The Stop Button

The Spirit gets his first mission as a special government agent: identifying enemy powers’ fuel depots on the Mexican coastline. The military doesn’t want to let the Mexican government know about it because then they’d want to investigate and they don’t want to investigate themselves because gunboats will scare off the other bad guys. So they send the Spirit, who meticulously plots his jump point from the military plane, but fails to expect armed sentries.

By this time in the war, Italy had joined on the Axis side. Eisner and studio had plenty of possible ways to go with the enemy forces. They went with “Nargoff,” which is neither German nor Italian. According to the Internet, it’s either Norwegian or Jewish. And Germany had been occupying Norway for months at this point. Maybe he’s Norwegian; Nargoff, the enemy leader.

He’s also an author, who’s written a book about world politics with gems about larger countries having the right by size to take smaller ones. Spirit helps Nargoff understand that system on a personal level later in the strip.

First, Spirit’s got to disrupt the submarine fuelingS station, which he’s able to do rather conveniently because it’s made out of wood—and wood burns.

The strip goes through three distinct sets of stakes in its eight pages. The Spirit’s got to investigate and resolve the possible fueling station. Then the stakes move to Nargoff having to survive that resolution. And then there’s Nargoff having to survive, well, the Spirit.

When the Spirit’s adversaries die, they rarely do so with the Spirit directly involved. In many cases, he may not even be present. And he generally turns the crooks in alive. So despite the lively, colorful art—lots of blues—and the energy to the action, the strip’s third act is dark. The Spirit’s solution for the situation is just a little unexpected given his… amiable vibe.

But, it’s not wrong about how you deal with fascists.

The strip’s got lumps and bumps; also, some rather solid moments. Spirit’s first mission as agent could’ve gone a lot worse.