The Spirit Archives, Vol. 23

The Spirit Archives #23

by Will Eisner

Collects stories from classic Spirit adventures in which a murdered detective fights crime from beyond the grave.

Genres: Comics, Comic Strips, Graphic Novels

204 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2007

About the author

William Erwin Eisner was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in his honor and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Reviews

[StrictlySequential · Rating 3 out of 5]

11/25/1951 is the worst Spirit I've ever read of roughly 270. Eisner wasn't present for it because both narrative and art violated tenets of the title.
->The art was bottom of basement sloppy and inaccurate to Eisner's character, setting, atmosphere, etc. look of things. Then, all panels are as tight as possible, no space "waisted" besides necessities. P'Gell outside boundaries of similarity like Carrion and especially Octopus who is woefully blundered- and he even get's revealed, only a shaded face for the reader, and jailed! With the other writing problems it was read with a grimace!

The rest wasn't much better. It seems like Pfeiffer wasn't writing at the time either but there were the merits from the ghosts. Don't get me wrong.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twenty-three Archives in, and the Spirit's finally run out of steam. You can tell with just a glance at the art - stiff where Eisner's work was fluid - that Eisner's assistants had more and more control, while Will devoted himself to other projects. The stories are still strong, a benefit of having young Jules Feiffer as the primary assistant writer, but the glorious experimentation of the page layouts and beautiful noir shadowing, the splash pages, the fluid body postures... it's all gone.

[Tankboy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eisner's hand is largely absent here. Some of the stories have a cute meta feel to them, but the heavy handed approach to the art squashes most more faint moments of delight. For completists only.