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produced mostly unremarkable stories. Political cartoonist, playwright, and children’s
book author Jules Feiff er began his career in Eisner’s studio, producing memorable
stories including one featuring his own strip character, Cliff ord. As Th e Spirit wound
down, the excellent science fi ction comics artist Wally Wood created a series in which
the Spirit traveled to the Moon. By the last years of the feature, Eisner was really no
longer involved. He had turned his attention to educational comics, particularly the
magazine he had created for the U.S. Army, based on his World War II work, P*S, the
Preventive Maintenance Monthly. Th e economics of the section became more diffi cult,
particularly as the price of newsprint rose, and Eisner ended the series in 1952. Th e
growing attack on comic books in the media probably also helped motivate Eisner’s
decision. Interest in the Spirit was revived when Feiff er published his book, Th e Great
Comic Book Heroes, in 1965, giving a prominent place to Eisner’s creation alongside
Superman, Batman, and Captain Marvel. Ironically, nostalgic interest in super-
heroes helped restore Eisner’s anti-superhero to prominence. In addition to reprints
by Kitchen Sink Press of the original comics, the character was resurrected in new
stories published by Kitchen Sink in the mid-1990s, by such writers as Alan Moore
and Neil Gaiman. In 2007, DC picked up the character, fi rst in Jeph Loeb’s o ne - sho t
Batman/Th e Spirit, then in his own ongoing self-titled series. A 2008 fi lm adaptation,
directed by comics writer and artist Frank Miller, was not well received.
Christopher Couch
STAGGER LEE. Writer Derek McCulloch and artist Shepherd Hendrix explore the folk
legend surrounding the infamous African American “bad man” known as Stagger Lee in
this critically-acclaimed graphic novel published by Image Comics in 2006. Th e comic
demystifi es the details behind “Stag” Lee Shelton’s deadly quarrel with Billy Lyons in
a St. Louis saloon on Christmas Eve in 1895 against a turbulent backdrop of racial
segregation and political corruption. Hendrix’s artistic style evokes a distant past fi xed
in sepia-tone panels, the old-fashioned typeface of Western comics, and deep, shadowy
images of violence and racial terror. Th e graphic novel’s primary concern, however, is
the evolution of Stagger Lee’s image through a century of song from every American
era and musical genre. Richly supported by historical and cultural research, Stagger Lee
intertwines the realities of race, nation, and manhood with the portrait of a villain in a
Stetson hat who was born out of the blues.
In moments of subversive levity, Stagger Lee speaks to the reader from the gallows,
laughs about the way singers and songwriters have portrayed him, and acknowledges
the irony of his rebirth as a hippie folk hero, a 1970s pimp, or a gangster thug. Lee
Shelton, however, rarely smiles and is often drawn with sober and refl ective expression.
In more poignant scenes, he off ers advice and hard-won wisdom to his own lawyers.
Th is dialogic strategy poses a kind of cultural and ethical challenge to readers as they
confront not only the tragedy of Billy Lyons’s death, but also other calamities in the
context of black folk life from the late 19th and early 20th century. In addition, Stagger
Lee’s multiple plots fi ctionalize Shelton’s attorney’s tragic struggle with morphine
