Will Eisner
The Spirit #392: Slippery Eall (1947)
Distributed by the Register and Tribune Syndicate
Black and white version (the original in colour, here)
‘The Spirit’ was the first major effort in my life where I was able to do something I wanted to do, and was doing something I thought was meaningful, and at the same time making money on it. They were good years!
—Will Eisner, in a 1969 witzend interview, republished in The Comics Journal in 2005