Spirit (comics character)

In late 1939, Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, publisher of the Quality Comics comic-book line, began exploring an expansion into newspaper Sunday supplements, aware that many newspapers felt they had to compete with the suddenly burgeoning new medium of American comic books, as exemplified by the Chicago Tribune Comic Book, premiering two months before "The Spirit Section".[3] Arnold compiled a presentation piece with existing Quality Comics material. An editor of The Washington Star liked George Brenner's comic-book feature "The Clock", but not Brenner's art, and was favorably disposed toward a Lou Fine strip. Arnold, concerned over the meticulous Fine's slowness and his ability to meet deadlines, claimed it was the work of Eisner, Fine's boss at the Eisner & Iger studio, from which Arnold bought his outsourced comics work.

In "late '39, just before Christmas time", Eisner recalled in 1979,[4] "Arnold came to me and said that the Sunday newspapers were looking for a way of getting into this comic book boom". In a 2004 interview, Eisner elaborated on that meeting:

"Busy" invited me up for lunch one day and introduced me to [sales manager of the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate] Henry Martin, who said, "The newspapers in this country, particularly the Sunday papers, are looking to compete with comics books, and they would like to get a comic-book insert into the newspapers"... Martin asked if I could do it... It meant that I'd have to leave Eisner & Iger [which] was making money; we were very profitable at that time and things were going very well. A hard decision. Anyway, I agreed to do the Sunday comic book and we started discussing the deal [which] was that we'd be partners in the "Comic Book Section", as they called it at that time.[5]

Eisner negotiated an agreement with the syndicate in which Arnold would copyright the feature but, "Written down in the contract I had with 'Busy' Arnold — and this contract exists today as the basis for my copyright ownership — Arnold agreed that it was my property. They agreed that if we had a split-up in any way, the property would revert to me on that day that happened. My attorney went to 'Busy' Arnold and his family, and they all signed a release agreeing that they would not pursue the question of ownership."[5] This would include the eventual backup features, "Mr. Mystic" and "Lady Luck."

Selling his share of their firm to Iger, who would continue to package comics as the S. M. Iger Studio and as Phoenix Features through 1955, for $20,000,[6] Eisner left to create "The Spirit Section". "They gave me an adult audience", Eisner said in 1997, "and I wanted to write better things than superheroes. Comic books were a ghetto. I sold my part of the enterprise to my associate and then began The Spirit. They wanted an heroic character, a costumed character. They asked me if he'd have a costume. And I put a mask on him and said, 'Yes, he has a costume!'"[7]

The character and the types of stories Eisner would tell, Eisner said in 1978, derived from his desire

...to do short stories. I always regarded comics as a legitimate medium, my medium. Creating a detective character would... provide me with the most viable vehicle for the kind of stories I could best tell. The syndicate people weren't in full agreement with me... [I]n my first discussion with 'Busy' Arnold, his thinking centered around a superhero kind of character—a costumed character; we didn't use the word 'superhero' in those days... and I argued vehemently against it because I [had] had my bellyful of creating costumed heroes at Eisner and Iger... [S]o actually one evening, around three in the morning, I was still working, trying to find it—I only had about a week-and-a-half or two weeks in which to produce the first issue, the whole deal was done in quite a rush—and I came up with an outlaw hero, suitable, I felt, for an adult audience.[8]

The character's name, he said in that interview, came from Arnold: "When 'Busy' Arnold called, he suggested a kind of ghost or some kind of metaphysical character. He said, 'How about a thing called the Ghost?' and I said, 'Naw, that's not any good,' and he said, 'Well, then, call it the Spirit; there's nothing like that around.' I said, 'Well, I don't know what you mean.,' and he said, 'Well, you can figure that out—I just like the words "the Spirit."' He was calling from a bar somewhere, I think... [A]nd actually, the more I thought about it the more I realized I didn't care about the name."[8]

The Spirit, an initially eight (and later seven) page urban-crimefighter series, ran with the initial backup features "Mr. Mystic" and "Lady Luck" in a 16-page Sunday supplement (colloquially called "The Spirit Section") that was eventually distributed in 20 newspapers with a combined circulation of as many as five million copies.[9] It premiered June 2, 1940, and continued through 1952.[10] From 1944-1950, Busy Arnold published twenty-two issues of an associated Spirit comic book under his Quality Comics banner, reprinting several Spirit stories per issue.[11] From 1952-1954, Fiction House published five issues of their own Spirit reprint comic book, continuing this process.[12]

A classic Eisner cover for Oct. 6, 1946. Note the innovative use of title design, the mix of color and black-and-white, and the shadowing and texturing that combine for exotic noir effect. Other Spirit stories could be whimsical, gritty, folklorish, sentimental, horrific, or mystical, yet always humanistic.

