Spiritualised

Recently, my work colleague's husband, who is Dutch, loaned me four b/w reprint editions of the newpaper cartoon strip featuring Will Eisner's Spirit. The Real Free Press was a publishing house in the Netherlands that ran on dope ( or weed) money apparently and these "albums" are 70s reprints of wartime adventures. They seem to be mostly by Jack Cole, the genius who created Plastic Man, and Lou Fine. The racist caricture of cabbie Ebony White and other black characters is jaw-dropping but if you can overlook that, the strips have a freewheeling charm. There's a running subplot too, about the beautiful and dangerous agent, Destiny Blake, tasked with assassinating Hitler. I wonder if she was an influence on Moffat's River Song?

My first encounter with the Spirit is lost in time but I think it was in the very early 70s, when my father mended fences with his estranged sister. My aunt and uncle bought me Marvel comics and around 1971-2, passed my elder cousin's DC collection to me- obscure strips like Rip Hunter, Time Master; House of Secrets with Eclipso and Mark Merlin; Mystery in Space with Space Ranger; and, best of all, Adventure Comics starring Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

At that time, I read a giant-sized ( or so it seemed) collection of stories about the masked man in the blue suit. I suspect it was this 1967 comic above - it wasn't unknown for Sixties comics to float back to the surface in those days. Here are exhibits A and B from the same time period:

 

1966 and 1968 on sale in '72

Anyway, I never heard of the Spirit again until the 80s. By then, I was reading magazines like the cerebral Comics Journal and later the more frivolous Amazing Heroes and was more aware of Will Eisner as a significant creative force.

 I knew that the DC hero named Midnight in All-Star Squadron was - putting it mildly -a pastiche of the Spirit but I still hadn't read any actual Spirit stories - that wouldn't happen until the "Noughties".

I really became interested in the Master of Mystery with this 2007 team-up:

Robert Mitchum in a domino mask, Denny Colt seems a likeable romantic but his rogues gallery and parade of femmes fatales are very like those of the Dark Knight. Batman and Robin in this story are very much in the style of the late 50s but the villains are a more contemporary crew- Joker and Harley, Ivy, Croc and the Ventriloquist.

 
The ongoing series that followed, by Darwyn Cooke, is a stylish, dynamic and gorgeous work. Issue 1 introduced the corrosive power of the Pill; 2 revived the sultry P'Gell (Pigalle, get it?); 3 revisited the origin of the Spirit; 4 revived shadowy villain the Octopus and CIA agent Silk Satin; 5 introduced a modernised Mr. Carrion while 6 was a stunning tribute to the Blue Note jazz label. All of these stories are highly recommended and can be found in this collection, with the B&R team-up.

 The 2008 movie by Frank Miller is an arch but chilly mash-up of the Adam West Batman tv show and Kiss  Me Deadly. Samuel L. Jackson - never a subtle performer -is at his most excrutiating there. I can't say I enjoyed it much. None of the fun and verve of the Cooke title is present in the film.

More recent takes on the Spirit (DC's pulp fiction line First Wave, from 2009-11 and Dynamite Entertainment's current title) seem more like period pieces but I've only read one issue of each. Although I'm fond of  Marvel's b/w Doc Savage and the Kirby Justice Inc. I much prefer the exaggerated energy and expression of Cooke's Spirit.  An upcoming post will focus on the artist's Batman:Ego collection but next time, I hope to look at the first handful of episodes in the second season of the Capaldi Doctor.

All images are presumed copyright of their respective owners