The splash page is Ellen Dolan with a black eye, reading The Manly Art of Self Defense. Given Ellen’s last appearance in the strip, it’s a sensational and not unconcerning opener. But it’ll all work out, with Self Defense possibly the best Spirit strip so far.

We open in Wildwood Cemetery, Spirit running into the crypt, begging Ebony to hide him. Ebony wonders what could have the Spirit so scared… why, it’s just Ellen Dolan. She’s told the Spirit she loves him and he’s run away. She decides to catch a criminal to prove herself worthy of his attention.

Except the criminal she goes to catch is dead, and an enforcer is just arriving to find her there. Luckily, the Spirit convinces the thug Ellen’s not the killer, except she then wants to identify herself as the commissioner’s daughter, which would complicate matters.

The Spirit will eventually find the killer, defeat the gangsters, and generally save the day. Ellen will get that black eye. And, then, in the glorious last page, pay the shiner back in full. Along the way, there are multiple action and suspense sequences. The line work is gorgeous, as are all the shadowy panels. Eisner and studio really go for mood this strip and it pays off. They also play with color in the last action scene, setting it in the dark (blue), and it’s a dynamite visual. The Spirit’s got a lot of gangsters to get through before the day’ll be saved. The strip’s seven pages, not including the splash, and three of those pages are superlative. The flow between the panels, the change in angles and distance, the expressions, the fisticuffs… it’s all just fantastic.

But what will put it over is how the strip deals with that first plot line—Spirit and Ellen—things have gotten a little more complicated and there’s not exactly a lot of time to wrap it. Still, Eisner leaves the couple’s relationship in a far more interesting place than it’s ever been before. And without being crappy to Ellen.

Maybe minus her naïveté in going after the criminal at the beginning (the strip has forgotten she’s in school to be a criminal psychologist or whatever).

Anyway.

Manly’s a beautiful piece of work.

It’s a good thing Spirit cleared his name since he needs Dolan’s official recommendation this strip.

FDR has just signed the Selective Training and Service Act—a peacetime draft—and, being a good jingoist, the Spirit wants to sign up. He’s got some conditions, however. He doesn’t want to reveal his identity and he wants to be put to good use (based on his skills).

The Army thinks he’ll make a good espionage agent, especially when the Spirit immediately uncovers a spy in the Army recruitment office. As a try-out for the Army, he roots out the rest of the spies, who call him “Americano” but also have guys named Adolf. Spirit still isn’t willing to be specific about which foreign powers are the baddies.

The action’s pretty straightforward, with Spirit tracking the bad guys back to their hideout and taking them out. He’s got Ebony along for backup, so there’s some comedy action involving Ebony flying the autoplane and seeing trouble on the ground.

Dolan’s particularly pissy about Spirit this strip. Dolan’s jealous about Spirit breaking all the big cases, a bit of character development Eisner’s had on a slow boil for a while now, though it never made sense when Dolan was lowkey protecting the Spirit from the rest of the police force.

The jealousy just leads to banter—and whining—as the Army comes to realize having the Spirit on the payroll will work out, after all.

While it’s an interesting attempt at being timely—though the draft was for twenty-one to forty-five and the Spirit says it’s just until thirty-five, so they needed some copy-editing—it’s also just propaganda. At times well-illustrated propaganda, to be sure, but there’s no oompf to the story.

And Spirit mansplaining the United States being the only place on Earth where a man can live in freedom and peace to Ebony (thankfully in long shot in one of those pretty propaganda panels) is one hell of a flex.

It’s another slighter strip, with the Spirit rescuing a damsel in distress from her ex (the titular Ogre Goran), a psychopath who’s just escaped prison.

The opening is the prison break and it’s relatively solid business. The line work is wanting this strip, but the moody long shots of the action are still effective. The action shifts to the damsel, Mary, discussing Ogre’s prison break with her husband. Since it’s a comic strip, Ogre appears immediately following her statement, shooting her husband dead on the spot and ready to kidnap her. Luckily, Mary dowses him in alcohol and sets him (and the apartment) on fire.

Now, we know Ogre gets away because he gets in the shower and turns on the cold water. Also, there’s a panel (maybe the least discernible in the series to date) of Ogre getting away.

Fast forward a few days to Ebony trying to get the Spirit interested in the case. After initially discounting Ebony’s thoughts on Ogre’s survival (Spirit thought the shower was only running because someone wanted a bath), the Spirit agrees with Ebony’s conclusions—Ogre’s alive!

The Spirit tries to find Mary, only to learn she’s gone away with a man entirely wrapped in bandages. Ogre, post-burns. Thanks to Commissioner Dolan giving him information about Ogre’s old hideouts, Spirit heads (by boat) to an abandoned lighthouse where Ogre’s got to be holding Mary. Dolan heads to the lighthouse, too, wanting to beat the Spirit to the punch.

Spirit’s only cleared his “name” of a murder charge in last week’s strip, so Dolan competing with him doesn’t make much sense. It also doesn’t make sense how Spirit gets to the lighthouse by boat, but then his boat disappears and he can’t take it back to shore at the end of the strip.

Also nonsensical is Ogre having a new wife, who can—presumably, more appropriately—beat up Mary.

