Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [146]
Unfortunately, for reasons beyond the understanding of de Souza and others working on the film, ABC insisted that the role of the Spirit be given to Sam J. Jones, a handsome young actor who looked like Denny Colt but couldn’t act the part. Will Eisner’s character was a man of action, which Jones could play convincingly, but he was also highly nuanced—thoughtful, funny, vulnerable, not unlike George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones—and for all his efforts, Jones couldn’t master these qualities. Instead, he came across as an action hero indistinguishable from those viewers had seen before.
Even so, The Spirit might have caught on as a television series, and Jones might have had the chance to grow into his part, if big business hadn’t entered into the picture. While The Spirit was in the midst of production, ABC changed hands, and the new powers-that-be didn’t share the previous management’s enthusiasm for the project. Rather than air the movie in an opportune, prime-time slot during the regular programming season, ABC broadcast it in the middle of the summer, on July 31, 1987, in the heart of the rerun season, when viewers traditionally stayed away from their television sets. The ratings were awful, and the movie was never rebroadcast. The Spirit television series never materialized.
After seeing the movie, Eisner, reminded of why he had resisted offers for a Spirit movie adaptation for all those years, was relieved by the cancellation. “It made my toes curl,” he said.
Not that he was surprised by the project’s failure. In a letter to Denis Kitchen written a year prior to the movie’s airing, Eisner lamented the state of the project. He’d screened a tape of the film and wasn’t fond of what he saw.
“They have about 2 million dollars invested in this ‘dud,’” he told Kitchen, “but I can’t weep for them because they never consulted me—or let me near the project. I’m only sad that the hopes we had of widening our audience has gone up in smoke.”
By now, Eisner was accustomed to receiving his share of industry accolades and to seeing his name included on the short list of the influential founding fathers of the comic book, but he was unprepared for the call he received from Dave Olbrich, an administrator of the annual Kirby Awards handed out for excellence in the comics industry. The awards, Olbrich informed Eisner, were being discontinued. Would Eisner consent to having his name attached to similar awards?
Eisner had reason to pause before answering. The Kirby Awards, named after comics great Jack Kirby, his friend and former protégé, were being discontinued because of a dispute between Olbrich and Gary Groth, Olbrich’s former boss at the Comics Journal. Olbrich’s split with Groth had been nasty. There had been a power struggle over the Kirby Awards, to such an extent that Kirby himself had asked that his name be removed from the awards. Fantagraphics was starting up a new set of awards named after Harvey Kurtzman. Aside from his own falling-out with Groth, Eisner had other issues to consider. Kurtzman was still one of his close friends, so other awards might be seen not only as competing, but even as an affront to another great artist.
At the 1989 San Diego Comic-Con with comics giants Burne Hogarth, Jerry Robinson, and Jack Kirby. (Courtesy of Denis Kitchen)
According to Ann Eisner, her husband gave a lot of thought to the awards before accepting the offer. “At first he was very wary,” she remembered. “He was always very suspicious of awards. He put down some very, very firm conditions—that they be objective, that he have nothing to do with selections, that it be done by a group, that it not be a