Broken Frontier

When The Spirit first hit newsstands on June 2, 1940, he did not appear in comic book form. He appeared as part of a full color supplement in the Sunday papers. It was a case of comic books coming full circle, as they were created as a way to reprint newspaper comic strips. Now, thanks to their great popularity, newspaper syndicates wanted a comic book for their papers.

23 year-old Will Eisner was called on to create this new supplement. Eisner, already a veteran of the comics biz, was part of the Eisner & Iger Studio, a group of artists who comic companies employed to provide content for their comics. Eisner worked for a number of companies this way—including Fox Comics, Fiction House, and Quality Comics, where Eisner had co-created the Doll Man and Uncle Sam characters.

It was through Quality’s owner, Everett M. “Busy” Arnold that Eisner got in contact with the newspaper syndicates. Arnold recommended him for the job of creating the new comic book insert, knowing that Eisner could handle the deadline of creating a seven-page story each week. In an unprecedented move, Eisner constructed a contract with Arnold stating that he owned the rights to the characters created for the supplement.

Tired of working on superheroes, Eisner decided to create something totally different than what was seen in comics up to that point. Instead of a cape and spandex, Eisner dressed the Spirit in a blue business suit, a fedora, and gloves. The only nod to the super-hero costume, included at the request of the syndicates, was a small domino mask.

The Spirit was Denny Colt, a police detective who seemed to have killed in the line of duty. However, he survived the attack. Allowing people to believe that Denny Colt was dead, he adopted the new identity of the Spirit, deciding to fight crime as a vigilante.

The overall concept of The Spirit let Eisner tell a wide variety of stories about the character. The hero was just as home in crime drama as he was in horror, in comedy as he was in love stories. This adaptability proved to make the Spirit a success. The supplement ran each week in Sunday newspapers for 12 years and 645 installments, ending in 1952.

Eisner broke boundaries not only in what a comic character could be and the stories that could be told in the format, but artistically as well. He is widely respected for his storytelling abilities, and his art on The Spirit was decades ahead of its time. His use of shadow, inventive panel arrangements and fluidity in the way he portrayed motion served as an inspiration for several generations of comic creators to follow.

Even though The Spirit primarily appeared in newspapers, he made his presence known in comic books as well. Quality Comics reprinted the supplements in comic book form, first in their Police Comics series, then in a Spirit comic book from 1944 to 1950. Fiction House took over the task of reprinting the work in five issues between 1952 and 1954.

The reprints continued in 1966 and 1967, when Harvey Comics came out with two, oversized reprint comics, each featuring all-new material from Eisner. The stories were also reprinted in magazine form by Warren Publishing from 1974 to 1976 before the series was taken over by Kitchen Sink in 1977. Kitchen Sink published the magazine until 1983 when the company changed the format to more of a comic book style which lasted until 1992. 

In 2000, DC Comics took over reprinting the original Spirit stories in their hardcover Archive line. To date, 19 volumes have been published, reprinting these stories chronologically in a sturdier, longer-lasting format. This arrangement opened a line of communication between Eisner and DC and exposed the character to modern audiences—both played a part in the new Spirit series.

       

Denis Kitchen, friend of Eisner, owner of the now defunct Kitchen Sink and the person who spearheaded the Archive reprints, began talking to the DC head honchos and brought up the possibility of a new Spirit ongoing. He was looking for a way to further introduce the 66 year-old character to modern audiences. With Eisner’s approval (the ball got rolling on the project before the creator’s death on January 3, 2005), DC agreed. Creator Darwyn Cooke was tapped to take the reigns on the new Spirit comic.

To say that Cooke has big shoes to fill would be an understatement. After all, he is taking over from a master of the comic form on his most famous creation. But, of all the creators working today, Cooke might be the perfect person to carry on the Spirit legacy. His work has a unique and definitive style. The Spirit has never been your typical comic character, so if anybody besides Eisner is to write him, they would have to be special.

Also out this week:

• Sandman Mystery Theater: Sleep of Reason #1: One of my favorite titles from the early days of Vertigo was the original Sandman Mystery Theatre series. Tying loosely into Neil Gaiman’s Sandman mythos and featuring a favorite Golden Age character, Matt Wagner and Guy Davis created taut mysteries set in America’s Jazz Age.

The concept is revisited by John Ney Rieber, no stranger to Vertigo from his time on Books of Magic, and moved to the present day. A new person has taken up the mantle of Sandman, and it may be the only thing that could protect him in the War-torn country that is today’s Afghanistan. It keeps elements of the original series to entice its fans, yet updates it enough as to not alienate new readers. 

John Ney Rieber (W), Eric Nguyen (A), DC/Vertigo Comics, $2.99. Five-issue miniseries.

• Joe and Max #1:  Being an 11 year-old like Joe today is hard. From the mean teachers who give out too much homework, to the people who have high expectations of you, to the school-yard bully, life is full of difficult challenges. It’s a good thing Joe has a guardian angel by the name of Max, especially since Joe is expected to one day save the world from the forces of evil—that bully is actually a spawn of Satan.

This title is the first of several, culturally diverse series to be published by new company Guardian Line. All the titles appear to be interrelated and have heavy religious overtones. It definitely fills several voids missing in comics today. Will that be enough for the line to be a success? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Michael Davis (W/A), Guardian Line, $2.99. Ongoing series.

• Maintenance #1: TerroMax is the world’s biggest evil science think tank. It is chock full of mad scientists and wannabe world conquerors. When they all get together to create robots and monsters to use to try and take over the universe, someone has to clean up after them. That’s where Doug and Manny come in. They’re janitors. That’s their job.

There could be a lot of humor to be mined in this type of story. After all, Marvel got quite a bit of mileage out of a similar concept with Damage Control. With a little bit of luck and some good writing, we could have a cult favorite on our hands. It will be interesting to find out where the series goes from here. 

Jim Massey (W), Robbi Rodriguez (A), Oni Press, $3.50. Ongoing series.

• Outer Orbit #1: If you think being janitors for mad scientists is a crummy job, try being an intergalactic pizza delivery man. Especially when you have just stolen a mysterious idol from one of your deliveries, an idol wanted by some of the worst scum in the universe, the crosshairs of which your petty theft has just put yourself in. And you think you’re having a bad day.

The series claims to be an “outrageous, rude and hilarious” send up of the litany of science fiction conventions. And if there’s ever a genre that can stand to be parodied—over and over again—it is science fiction. This title covers new ground that was left untouched in previous stories of this type.  

Zach Howard, Sean Murphy, & Hans Rodinoff (W), Howard & Murphy (A), Dark Horse, $2.99, Four-issue miniseries.

• Wonder Man #1: Simon Williams steps into the role of Professor Henry Higgins and a villain named Lady Killer becomes his Eliza Doolittle in this take-off of My Fair Lady. But instead of making a street urchin into a cultured lady, he’s making an assassin into a super-hero! Luckily, he has Ms. Marvel and his old buddy The Beast to help him out.

It seems like Peter David has the workings of a comedy gem here. I love the fact that he is weaving in Wonder Man’s prior history into the story. Hopefully this will go over well so that David will be able to write an ongoing series with the character.

Peter David (W), Andrew Currie (A), Marvel Comics, $2.99. Five-issue miniseries.   

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William Gatevackes is a professional writer living in Mamaroneck, NY with his wife Jennifer. Bill also writes periodic comic reviews for PopMatters and writes title descriptions for Human Computing’s Comicbase collection management software.