Element of Time starts as a mad scientist strip and fairly quickly becomes a “thug of the week” strip. Just as Professor Corda completes his life’s work to condense time into a physical form–in this case, a liquid–Tommy Moran decides to plug Nick Ennis for snitching. Moran’s got a girlfriend who wants him to reconsider and think about their future together, but toxic masculinity; no one snitches on Tommy Moran.

Tommy and the Professor happen across one another in a park, and Tommy can’t turn down the scientist’s offer of $5,000 to be the first liquid time test subject. It’s unclear how Professor Corda knew the liquid should be injected and not consumed; not to mention whether or not he can be certain time is a nonlethal element.

At this point, the strip leans heavily into stylization: Tommy sees his immediate future—he goes and kills the snitch, but then the Spirit catches up with him. They then have a cat-and-mouse fight on some cliffs, though the visual stylization clashes with the setting having any particular import. The visuals are all about color and unbound dimension, not fisticuff action. They convey Tommy Moran being unstuck in time, and nothing looks quite right.

So it’s a morality tale, and a heavy-handed one. Spirit has gotten downright lefty with Spirit convincing Dolan criminals can be rehabilitated but Tommy’s only going to learn the lesson if he just happens to be seeing a possible future. He’s not interesting, much less sympathetic. Dumb and dumber luck; the strip’s final reveal strips Tommy of even more agency in his rehabilitation. And Eisner and studio know it’s the same old story, only without a natural happy ending, so they unravel the tale with the colorful panels and leverage the visuals more than the narrative.

And instead of doing an elaborate fisticuff sequence or some other obvious distinct gag (there was the strip they did as a song about a fight), they’re trying something with the art. It’s fine. It’s not unsuccessful, just not at all exciting, especially since the finish—with the actual Spirit’s appearance—sends it all out on an inert, truncated note.

The strip has a lot of different pieces, cohesive thanks to Eisner and studio, but still clashing with each other. Art can cover for a clunky narrative; it can only do so much.

From the splash page, Wanted Dead or Alive promises a lot and delivers very little. Spirit is indeed wanted, and apparently dead or alive, but the police manhunts never give him the slightest trouble. Not even when he breaks into the police station and kidnaps Dolan and the Mayor. Spirit’s very cocky this strip, and oddly self-destructive.

He’s wanted because he’s broken a murder suspect out of jail. The murdered is a foreign general who is in exile in the United States because the Nazis took over his country. The cops found the suspect going through the general’s papers. Spirit knows the general might have Nazi agents after him—the general was active in the resistance even in exile—and doesn’t think his execution by firing squad suggests a lone gunman. The reader gets all these details after Spirit has kidnapped Dolan and the Mayor (which comes after Ellen has a panel bitching out her dad for putting out the APB on Spirit). Spirit presents these details at the murder scene, which has no signs of ongoing police investigation, even though Spirit broke the suspect out before Dolan could even question him.

We find out the “not talking to Dolan yet” detail later, after the suspect slugs Ebony (who’s babysitting him) and heads out to try to get the Commissioner to believe him about the Nazi agents. But it wouldn’t matter because Dolan agrees with Spirit’s assessment after a reenactment at the crime scene, where the Spirit repeatedly humiliates the Mayor. Now, the Mayor has been a stuffed-shirt and looked the other way at significant corruption, but Spirit’s really going for it this strip. The Mayor tells Dolan to up the manhunt and charges because of the whole humiliation thing. For the first third of Wanted, it seems significant.

It is not significant. It goes away entirely because the suspect runs into Ellen at the police station before he can talk to Dolan, so they can go off trying to find the Spirit. Except the Nazis have captured the Spirit, who came up with a plan to get captured and tortured until they felt comfortable enough talking in front of him, all so he could discover their actual hideout.

Certainly this actual hideout will be important to the narrative and host a fantastic finale showdown between Spirit and the Nazi scum.

Or not.

Lots of “or nots” this strip. Eisner and studio get ideas every page or two, but they burn through them quickly and need something else. Nothing goes anywhere. And while I’ve been mentioning the Nazi angle a bunch, it’s kind of not important enough. Dolan and the Mayor certainly haven’t been paying attention to the Spirit comic strip each week, which would have warned them about the various dangers from the Axis powers, even in the relative security of Central City. Except, of course, Ellen went to Occupied France on an adventure, and the Mayor and Dolan literally just had bad guys take advantage of the city during air raid drills.

