spirit

Kitchen Sink 1974-84
The Spirit is a fictional masked crimefighter created by cartoonist Will Eisner. He first appeared June 2, 1940, as the main feature of a 16-page, tabloid-sized, newsprint comic book insert distributed in the Sunday edition of Register and Tribune Syndicate newspapers; it was ultimately carried by 20 Sunday newspapers, with a combined circulation of five million copies during the 1940s. “The Spirit Section”, as the insert was popularly known, continued until October 5, 1952. It generally included two other four-page strips (initially Mr. Mystic and Lady Luck), plus filler material. Eisner, the overall editor, wrote and drew most Spirit entries, with the uncredited assistance of his studio of assistants and collaborators, though with Eisner’s singular vision a unifying factor.

The Spirit chronicles the adventures of a masked vigilante who fights crime with the blessing of the city’s police commissioner Dolan, an old friend. Despite the Spirit’s origin as detective/criminologist Denny Colt, his real identity was rarely referred to after his first appearance, and for all intents and purposes he was simply “The Spirit”. The stories are presented in a wide variety of styles, from straightforward crime drama and noir to lighthearted adventure, from mystery and horror to comedy and love stories, often with hybrid elements that twisted genre and reader expectations.