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The Spirit (August 4, 1940) “The Devil Dolls”
Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks)
Joe Kubert (colors)
Sam Rosen (letters)
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.
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All-Star Comics (1976) #58
Gerry Conway (editor, script)
Ric Estrada (pencils)
Wally Wood, Al Sirois (inks)
Ben Oda (letters)
Paul Levitz (assistant editor)
The issue opens with the JSA reading their email—no joke—and an anonymous sender telling them there will be disasters in three major cities: Seattle, Capetown, and Peking. The heroes split into pairs to investigate.
Seattle is Dr. Mid-Nite and Hawkman, except the action there begins with Star-Spangled Kid foiling a bank robbery. Once we get a bunch of Kid’s thought balloons about his cosmic rod (literally a cosmic rod, not his… anyway), it’s time for an earthquake. Hawkman and Dr. Mid-Nite see him trying to save people from above; Hawkman wants to help, but as Kid’s psychiatrist, Mid-Nite, says if they help, it’ll give Kid a complex.
So they just watch as maybe people die because one superhero isn’t enough for an earthquake.
In Capetown, Dick Grayson—oh, right, JSA is Earth-Two, which means everyone’s older… kind of like they’d kept aging after WWII but not really because Dick Grayson’s in his twenties, not his late forties—Dick Grayson’s a UN envoy and he’s there when a gas attack occurs. Dr. Fate and Green Lantern show up and do most of the work, with Green Lantern whining the whole time about how he’s not very smart and he wishes he were smart.
Finally, in Peking, we get Flash and Wildcat arriving just in time to stop a newly appeared volcano. Power Girl gets there after a page, sealing up the volcano and explaining the conceit of the comic to the heroes—writer Gerry Conway has already laid it out at least once for the reader, so he’s really hammering it in with Power Girl’s exposition. What if there were three disasters and three young heroes who really did all the work while the JSA was powerless? Wouldn’t that make a great concept for a comic?
Having read the comic, no, not really. Especially not since Conway’s wordy exposition oscillates between vapid superhero worship and redundant griping. Wildcat, for instance, spends most of the comic throwing in some asinine remark. But the rest of the heroes are still at least a little pissy about… being superheroes. Maybe some of the disconnect is all of them ostensibly being grown-ass men in at least their forties, yet still utterly feckless. Or Conway just doesn’t have a comic so much as an idea for one.
Ric Estrada and Wally Wood are on art. Lots of weird body poses, particularly with the flying (and not just Power Girl, who Estrada makes sure to get her cleavage and her leggy legs in every panel), but it’s such a rushed story, it doesn’t really matter.
All-Star Comics—returning after a twenty-five-year hiatus (sort of)—is off to a soggy start.
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The Spirit (July 28, 1940) “Palyachi, The Killer Clown”
Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks)
Joe Kubert (colors)
Sam Rosen (letters)
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.
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Superboy (1949) #214
Jim Shooter 1, Cary Bates 2 (script)
Mike Grell (artist 1, pencils 2)
Bill Draut (inks 2)
Ben Oda 1, Joe Letterese 2 (letters
Jack C. Harris (assistant editor)
Murray Boltinoff (editor)
Ah, yes, the valiant superheroes of the future… who are willing to sacrifice a little kid’s life because they don’t like him. Well, not all of them, but definitely Wildfire and maybe Karate Kid. Thank goodness Superboy (with his forty-five-year-old Grell features) is there to remind them they’re not supposed to let innocent people die just because they’re unpleasant.
The Legion’s on an automated factory planet. The planet’s been attacking ships trying to land, including one after the Legion arrives. Superboy saves the ship’s pilot before the planet’s lasers zap it. Turns out the pilot is an obnoxious little kid (who barely seems aware of the Legion, which ought to be interesting but isn’t), son of the planet’s owner.
Too bad the villain turns out to be a fired overseer who hates the planet’s owner and would kill the kid at the first opportunity. So Superboy does his best to try to keep the kid safe, even as the kid thinks the heroes are just trying to cramp his style. Wildfire takes a different approach—let the kid die so the Legion can escape.
