The Spirit, Will Eisner, and the Eisner Awards

With the new movie coming out, I thought I would answer the question on everyone's mind, "Who the hell is The Spirit and why should I see it?" If you watch the trailers, the answer is "A movie by the creator of 300 and Sin City." If you ask me, it's because either you watch every comic adaptation ever made (like me) or there won't anything better on top of your Netflix queue in six months when it hits DVD.

To understand the Spirit, it helps to understand the creator, Will Eisner, and why he is so revered in the industry. If you haven't read the Pulitzer prize winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, you may not know that the comic industry was formed mostly by first and second generation Jewish immigrants in New York City. They were paid little, worked hard, and rarely had any creative or intellectual property control (an issue that still has repercussions in the industry). These weren't artists working on their dreams, they were young, Depression-era craftsmen working to put food on the table. Consequently, none of them thought of their work as art. It was just cheap entertainment for kids.

The Spirit was Eisner's first big break. It first appeared in June 2, 1940 and lasted for twelve years. It actually wasn't a comic book, but a seven-page comic "strip" featured in major newspapers as distributed by the Tribune Syndicate. It's worth noting that at this time, the comics section wasn't just something you threw to your kids while reading the business section. Comic strips, unlike comic books, appealed primarily to adult audiences and often sold issues.

"They gave me an adult audience", Eisner said in 1997, "and I wanted to write better things than superheroes. Comic books were a ghetto. I sold my part of the enterprise to my associate and then began The Spirit. They wanted an heroic character, a costumed character. They asked me if he'd have a costume. And I put a mask on him and said, 'Yes, he has a costume!'"

The protagonist was a private investigator named Denny Colt who appeared to die due to exposure to experimental chemicals. Fortunately, Colt's "lifeless" body was sent to his family crypt where he woke up several days later. Deciding he could work better outside the law, Colt came to live in the crypt in Wildwood Cemetary, started wearing a domino mask, and called himself The Spirit.

Unlike the superheroes, the Spirit's charm is not due to a compelling origin story, but the creator's own storytelling abilities. Eisner was one of the first creators to consider what he did art and it shows in his work. Perhaps the most distinctive and innovative aspects of The Spirit was the title page which often integrated non-diagetic material (i.e. title and credits) into the picture.

But what truly distinguishes The Spirit from the competition is the warmth and humor of the series which would often use its title character in a minor role while elevating bit characters to the role of the protagonist. These characters were as human as they could get, often working men or criminals. One story features a criminal who escapes from jail and runs into his exact double. He switches places with the man who goes to jail while he returns to the man's home. Unfortunately, the stranger was a hen-pecked husband who finds that he enjoys the peace and quiet of prison more than the stress of his home life. Eisner's stories are filled with humor, action, and sentiment... often all in the same story. His art style, though fairly conventional in its early years, becomes quite intelligent and complex. Eisner, in fact, wrote the book on telling story through art with his book Comics & Sequential Art, which is used as a text book in most college-level comic book classes.

In 1942, Will Eisner was drafted, but The Spirit was still being published by Eisner's colleagues with his permission. Eisner himself used comics to train military personal. Following both the war and The Spirit, Eisner helped start PS, The Preventative Maintenance Monthly which instructed soldiers on the proper maintenance of their equipment. It was started in 1951 and continued publication into the sixties.

In the 1970s, Eisner coined the phrase "graphic novel." With the word "comic" having a pejorative connotation held over from its comedic roots, the phrase "graphic novel" was a way to suggest a more mature and intelligent form. Eisner's first graphic novel was A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories. These are stories inspired by his childhood growing up on the streets of the Bronx in a poor Jewish community. I highly recommend it to anyone, comic fan or not. Other works include Fagin the Jew (a fresh look at the Oliver Twist character who is often considered an anti-semitic stereotype), The Plot (an account of the conspiracy hoax known as The Protocols of Zion), and Last Days of Vietnam. Despite his popularity and reputation, Will Eisner never did any work for Marvel or DC Comics, apparently having no interest in writing or drawing superheroes.

As a champion for the integrity of the form, the greatest honor a comic book can receive from the industry is an Eisner Award. These are distributed every year at the Comic-Con International in San Diego. They are like the Academy Awards of comic books. For my money, they seem to be pretty fair. Awards are distributed to mainstream, independent, and foreign publishers with roughly equal spread.

Now, to tie this all into the movie, Eisner and Frank Miller (the film's writer/director) were friends who respected one another's work. Miller admits that he stole his famous and renown Daredevil/Elektra storyline from a Spirit story. Together, they produced a book appropriately titled Eisner/Miller where they discuss the comic industry from an insider's perspective. But as I've said before on this blog, their storytelling techniques are as different as Hitchcock and Capra. Both grew up in New York, but Eisner focuses on the humanity and soul beneath appearances while Miller focuses on brutality and image. This is not to say that Miller's approach isn't as good (it isn't, but that's not what I'm saying), but rather that it is not appropriate for the material.

Public opinion seems to agree as reviews of the film range from "good if you aren't a Eisner fan" to outright horrible. The usually reliable RottenTomatoes.com has given The Spirit an appauling 15%. Personally, I want to get my hands on the 1987 failed pilot, but I'm sure I'll see this train wreck eventually.

Will Eisner died on January 3, 2005 at the age of 87. He was writing and drawing up until the end.

He will be missed.


If you would like to read The Spirit, they are collect in 26 hardcover volumes for $50 each. Or if you don't want to spend $1300 on comics, pick up The Best of the Spirit (which is probably an easier read anyway) for $14.99. Or if you want a more faithful modernization of the character, check out The Spirit Vol. 1-2 by Darwyn Cooke.

As for other recommendation, any of Will Eisner's graphic novels are fantastic, but A Contract With God is his most recognized artistic achievement.