The twenty-fifth volume of Will Eisner's The Spirit Archives collects up the relatively brief run of daily comic strips which were created in 1941 and ran into 1944. The strips get criticism because Eisner's keen ability to construct a comic page was hampered by the restrictive requirements of a daily comic which required steady updates and cliffhangers on a regular basis to bring back the readership. I found the strips surprisingly involving, better than I'd expected. Unlike The Spirit stories themselves, I'd never read any of the comic strips before. It was not unlike a somewhat parallel world, a look at a Central City similar but not identical in all ways.
The Spirit was joined by Ebony White, Commissioner Dolan, and Ellen Dolan and that was pretty much all of the cast from the Spirit Sections which made it into the run. Mayor Blast does make an appearance late in the run. Instead, we are treated to new characters, especially some tasty villains. Squire Sampson does make an appearance, the only villain from the Sections to crossover, and does great damage when in his will he leaves a million bucks to any villain who can uncover The Spirit's identity. Two heinous killers named Sphinx and Kaibash show up to attempt to claim the prize. The Spirit heads to Hollywood to uncover the mystery of actress Gloria Fillum. He gets shanghaied by villains Blind Bat and The Blot. The murderous Fannie Ogre becomes the still quite murderous Cinderella Sinn. Dr. Future makes The Spirit's life a misery when he predicts that the hero will murder him.
The Spirit gets drawn into espionage time and again such as when he helps stop a traveling group of actors who are actually spies, and he even goes to Germany when he's recruited by Himmler to help steal and hide the booty that the top Nazis, including Schiklegruber himself, have lurking in banks. He encounters Lucky Chance, a man who seeks death but is too fortunate to find it, and he solves the case of the Cowled Killer, even though he is accused of the murders himself.
In more humorous outings Ebony White, who calls himself "Super Ebony" finds secret formulas that seem to make him disappear and later create duplicates of himself who cause no end of mischief. The series ends when a potion which releases hidden desires is acquired by Ellen Dolan who tries to use to get The Spirit to marry her and instead spreads it across Central City itself.
My favorite new character is Destiny Blake, a daring young woman who was born during World War I and whose birth stopped her father from killing Hitler, so she's determined to make up for that oversight. She's alluring and deadly and pops up in the run more than a few times, a more than worthy addition to The Spirit's array of femme fatales.
The dailies had been collected by Ken Pierce Inc., but this archiver volume is the first time all of them have been between two covers. I have a few of these reprints, but not all of them.
One challenge is that the reproduction of the individual strips is pretty small, and the reading of them can be a challenge for aging eyesight like mine. But I got used to it and enjoyed them mightily. When producing these dailies became too much for Eisner after he was drafted, Jack Cole took over the series and did an excellent job. His style was a bit less dense than Eisner's while still evoking a similar feeling and actually might read more easily.
We take on the penultimate volume of the series next time which takes The Spirit from the 1950's all the way into the 21st century. See you next time.
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