THE SPIRIT is a fictional masked crimefighter created by cartoonist WILL EISNER, who 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.
The Spirit 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 help 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.
From the 1960s to 1980s, a handful of new Eisner Spirit stories appeared in Harvey Comicsand elsewhere, and Warren Publishing and Kitchen Sink Press variously reprinted the newspaper feature in black-and-white comics magazines and in color comic books. In the 1990s and 2000s, Kitchen Sink Press and DC Comics also published new Spirit stories by other writers and artists. In 2011, IGN ranked The Spirit as 21st in the Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of all time.
THE SPIRIT by WILL EISNER - http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=19814, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67868622
The Spirit, referred to in one newspaper article cited below as "the only real middle-class crimefighter", was the hero persona of young detective/criminologist Denny Colt. Presumed killed in the first three pages of the premiere story, Colt later revealed to his friend, Central City Police Commissioner Dolan, that he had in fact gone into suspended animation caused by one of archvillain Dr. Cobra's experiments. When Colt awakened in Wildwood Cemetery, he established a base there (underneath his own tombstone) and, using his new-found anonymity, began a life of fighting crime wearing a simple costume consisting of a blue domino mask, business suit, fedora hat and gloves (plus a white shirt and red necktie). While elements of this basic costume occasionally vary (depending on the Spirit's circumstances and where he is in the world), he is always depicted wearing his blue domino mask and blue leather gloves. The Spirit dispensed justice with the aid of his assistant, Ebony White, funding his adventures with an inheritance from his late father, Denny Colt Senior, and the rewards for capturing villains.
The Spirit originally was based in New York City, but this was quickly changed to the fictional "Central City". Not tied to one locale, his adventures took him around the globe and even to the Moon. He met eccentrics, kooks, and femme fatales, bringing his own form of justice to all of them. The story changed continually, but certain themes remained constant: the love between the Spirit and Dolan's feisty proto-feminist daughter Ellen; the annual "Christmas Spirit" stories; and the Octopus (a psychopathic criminal mastermind who was never seen, except for his distinctive purple gloves).
