The Wraith is Michael T. Gilbert's 70's reinvention of the classic Eisner The Spirit. According to Gilbert he was casting about for work in those halcyon days when comics seemed to about to expel the last gasp just any minute and found work with Mike Friedrich's little Star*Reach outfit. Specifically in a short-lived comic dubbed Quack which hoped to reap some of the glamour stirred up by the out-of-nowhere ascendancy of Marvel's Howard the Duck. Suddenly the superhero was displaced and funny animals were on...if only briefly.
Looking for inspiration, Gilbert was a fan of The Spirit and thought a funny animal version might just work. He produced seven stories featuring The Wraith, one each for the six issues of Quack and another for his later comic Strange Brew published by Aardvark-Vanaheim. And as far as I know that's all of the Wraith there is.
The Wraith begin as a slight homage to the classic Eisner hero and little else, saving a lady of the evening from her employers. Other stories have him battling mad scientists and even falling in love on an isolated island. The stories are in continuity, so despite their frolicsome nature what happens is remembered. That adds quite a bit to stories which by design are often quite slender, the whole perhaps greater than the sum of the parts. The one cover appearance for "The Reality Ray" really shows how offbeat and creative Gilbert was in trying to make the stories click.
The tome I read featured very detailed text pages by Gilbert about how The Wraith came to be and how his misadventures often reflected Gilbert's own personal life at the time. We also get a nifty explanation of some of the techniques Gilbert used. We are seeing an artist grow in real time with these stories and this background info helps to make sense of the style and thematic changes.
But Gilbert seemed all too ready to leave The Wraith, suggesting he'd done all he could do and it was time for other projects (such as his most famous creation Mr.Monster --more tomorrow on that). I doubt he thinks that still today and I wonder if and when we'll ever see another Wraith tale. I'd be interested.
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Welcome back. I feared that Covid-19 had got you!
ReplyDeleteNot so far. My state (Kentucky) has had a leader who has shown some real gumption in the face of this and we are suffering far less than other areas, though of course things can always change. We cannot control this, only deal with it intelligently.
DeleteHey, Rip's back. With Gilbert, the real attraction was always his approach to storytelling and page design, including the lettering by Bruzenak on the later stuff. He was the big standout in that Kitchen Sink Spirit Jam issue, the rare sort of fan who has intelligently analyzed and figured out how to apply the lessons of a Master.
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