The Spirit Comic Volume 2
This is the second volume of Spirit stories, by master graphic storyteller Will Eisner. DC is doing an excellent job of re-presenting all the Spirit Comics in chronological order in a beautiful deluxe format — a coup de grace of the comic book medium. Not only did artist and writer Will Eisner strive to establish comics as a mainstream art, he did it over 40 years ago with this awesome collection of dailies. The Spirit Archive Volume 2 reprints the weekly Spirit newspaper sections that originally appeared from January 5 through June 29, 1941.
The Spirit is reporter Denny Colt, who was believed killed; but is alive and hiding in the local cemetery emerging to fight crime. This set of comics sees Eisner’s storytelling talents continue to mature as he developed new levels of sophistication. He introduces new characters such as Silk Satin and reveals new details of Denny Colt, Commissioner Dolan and his daughter, Ellen, The stories find the war in Europe beginning to influence the Spirit’s stateside adventures. These stories are still prior to Eisner own entry into the army.
The most remarkable thing about the tales in that book is that even the ones that are very clearly tied to the politics of the time (Spirit battles a number of facist agents and even tries to convince Hitler of the error of his ways), remain powerful and entertaining tales where many other such comic book adventures fall flat when read today.
This is the original pioneer of the comics industry and Eisner did it long before anyone ever thought of trying to mainstream comics – this is the pinnacle of storytelling and cartooning.
The Spirit is in print because it was influential on the whole comics medium. And it is still fun to read. Check out first few pages