Denny Colt Is Immortal
But Will Eisner, sadly, is not:

(RIP Will Eisner, 1917-2005)

Except, of course, that he is -- he will live on, through John Law, Hawk of the Sea, A Contract With God, A Life Force and the canonical many many more.

And also in the very existence of the graphic novel as a storytelling format, as well as in the derivative work of thousands of less-gifted (and a bare few equally-gifted) writers and artists.

But for me -- and here, no doubt, I betray a fundamentally bourgeois sensibility or something -- Will Eisner would still be the greatest figure ever in adventure comics if he had created nothing but The Spirit.

I have no idea which Spirit reprints I have, or how complete my series is; I've bought several different chunks of several different reprint series. (I haven't been buying the latest one from DC, solely because it's in well-deserved hardback, and thus a trifle too rich for my blood.) For all I know, I may have two or three copies of some storylines. But it's all good.

I don't know how many of you read B.C. Boyer's very entertaining series Masked Man, published by Eclipse Comics in 1982-1984 or thereabouts. Boyer's hero put on a mask and beat the hell out of bad guys; the tone was whimsical and ironic. In short, it was about as clear a Spirit ripoff as possible, missing only the farcical "death" of its protagonist. But Boyer, apparently, had never read The Spirit. He had simply re-assembled his comic out of the shards of Eisner's shadows and imitators. His editor, Cat Yronwode, had read Eisner's work, however, and one imagines an interesting series of conversations, a hustle to find reprints, and the dawning of that appalled yet amazed feeling (oh so familiar, and feared, by writers) which comes with discovering that the unknown valley you've been exploring is someone else's footprint. Boyer published his response in Eclipse Monthly #8 in a story called "Phantom Man." It's worth finding, if you can.

Failing that, just re-read a whole whack of Spirit comics and assemble it yourself.