paper's homepage until the end of the month or so, and feature comics that are interesting and exciting, and that people will WANT to read - they'll have to buy the paper to read them. But no - they're not going to do that, because they are stupid. The last truly ingenious strip (in my opinion) was 'Calvin and Hobbes', and that folded years ago. The old masters of the form are all either dead or retired, and the fresh blood that could replace them is being poured into the internet instead. I fear we are witnessing the pitiful, piddling end of a once-mighty empire.