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 more than he’s active—in one of his disguises (this one much better than his previous efforts, which usually just had him putting on a pair of glasses)—but Eisner takes a more global view of the story. It opens with Dan and his mom, Mom full of pride, and a local thug showing up to pay him off.

From there, the strip shows the hoods framing Dan to get away with their latest robbery, leading to his immediate dismissal, and the Spirit interceding because he witnessed the frame-up.

In order to be a witness (including showing up at the police station to give a witness statement), Spirit had to be hanging around the Silk District. Why didn’t he just foil the robbery or track the robbers himself? Very unclear. Other than there needed to be a “help your neighbor” message to the strip.

While Spirit and Dan are planning to apprehend the robbers and clear Dan’s name, Commissioner Dolan is contending with the shady Squire Sampson. Sampson’s a recurring character, the legit front for numerous rackets around Central City; Dolan can’t prove anything, however, so he has to put up with it. Spirit, on the other hand, takes multiple opportunities to manipulate Sampson—positioning the strip’s narrative dominos.

The Sampson angle adds approximately a page to the strip, which struggles to make it to the eight pages (minus one for the lovely, spoiler-y splash page). The final page of the strip has a “ladies will talk” trope, and then Spirit providing a brief recap of his adventure to Ebony. There’s also a lot of rumbling from Dolan about how he’s just got to solve the case before the Spirit.

All very solid, with nothing distinct about it. Maybe the Spirit’s disguise is supposed to be doing more. The disguise does have certain elaborate aspects to it—and they make the Spirit uncomfortable—but they never figure into the narrative.

Again, at least it’s not just a pair of spectacles.

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 Nazis.

The strip opens introducing the title villain and how immigrants from a particular country are terrified of The Black Bow. Fortuitously, some of these immigrants bury the Bow’s latest victim in a desolate corner of Wildwood Cemetery, where Spirit’s curious about the gaggle of old men doing an illicit burial. So he eavesdrops.

There’s some wild present action going on this time; the inciting incident happens in October (of the previous year), then the Spirit and Ebony (who’s just around for this scene) cook up a scheme to investigate the mysterious burial. Presumably, other strips were happening during this investigation, which involves accent work, disguises, and home rentals.

While Spirit sets himself up as a sitting duck for the Black Bow, another victim literally stumbles into Commissioner Dolan’s arms, asking for help. Dolan sees it as an excellent opportunity to get one over on the Spirit and solve the case before Spirit even knows what’s happening.

Of course, by that time, Spirit is in the middle of spirited (no pun) fisticuffs with the Black Bow; the two acrobatic adversaries even banter at one another through the fight scene.

It’s a good action strip. The movement during the chase (the fight starts inside an abandoned mansion, moves to its exterior, ends in its basement) is phenomenal. The banter’s solid. The patriotism is a tad much. These European immigrants are just too embarrassed to go to the cops about their problem, which they consider imported: the Black Bow’s their country’s historical extorting murderous archer. We get a little back story on that setup, but not enough. Especially not for a villain who keeps up with Spirit so much.

1941’s off nicely to the races; we shall see if the strip continues to find ways to incorporate Spirit into current events-related adventures.

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 investigate themselves because gunboats will scare off the other bad guys. So they send the Spirit, who meticulously plots his jump point from the military plane, but fails to expect armed sentries.

By this time in the war, Italy had joined on the Axis side. Eisner and studio had plenty of possible ways to go with the enemy forces. They went with “Nargoff,” which is neither German nor Italian. According to the Internet, it’s either Norwegian or Jewish. And Germany had been occupying Norway for months at this point. Maybe he’s Norwegian; Nargoff, the enemy leader.

He’s also an author, who’s written a book about world politics with gems about larger countries having the right by size to take smaller ones. Spirit helps Nargoff understand that system on a personal level later in the strip.

First, Spirit’s got to disrupt the submarine fuelingS station, which he’s able to do rather conveniently because it’s made out of wood—and wood burns.

The strip goes through three distinct sets of stakes in its eight pages. The Spirit’s got to investigate and resolve the possible fueling station. Then the stakes move to Nargoff having to survive that resolution. And then there’s Nargoff having to survive, well, the Spirit.

When the Spirit’s adversaries die, they rarely do so with the Spirit directly involved. In many cases, he may not even be present. And he generally turns the crooks in alive. So despite the lively, colorful art—lots of blues—and the energy to the action, the strip’s third act is dark. The Spirit’s solution for the situation is just a little unexpected given his… amiable vibe.

But, it’s not wrong about how you deal with fascists.

