Daisy Kay’s kidnapping involves a lot more action than the setup will imply. The strip opens with Homer Creep (renamed from the previous, presumably French spelling, Creap) bursting into the Spirit’s crypt lair with a pistol at the ready. Spirit handily disarms Homer and invites him into the lower portion of the lair—the living quarters and laboratories.

Homer even asks about the renovations.

Since we last saw Homer in the second Spirit strip, his fiancée has left him. The fiancée is Commissioner Dylan’s daughter, Ellen, who the Spirit gussied up at the end of that strip in a profound act of misogyny. He and Homer discussing it here explicitly objectifies the character again, and Ellen has clearly internalized it. She’s no longer interested in criminal psychology, she’s going to be a chorus girl.

The Spirit has a plan, however. He’s going to kidnap Ellen and then Homer will come and save her. She’ll think Homer’s a hero, Spirit’s a sap, and everything will be jake.

Except Ellen is working for a gangster. But that gangster—who’s producing her show on Broadway—doesn’t know about it until opening night, when one of his flunkies recognizes her. She’s there under a pseudonym—Daisy Kay. There’s a quick scene to establish Dolan’s worry that she’ll ruin his reputation as police commissioner, which is precisely the gangster’s plan. Reveal her true identity, humiliate the commissioner, get the mayor to fire him for having a low-class kid.

So the gangsters don’t like it when Spirit swings down onto the stage and grabs Ellen, running off with her over his shoulder. They give chase, which results in a fantastic series of action sequences. First there’s an autoplane bit, then there’s a Spirit fighting guys in a car bit, then there’s Ellen and Spirit under siege in a remote cabin with gangsters circling them firing on the cabin bit. It’s all glorious, it’s all beautifully visualized, even if the interludes are just Spirit being a mega-jerk to Ellen for Homer to capitalize on eventually.

Will Homer save the day and get the girl? Or are things more complicated in love and war?

More importantly, what happened with the last big action panel—despite all the two-fisted fisticuffs, Eisner and the studio can’t render the slightest dodge?

Maybe they just didn’t have the space. Doesn’t matter; it’s an excellent strip. Minus the active and passive misogyny, of course.

While The Death Dolls do play a part, the most impressive element of this strip is the proto-Nazi killer robot. “Proto” because Eisner wasn’t willing to be too explicit in 1940. But there will be a robot shaped like a German soldier (the helmet is the giveaway) who tries to destroy New York.

But that raid is in the last couple pages….

The strip begins with the Spirit tracking evil munitions engineer Yagor to a small New England coast town. The overly verbose—but finding its charm—introductory exposition has the Spirit arriving by boat, giving the town an isolated vibe. The isolation is just to provide the moody setup. And possibly just some Spirit showing off with his motorboat pursuit.

He’s tracked Yagor from the city, the obvious culprit in the murder of another weapons engineer. Yagor stole his plans to sell to a German guy. Again, the strip’s not explicit—the guy just happens to be named Emil Kampf, but he could be representing any global superpower with a name like Emil Kampf in 1940.

Instead of just shooting the Spirit on the spot, Yagor lets Spirit douse him with some exposition about the murder case in the city, which involves Spirit catching wind of the deal with Kampf. So Spirit’s going to hang around and watch the deal, thereby witnessing Yagor selling secrets to a foreign power, which is just good business when you think about it.

Except Kampf thinks the robot Nazi is a bad product (he shoots it a couple times, causing oil leaks), and storms out. Then Yagor unleashes the death doll, which tracks Kampf back to his hotel in New York City—walking across New England, which totally means Spirit could’ve driven—and detonates when it reaches Kampf.

Spirit tries to stop Yagor, but the robot is still functional and it kicks his ass. As Yagor and the robot leave to start their reign of destruction on the world for refusing to buy his stolen arms (why was a U.S. company making robot Nazis… oh, never mind, Spirit takes place in a reality close to ours), he leaves a death doll to take care of Spirit.

Obviously, the Spirit will foil the doll, escape, and save the day. However, when the robot hits the city, it’s fighting an army of cops, forecasting a fifties sci-fi monster gone amuck. Spirit concentrates on Yagor, and negotiating a temporary truce with Dolan.

It’s another great strip, with a few pages of sublime lines, and a fun finish after some phenomenal action; the studio just can’t unlearn the reliance on dotting for inking fast enough.

Since the last strip, when the Spirit confessed to a murder he did not commit to save Commissioner Dolan’s reputation and career, he’s apparently been taking it easy. The strip opens with a gorgeous, gigantic splash of the title character–Palyachi, introduced by a ringmaster as “a killer clown.”

We get Palyachi’s story—he gets laughs at the circus, but Marka—the maybe belly dancer (it’s never established)—still won’t return his affections. Maybe if he’d kill for her she would, starting with one of the trapeze acrobats. Palyachi’s reluctant, but once he gets going with his criminal ways, he can’t stop himself, going on a rampage around the city.

Despite the first panel after the splash establishing the circus is right near Spirit’s hideout in Wildwood Cemetery, he and Ebony have no idea it’s there. Days into Palyachi’s crime spree (he’s trying for a million bucks to sway Marka), Ebony brings a recent crime to Spirit’s attention in the newspaper.

Spirit immediately deduces it involves a circus, and to their surprise, there’s a circus out the window (of the crypt) they hadn’t noticed for days on end. It’s a little thin, even for a comic strip, but once Spirit gets to the circus—where Marka is going to literally strip down to seduce him, very risqué—it turns into an excellent action strip, and the occasional bumps don’t matter.

The Spirit goes into the situation entirely clueless as to what he’s uncovering and lets Marka convince him Palyachi’s the mastermind. Well, maybe. Spirit definitely plays along with Marka (who gets naked waiting for Spirit to return after dealing with Palyachi), but when he starts suspecting her involvement isn’t clear despite him finding her in possession of all the loot from Palyachi’s heists.

The fight scene has the two running around a circus, including trapeze action, and even a killer gorilla. Lots of beautiful panels, with phenomenal flow, even as the inking is uneven. Someone in Eisner’s studio still thought dots were going to win over lines.

The finale involves the police, who are after Spirit (the opening origin blurb even includes Spirit being an outlaw now) and don’t care he’s trying to solve a crime spree for him.

It’s rather good, even with the occasional thin plotting, or, in the case of the ending, thin sentiment.