January 1950: One of Will Eisner’s greatest Spirit stories might never have existed had it not been for the legendary cartoonist’s ill-fated effort to go into self-publishing in 1949. After the failure of his fledgling line’s first releases, Eisner put the unpublished John Law, Detective #1 on the shelf but he had no intention of leaving it there. Instead, the cartoonist reworked the issue’s three stories for his weekly Spirit section in early 1950, redrawing Law (who had an eye-patch and smoked a pipe) as the Spirit along with other revisions. John Law #1’s high point had been an 11-pager that delved into the detective’s boyhood relationship with a girl named Sand whose early flirtation with American racketeers had matured into ever-shifting alliances with international forces. Creating a new three-page opening sequence, Eisner transformed the story into two seven-page adventures (published on January 8 and 15, 1950) that culminated with the Spirit’s bittersweet reunion with Sand Saref in Central City. The emotional two-parter was justly embraced by fans, some of whom first encountered it in Harvey Kurtzman’s Help! #13 (reprinting Part Two) in 1962 or Warren’s The Spirit #8 in 1975. Frank Miller famously even used the story as the template for his introduction of Elektra in 1980’s Daredevil #168. No one knew the story’s origins, though, until Eisner archivist Cat Yronwode discovered the John Law pages among the cartoonist’s old work and convinced him to let Eclipse publish John Law, Detective #1 in 1983 with coloring by Klaus Janson. The stories were reissued in a 2004 trade paperback from IDW, this time in black and white with tones by Gary Chaloner.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 11:44:33 +0000
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