The strip’s got lumps and bumps; also, some rather solid moments. Spirit’s first mission as agent could’ve gone a lot worse.

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 leave it up to the “Spirit of Christmas.”

The action cuts to those known crooks, who’ve decided to rob a bank. It’s Christmas Eve, people are busy, and the bank’s just gotten a ten thousand dollar deposit (from the Spirit, actually); perfect night for a heist.

They even dress up as Santas to pull it in the holiday spirit.

The robbery itself goes swell, but when the crooked Saint Nicks are on their way out of town, they slow to listen to the tranquil sound of Christmas carols from a nearby church. Worse, the kindly priest comes out and invites them in—after all, they’ve spent their whole day working with the needy or whatnot.

After some consternation, the crooks agree to attend, and get a dose of the true meaning of Christmas. In addition to the church having a peaceful vibe, their fellow attendees show them kindness, which softens our crooked Santas a little. They just get softer when they hear the money they stole was going to get needy orphans their first ever Christmas presents (and Christmas dinners).

The crooked Krises Kringle scurry out, the guilt too much.

Their individual (and, eventually, joint) resolutions will get the strip to its appropriate Christmas vibes, with the Spirit and friends returning for the finish. They’re still not involved in the case—they’re just reading about it in the paper on Christmas morning. It’s interesting to see who makes the regular cast at the Dolan house—Dolan, Ellen, Spirit, Ebony, and Finnegan, one of Dolan’s coppers (who I’m pretty sure at least once tried to railroad Spirit). However, Finnegan’s just there as a gag, not participating in the revelry.

It’s a good strip. Lots of dotty inking but not too severe. Little cloying but it’s Christmas, after all. It’s the time of miracles. And spirits.

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 successful life of crime. To convince the kid crime doesn’t pay, he gives his life story, starting with robbing a grocery warehouse and selling the produce on the street. That robbery includes killing the grocery store owner (who Slim worked for), which proves rather crucial later in Slim’s tale.

Then we get a recounting of Slim’s rise to power. Whenever he finds someone in his way, he just knocks them off and keeps knocking them off until he’s a-number one. Commissioner Dolan, the Mayor, and the Spirit are the only people he can’t bribe or kill.

When the Spirit finally comes knocking, looking for evidence to lock up Slim, everything starts going wrong. Not for the reader, who gets the treat of Spirit taking out Slim’s entire office of thugs in a beautifully rendered sequence. This strip’s got a bit too much of the dotty inks (with some very nice line work, too), but that page where the Spirit two-fists his way through the gangsters is sublime.

Minus some occasional Spirit observations, the strip sticks with Slim. We don’t follow the Spirit chasing him, but Slim running from the Spirit. He finds himself in an utterly contrived situation, and it convinces him he should’ve just stayed straight and not become a crook.

After Slim finishes telling his story, the postscript drives home the “crime doesn’t pay” message, just in case any readers missed it the other three times.

It’s a decent enough strip. The didacticism isn’t a surprise (or even particularly cloying) and the way Eisner constructs the narrative, the various reveals work well enough.

The dotty inking hurts some pages worse than others, but never enough to drag it down.

Spirit’s found a very reasonable minimum level. Even when the story’s a little simple, there’s always enough creativity in the art—if not the narrative—to keep things running well enough.

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 to a gangster who wants to use it as a gambling den (and general purpose hideout), but the Spirit wants the state old folks’ home to get it.

About halfway through the strip, we’ll get some more exposition about the house, explaining what happened to it before the foreclosure rumblings. A few pages later, we’ll get even more. For all that exposition, however, there are still several unanswered questions in the strip… including why the gangster wanted the house (other than its remote location) and why he never took a look at it.

The “haunting” elements seem to be permanent installations, so any estate agent and prospective buyer would see them.

But, no, it’s just Spirit and Ebony bantering on the way there, then Ebony getting scared by everything and Spirit realizing there’s something else going on. Even as there end up being multiple fisticuffs opponents, and a handful of gags related to haunting the house, the strip finishes feeling more than a little slight. The stakes at the beginning—Spirit wanting to keep the house from the gangster—change in the middle, then change before the end, then are different once again in the last few panels. It’s like Eisner and studio had the idea for a setting, but not really what would go on in it.

Especially considering they reuse actual (and somewhat nonsensical) set pieces.

It’s still a perfectly okay strip, with Ebony around for the banter and some slapstick. The haunted house stuff proves fake reasonably quickly, so not a lot of Spirit in “supernatural” situations, but some nice, shadowy panels for sure. Even if the art’s never quite as tight as it could be.

Again, Spirit has raised the bar so much technically, even slighter strips are fine outings.