Eisner and studio keep it together—there’s some solid fisticuffs and Spirit’s patriotic swagger (even during torture) is affable—but there’s some warping in the verisimilitude. Wanted’s too full of hot air, narratively speaking, and Eisner never finds anything substantial. Never even tries.

Pink Perkins brings back the two kid characters—revealed here to be the Tidewater children–who previously appeared in the “Hitler Goes Good” strip. They don’t get first names here; the family name matters because their dad is initially in trouble. He runs the Tidewater grocery chain, and the mob is shaking him down for protection money. It just happens the mobsters in the Spirit comic strip use similar threats as the mobsters in the Gumshoe Gus comic strip the kids read. And that comic strip is created by one Pink Perkins. He works at the Daily Beagle. So many names, all of them great, some of them eerily prescient for future developments in the comic book industry.

The kids go see Pink Perkins because Gus is a vicious killer of bad guys, and they think Pink writes Gus from experience. Gus also apparently beats his witnesses within an inch of their lives, which also contributes to a less-than-heroic ideal. Certainly less heroic than the Spirit, who will figure into the story eventually, and Commissioner Dolan, who Eisner and the studio also manage to fit in. The kids go see Perkins, leaving a note for their dad to explain, which leads Dad to think Perkins is a big tough guy, too; except the mobsters snatch the kids, which Spirit somehow finds out about and sets about rescuing them.

Meanwhile, the kids–well, one of them, the comic-relief one (who bites people) doesn’t talk—regal their kidnappers with tales of Gumshoe Gus’s toughness. And, being a superstitious, cowardly lot, the criminals believe the kid about Perkins’s demeanor. Now, Eisner and studio’s punchline for Perkins is he’s a risible scaredy-cat. It’s not a flattering characterization. Eisner gets some of the “life imitates art” meta, but entirely misses how Pink Perkins could be the obvious stand-in for the creator of The Spirit.

The mobsters go after Pink Perkins, while Dolan and Spirit both figure out the mobsters’ kidnapping scheme, down to where they’re holding the kids. At that point, with some peculiar exceptions, the strip plays like an early “Spirit vs. the mob” entry; they’ve even had one with a fight at a rural cabin before, though this time there’s a fainted man prop for the fisticuffs to move around.

There are good comedy beats thanks to the kids, and the strip generally survives how poorly it treats Pink. The art’s solid without trying for anything special; lots of familiar fight choreography, and limited locations. It’s all played for the humor, with Eisner treating the fisticuffs—at least until the very end (and even then not for long)—like a combination of added value and mandatory inclusion. Like the Tidewater kids aren’t enough to carry a strip on their own, Spirit needs to sock some thug into the side of the panel.

Overall, mostly successful. In some ways, a more traditional Spirit, but only since the “war’s almost on” Spirit doesn’t have as many entries. Yet.

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.

Like last week, Stolen Squad Cars brings back another recurring Spirit character to involve them in war-related intrigue. This strip it’s Squire Samson, a corrupt political operator who’s been a thorn in Commissioner Dolan’s side for ages. Last time the Squire appeared, Spirit outed him as a criminal. Unfortunately, the Women’s Civic Club—and its twenty thousand voting members—didn’t read the Spirit that week; they still think the Squire’s a saint, which will eventually be very important, but not at the start.

The strip begins with Dolan and the police department doing a city-wide blackout drill. It’s the first time Central City’s had to do it and Dolan wants to get it right. He’ll be incredibly upset when ten of his squad cars are, well, Stolen. Except the stolen cop cars aren’t a plot point for a few pages, because Spirit and Ebony have a gadget-testing plot to get Spirit involved with the case early (only to inexplicably ignore it).

Spirit’s figured out a way to create a ghostly glow around himself and have it dissipate as black smoke above, meaning he can walk around in blackout conditions and still be seen. It doesn’t seem like it’d particularly help Spirit see in the dark, since he’s only lighting the area immediately around his body. It scares the crap out of at least one beat cop before Spirit calls it a success and heads home.

On the way, Ebony notices ten police cars driving in a peculiar procession and headed towards a single house, but Spirit’s not interested. He wants to go home. We never find out why, though it’s definitely not to listen to jitterbug music, which Ebony had been enjoying earlier. Spirit’s got no time for that kind of music. The strip’s got a lot of dialogue in its scenes, with Eisner and studio padding it out a little. There’s not even an emphasis on the (eventual) fisticuffs because the strip’s got to get along to the next dialogue-driven beat.

Anyway.

