<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

The Spirit is a fictional crime fighter that appeared in a long series of comic supplements. Due to its original visual quality and unusual perspectives (what would be called "camera angles" in film) The Spirit is considered by some to be the "Citizen Kane" of what his creator Will Eisner called the "sequential art medium".

Character Origin and History

The Spirit was Denny Colt, a detective (sometimes referred to as a "criminologist") who was presumed dead when Dr. Cobra tried to poison the water supply of Central City (in the earliest stories, it’s New York, but later gets a fictional moniker). He decides to use the opportunity to become the Spirit, a crimefighter, setting up his headquarters under his own grave in Wildwood Cemetery, symbolizing his deceased status. The secret location is known only to his friend Ebony, the closest thing The Spirit comes to having a kid sidekick. Later Denny will tangle with other criminal masterminds, including the Squid and the Octopus. His secret is known to Police Commissioner

Comic book companies like Warren and Kitchen Sink have reprinted Eisner's Spirit supplements for modern readers.

Dolan, who works hand in glove with him. Dolan’s daughter Ellen is the main romantic interest for the Spirit, though they never marry. And the Spirit is always falling into the clutches of the gorgeous femme fatales that Eisner created, who can’t seem to keep their hands, or their lips, off him. P’Gell, an international adventuress whose wealthy husbands keep meeting early demises, is the best-known of a bevy of seductresses that also includes Sand Serif and Skinny Bones, modeled on Lauren Bacall. Eisner created some of the most intelligent and independent women characters in comics in the 1940s: P’Gell was a successful businesswoman, Silk Satin a secret agent and insurance investigator, and Ellen Dolan ran successfully for mayor—over the Spirit’s objections!

Eisner was known for his creative Spirit splash pages.

History and Significance

The Spirit by Will Eisner, which appeared as a newspaper supplement from June 2, 1940 to October 5, 1952, is probably the most important and influential comic book series ever produced in the United States. Eisner began his career in comic books as co-owner of the Eisner and Iger Studio in 1936, where he gained a reputation for both meeting deadlines and maintaining professional standards. When Everett “Busy” Arnold of Quality Comics was approached by a comic strip syndicate to produce a comic book supplement aimed at newspapers whose editors were nervous about the success of newsstand comics, he tapped Eisner who jumped at the chance because he believed he’d get a more mature and diverse audience.

From the first, Eisner believed in comic books as an artistic medium, and he used The Spirit—his personal creation—to explore his ideas. The Spirit supplement, like newsstand comics, included several additional features such as Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic, Intellectual Amos, and others, but Eisner’s The Spirit was the lead and the best.

Eisner also set the model for comic book splash pages, refusing to create a logo for The Spirit, instead using the first page to open the story in media res, often with The Spirit lettered on a newspaper flowing down a gutter, on a poster on a hoarding, or in three dimensions as the wall of a building. Equally important, Eisner made The Spirit an exemplar of the kinds of stories comic books could tell. From gritty urban tales of crime and corruption to moving stories about neighborhood types, Eisner brought to comics the literary qualities of American realist, crime and immigrant fiction from Damon Runyon to Theodore Dreiser to Abraham Cahan. In some of the best stories, the Spirit hands the lead to powerfully moving characters like Gerhard Shnobble, the low-level bank clerk who, when he believes in himself, can fly. Eisner also pioneered the kinds of media satires that would become a staple of Mad Magazine, mocking movies like Lost Weekend and strips like Li'l Abner, and has influenced generations of comic artists. The Spirit is the primary model for The Escapist comics in Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.