The Spirit heads to Syria for a Middle Eastern-tinged adventure in Jewel. He’s there to find the only doctor who can cure a disease back in Central City, but the doctor has married a beautiful local woman and doesn’t want to return.
Except this beautiful local woman seems to be a dark figure of legend—any man who marries her dies within twenty-four hours. Perhaps The Jewel of Death has something to do with it.
The wife is personality-free as a potential villain, with some similarities to early Spirit female villains. The wanting ones, unfortunately. She doesn’t get any lines; she doesn’t have any motive; she’s just possibly a murderer. One who operates without motive, too, because the doctor isn’t some black widow achievement. He’s just a drunk who feels bad about himself and doesn’t want to listen to any of Spirit’s pleas.
There’s also a fortune teller on the street who figures in, and a smuggler villain. The fortune teller freaks out when Spirit arrives, only for Spirit to be a jerk to him and the fortune teller to semi-curse him back. It’s a strange way to start, especially given the Spirit’s in white for most of the strip. All the other Western men’s suits will at one time or another become Spirit’s white suit—in the final example indistinguishably so. The ending feels rushed, including Spirit talking about something he (and everyone else in Damascus) sees but Eisner and studio don’t bother to show the reader.
It’s also a strip with lengthy expositional text, with more than enough Orientalism to make it a little weird. Coupled with Spirit making fun of the fortune teller, Jewel’s just got bad vibes. Bad vibes and nowhere near enough story. To contextualize Damascus at the time, it and Syria would’ve just been freed from Vichy occupation. The week before. Given Spirit has been doing international espionage for months now, a mystical outing—because magic’s real in the Middle East, just not Central City—in a war zone is notable. There’s also the overly reverential tone to the Orientalism in the exposition and the disconnect in how Spirit (and some other speaking players) react to the local population.
Jewel is a far less cohesive Spirit than usual. It’s already a strange mix with the setting, the MacGuffin, and tone–and acknowledging the war would make it stranger–but also considering the art oversights, Jewel reads shakier. Eisner doesn’t even know what to do with the Spirit (other than white-suited fisticuffs against shirtless, dehumanized Middle Eastern thugs); very little of the story ends up mattering.
There are some flexes, but the strip’s too slim for its circumstances.