Eisner was drafted into the U.S. Army in late 1941, "and then had about another half-year which the government gave me to clean up my affairs before going off" to fight in World War II.[8] In his absence, the newspaper syndicate used ghost writers and artists to continue the strip, including Manly Wade Wellman, William Woolfolk, Jack Cole and Lou Fine.[13]

Eisner's rumpled, masked hero (with his headquarters under the tombstone of his supposedly deceased true identity, Denny Colt) and his gritty, detailed view of big-city life (based on Eisner's Jewish upbringing in New York City) both reflected and anticipated the noir outlook of movies and fiction in the 1940s.[14] Eisner said in 2001 that he created the strip as a vehicle to explore various genres: "When I created The Spirit, I never had any intention of creating a superhero. I never felt The Spirit would dominate the feature. He served as a sort of an identity for the strip. The stories were what I was interested in."[15] In some episodes, the nominal hero makes a brief, almost incidental appearance while the story focuses on a real-life drama played out in streets, dilapidated tenements, and smoke-filled back rooms. Yet along with violence and pathos, the feature lived on humor, both subtle and overt. He was shot, knocked silly, bruised, often amazed into near immobility and constantly confused by beautiful women.[16]

The feature ended with the October 5, 1952, edition.[10] As The Comics Journal editor-publisher Gary Groth wrote, "By the late '40s, Eisner's participation in the strip had dwindled to a largely supervisory role. ... Eisner hired Jerry Grandenetti and Jim Dixon to occasionally ink his pencils. By 1950, Jules Feiffer was writing most of the strips, and Grandenetti, Dixon, and Al Wenzel were drawing them."[17] Grandenetti, who penciled as a ghost-artist under Eisner's byline, said in 2005 that before the feature's demise, Eisner had "tried everything. Had me penciling 'The Spirit'. Later on it was Wally Wood", who drew the final installments.[18]

The Spirit, referred to in one newspaper article cited below as "the only real middle-class crimefighter", was the hero persona of young detective/criminologist Denny Colt.[19] Presumed killed in the first three pages of the premiere story, Colt later revealed to his friend, Central City Police Commissioner Dolan, that he had in fact gone into suspended animation caused by one of archvillain Dr. Cobra's experiments. When Colt awakened in Wildwood Cemetery, he established a base there (underneath his own tombstone) and, using his new-found anonymity, began a life of fighting crime wearing a simple costume consisting of a blue domino mask, business suit, fedora hat and gloves (plus a white shirt and red necktie). While elements of this basic costume occasionally vary (depending on the Spirit's circumstances and where he is in the world), he is always depicted wearing his blue domino mask and blue leather gloves.[20] The Spirit dispensed justice with the aid of his assistant, Ebony White, funding his adventures with an inheritance from his late father, Denny Colt Snr, and the rewards for capturing villains.[21]

The Spirit originally was based in New York City, but this was quickly changed to the fictional "Central City". Not tied to one locale, his adventures took him around the globe. He met eccentrics, kooks, and femme fatales, bringing his own form of justice to all of them. The story changed continually, but certain themes remained constant: the love between the Spirit and Dolan's feisty protofeminist daughter Ellen; the annual "Christmas Spirit" stories; and the Octopus (a psychopathic criminal mastermind who was never seen, except for his distinctive purple gloves).[22]

The Spirit with Ebony White. The Spirit #10 (Fall 1947), Quality Comics. Cover art by Reed Crandall.

Eisner was criticized for his depiction of Ebony White, the Spirit's African-American sidekick. The character's name is a racial pun, and his facial features, including large white eyes and thick pinkish lips, are typical of racial blackface caricatures popular throughout the "Jim Crow" era. Eisner later admitted to consciously stereotyping the character, but said he tried to do so with "responsibility", and argued that "at the time humor consisted in our society of bad English and physical difference in identity".[23] The character, who was consistently treated with respect by the strip's fellow cast-members, developed beyond the stereotype as the series progressed, and Eisner also introduced such African-American characters as the no-nonsense Detective Grey who defied popular stereotypes.

