The Stop Button

The Spirit tries—very gently—a “whodunit,” with the reader getting as much information as Spirit or the cops; more, actually. The whodunit aspect seems half-baked, similar to the rest of the strip. While The Mastermind avoids any of Spirit’s problematic pitfalls, it’s also barely a story.

The strip opens with a mayoral candidate’s aide dying by poison gas, which the coroner can’t figure out. When the candidate visits Dolan to demand action, the Spirit shows up and the candidate remembers Spirit’s wanted for that murder from months ago. The candidate demands Dolan arrest the Spirit, but obviously the Spirit escapes.

One more murder and then the “Mastermind” is after the Spirit too, hiring a kid to deliver a bomb to him. Spirit will enlist the kid’s help, intentionally putting him in harm’s way at one point, as he unravels the case. Except he’s just operating off that early clue the reader also got, so it’s not a lot of unraveling.

The last few pages have the Spirit getting in a fight with the villain. Lots of empty backgrounds as they punch it out. Even the finish is slight, with Eisner and studio wrapping the whole thing in the last couple panels, including the villain’s motives. Given the strip starts promising a “Mastermind”—standing over a pile of skulls on the splash page—having the villain not just be a done-in-one, but also be far from devious and really just in possession of explosives and poisons the cops can’t identify.

There are some nice establishing shot panels of the city—long shots with good angles and nice line work. The action at the end is fine; it just dawdles through action and hurries through the exposition.

Even as the least impressive of Spirit so far, it’s still rock solid work, technically speaking. Eisner just seems like he’s run out of things to try this one.

Outside that gorgeous splash page, of course.