After the War, Eisner returned
to work on The Spirit. The strip had faltered in
less-able hands during his absence and he jumped back into
full-time cartooning with a zeal that would produce stories
that are considered classics today.
In December of 1945 he reintroduced the
strip with a retelling of the Spirit's origin, and the Spirit
was quickly back on track. Now with the support of other
artists such as a young Jules Feiffer and
later Wally Wood, Eisner continued the
weekly installments of the Spirit until 1952.
 |
| Rube Rooky, from the ill-fated Eisner title Baseball Comics. |
The post-War Spirit stories
featured Eisner at the pinnacle of his powers. It is noteworthy
that even as he worked on The Spirit for 12 years,
he was continually using it to devise new creative challenges,
such as stories told in song, in nonsense language and in
poetry, to name only a very few. Never content to stay within
the narrow confines of the detective genre, Eisner used
the Spirit to explore a wide variety of stories, from simple
tales of ordinary people to wild flights of fancy verging
on science fiction.
 |
| Joe Dope, Eisner's comical creation for the Army's P*S Magazine. |
During this period, Eisner attempted to
foster several other projects for publication as newspaper
strips or newsstand comics, including Kewpies,
Baseball Comics,
Pirate Comics and John
Law. None of these were successful at
the time, but some of the material created for them ended
up being incorporated into The Spirit.
* * *
While still producing The
Spirit, Eisner founded the American
Visuals Corporation, which was a commercial art
company dedicated to creating comics, cartoons, and illustrations
for educational and commercial purposes. Eisner resurrected
Joe Dope, a bumbling soldier he
had created during the War, for feature in P*S
Magazine, a publication he produced for the
Army for over twenty years.
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