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.