Ebony debuted as a resourceful taxi driver in the first "Spirit Section". He became a mainstay of the strip and a principal member of the Spirit's supporting cast until Eisner phased him out of the narrative in mid-1949 and replaced him with another assistant, a Caucasian boy named Sammy. Ebony's last "starring" role in a Spirit story (a semi-regular event in which he was the focus of the story rather than the Spirit himself) was "Young Dr. Ebony", published on May 29, 1949.

Sammy first appeared in "The Ballgame", published July 31, 1949, part of a six-episode arc set in the South Seas, in which Ebony does not appear. Sammy returns to Central City with the Spirit in "The Return", published August 14, 1949, and is welcomed into the cast by Ebony, Commissioner Dolan and Ellen Dolan. Ebony makes two wordless, one-panel appearances in the next two installments, "The Candidate" and "White Cloud" (August 21 and 28, 1949) before making his final appearance in five panels of "Lurid Love" (September 18, 1949). After this (and apart from one final mention of his name in the text-based splash page of "The Inner Voice", published November 6, 1949), Ebony left the strip without fanfare or explanation, and Sammy functioned as the Spirit's assistant for the strip's final three years.[24] An adult Ebony appears as an office worker in a one-off Spirit story that appeared January 9, 1966, in the New York Herald Tribune.

In an accompanying feature article in issue of the New York Herald Tribune, Eisner's former office manager Marilyn Mercer wrote, "Ebony never drew criticism from Negro groups (in fact, Eisner was commended by some for using him), perhaps because, although his speech pattern was early Minstrel Show, he himself derived from another literary tradition: he was a combination of Tom Sawyer and Penrod, with a touch of Horatio Alger hero, and color didn't really come into it".[25]

• Dr. Cobra is a mad scientist whose chemicals and machinations inadvertently help Denny Colt become the Spirit.
• Darling O' Shea is the richest and most spoiled child in the world.
• Hazel P. Macbeth is a witch with a Shakespearean motif and apparent magical powers. (Vide Macbeth.)
• Lorelei Rox, an apparent siren, appeared in a September 1948 strip and subsequently in 2000s DC Comics Spirit stories. (Vide Lorelei rock.)
• Mister Carrion is a morbid con man with a pet vulture, Julia. (Vide carrion.)
• The Octopus is the archenemy of the Spirit. He is a criminal mastermind and master of disguise who never shows his real face, though he is identified by his distinctive purple gloves.[26] In the second issue of the 1960s Harvey Comics Spirit comic book, his name is given as Zitzbath Zark. The first name is a pun on sitz bath.
• P'Gell is a femme fatale who perennially tries to seduce the Spirit to a life of crime at her side. She seduces and marries wealthy men who invariably die in mysterious ways, and uses their money to fund her crime empire in Istanbul and expand her influence and control over the underworld. After moving to Central City to find the Spirit, she continues her modus operandi of selected marriages with the cream of society, even gaining an ally in the form of Saree, the young daughter of one of her deceased husbands. In the 2000s DC Comics version, P'Gell was once a young socialite in love with a doctor, working in Third World countries, and turned to a life of crime when he was killed. (Vide Pigalle.)
• P.S. Smith ("Peppermint Stick" Smith AKA Algernon Tidewater) is a silent, baseball helmet-wearing associate of Ebony. Always sucking on a peppermint stick and appearing to be 6-8 years of age, the wordless P.S. is capable of almost-superhuman feats (always played for comedic effect) and serves as Eisner's comic embodiment of anarchy and disruption. P.S. first appeared in The Philadelphia Enquirer as the star of a silent pantomime strip appearing underneath the main Spirit story, before Eisner introduced the character within the main strip (as Algernon Tidewater) in 1941. The character was renamed P.S. in his first postwar appearance in May 1946.[27][28]
• Officer Sam Klink is a brave, big-hearted but not particularly bright member of the Central City Police Department. A regular member of the postwar Spirit Section cast list, Klink is a loyal aide to Commissioner Dolan and a frequent ally of the Spirit.
• Sand Saref is a childhood friend of Denny Colt, and knows he is the Spirit. Working in espionage, she usually ends up on the opposite side of the law from him. She appears several times, always involved in some criminal scheme. (Vide sans serif.)
• Silk Satin is a tall, statuesque brunette with a white streak in her hair, originally an adventuress who later reformed and worked as an international troubleshooter for the insurance company Croyd's of Glasgow. In later stories, it is revealed she has a daughter, Hildie, who motivates her to stay on the straight path. In the 2000s DC Comics revival, she is a smaller, more slender, blond CIA agent.
• Silken Floss is a nuclear physicist and a surgeon, who acts as the accomplice to the Octopus.