The next morning the newspapers are demanding an explanation for Dolan’s incompetence in losing the cop cars. The mayor’s there, and the Squire’s there. Spirit disguises himself and poses as Dolan’s new secretary, just in time to witness the mayor appointing the Squire as Dolan’s assistant. Corrupt gangster or not, the Squire’s got those twenty thousand votes, and the mayor’s going to make them happy. It does not make Dolan happy.

The Spirit’s got a plan, however; they can make sure the Squire’s exposed as a crook. We get some plan details, but then some are for the plot twists, but they also enable the one fisticuffs scene. The glowing doesn’t come back. And it’s never clear what’s part of Spirit’s plan and what Dolan’s doing on his own. The effect’s the same, it’s just herky-jerky with what receives abundant exposition and what doesn’t.

The finish doesn’t even involve the Spirit, who wraps up one part of the case then vanishes until the last panel for a postscript.

It’s an all right strip; a little rambling. Lots of ideas kicking around all at once; instead of filling them out, Eisner introduces them, maybe even executes on them (the glowing bit), then moves on directly.

Agent 24 is an espionage thriller; Spirit goes over to occupied France on an impromptu rescue mission—one with many surprises in store.

The strip itself sets a few precedents, including the first direct use of Germans as Spirit fisticuffs villains. A couple strips ago, Eisner and studio did a fable about Hitler finding his humanity and, while the Germans were villains there, Spirit didn’t interact with them the same way. It’s no longer vague European baddies; it’s Nazis with German phonetic dialect dialogue.

Though not too much of it, because the Nazis aren’t the main foil in Spirit’s adventure, which involves two love interests, a newborn babe, and an unexpected sea voyage. The first love interest is Ellen, who’s headed to England to help out in the war effort. She’s going to drive ambulances. Her father disapproves.

The Spirit doesn’t find out about Ellen’s plans (and trip) until he runs into her aboard ship. He’s there after trying to save a good spy from some bad spies. The good spy gives Spirit the Agent 24 rescue mission.

Except Ellen and Spirit can’t just get to England (or occupied France) without incident; they’ve got numerous hurdles to jump over, most done in summary, with one major exception. The strip slows down to emphasize the destruction and loss of life the Nazis are causing. Spirit’s a newspaper comic, read before and after news of real sinking ships, concerns of real sabotage, and so on.

So when Ellen and Spirit get captured, putting Ellen in a spot to engineer their escape (thanks to Spirit’s reluctant but unfailing devotion), it’s also a spot for expanding the scope of the story. Ellen and Spirit—and the other love interest (no spoilers)–exist separate from the war. Ellen and the other love interest, until this strip, have existed entirely separate from one another; now the strip’s able to bring them together with the war. The war supersedes The Spirit, and Eisner concentrates on the human factor.

Of course, these human factors can only exist because of the war. All the secrets, whispers, and lies mix and create this definitely peculiar outing. Spirit’s knocked out for a bunch of it, too. It’d be more of an Ellen strip if it weren’t for the whole Agent 24 angle; actually, no… Ellen gets very involved with the Agent; she’s just sharing space with the other love interest at that point.

And since there’s only so much story for the end of the strip, Eisner shifts gears again to examine how Spirit feels about capable women.

Art-wise, it’s rote. The action’s all well-choreographed, and the panels flow, but the action’s just for the narrative; no exuberance. A few rather nicely composed panels, even if the detail work isn’t there. Also, the humor—limited but present—comes across well.

It’s not exactly a war comic, but it’s closer than Spirit’s gotten before. Maybe a war espionage comic. Something along those lines. Somewhat more notable for its precedents than its content.

Balkan Ball is an Ebony strip, which means there’s lots of racist caricature to negotiate, amplified by Ebony getting a sidekick, Pierpont, who is also visualized in racist caricature. Scarlett appears, too. So it’s three… well, it’s actually more, but only for what ought to be a delightful sight gag. As usual, Ebony’s strengths as a character work against the weaponizing visualization. Last big Ebony adventure: it was about him being a good detective on his own, even though others thought he wouldn’t be, so there was a very obvious disconnect. Balkan’s a little less disconnected as Ebony is more comfortable in his crimefighting abilities.

After the splash page, which sets it up as an Ebony (and Pierpont) strip, we get Spirit ditching Ebony to go to a fancy ball and keep an eye on the jewels. It’s for the war effort. So Spirit gives Ebony the car for the night (no, sir, the other car). Spirit then goes to pick up Ellen Dolan to take to the fancy ball, but the reader learns she’s already made a date with a prince. Ellen says there are all sorts of royalty around with the war on. Commissioner Dolan’s not particularly thrilled she’s dating a prince (suggesting loose moral behavior amongst Europe’s royalty). When Spirit gets there, Ellen tells him off and sends him out before breaking into tears at him finally picking her.

