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…

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.…

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.…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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……

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) For a relatively simple strip—the Spirit and Ebony go to investigate a supposedly haunted house—there’s a lot of exposition involved. We get a history of the haunted house—owned by a guy who has disappeared, the bank is about to foreclose, and it’ll go…