I had never read The Spirit before the "origin story" and I have to say that right off the bat I was impressed.First of all, the art was superb. Eisner's clean lines
complement his crime-noir design sense beautifully, resulting in an elegant almost pristine quality that instantly brought Bruce Timm to mind. Although his work on Batman: The Animated Series had a slightly less realistic quality than The Spirit, both share the winning combination of intense, often gritty crime drama with a clean animation stlye.I also found that Eisner created a highly engaging sense of movement through his unorthodox use of panels. His frequent use of slanted and splash panels in tandem seemed to remove the action from the myopic viewfinder of the panel and throw it all on the page for the reader to watch, rather than follow.
In terms of the story, to be perfectly frank it was reminiscent of almost every other origin story I can think of. And while I am well aware that this story predates many modern superheroes I think there is something to be said for how mundane the excessively formulaic heroic introduction tends to be.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteAs I briefly mentioned in class, I found out from the PULP FICTION panel that many of the 1940s and 1950s crime noir stories were taken from the Pulps of the 1920s and 1930s: The Shadow, The Whisper, Jimmy Dale, etc. You may want to look them up. THE SHADOW #9 was directly responsible for much of the story for BATMAN Action issue #1.
Good analysis of Eisner and his use of space concerning his panels: "slanted and splash panels in tandem"....
Best,
Cynthia