WILL EISNER’S 3D CLASSICS featuring THE SPIRIT (1985) title page by Ray Zone (d. 2012) after Will Eisner

Will Eisner’s The Spirit was a watershed moment in the history of comic art. The titular hero was more than just a masked vigilante, and Eisner imbued his comic strip with a sexiness and vernacular that seemed more akin to the pulps than to the pages of Superman or Batman or even other syndicated strips like Blondie. But what really set The Spirit apart was Eisner’s dynamic and groundbreaking layouts, which combined elements of his backgrounds into the title treatments and utilized cinematic perspective that transformed the previously flat format. The 3D process for this story (reprinted by Kitchen Sink Press in Will Eisner’s 3D Classics featuring The Spirit) was personally overseen by Ray Zone, who was the undisputed king of 3D. The process of creating 3D in 1985 involved creating a hi-resolution scan of the original art, output to the same size as that original art, printed on vellum and then precision hand-cut to separate foreground images from background to produce the best three dimensional effects. Those pieces were scanned individually and then reconfigured on a new board for reference against the final, printed page.

Like the original penciled page, this is a unique piece of comic book production art featuring the work of two Hall of Fame legends, Will Eisner and Ray Zone. Unlike digital proof pages, 3D production pages are analog works of art that very much have the hand of the creative team on them. The separation process involves redrawing portions of the artwork where the artwork has been handcut, and those corrections require the approval (and sometimes the participation) of the penciler or inker. This was a true partnership between the 3D Zone and Will Eisner Studios. Eisner passed away in 2005, Zone passed away in 2012.