The Spirit (2nd Series)

    (Quality, 1944-1950)
™ and ©1949 Quality

The Spirit series from Quality Comics gave readers of the 1940s, whose newspapers did not carry it, the opportunity to experience the groundbreaking and fabulously entertaining adventures of Will Eisner’s masked detective in 52 pages of full color. Eisner packed a startling range of humor, drama, adventure, and mystery into the tight eight-page Spirit stories, illustrated in a black, heavy, expressionistic style that serves, even 50 years later, as a textbook on the possibilities of graphic storytelling. The Spirit (presumed dead private eye Denny Colt) and his memorable cast (Ebony, Commissioner Dolan, and his daughter Ellen) matched wits with femmes fatales P’Gell and Sand Sarif and the criminal mastermind, the Octopus, in a series of wild adventures between 1940 and 1952. Eisner created other successful characters for Quality, including Uncle Sam and Blackhawk, but it is the poignant, human-scale tales of the Spirit that testify to his lasting influence and genius.
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