The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: Comics
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) The Spirit has had a wider narrative scope as of late, but never before have Eisner and studio attempted anything like S.S. Raven. It’s a phenomenally weird strip, all about a killer Navy boat, with an ornery, lovable sea captain narrating the tale…
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Paul Levitz (script) Joe Staton (pencils) Bob Layton (inks) Adrienne Roy (colors) Ben Oda (letters) Joe Orlando (editor) This issue is another strong one for All-Star. Very strong. It gets there a tad cheaply—Golden Age Flash villain Thorn is now aggressively lethal, bumping off Keystone City randos for kicks. She’s also no dummy, knowing the…
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Croaky‘s tale is Spirit at its most didactic: crime does not pay. It’s also the strip stretching to center other characters, in this case Croaky and his best gal, Poison Mag. The Perfect Crime title is a tad misleading; Croaky’s crime is robbing some guy of a hundred thousand dollars and killing the poor sap.…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) If you want to explore the peculiarities of Spirit’s characterization and visualization of Ebony White, Introducing Scarlett Brown is probably the most fodder the strip’s seen to date. Ebony, of course, is the Spirit’s only confidant, best friend, assistant investigator, and occasional savior.…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) The title gives everything away in this strip: the Central City underworld teams up (principally three gangsters) and successfully captures the Spirit. Not a particularly difficult feat, it turns out. They give Spirit some bad intel, and he walks right into a trap.…
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Paul Levitz (script) Joe Staton (pencils) Bob Layton (inks) Adrienne Roy (colors) Ben Oda (letters) Joe Orlando (editor) Even leaving aside the delightful implication Green Lantern and the Flash are sharing a bedroom as part of GL’s rehabilitation (Joan does not appear, wink wink), this issue of All-Star once again succeeds thanks to the absence…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) The Dolans—both Commissioner and Ellen—are back this strip after a few weeks off. The Commissioner’s sick of Ellen just going to teas or dances; it’s high time she settles down with a husband or gets herself a job. Ellen’s already ahead of Dolan…
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Paul Levitz (1), Gerry Conway (2) (script) Mike Grell (1), George Tuska (2) (pencils) Vince Colletta (inks) Jerry Serpe (colors) Milt Snapinn (1), Ben Oda (2) (letters) Al Milgrom (editor) Joe Orlando (managing editor) Hang on, it’s Vince Colletta inking both stories? I knew he was on the strange backup from Gerry Conway and George…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Satin is an incredible strip. It’s a mostly action strip, with three master thieves planning a team-up heist in Central City. They’re all displaced from Europe: Cedric’s British, Anton’s French, and Satin’s… Satin. They’ve also got an American sidekick monikered “Asphalt,” who doesn’t…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Spirit and Ebony are on the job for the G-men, trying to crack a spy ring planning on destroying munitions factories with “robot planes.” The robot planes, as the Spirit will later explain, are really aerial torpedoes. The villains launch them from Europe…
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Paul Levitz (script) Joe Staton (pencils) Bob Layton (inks) Jerry Serpe (colors) Ben Oda (letters) Joe Orlando (editor) Last issue, writer Paul Levitz found a Hallmark moment amid the chaotic infighting of quinquagenarian white male superheroes and their surrogate daughter (Power Girl), whom they all berate or dismiss. Sole exception: Dr. Fate; respect. Though maybe…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Argos is a singular Spirit strip. Not because of its formal artistic qualities, which are strong in places, particularly in the establishing shots, and altogether perfectly fine. Rather, its content and connotations. The strip’s about a regular Joe who encounters a space alien…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Argos is a singular Spirit strip. Not because of its formal artistic qualities, which are strong in places, particularly in the establishing shots, and altogether perfectly fine. Rather, its content and connotations. The strip’s about a regular Joe who encounters a space alien…
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Paul Levitz (script) Joe Staton (pencils) Bob Layton (inks) Elizabeth Safian (colors) Ben Oda (letters) Joe Orlando (editor) This issue’s writer Paul Levitz’s magnum opus on the book so far. It’s an action-packed issue—most of the pages are just Justice Society members fighting, whether amongst themselves in the Batcave (holy set-piece, Batman!) or against the…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) WLXK is a beautifully plotted strip, with lots happening in a very short amount of time. A rather unlikely amount of time, actually, but considering part of the plot has kids listening to the Spirit kick ass on the radio and cheering along……
