SPIRIT, THE 591
Selected Bibliography: Spiegelman, Art. Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a
Young %@&*! New York: Pantheon Books, 2008; Witek, Joseph, ed. Art Spiegelman:
Conversations. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Jennifer D. Ryan
SPIRIT, THE. A comic book feature regularly produced by Will Eisner and his studio be-
tween 1940 and 1952, Th e Spirit was the lead feature in a comic book supplement licensed
to newspapers by the Des Moines Register and Tribune syndicate. During its best periods,
before and for several years after the artist’s military service in World War II, Eisner was
primarily responsible for the feature, writing and drawing, and closely collaborating with
assistants to create the book. Th e eponymous hero of the series is a detective hero, Denny
Colt, who is declared dead after a gas attack by criminal mastermind the Cobra. Colt is
buried at Wildwood Cemetery, which subsequently becomes the Spirit’s headquarters.
Th e Spirit section, usually titled Th e Comic Book Supplement, was created for news-
paper editors worried about the competition from the new medium of the comic book,
particularly after the success of Superman. Eisner never liked superheroes; when he got
the chance to do his own comic book, he gave the Spirit a mask and gloves, but no secret
identity (Denny Colt was dead)
and, feeling that he had an adult,
literate audience, not the children
and lower literacy readers of comic
books, he created mature and emo-
tionally resonant stories. (Th e Spirit
section included backup features,
most notably those featuring the
female detective Lady Luck, created
by Eisner and drawn by Klaus Nor-
dling, which were rather ordinary
action and comedy stories.) Con-
tinuing characters included Police
Commissioner Dolan, who brought
the Spirit in on various cases;
Dolan’s daughter Ellen, romanti-
cally involved with the Spirit; and
the detective’s sidekick, an African
American boy named Ebony White.
After World War II, Eisner realized
that this stereotyped character was
off ensive and, after several attempts
to alter the character, including
various professional roles, he was
dropped from the series.
The Spirit, issue #1, published in 1974. Warren Publishing/
Photofest
