The Best of the Spirit

by Will Eisner

Written by Will Eisner Art and cover by Eisner DC Comics is proud to present its first-ever collection celebrating the greatest stories by comics mastermind Will Eisner starring one of the most... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1401207553
• ISBN13: 9781401207557
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: DC Comics
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.6" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great artwork, great storytelling, short stories... and an inexpensive sampler of a classic comic bo

I had never heard of THE SPIRIT until I saw a trailer for Frank Miller's film version. Curious, I went online to see what the book was all about. What I learned was that THE SPIRIT was a detective-type comic written in the 1940s. It was said that Will Eisner, the creator, had raised comics to an art form and that he was ahead of his time. I am inclined to agree. I purchased this "Best Of..." collection to see for myself why THE SPIRIT was so celebrated. The book is great. Each story is a mere seven pages long, but each story is filled with mystery and suspense. The artwork is terrific. It has style! I love the cover artwork for each story. It incorporates the words "The Spirit" into an image that sets the tone for the pages ahead. Eisner uses the panels not only to advance the plot, but to create a mood. Many of the narratives have a sort of "Twilight Zone", Rod Serling feel. The stories in this collection are thoroughly enjoyable, even after sixty years. The stories aren't too dark or mature-themed, but there are gunshots and fatalities. As I write this, Frank Miller's movie has not yet been released, so I cannot compare it with its source work. But where the film seems to have a colorless, Sin City-like quality, the comics are very colorful. There are dramatic shadows, yes, but it's not a black-and-white book. I encourage any curious readers like myself to check out this inexpensive "Best Of..." and discover THE SPIRIT for themselves. This sampler left me wanting to read even more of the adventures of The Spirit!

Four-color fisticuffs

I love Will Eisner's creation "The Spirit", but let's face it: when it comes down to buying all 26 volumes of the Archives at $50 a pop, I'm not THAT big of a fan. Luckily, I can purchase the affordable trade paperback THE BEST OF THE SPIRIT, containing 22 classic stories from 1940 - 1950 that I feel serve as an excellent overview of the series. Contents include: "The Origin of the Spirit", in which criminologist Denny Colt becomes the titular masked hero. This is a fairly typical origin for a Golden Age character, though the storytelling is much more refined - and the art, cleaner - than what was usually seen during that period. "Introducing Silk Satin", "Meet P'Gell", and "Death of Autumn Mews", which showcase Eisner's trademark bombshells. "Life Below", "Two Lives", and "The Story of Gerhard Shnobble": tales of the city and how it affects its inhabitants, a theme which would be used to great effect in Eisner's groundbreaking graphic novels of the `70s. "The Last Trolley", "Wild Rice", "The Last Hand", and "Sand Saref": hard-boiled crime. And one of my favorite comic stories of all time: "The Killer", which shows a double homicide through the eyes - literally - of the guilty. And of course, there's more! This collection shows that Eisner was a pioneer of the comic medium, and perhaps its earliest master. His experiments in narrative, layout, perspective, color, and photo-collage show that he was decades ahead of the game, influencing a number of Silver Age writers and artists who were considered "originals" in their own right... and short of Jack Kirby, NOBODY can draw a fight scene better than Eisner. As far as the reproduction goes, it's just fine for a $15 trade format, and I don't see any recoloring of the Spirit's sidekick Ebony, as mentioned in another review; however, the Spirit does have a blonde white kid named Sammy as another sidekick later on. In closing, please note that the more recent movie tie-in trade collection, FEMMES FATALES, reprints quite a few stories contained in this volume. If you have THE BEST OF THE SPIRIT, there's really no need for the other book.

The Sprit Review

Amazing stories and art. I HIGHLY recommend this!!! A must for all comic collectors!!! Buy it at once!!!

A sampling of one of the all-time great comics

When you hear someone or something praised a lot, you are often disappointed when you are finally exposed to the lauded subject. Certainly, over the years I had heard a lot of great things about Will Eisner, so when I finally got an opportunity to read a collection of stories featuring The Spirit, I was wary. I needn't have worried: Eisner and The Spirit is well-deserving of all its praise, as shown in The Best of the Spirit. The Spirit is really Denny Colt, a criminologist and private detective, who is exposed to a chemical that makes him appear dead. He gets better but maintains the ruse that he died, using his guise as the Spirit to fight crime. He is hardly a typical superhero character: for one thing, his disguise is merely a mask over the eyes; otherwise, he goes around in suit, tie and fedora. Furthermore, he as often loses his fights as he wins them. In fact, in many of the stories, the Spirit is almost a peripheral character, with the focus on other characters that get involved in crimes; the Spirit just seems to come in to wrap things up. What makes the Spirit stories magical, however, is that Eisner seemed unconstrained by the limitation of the comics genre. In the period he wrote The Spirit (principally the decade or so after WWII), many comics were very formulaic; with The Spirit, you never knew what you would get, only that it would be good. At least one of the stories in this story is really science fiction, while another is a Christmas tale and still another takes the form of a children's tale. While there is a lot of humor (often at the Spirit's expense), there are also nasty villains and beautiful femme fatales (most notably Silk Satin who has three appearances and Sand Serif who is in the only two-part story in this collection). Yes, if you compare The Spirit to today's comics, it would be rather tame, but in the context of its time, it was cutting edge stuff. And even today, it is still both wonderful to look at and to read. If you're a comics fan, this is a collection well worth picking up.