This was excellent. When folks say, "they don't make them like this anymore," they mean work like Eisner's. The man was way ahead of his time, and it is evident in this sampling of his series The Spirit. In brief, this is the story of a common man who becomes a crime fighter. He has no special superpowers or fancy tights. What he does have is integrity, tenacity, and good detective skills. Working with that, Eisner gives us a bit of everything. We get noir; we get detective and police stories; we get surreal tales and even an episode or two that might fit in a Twilight Zone episode or an O'Henry story. There is some humor as well. In other words, this comic is literary, and it explores various genres and conventions. And he does it in a few panels (each story is about 7 pages worth). Eisner also experiments with the art and the layouts. Odds are good that this small selection will make you consider buying the hardcover compilations. I know I am thinking about it. If nothing else, you can see where a lot of comics and graphic novel writers and artists got a lot of their influence from. It started here. I definitely recommend this one. ( )

There's a reason Will Eisner has an award named after him, and this collection gives some prime examples of his mastery of storytelling and layout. I remember when this book first went on sale, and I don't know why I didn't buy it back then, but now that I'm doing some heavy research into the Golden Age of comics, I knew that The Spirit was an absolute must! Plus, I lucked out that my local library had a copy while I was looking for some other Golden Age books.

Will Eisner is still one of the greatest comic book creators of all time, and this collection shows exactly why. ( )

I'd heard of The Spirit, and specifically, its important place in comic book history, but I always suspected it would be kind of a letdown. It was, but not in the way I'd suspected. The letdown had more to do with how few comics have been able to show the same inventiveness demonstrated by Eisner, or even develop it further.

The Best of the Spirit is a tour de force demonstration of what a skilled artist can do with the combination of words and pictures. Eisner doesn't need to lean on graphic sex or violence to push the limits of the comic book form. He shifts tones effortlessly from comic to dramatic to tragic, and every story is well-paced and plotted.

The Spirit truly lives up to the hype. ( )

In 1940, criminologist/private detective Denny Colt got in a scuffle with the criminal mastermind Dr. Cobra and was presumed dead. He then re-invented himself as The Spirit and continued his hunt to bring bad guys to justice. The Best of the Spirit contains 22 of Will Eisner’s weekly short stories in the comics medium covering the ongoing saga of The Spirit. The stories span from 1940 to 1950 and feature various episodes in The Spirit’s adventures, beginning with his origin.

While I appreciate that Eisner was a forerunner in making comics a more serious art form, I do have some problems with the series. The first is that The Spirit is just not an interesting character to me – as far as I can tell, there’s no further back story to how Denny Colt became such a relentless advocate for justice in the first place. And seriously, basically Denny Colt dons a tiny eye mask and suddenly is unrecognizable to his enemies even while wearing the same blue suit and hat as before? He also doesn’t seem like the fastest, strongest, or even most quick-witted of heroes, so how he manages to always win the day is a bit of a mystery to me. Another big issue I had was the representation of minorities, foreigners, and women. Granted, The Spirit is a product of its times so it has to be taken with a grain of salt, but lines like “Feminine curiosity is such a vice!!” and “How can I resist? Women are so weak!” are just cringe-worthy.

That being said, these stories collectively do deliver on their promise of “action, mystery, adventure.” They’re short and light reads that are entertaining despite their flaws, including a sometimes flair for the melodramatic ala bad 1940s and 50s film noir. (There’s a fair share of crime film tropes, not least of all the femme fatale that often crops up.) But there’s also evidence of great skill on the part of Eisner in the interplay of writing and art. In addition, there are good doses of both humor and innovation in these expertly succinct stories. A particularly interesting twist in one story was the action unfolding from the killer’s point of view – literally watching through his eyes and seeing what he sees. In The Best of the Spirit, the reader gets a front row seat as Eisner hones his craft, and the book is worth reading for this alone, if nothing else. ( )

Eisner's Spirit is generally recognized as a landmark in the comics medium. I have admittedly reached the real thing by a backwards process that included the 2008 feature film and Darwyn Cooke's 21st-century reboot of the comic. But, having now read this convenient anthology of some of Eisner's key work from the 1940s, I do see what all of the fuss is about.

There's no special attraction to the plots, characters, or setting: The Spirit is basically straightforward fantasy detective fiction that seems to be a synthesis between Bob Kane's Batman and Chester Gould's Dick Tracy. What makes Eisner's Spirit special is the storytelling: his inventive use of both graphic and narrative perspectives. These features are thrown into relief in the format of the eight-page weekly comics supplement syndicated to various newspapers, where all of the stories in this anthology were originally published.

These stories include the Spirit origin episode, tales of the chief femmes fatales of the series (Silk Satin, P'Gell, and Sand Saref), and most importantly, many of the stories in which the Spirit himself only appears in a few of the final panels, just to provide external continuity for what is otherwise a free-standing parable of crime and punishment.

At eight pages per story, this collection is able to include over twenty tales of The Spirit, and they are worth savoring. It amply demonstrates why Eisner's work has been inspirational to comics creators for generations.