Death and the Spirit
A meditation for Twelfth Night
on "the whirligig of time"
- Frank Kelly Freas, who created, among other works, 400 portraits of saints for the Franciscans and the covers of Mad Magazine from 1958 through 1962. "I found it difficult to shift my artistic gears from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again," he said of his departure from Mad.
- Will Eisner, "an innovative comic-book artist who created the Spirit, a hero without superpowers, and the first modern graphic novel."
Yesterday's entry provided an approach to The Dark Lady, Kali, that was, in Freas's apt word, "ridiculous." The illustration below, "Mate," is an attempt to balance yesterday's entry with an approach that is, if not sublime, at least more serious. It is based on a similar illustration from Jan. 31, 2003, with actress Judy Davis playing The Dark Lady. Today it seems appropriate to replace Davis with another actress (anonymous here, though some may recognize her). I once knew her (unlike Davis) personally. One of my fondest memories of high school is reading Mad Magazine with her in the school lunch room. Our lives diverged after high school, but I could happily have spent my life in her company.
– S. H. Cullinane, Twelfth Night, 2005
A diamond and its dual "whirl" figure—
or a "jewel-box and its mate"
ending on Feb. 1, 2003, and the
perceptive remarks of Ryan Benedetti
on Sam Spade and Brigid O'Shaughnessy.
As for Eisner and "The Spirit,"
which has been called
"the quintessential noir detective series,"
those preferring non-graphic stories
may picture Spade or his creator,
Dashiell Hammett, in the title role.
Then, of course, there are Eisner's later
story, "A Contract With God,"
John 4:24, and 1916 4/24.