The song "Ev'ry Little Bug" (with lyrics written by Eisner) appears regularly between 1946 and 1950. The initial lines of were first uttered in the story "Poole's Toadstool Facial Cream" (June 9, 1946). By the end of 1946, all of the lyrics had appeared, sung by various characters. In 1947, Eisner collaborated with his World War II service friend Bill Harr, who composed a melody for Eisner's lyrics. The complete song appears in the April 27, 1947 "Spirit Section", here titled "Ev'ry Li'l Bug", with Ebony credited within the storyline as its composer. In the story "Wiffenpoof" (June 29, 1947), real-life operatic singer Robert Merrill was depicted singing the tune. Shortly afterward, the Robbins Music Corporation of New York published "Ev'ry Little Bug" as sheet music, with an image of Ebony on its cover page. After three more appearances in the strip, "Ev'ry Little Bug" remained dormant until 1987, when music producer John Christensen assembled a recording featuring five versions of the tune, released by Kitchen Sink as a picture disc with an exclusive Spirit/Ebony image illustrated by Eisner. The record featured actor Billy Mumy playing guitar on some tracks.

Several Spirit stories, such as the first appearance of Sand Saref, were retooled from a failed publishing venture featuring an eyepatched, pipe-smoking detective named John Law. Law and his shoeshine-boy sidekick, Nubbin, starred in several adventures planned for a new comics series. These completed adventures were eventually adapted into Spirit stories, with John Law's eyepatch being changed to the Spirit's mask, and Nubbin redrawn as Willum Waif or other Spirit supporting characters.

The original John Law stories were restored and published in Will Eisner's John Law: Dead Man Walking (IDW Publishing, 2004), a collection of stories that also features new adventures by writer-artist Gary Chaloner, starring John Law, Nubbin, and other Eisner creations, including Lady Luck and Mr. Mystic.

Like most artists working in newspaper comic strips, Eisner after a time employed a studio of assistants who, on any given week's story, might draw or simply ink backgrounds, ink parts of Eisner's main characters (such as clothing or shoes), or as eventually occurred, ghost-draw the strip entirely. Eisner also eventually used ghostwriters, generally in collaboration with him.

Jules Feiffer, who began as an art assistant circa 1946 and later became the primary writer through the strip's end in 1952, recalled, "When I first worked for Will there was John Spranger, who was his penciler and a wonderful draftsman; better than Will. There was Sam Rosen, the lettering man. Jerry Grandenetti came a little after me and did backgrounds, and Jerry had some architectural background. His drawing was stiff but loosened up after a while, but he drew backgrounds and inked them beautifully. And Abe Kanegson, who was my best friend in the office, was a jack-of-all-trades but mostly did lettering and backgrounds after Jerry left. Abe was a mentor to me."[29]

Eisner's studio also included:[10][30][31]

• Art assistants: Bob Powell (1940), Dave Berg (backgrounds, 1940–41), Tex Blaisdell (1940–41), Fred Kida (1941), Alexander Kostuk a.k.a. Alex Koster (1941–43), Jack Cole (1942–43), Jack Keller (backgrounds, 1943), Jules Feiffer (1946–47), Manny Stallman (1947–49), Andre LeBlanc (1950), Al Wenzel (1952)
• Inkers: Alex Kotzky (1941–43), John Belfi (1942–43), Don Komisarow (1943), Robin King (year?), Joe Kubert (1943–44), Jerry Grandenetti (1948–51), Jim Dixon (1950–51), Don Perlin (1951)
• Letterers: Sam Rosen (1940-1942), Martin De Muth (1942-1947), Abe Kanegson (1947-1951)[32], Samm Schwartz (1951), Ben Oda (1951-1952)
• Colorists: Jules Feiffer (1950-52), Chris Christiansen (1951)
• Ghost artists (pencilers): Lou Fine and Jack Cole (variously, during Eisner's World War II service, 1942–45), Jerry Grandenetti (1951), Wally Wood (1952)
• Ghostwriters/writing assistants: Toni Blum (1942), Jack Cole, Manly Wade Wellman and William Woolfolk (variously, during Eisner's World War II service, 1943–45), Klaus Nordling (1946, 1951), Marilyn Mercer (1946), Abe Kanegson (1950), Jules Feiffer (1951–52)

