Discovered by comic maven Cat Yronwode in a stack of Will Eisner's archived artwork was a collection of stories that he was developing in 1948 after the success of The Spirit. Named John Law he was basically a Spirit clone, only Law wore an eye-patch instead of a mask, smoked a pipe and did his crime-fighting in the city of Crossroads. When Yronwode asked Eisner about it, he replied: "Never heard of it."
Slowly, the memory came back to him and he said, "Did I make this into a Spirit story? . . . or was it a Spirit story and I made it into this?" It turns out that it was planned as one of his self-publishing ventures that never materialized.
In 1983, Eisner and his Spirit had been riding the wave of new interest in his character and other projects. Yronwode got Eisner's permission to publish the John Law stories and edited the special edition JOHN LAW, DETECTIVE for Eclipse Comics in 1983.
With a cover date of April 1983, the book contains the cleaned up art and colors added by Klaus Janson. The magnificent lettering is by Eisner's associate, Abe Kangegsan.
Before their appearance here in their original form, the stories did end up being used in a revised format as Spirit episodes.
I have this gem tucked away in my Spirit collection. Hard Case Crime, the outfit that reprinted the Ms. Tree comics is reprinting this as well sometime next year I think.
ReplyDeleteOne wonders if Yronwode hadn't come across it, would it ever have seen the light of day?
ReplyDeleteSo true. A lot of work was done by her and others in those still early days of comic history excavation. The Eclipse brand had a real flair.
DeleteShe was a great custodian of the art form and sounded like a tireless worker. i just finished reading TwoMorrows' The Pacific Comics Companion -- fascinating read and I had forgotten how those two brothers and Scroggy invented the industry of direct distribution. It's sold out on the TM website but I found some print copies that are (were?) still for sale on Amazon.
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