Not great Ellen writing.

Spirit then runs into the prince on the street—well, bumps—and is pretty sure he’s a professional thief, not an exiled royal. But Spirit lets it go and heads to the ball.

Meanwhile, Ebony goes to pick up Scarlett to take her to the movies, but she saddles him with her cousin, Pierpont, who’s a stereotypical troublemaking kid. Scarlett then runs out, and Ebony’s stuck. Worse, Pierpont is holding him a little hostage, threatening to badmouth Ebony to Scarlett. Instead of the movies, they go to bingo, where it turns out Pierpont’s a wunderkind at selecting the right bingo card.

Except they then get held up by some thugs, who they take out in short order—Ebony’s a crimefighter with a flying car, don’t forget—and those thugs are part of a plan to take out the Balkan Ball, bringing the threads together.

The narrative is thorough and precise. Eisner and studio hit all the points to build the story along, once again frustrating in what should be a cool strip for a little Black kid to be reading in summer 1941 instead of some traumatizing shit. Ebony and Pierpont are instrumental in foiling the heist, which will also get Ellen and Spirit into some close quarters; angry ones, too.

And the finish is well-executed. Good art on the Spirit’s relatively quick resolve with Ellen; probably the horniest Eisner and studio have gotten about this pairing. Spirit’s had some other hot encounters, but I don’t think any with Ellen. It’s brief, though. And there are some not-ideal power dynamics.

Then Ebony gets a good finish, too. Except they draw it racist, so there’s a shitty element to it.

Technically, stellar narrative pacing and plotting. Some of the other stuff… ick.

The Tale of the Dictator’s Reform is not Spirit’s biggest creative swing to date, but the strip is definitely the wildest. Hitler coming to the United States on a fact-finding mission—only to have a change of heart thanks to Spirit’s intervention—will forever be singular. Eisner and studio know the strip won’t age well, with the ending acknowledging certain inevitables, but it’s also a strip from summer 1941. It’s five months before Pearl Harbor, it’s years before learning the extent of the Holocaust; it’s incredibly naive, but earnestly so.

The splash page is a lengthy expository paragraph (with humorous little illustrations) explaining Hitler—who is unnamed because, remember, at this point, the United States still had diplomatic relations with Germany—wants to see what’s going on in the United States and help people see they should be on his side. Again, it’s earnestly done, so it’s not like Eisner knew the Nazis got a bunch of their ideas from the United States, its politicians, and its citizenry. Instead, Hitler’s going to find out no one here likes him, fascism, or any of the hate he’s selling.

Good thing Hitler went to Central City instead of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The strip takes its subject from a council of patriotic hoboes to a couple little kids getting the better of him. Dolan’s going to hear about the visit from the kids’ father and will sound an alarm. By that time, Hitler’s found his way to Wildwood Cemetery, where Spirit hosts him for some light exposition and lighter debating. It doesn’t take much for Hitler to see the error of his ways, just some good, plain talk from the Spirit.

The final page of the strip has Eisner resetting the stage, but there’s also some follow-up to the police’s search. Sight gags with Hitler were probably a lot funnier in summer 1941 than later, but they’re still a flex at that point. As a comic strip, The Spirit has always been produced in a world with Nazi Germany; it just took a while to acknowledge it in the story content, with Spirit only relatively recently getting into the spy game. And they’re still cagey about proper nouns—the “Dictator” comes from the country of Europe in the strip… Eisner and studio had their reasons, but those reasons might be too constraining for their ambitions here.

Technically, there’s not a lot going on with the strip’s execution. Some good composition choices, the kids in the park are funny, but the strip fails in its didactic efforts. It’s thin.

Though, right on for them running with it. Eisner and studio probably didn’t know the extent of Nazi sympathy in the United States at the time, but they knew some of it, and they delivered a definite condemnation.

Weird strip.

Dusk and Twilight is, no pun, a dark strip. The splash page introduces us to Dusk, who may look like he’s in a carnival act, but he’s actually a murderer with hands of steel and a gentle disposition. We learn these two details on the second page, when he goes to a famous brain surgeon’s house, asks the little daughter to show him into the dad’s office, strangles the dad, pats the daughter on the head, and strolls away slowly enough to make sure he gets to hear the daughter find the body.

