The Spirit Archives, Volume 16
The hardcover series reprinting Eisner's famed and influential 1940s masked-crime-fighter comic strip continues with 25 stories dating from 1948, when the strip, eight years into its run, was arguably at its zenith. Eisner was using a simple premise--masked crime fighter, more everyman than superhero, operating in a noirish urban milieu--to tell a variety of stories: murder mysteries, pop-culture parodies, a creepy haunted-house yarn, and an episode starring the hero's comical sidekick. In an even bigger change of pace, Eisner took the Spirit from his usual stamping ground, Central City (i.e., New York), to Paris, London, Calcutta, and a fictional South American island, Montabaldo, newly risen from the sea to reveal a lost civilization. Whatever the setting, the strips all feature Eisner's hallmark cinematic storytelling, artwork that seamlessly blends serious illustration and broad cartooning, and distinctive full-page opening panels (which served as covers to the newspaper comic-book supplements in which the strips first appeared). The late-1940sSpiritrepresents Eisner at his best--which means the best mainstream comic books ever offered.Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved