Tag: spirit

Travels and Bummers and Will Eisner

I’m in Atlanta at the moment, doing travel for the day job. I would have liked to have met up with friends and done stuff but the evening plans were such that I wasn’t sure if I was free. I ended up opting to just go for ease this time through. Sorry ATL friends, I do still love you.

Part of our obligations took us to Atlantic Station, which was a giant hole in the ground when I left Atlanta in 2003. While there, I saw banners for the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. You might wonder why a goy like me would care. Well,  I found out from Creative Loafing one of the films being exhibited is a documentary I wanted to see, Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist. I’d like to see that to balance out the relative suckiness of the Spirit movie. Of course, when does the film festival start? Not the last two nights when I could have gone, but tonight when we’ll be back home. Ain’t that the way it always goes?

In the upside, I did break off from the pack Monday night and drove to Oxford Comics with my want list in hand. One fo those was the new Spirit series issue 10 which for some reason no comic shop I’ve visited in the last year had, but Oxford did so my Will Eisnerish content for the trip was met. Still, I’d love to see that documentary and even more would like to see it in a theater with an audience. Maybe next year.

The Spirit Movie from an Alternate Reality

I am dreading the film version of The Spirit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to go see it in the theater. Whatever problems it has, they won’t get better on the smaller screen. It’s just that I fear it will be miserable experience. Everything about it that I’ve seen so far makes it look heavy on the Frank Miller and light on the Will Eisner – exactly the opposite of what I’d be looking for in this film.

Here’s an interesting story of an attempt to make an animated Spirit film in the early 80’s. I wish I lived in the alternate reality where this attempt succeeded, a good film was made from his character while Eisner was alive and Brad Bird’s talent became clearly evident a decade earlier. It’s nice to think about, isn’t it?

Bonus link: Here’s my mid 90’s interview with Will Eisner from my Reality Break podcast. Boy, I miss that guy. He was a wonderful writer and artist and a cool dude.