Category: Spirit
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) The entire strip seems to be just a way to do a panel of Spirit with a Tommy gun taking out the mob. It’s a striking visual, and the strip itself is solid, but Gang Warfare is more like Gang Meddling. The strip…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Ebony’s X-Ray Eyes show the problem with caricature, racist and otherwise. At the start of the strip, Ebony gets some of the Spirit’s x-ray juice in his eyes and can see through things. He quickly happens across some crooks who’ve decided to go…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Despite the immediate follow-up to last strip, we still don’t get a big Spirit versus Orang scene. Spirit will track Orang to the ends of the Earth (well, Sumatra), but they never have a real, intellectual or physical showdown. Instead, they’re still in…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Orang is a Frankenstein story from the monster’s perspective. The Spirit is still around, but he doesn’t have anything to do with the actual action of the strip. Instead, it’s the sad tale of Orang, an orangutan, turned into a being with human-level…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Orphans is about the Spirit taking a young orphan, Billy, slumming in the underworld. Spirit comes across Billy and his friend, Barney, in the cemetery smoking cigars and getting sick from it. Barney’s trying to convince Billy to join a gang with him.…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Morger Boys has maybe one bad moment, some missed opportunities, a peculiar finish, and fantastic action. The strip opens twenty-five years ago—so, you know, 1915–with the execution of a notorious murderer, Morger. Mrs. Morger makes their four sons promise to avenge Papa’s death…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) 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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) There’s a lack of consistency to Mr. Midnight. After a gorgeous splash page, featuring the dramatically posed new villain, with the intro text recapping the Spirit’s origin segueing naturally into the exposition’s start, the art seems to go from Eisner’s drafting table to…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Eisner and studio tell one heck of a full story in these eight pages. The splash panel gives the Spirit origin and shows Wildwood Cemetery very close to New York City proper, with an airplane below the cemetery. But the story of The…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Johnny Marston’s splash panel has a short blurb explaining the Spirit’s origin—of note because it’s a strip standard from now on. It’s also the first strip where the Spirit stumbles into an ongoing adventure. Johnny Marston is a blue-blood fallen on hard times.…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) The strip opens with Ebony and a lodge brother in Wildwood Cemetery looking for the Spirit. They find him, appearing out of smoke, and request his assistance–their lodge building seems to be haunted, can Spirit investigate? After some whinging, the Spirit agrees. The…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Zoltan Szenics (letters) The first panel sets up everything in the strip (save formal cast additions)—mobster Grogan on trial for murder, defended by “The Black Queen,” his lawyer, and a side item about the school district running out of money for lunches. Grogan gets off (with…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Zoltan Szenics (letters) The strip opens with Spirit dropping into Ebony’s cab. Literally, from a tree. Spirit then pulls a gun on Ebony, demanding a ride to town, while the passengers—Homer Creap and Ellen Dolan—sit terrified. Ellen’s in town to visit her dad, the regular cast…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Zoltan Szenics (letters) The Spirit ends his first adventure leaving three burning questions unanswered. First, why is he remaining officially dead—we’ll loop back—second, why doesn’t he think everyone will recognize his blue suit, and, third, how does he have those little tombstone calling cards carved already.…
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Today, a full month later than I’d hoped but a couple weeks before I feared, I’m dropping The Comix Section #1, an e-zine of comic book criticism. If you have a good color printer, lots of ink, legal-sized paper, and a powerful stapler, it can also be a paper zine. It was meant to be…
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And there’s a nice happy ending with no resolution to any of the lame character subplots Waid brought into the series to try and give it some semblance of a story. But apparently all Cliff needs is a Zorro mask when he’s not in flight and life’s much easier for the Rocketeer. That idea (from…
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So J. Bone takes over the art. Maybe the intention was always a different artist on each issue, but it doesn’t play particularly well. Bone does very nice homage to Eisner’s character design without being too literal. The story’s a little weak though… definitely a little weak. Waid definitely likes the Spirit and his supporting…
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Waid continues full steam ahead with two characters who probably should have never crossed over. The result is more a Spirit comic guest starring the Rocketeer cast than anything else. Loston Wallace’s heavy on the Eisner influence for the character designs–except Betty to some degree–and, as a result, Cliff feels totally out of place. Peevy…
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Does Mark Waid always write Betty so awful? Not poorly awful, but awful to Cliff awful. It’s inexplicable why Cliff would hang around such a terrible human being… makes him a weak character too. The Spirit and The Rocketeer aren’t exactly a good team-up, but Waid does find a decent connection for Peevy and Dolan–World…
The Stop Button 