Will Eisner Week celebrated with John Law and more
Word Balloons #1258: ‘Spirit’ creator was born March 6, 1917.
The Will Eisner Foundation again celebrates Will Eisner week in 2025 from March 1-7.
Will Eisner was the creator of the popular “The Spirit” character and newspaper comic. Eisner also pioneered the graphic novel with “A Contract With God” in 1978, as Eisner followed four interconnected stories on Dropsie Ave. in the Bronx.
His 1985 “Comics and Sequential Art” is considered an essential contribution to the study of comics. He continued to create graphic novels in the 1990s and 2000s, with his final work appearing shortly after his death in 2005.
Among the celebrations this year is the release of “The Collected Will Eisner’s John Law” by Eisner and Gary Chaloner, released from Titan Comics' Hard Case Crime imprint.
Here’s the info from the publisher, which notes much of the John Law artwork was later reworked for The Spirit.
Wherever men live, be they nomads or city dwellers, there they must have law and a man to enforce it.
Meet Detective John Law of Crossroads City. Strong, decent, hardworking and hard-nosed. He's a man who believes in the law and order. He's the last of a dying breed.
In 1948, Will Eisner produced the first issue of "John Law Detective", which he intended to add to a line of self-published comics. However, after Eisner's "Baseball Comics", "Kewpies", and "Pirate Comics" failed to find an audience, John Law never made it to the newsstand and was quietly dropped, with much of the original artwork reworked in 1950 for his most famous creation, The Spirit.
Featuring original stories by Will Eisner, Gary Chaloner's award-winning reboot from 2004, including a previously unpublished John Law Story, and a foreword by long-time Eisner publisher Denis Kitchen, this is a must-have for not just Eisner fans but comic collectors of all ages.
In New York City, an Eisner exhibit at the The Philippe Labaune Gallery, 534 West 24th Street, runs through tomorrow, March 8.
For more about Eisner and his work, visit willeisner.com.
Matthew Price, matthew@matthewlprice.com, has written about the comics industry for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman, Oklahoma.