We don’t even get to see Spirit and Ogre’s fisticuffs.

Not a lot of pay-off in the strip, though it’s nice to see Ebony developing as a sidekick.

It’s also the dottiest the art’s been in ages. The line work gains slide back here.

The splash page for this strip is a newspaper article about the Daily Press declaring its mission to uncover the Spirit’s identity. The article gives a rundown of (some of) the strip so far, including the Spirit being wanted for murder.

That murder will get discussed a few more times—and its “solving” is so simple one wonders why the Spirit waited so long to get it cleared up—and Eisner and studio clearly did not think all their readers were getting through that newspaper article. Every time it comes up, we get extra exposition on the subject. At one point, the mayor makes Commissioner Dolan tell him all about the murder charge only to remember he was in that scene so knows all the information.

Separate from the Spirit’s quest to clear his name, a gangster decides to impersonate the Spirit (all it takes is a blue suit, after all) to commit crimes and taunt the police. Oh, and the Daily Press reporter—in from the war in Europe, but this story’s bigger—gets help from a cop to uncover Spirit’s secrets.

The three subplots never quite converge—the reporter’s adventures stay mostly distinct except when the plot needs to move along a little—and then Dolan gets the ending. In some ways, it’s an entirely functional strip: the Spirit’s (false) murder charge gets resolved. Along the way there’s some humor at the reporter’s expense (Ebony’s contribution) and a variety of action. Besides the Spirit going around town, the gangster impersonating him is out causing trouble. It all leads to some glorious fisticuffs.

While the strip itself isn’t particularly ambitious, Eisner has several art flexes. The repetitive exposition usually gets some inventive panel composition. Even with the heavy-handed finish (Dolan talking about the Spirit being the dark knight the city deserves), it all works out. The art and narrative choices put the relatively slight story over.

The Spirit tries—very gently—a “whodunit,” with the reader getting as much information as Spirit or the cops; more, actually. The whodunit aspect seems half-baked, similar to the rest of the strip. While The Mastermind avoids any of Spirit’s problematic pitfalls, it’s also barely a story.

The strip opens with a mayoral candidate’s aide dying by poison gas, which the coroner can’t figure out. When the candidate visits Dolan to demand action, the Spirit shows up and the candidate remembers Spirit’s wanted for that murder from months ago. The candidate demands Dolan arrest the Spirit, but obviously the Spirit escapes.

One more murder and then the “Mastermind” is after the Spirit too, hiring a kid to deliver a bomb to him. Spirit will enlist the kid’s help, intentionally putting him in harm’s way at one point, as he unravels the case. Except he’s just operating off that early clue the reader also got, so it’s not a lot of unraveling.

The last few pages have the Spirit getting in a fight with the villain. Lots of empty backgrounds as they punch it out. Even the finish is slight, with Eisner and studio wrapping the whole thing in the last couple panels, including the villain’s motives. Given the strip starts promising a “Mastermind”—standing over a pile of skulls on the splash page—having the villain not just be a done-in-one, but also be far from devious and really just in possession of explosives and poisons the cops can’t identify.

There are some nice establishing shot panels of the city—long shots with good angles and nice line work. The action at the end is fine; it just dawdles through action and hurries through the exposition.

Even as the least impressive of Spirit so far, it’s still rock solid work, technically speaking. Eisner just seems like he’s run out of things to try this one.

Outside that gorgeous splash page, of course.

Despite the (already) ominous title, Oriental Agents’ main cringe-factor doesn’t involve the titular spies. Instead, wow, does The Spirit think very little of Ellen Dolan, and in general, the female of the species.

The strip begins with Ellen dumping Homer Creep (née Creap) because he’s not the Spirit. Homer goes off and gets drunk, gets picked up by a spy, and kidnapped. Ellen’s mortified at the thought of him… finding another woman. Just because she doesn’t want him doesn’t mean she wants some other girl having him.

This generally gross vibe continues throughout the strip, whether when Ellen tries to tag along with the Spirit to investigate or when she gets to the resolution and finds no one cares about her feminine wiles.

The spies—from the “Asiatic Embassy”—kidnapped Homer to hypnotize him and get him to kill an industrialist. Despite them being the title characters, until the Spirit arrives at their lair—a remote castle—they’re barely around. Most of the time is spent with Ellen, Homer, or the Spirit. Dolan’s got a little time fretting over Ellen’s romantic decisions and expositing about Homer being a murderer (he’s not the first guy they’ve hypnotized into murder). Ebony’s also around for a few panels; he was out doing investigating for the Spirit, who isn’t as disinterested in the case as he conveys to Ellen. He just doesn’t want to be cleaning up her love life.

Once it’s clear their cases are entwined, Spirit will relent and take Ellen along in his pursuit. That pursuit will involve the Spirit putting on a disguise. The disguise is on his face: muss to make him look old and a ruffled hat. Otherwise he does not change his blue suit. No one can recognize him with that face makeup, despite him wearing the same suit as the scene before.

It’s an okay strip, certainly the least in a while. While the Oriental aspects of the story seem like they should be in the spotlight, they’re very mild. Ellen being an unlikable, shallow harpy, however, is a problem. Especially since the strip itself seems to dislike her.

Big “he-man woman haters club” energy here.