The comic strips and comics have been collected into a number of volumes:

• The Spirit Coloring Book (1974, Will Eisner Studios/Poor House Press)
• Will Eisner Color Treasury (1981, Kitchen Sink) (ISBN 0-87816-006-X)
• Spirit Color Album (1981, Kitchen Sink) (ISBN 0-87816-002-7)
• Spirit Color Album, v2 (1983, Kitchen Sink) (ISBN 0-87816-010-8)
• Spirit Color Album, v3 (1983, Kitchen Sink) (ISBN 0-87816-011-6)
• The Art of Will Eisner (1989 2nd ed, Kitchen Sink) (ISBN 0-87816-076-0)
• The Outer Space Spirit (1989 Kitchen Sink) (ISBN 0-87816-012-4)
• The Christmas Spirit (1995 Kitchen Sink) (ISBN 0-87816-309-3)
• Spirit Casebook (1999 Kitchen Sink) (ISBN 0-87816-094-9)
• All About P'Gell: Spirit Casebook II (1998 Kitchen Sink) (ISBN 0-87816-492-8)
• The Spirit Archives: (DC Comics)
  • Volume 1 (2000) (ISBN 1-56389-673-7) through Volume 26 (2009) (ISBN 1-4012-1974-8)
• The Best of The Spirit (2005 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-0755-3)
• The Spirit Book 1, collects Batman/The Spirit and The Spirit (Volume 1)#1–6 (2007 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-1618-8)
• The Spirit Book 2, collects The Spirit Volume 1 #7–13 (2008 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-2220-X)
• The Spirit: Femmes Fatales (2008 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-1973-X)
• Will Eisner's The Spirit: The New Adventures, collects Kitchen Sink's The Spirit: The New Adventures #1-8 (2009, Dark Horse) (ISBN 1-5697-1732-X)
• The Spirit Book 3, collects The Spirit Volume 1 #14–20 (2009 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-2186-6)
• The Spirit Book 4, collects The Spirit Volume 1 #21–25 (2009 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-2505-5)
• The Spirit Book 5, collects The Spirit Volume 1 #26–32 (2010 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-2642-6)
• The Spirit: Angel Smerti, collects The Spirit Volume 2 #1–7 (2011 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-3026-1)
• The Spirit: The Clockwork Killer, collects The Spirit Volume 2 #8–14 (2011 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-3309-0)
• Rocketeer/The Spirit: Pulp Friction, collects Rocketeer/The Spirit: Pulp Friction #1-4 (2014 IDW Publishing) (ISBN 1-6137-7881-3)
• Will Eisner's The Spirit: A Celebration of 75 Years (2015 DC Comics) (ISBN 1-4012-5945-6)
• Will Eisner's The Spirit Returns, collects Dynamite's Will Eisner's The Spirit #1-12 (2016 Dynamite Entertainment) (ISBN 1-6069-0841-3)
• The Green Hornet '66 Meets The Spirit, collects Dynamite's The Green Hornet '66 Meets The Spirit #1-5 (2018 Dynamite Entertainment) (ISBN 1-5241-0590-2)
• Will Eisner's The Spirit: The Corpse-Makers, collects Dynamite's Will Eisner's The Spirit: The Corpse-Makers #1-5 (2019 Dynamite Entertainment) (ISBN 1-5241-0481-7)

• Jack Kirby Collector #16 (June 1997): Will Eisner interview
• Archive of Heintjes, Tom. "Will Eisner's The Spirit", AdventureStrips.com. Reprinted from The Spirit: The Origin Years #1–4 (Kitchen Sink Press, May–November 1992). Original page Original page.
• The Spirit at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
• The Spirit at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017.

• Andelman, Bob. Will Eisner: A Spirited Life. ISBN 1-59582-011-6.
• Feiffer, Jules. The Great Comic-Book Heroes. ISBN 1-56097-501-6.
• Jones, Gerard. Men Of Tomorrow. ISBN 0-434-01402-8.

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