Something fun for fans of comics at Google!

So, I went to Google this morning as I do many mornings. Instead of the usual logo, I saw this:

Pretty cool, huh? It's a take-off on the neat logos that graced so many of the title pages on Will Eisner's most famous creation, "The Spirit" from the 1940s and early 1950s and Google did this in observation of what would have been Will Eisner's 94th birthday.

The company also posted an article from writer/artist and critic Scott McCloud about Eisner on their official blog.

If you click on the logo on the actual Google page, there's a pre-made search that lists several top sites devoted to Eisner and "The Spirit". If you're not familiar with Eisner's work, but love comics, you owe it to yourself to visit some of them and read up... and perhaps even think about getting one or two of the many different reprint volumes that collect some of Eisner's celebrated, groundbreaking series.

The same is true if you love old movies. Few creators nailed the femme fatale type character more effectively than Eisner did in his writing and art. If you enjoy crime dramas from the 1940s and 1950s, I suspect you will LOVE "The Spirit."

Will Eisner and the "Graphic Novel"

Here's a nice article discussing the truth about the long-held idea that pioneering comic book creator Will Eisner invented the "graphic novel."

Dr. K's 100-Page Super Spectacular: Will Eisner and the "Graphic Novel"

Happy birthday, Spirit!

Today, it's seventy years since one of the most influential comic book creations first saw print--Will Eisner's "The Spirit." Through these weekly tales, Eisner (along with a handful of collaborators) created much of the visual vocabulary that we take for granted in comics today, whether they're from America, France, Japan, or some place in Africa no one's ever heard of.

Pappy (of Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine) has put together a post marking this milestone that's far better than anything I was going to do... which was something not much different than the paragraph above. He presents the three different versions of the Spirit origin tale that Eisner created. They are interesting both for the way they tell the same tale in three different fashions, but also in the way they show how Eisner's artistic and storytelling styles changed between 1940 and 1966.

Click here to visit Pappy's place and see the thrice-told tale of how Denny Colt came to be The Spirit.

'The Spirit' is lacking

The Spirit (2008)
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Eve Mendes, Scarlett Johannson, Louis Lombardi, Dan Lauria, Stana Katic and Paz Vega
Director: Frank Miller
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

The mysterious protector of Central City, The Spirit (Macht) squares off against the villainous Octopus (Jackson) over the secret behind The Spirit's powers and the key to world domination. But will triumph mean defeat for The Spirit? Has his long-lost childhood sweetheart, Sand Saref (Mendes), really joined forces with the Octopus?



I've been a fan of Will Eisner's "The Spirit" since the very first story I read. It's a series that's unique both artistically and story-wise, and it's one that is well-deserving of the place of honor it holds in the minds of well-read comic-book fans and scholars who study the genre.

It was for this reason that I was a bit concerned when I heard that Frank Miller was going to be adapting "The Spirit" to the big screen. Miller has shown himself to be a one-trick poney when it comes to story-telling, and I was afraid that he would "Sin-Citifie" The Spirit by reshaping the property into the sort of stuff he usually does.

The fact that Miller has long been a very vocal admirer of Eisner and his work made me hold out hope, however. I hoped that Miller understood enough about "The Spirit" to recognize that he had to take a different tack than he did on "The Dark Knight Returns" or "Ronin" or any of the Sin City graphic novels (and especially the Sin City movie).

Unfortunately, I held out hope in vain.

While it's clear from the film that Miller has looked at the gorgeous art that Eisner produced--the Eisner hallmarks of falling snow/rain, the splashing water, the plunging buildings, the femme fatales dressed in clothes that will fall off if they sneeze are all present in the film's visuals--but I can't believe he actually bothered reading the stories.

Miller has imported some of Eisner's trademarks (and The Spirit's red tie) into a world that is visually Miller's, but he completely missed the... well, the spirit of Eisner's work. Either that, or Miller isn't half the admirer of Eisner that he claimed to be, and he figured that he knew how to "do it right."

Miller also seems to have misunderstood a number of Eisner's characters, or he viewed them through his "Sin City" lense. How else can one explain the merging of master criminal Sand Saref, black widow con-artist P'Gell, and international jewel thief Silk Satin into one character and failing to include the humor surrounding P'Gell, Silk Satin's honorable nature, or Sand Saref's fundemental vulnerability? How else can one explain him taking three great characters are reducing them to nothing more than a beautiful dame in a skimpy dress?

"The Spirit" movie is an empty shell of a movie that rehashes, poorly, the visual approach taken in "Sin City" and Miller's writing style on Sin City. What little that remains of Eisner's creation are echoes so distorted that they barely warrant mentioning. Even worse, the film is boring. It is, quite possibly, the most boring movie I've sat through this year. (And I did sit through the whole thing; I kept hoping it would get better.)

Take my advice: Instead of wasting money on this crappy movie, spend it on one of the collected volumes of the real "The Spirit." The series was at its best during the years featured in Vols. 12 through 19. The forthcoming Vol. 25 will feature the story that first made me fan of the strip, a near-wordless fight between The Spirit and Octopus, a fight that is far more powerful and engaging than anything that's featured in this film.