Will Eisner Had An Unpublished Spirit Graphic Novel From 1996

Up For Grabs

Over at the New York Times, they have reported that Will Eisner’s estate plans to sell the rights to the late cartoonist’s work, including his most well-known character, the Spirit…

Carl Gropper, the nephew of Eisner’s widow Ann Weingarten, and his wife Nancy, have been controlling the estate since Weingarten’s death in 2020, and the couple, now both in their seventies, hope that the sale – which is being handled by investment bank Greif & Co. – will continue to keep his work in the public eye, and lead to a new movie for the Spirit.

Previously, companies like DC Comics and WW Norton have been the home of Eisner’s significant back catalogue but currently his work is without a home.

Perhaps most interestingly, the sale would include a previously unpublished 72 page Spirit graphic novel, The Return Of The Spirit, completed in 1996 by Eisner. Here’s a few of those pages from the article:

Other works that any buyer would acquire are the seminal graphic novel A Contract With God, the semi-autobiographical The Dreamer, Dickens pastiche Fagin the Jew, and antisemitism exposé The Plot. Additionally, it would also grant the rights to republish comics that other companies published with the license from Eisner and his estate, for example The Spirit series from DC, IDW, and Dynamite, including Darwyn Cooke’s acclaimed run from 2007

Eisner had a very impressive body of work and it is crazy that none of it is currently in print. We hope that they find an appropriate home.