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Bob Rozakis (script) Don Heck (pencils) Joe Giella (inks) Jerry Serpe (colors) Milt Snapinn (letters) E. Nelson Bridwell (associate editor) Julius Schwartz (editor) Writer Bob Rozakis—and I mean this statement as a compliment—has a wonderfully juvenile vibe for Teen Titans. Their dialogue is very groovy, maybe a little too groovy for 1977 (though they are…
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A week has passed since last strip, and the Spirit still hasn’t let Commissioner Dolan know he’s alive. Ebony points out he’s being unkind to a friend, and Spirit’s surprised to realize he’s got affection for Dolan. Now, despite Dolan constantly trying to pull one over on Spirit, Dolan’s always concerned for him. They’ve been…
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Paul Levitz (script) James Sherman (1), Michael Netzer (2) (pencils) Jack Abel (inks) Elizabeth Safian (colors) Ben Oda (letters) Joe Orlando (editor) The Legion of Super-Heroes had cover title billing with Superboy for over thirty issues before this issue. It’s one officially titled Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes in the indicia. Even more—literally—they’re going…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Davy Jones’ Locker is a straightforward strip, but only because Eisner doesn’t allow it to get bogged down. There’s plenty of potential for it to drift, and Eisner doesn’t want any of it; any tangents would affect the verisimilitude. The strip opens with…
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This special is the result of a letter to All-Star Comics about the origin of the Justice Society. Someone wrote in wondering about the canon, and, after diligently doing some research, DC staffers discovered the 1940 comics didn’t come with an origin issue for the Justice Society. The team was already together in their first…
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The strip takes place in Mexico, where the Spirit foils an attempt by some treasonous Mexican army folks to side with foreign powers to overthrow the government. The foreign powers are presumably German, but Eisner’s still not being specific. But Spirit doesn’t show up until page three, with the strip opening instead on a young…
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Eisner wastes no time getting this strip started—the first panel has Commissioner Dolan asking daughter Ellen what ever happened with her former beau, Homer Creep (né Creap). She hasn’t seen him since he was last in the strip, getting some loving attention from a nurse after Ellen threw him over for the Spirit; she never…
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Writer Paul Levitz makes a twelfth-level intelligence move with this issue; it’s not a great script—Wildcat’s “docks” accent is forever obnoxious—and the stakes are haywire, but the reveal is about the only way All-Star could move forward. Psycho-Pirate has been micro-dosing the Justice Society with negativity for ages. How long? Long enough to cover all…
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The strip’s a simple outing—Spirit helps young copper Dan Gorman, who runs afoul of the hoods on his new beat. There’s a great action sequence with the Spirit and Dan knocking heads; lots of great movement. Otherwise, the most interesting thing about Silk District is how little the Spirit’s in it. He’s around a bit…
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For this issue of “your favorite Golden Age superheroes hate working with each other and helping people in general,” the bickering is once again the main plot. The story opens with Power Girl trying to convince Wildcat and Star-Spangled Kid to investigate a giant hole in the Earth where the supervillains were suspiciously hanging out.…
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Eisner and studio start the new year one big change for the strip—The Spirit now takes place in “Central City,” and has always done so. Then there’s also the approach to the war in Europe; Eisner’s still not using the proper nouns, but this strip’s all about the influx of European refugees fleeing from the…
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Paul Levitz (script) Joe Staton (pencils) Bob Layton (inks) Elizabeth Safian (colors) Joe Orlando (editor) If I take back the things I said about Wally Wood being mid last issue, can he come back retroactively and save me from Joe Staton and Bob Layton? We can keep Paul Levitz finding his sexism towards Power Girl…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) 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…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) For Christmas, the strip does a story without the Spirit. He shows up in the bookends; at the beginning—with some lovely art—Spirit and Ebony discuss Christmas plans. Ebony had been expecting Spirit to go after some known crooks, but instead, Spirit’s going to…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) This strip’s an incredibly (and intentionally) didactic tale. A young prisoner is about to be paroled and plans on joining the Slim Pickens gang. But just before his parole, wouldn’t you know it, he’s got a new cellmate… Slim Pickens. Pickens regrets his…
The Stop Button 