Comics I Bought This Week: January 18, 2014
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got seven new comics.
This week’s comic book cover to look at and examine is “The Spirit” #60 by Will Eisner. This one is from October 1989. It’s got 60/89 in the bottom corner so I guess Eisner took an older piece and reworked it into a new cover. Since this book is a collection of Spirit comics from 1950 that makes sense.
Will Eisner is considered one of the masters of the comic book form and here is a very nice cover to show off why. He seems to be using the cover as a stage rather than a window since he has all the detailed action going on up front while the background is simplified and flat. Plus the horizon line is somewhere on the bottom of the cover much like it would be if they were above us on a stage.
The drawing is top shelf. I like the way he has all three figures twisting around in space in odd and interlocking positions. It’s a composition you don’t see every day. Nor do you see characters breathing in deeply as they stretch backwards as the Spirit is. All three figures are just amazing here. The forms and the fabric blow me away. It’s one of those covers that the more I look at it the more things I find to like in it. The man could flat-out draw.
The color is very unusual and outstanding on this cover. I say unusual because it’s normal for orange and blue to fight each other (as they are opposite each other on the color wheel) but they work in harmony here. That is not an easy thing to do. It probably has something to do with that deep maroon color in the background. The brown of Dolan’s suit and the boxes in front being so close to the maroon color in the background squeezes the space a bit as the eye tries to join then up and that adds to the stage-like feeling of this cover.
This is one of those covers I could look at all day. It creates such harmony for me despite the fact that it’s a chaotic fight that’s being depicted. It’s not showing us anything that’s very pretty but it’s showing it to us in a pretty way. And that is pretty amazing.
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