Maybe if writer Jim Shooter had a better moral compass, the story would read better; as is, the reader’s supposed to identify with Wildfire but eventually agree with Superboy, who’s actually not showing all his cards. So… the needs of the few only outweigh the needs of the many when you’re playing with marked cards.
At the very least, there are a couple okay big action splashes from Mike Grell. They’re usually cushioned with some strangely distorted human faces or whatever’s going on with Wildfire’s helmet, but there are at least a couple okay visual moments.
The backup—Grell on pencils, Cary Bates writing, Bill Draut on inks—is about Brainiac-5 trying to help Shrinking Violet with a mental health issue. She’s just had a nasty near accident with another Legionnaire in the gym—she almost got stomped on—and now she can’t shrink any more. Brainy ignores Saturn Girl’s “professional” psychiatric advice on how to deal with it and pushes forward with an extreme treatment.
It’s a terribly plotted story—the first few pages are all talking heads about Violet’s problems (talking about her, she’s not conscious for it because she’s so near her mental breaking point), then there’s some setup of Brainy’s treatment idea. But then the actual action of the story is barely a page and a half, and it’s… about getting stuck in a big ball of wire.
Once again, Brainiac-5 doesn’t seem very smart at all.
Overall, however, the issue’s nowhere near as bad as its creators can get. Unless, of course, you want your superheroes helping people instead of pushing them under busses.
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The Spirit (July 21, 1940) “Eldas Thayer”
Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks)
Joe Kubert (colors)
Sam Rosen (letters)
Eldas Thayer is the name of a miserly old rich guy who’s refusing to pay for his niece’s medical treatment. Thayer’s doctor has just given him the bad news—he’s got a day to live. The Spirit shows up just after, pleading for the niece’s life. Thayer doesn’t appreciate the Spirit’s tone, especially since Spirit heard the doctor’s report.
“No,” says Thayer. “I’d kill you,” says Spirit, “but morale code blah blah.”
Thayer then concocts a Rube Goldberg contraption to kill himself and blame Spirit because screw that guy. Thayer’s not just a bad guy, he’s visually unpleasant. Thayer will have some fantastic action sequences, strip-best dialogue, and—I believe—the first significant Spirit character development. But the art’s rough at open. Dots instead of lines. So Thayer’s, like, repugnant in his close-up.
He successfully frames Spirit for his murder, Spirit goes to visit Commissioner Dolan, unaware he’s wanted for murder, the mayor just happens to be there, tells Dolan to arrest Spirit, Dolan pleads with Spirit to proclaim innocence and Dolan’ll quit the force for him to fight for truth.
Upon hearing his only confidante’s pledge, Spirit decides he cannot deprive fair Gotham of her police commissioner and says, “No, I killed him.”
So then begins the chase portion of the story, which—remember—is called Eldas Thayer–cops are after Spirit, Spirit is trying to save the dying niece. Thank goodness someone remembered her.
Panel after panel, there’s great art and brisk storytelling. The art’s never quite sublime in terms of line work (except the splash page), but the composition and the writing establish a beautiful rhythm. Tiny panels composed like classic Hollywood montage shots; the panels get downright exquisite for the last few pages. At nine panels a page. It’s some genuinely exceptional art this week.
And then the writing.
Having to deceive Dolan (for his own good) immediately opens up a whole new layer to Spirit. He’s gone from white knight to dark knight. I did check: Gordon did appear in Detective before Spirit… but, based on a cursory look, that work marriage wasn’t anywhere near this far along yet.
Spirit makes the move fearlessly, the Spirit announcing (addressed to Dolan but for the reader) they’ve got to break up so Spirit won’t drag him down. But don’t worry, if the forces of evil should rise again, to cast a shadow on the heart of the city, the Spirit will be there. Just as an outlaw.
It’s a gorgeous finish, too. Extreme long shots, clean lines, sublime composition.
Easy strip best to this point.
