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WILL EISNER (1917-2005) •
Original Spirit Art
October 15, 1950. Page 5 from “Lizzie’s Boys”
Crime Does Not Pay – as well as it used to! With
a scripting assist from Jules Feiffer, Eisner
packs a ton of story onto this charming page from the late
Spirit story “Lizzie’s Boys.”
Light Fingered Lizzy is a career pickpocket who’s coming
up on hard times in the crime biz. Her boys are explosives
geniuses who fingered the notorious Ghouly Gang in a
recent bank heist, and while the press and police believe
the gang are the culprits, Spirit senses something else is
afoot. During a heated argument with Dolan, kid detectives
pick up Lizzie’s file and decide to bring her in. The
tables are turned when she picks their pocket, finding her
file in the pages of a Spirit comic book. Meanwhile, the
Ghouly Gang track down Lizzie’s boys and put them to work
planning a heist. Trying to find a wallet, Lizzie snatches
the map of her sons’ new heist from a Ghouly gangster’s
pocket. Despondent at the lack of a good score, she goes
to the police station to turn herself in and give up the
criminal life at exactly the moment when her boys bust
through the station floor in a joyous reunion. When Spirit
and Dolan debrief, they discover the boys planned to bust
into the police station. In a classic Eisner twist,
everybody went straight at the same time!
On this charming page, we get a huge chunk of story in a
mere seven panels. In the top tier we see the stymied
Junior detectives miss Lizzie walking right past them at
the moment they realize their comic book (and her police
file) are gone. Meanwhile, her sons have sold the Ghouly
Gang on a heist that isn’t as it seems, and what’s more,
at the bottom tier, Lizzie thinks she’s gonna snap up a
nice bankroll and instead turns up the heist map. “People
don’t seem to keep their wallets where they used to!” she
laments.
Although this page came at the height of the Spirit
studio’s collaborative efforts, Eisner hand is evident in
the characters drawn on the page. This is especially
apparent in the last panel, where Lizzie’s exasperated
expression is pure Eisner. This page is a charming gem,
and a rare opportunity to own a wonderful piece of
historical comic art!
Medium/Size/Condition: Brush, pen, and
ink on Bristol board measuring 15 x 22.5 inches (38 x
57cm). Some minor White-out. Some residual rubber cement
staining at very bottom, outside image or framing area.
Overall, in excellent condition.
Further reference: Much
other Eisner art, plus out-of-print graphic novels,
Spirit comic books and magazines,
signed serigraphs,
his Famous
Cartoonist
Button, and numerous other
Eisner-related items are accessible from our sister
store Steve
Krupp’s
Curio
Shoppe. Just type his name (or The
Spirit) into our search bar.
Provenance: The Will Eisner estate is
exclusively represented by the Denis Kitchen Art
Agency, an affiliate of Steve Krupp’s Curio Shoppe and
Gallery. This drawing is warranted to be an authentic
original created by Will Eisner, and sold on behalf of
his estate. Note: Image is © Will Eisner Studios, Inc.
Reproduction for commercial purposes requires
permission. |
