THE SPIRIT Volume 2 Hardcover

These stories collected in The Spirit's first comic book series are all from the war years. Eisner had been drafted, so back at home, Lou Fine, Jack Cole and others of the Quality Comics staff were drawing each of the 8-page stories. Writers Manly Wade Wellman and Bill Woolfolk are credited for most of these 1944-45 stories, though Eisner may have also stepped in occasionally. Art was primarily by Quality's two best: Lou Fine (with a simplified style) and Jack Cole, both trying to emulate Eisner rather than their own styles. From straight crime drama and noir to lighthearted adventure, from mystery and horror to comedy and love stories, these often had hybrid elements that twisted genre and reader expectations. The Spirit is a masked crime fighter created by cartoonist Will Eisner, who fights crime with the blessing of the city's police commissioner Dolan, an old friend. Despite the Spirit's origin as detective/criminologist Denny Colt, his real identity was rarely referred to after his first appearance, and for all intents and purposes he was simply "The Spirit." Like the Clint Eastwood character in the Sergio Leone westerns, the Spirit often got the daylights beat out of him, but he always came back to conquer the bad guys and save the day by the end of each eight-page adventure. Eisner introduced some of the most memorable femmes fatales in comics in the Eisner stories; often enemies of The Spirit, and yet drawn to him like a moth to flame. These stories are still eminently readable, representing some of the finest writing in the Golden Age. A lot of talent went into each Sunday Comic Section, which were then collected in actual comic books, beginning with this series and then revived in the 1960s and rarely out of print since. DC Comics collected the entire series in 26 volumes many years ago, but these are now long out of print (keep an eye on our Rare Book listings for available copies). Now PS is collecting the entire run of Quality's seminal title, which just gets better and better as Eisner returns to the strips and the femmes fatales become a big part of his adventures. The writers here, Wellman and Woolfolk, were excellent comics men and worked for many years for DC Comics and other companies. Their work in the Julius Schwartz-edited Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space was even credited in the comics themselves, which was very rare in those days.