Eisnershpritz News Archive

The latest news has Jaime King, the platinum heart-stopper who tamed Mickey Rourke's anti-hero, Marv, as Goldie and her twin sister Wendy in Sin City (2005), cast in an as-yet-undisclosed role.

Read more at ComicBookMovie.com

Variety.com reports that principal photography commenced today (Monday, October 8) on Frank Miller's film version of 'Will Eisner's The Spirit'.

More detailed casting news: Paz Vega will play the knife-wielding 'Plaster of Paris', and Jamie King will portray 'Lorelei', a phantom siren. Both femmes fatale feature in classic Eisner Spirit stories.

Read the Variety article here.

Courtesy of Devil's Due Publishing, CBR brings you the entire first issue of "Sheena: Queen of the Jungle" #1, based on the classic creation of S.M. Iger and Will Eisner.

Read the issue online here.

Larry Carroll from MTV Movies Blog has this from Eva Mendes, 'Sand Saref' in Frank Miller's movie adaption of "Will Eisner's The Spirit": "It's my first femme fatale character. She's literally a killer, and she uses her body to get what she wants. I'm excited!" Bob Andelman also reports on a MovieWeb interview with Mendes by Paulington James Christensen II.

The perfect artist has been hired to take on The Spirit, illustrating Sergio Aragones' and Mark Evanier's take on Will Eisner's classic creation.

Ploog has strong links with Eisner, having worked in his studio when Eisner was producing P*S Magazine for the US Army. Ploog's first issue will be #14, out in January, 2008.

Written by Sergio Aragones & Mark Evanier; Art by Mike Ploog; Cover by Jordi Bernet

Join the new SPIRIT creative team of writers Sergio Aragones & Mark Evanier (Groo the Wanderer) and Mike Ploog (Abadazad) for a case of murder! A string of killings is plaguing Central City...and the Spirit - with Commissioner Dolan - is on the case!

DC Universe | 32pg. | Color | $2.99 US

On Sale January 16, 2008

View the DC Comics page here.

The newly signed co-writer (along with Sergio Aragonés) of The Spirit, posts on his blog:

DC Comics has announced that the first issue of The Spirit that is written by Sergio Aragonés and Yours Truly will be #14, which goes on sale January 16. Mike Ploog is doing a spectacular job with the interior art, which I happen to have before me at the moment since I'm working on my end of things tonight and taking breaks to blog. Jordi Bernet did, as you can see here, a fine cover and I think we may get him to do an issue soon, as well. I'd tell you more about the issue but I have to get back to writing it. (I'm also working on a Groo tonight. Hope I don't get the pages mixed up and have The Spirit eating cheese dip and slaying hordes of soldiers...)

Written by Darwyn Cooke; Art by Cooke and J. Bone; Cover by Cooke

Darwyn Cooke - the visionary creator of the acclaimed DC: THE NEW FRONTIER - turns his attention to the classic Will Eisner creation The Spirit in this amazing hardcover collecting the first six issues of the new series from DC Comics plus the BATMAN/THE SPIRIT special! In these thrilling tales. Cooke maintains the "spirit" of Eisner's creation but brings his own original sensibilities to the character. The Spirit, a.k.a. Denny Colt, Commissioner Dolan, and his Daughter Ellen are reintroduced in this go-for-broke, shoot-the-lights-out collection of crime stories filled with action, adventure, humor and sexy girls!

DC Universe | 192pg. | Color | Hardcover | $24.99 US | ISBN 1401214614

On Sale October 24, 2007

Below are pictures of the physical book... a thing of beauty with a lovely die-cut cover...



... and under that... a stunning new front cover by Darwyn Cooke...

... Aragonés draws comparisons to his own creation Bat Lash when describing The Spirit and why the simplicity of Denny Colt's alter ego works today in the world of first-person shooter video games and mature-rated comics. "The character himself is of a genre that people try to confuse sometimes by adding all kinds of gadgets and things to, in this case, the detective mystery series, which is so pure, on in its own," explained Aragonés. "It's different than westerns, even manga, whatever you want. This is a subject we can play with and have a lot of fun without having to resort to any other gimmicks or supernatural powers. And there's obviously some humor. The character has a wonderful sense of humor."

Read the full article here.

Jette Kernion over at Cinematical writes: "I'm not a comic-book reader, so I didn't know much about the subject of Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist before seeing the documentary at Austin Film Festival. I knew he was the creator of The Spirit, a comic-book series that Frank Miller is adapting into a feature film ... and that's about all I knew. Fortunately, the documentary filled in many of the blanks for me about Eisner and provided some interesting details about the artist's life."

Read the full review here.
Link via Bob Andelman's 'A Spirited Life' Blog.

ComicsFondle.com's Andrew Wickliffe has uploaded a bunch of interesting short articles about seven classic Spirit stories from the mid 40s. Each has a brief synopsis, then a few comments. Some nice observations from someone new to reading the original Spirit material.

Jump to the index of stories reviewed here.

Tom Spurgeon takes a good look at the recently released hardcover collection of Darwyn Cooke's version of The Spirit:

The first volume collecting issues of DC's new The Spirit is, as expected, an extraordinarily good-looking book, clean and lean, with a clever and sharp-looking die-cut cover and impressive-as-you'd expect insides. You could spend hours looking at the damn thing, and I think I have. There are arresting instances on just about every page, the kind where you find yourself constantly clucking your tongue in appreciation. It's like watching a beautifully shot film. Your eyes might be seduced by the symmetry in a face or the perspective selected for a long shot of a living room. Cooke's comfortable partnership with Bone and Stewart results in handsome, pleasurable art, art worth going back to and looking at again. The two-page spreads have the requisite pop, a reminder of the Jack Kirby DC days of 35 years ago where a piece of visual candy lay waiting on pages 2-3 as a kind of stutter-step into the story proper. Cooke's women are beautiful, his bad guys grotesque, and there's only a tiny bit of struggle with the outsized, cartoonier figures like Commissioner Dolan (who retains a level of absurdity, at least in his design, that suggests his being a larger than life boss more seen that way than is that way) and Ebony (mercifully revamped and updated). The stories are ripped out of the 1940s in which Will Eisner's stories are set and take place in one of those mid-20th Century cities with modern elements that Cooke as much as anyone has popularized. Like I said, I've been looking at the thing for hours now. I like it.