It’s creepy. It’s the youngest kid ever in danger in The Spirit; it’s the strip’s first psychopathic-killer protagonist of this nature; and it’s not even the biggest swing in the strip. Once Dusk is done delighting in the screams of a little girl, he goes on a jaunt through a nearby cemetery. It just happens to be Wildwood Cemetery, where Spirit and Ebony are returning home after their latest adventure. Ebony’s a little nonplussed about it, prompting Spirit to ask why he’s not more excited about catching killers.

Ebony looks directly at the reader and asks how he’s supposed to be so invested in human life when Europeans are being murdered by the thousands, and no one in the United States seems to give a shit. After a “right on” from Spirit, Dusk happens across the duo and starts thinking about killing at least one of them. Spirit spots something off about this particular guest star, and they take a walk, leaving Ebony to wait.

Dusk will take Spirit to his underground lair and introduce him to his wife, Twilight, who Dusk has kidnapped and either kept primal or made primal. Twilight’s always trying to kill Dusk with throwing knives, but she’s got terrible depth perception. She’ll later prove perfectly good slashing with her knives, but only when Spirit’s trying not to hit another female guest star in the strip.

At this point, Dusk becomes less scary and a tad more cartoonish. Spirit has had savage wild women before; it’s had mad scientists who make mutant henchmen to fight Spirit. Even after an interlude at the Central City police department, so Dolan can get on the case, and the briefing talks about the little girl finding the dad’s body, Dusk seems a little more for a smile than a scare. Not a laugh, he’s too dangerous to be funny, but he’s got personality. Especially once he discovers Spirit isn’t the kindred… spirit (sorry), he had hoped.

The art is sometimes a little more Expressionist in the establishing shots than usual, lots of curling visuals, including Dusk’s wiry frame. But the art’s also rather hurried. Lots goes on with varying levels of detail; figure detail, character detail, yes; background detail, detailed scenery, no. Again, it’s hurried. And a lot of the strip’s visual pacing relies on sight gags, which makes it feel more like a traditional comic strip at times–panel, panel, punchline, and so on.

It’s a solid Spirit. Outside the opening macabre (and Ebony’s plea), it’s not particularly distinct (well, Spirit does get really upset about having to fight another lady, as I said), just a perfectly fine strip.

Five Passengers opens on a moody airstrip with an unlikely cast. A local schoolteacher’s favorite assignment is to bring the youngsters to watch the flight to Washington D.C. Each student gets to pick one of the passengers they’re watching board and write a fictional biography of the person. Given the strip will eventually involve foreign agents and other ill-intentioned folk, it’s strange no one ever thinks the schoolteacher’s off. The pilots even comment on the teacher and his class; it’s a regular field trip.

The school field trip is just a bookending device, however, and the action quickly gets underway with the incredible events aboard the airplane once it is in flight. There’s a mobster turned FBI informant on the plane, and the only way the mob can get him is to take him out on the plane, then for the hitman to parachute. A concerned older passenger observes, dressed entirely in blue, but can’t possibly be Spirit in disguise because he’s not just wearing glasses, he’s also got an old man white hair tuft beard.

It’s the Spirit, of course, who’s there on an unrelated case. Also, on board on an unrelated case is that foreign agent, who aids the mob hitman in his escape before turning to his own, now easily attainable, business. So everyone’s got their own agenda, there’s the potential for numerous double-crosses, and as long as the knocked out flight attendant doesn’t roll out of the plane, every Passenger will have either died or killed another passenger.

Then there’s a surprise after all that intrigue—which already will have involved parachutes, multiple disguise reveals, and a possible logic error in the narration text—but it’s not enough for Eisner; there’s got to be a comeback reveal. Then the bookend finish. Then something appropriately pro-British, because there’s a war on and everything.

Even the reveal at the end is basically just a cameo guest appearance, with some entirely functional dialogue to pass the time. Eisner and studio turn everything up to eleven with this strip—the opening has the class on the field trip to appeal to same-age readers, followed by almost immediate intrigue, violent mob action, and airplane peril. It’s a showcase of extremes, except there’s minimal Spirit fisticuffs. It’s not a Spirit action showcase, it’s a soft pilot for Spy Spirit’s Mystery of the Week. And it’s interesting to see Eisner and studio flex with narrative promises over visual ones. The strip’s a very accessible Spirit, especially in a newspaper full of war news.

The art’s entirely solid, with some moody panels but no real standouts. The timing is excellent, with Passengers using comedic comic strip timing in an intrigue setting and such. The strip’s successful; it just lacks any particular oomph, which is a choice given the guest star’s identity.