There was a point earlier this year when DC Comics was planning a great big eighty page tribute to Will Eisner‘s The Spirit featuring all kinds of creators, and artist P Craig Russell was two thirds of the way through illustrating Will Pfeifer‘s script for an eight page story when the whole shebang was cancelled. Pfeifer finished the art anyway, and got it lettered. DC owned it, but was not publishing the tribute, so it was assumed that the completed work for it would not see the light of day.
But now it looks like we’ll be seeing some of it anyway, as DC is publishing the work that would have gone into that eighty page special in August’s The Spirit #17.
Bleeding Cool even has a few of Russell’s pages to drool over:
The story itself appears to play with comparisons between the Spirit himself and classic works of art, a nice theme to pay homage to a comic creator who was committed to dissecting comics as a legitimate artform and bringing a classical attention to anatomy and expression well ahead of his time.
Not to mention that I’ll watch P Craig Russell draw greek sculpture anytime, ever since I was introduced to his distinctive style in Endless Nights.
(via Bleeding Cool.)
