The Noir Knight of Comics by Dave Goode

My introduction to The Spirit came from a story reprinted in Jules Feiffer's classic book from 1965 THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES. It's a story that whenever I reread it Al Stewart's song The Year of the Cat plays on the soundtrack in my head.

 

Later Harvey Comics put out two The Spirit comics in October 1966 and March 1967 with two incredibly fun covers.

The Spirit was the creation of Will Eisner , a cartoonist with the eye of a cinematographer. Anyone of his 7-8 page Spirit stories could serve as a storyboard for a B-Movie detective thriller. These 8 pagers were the main feature in a sixteen page newsprint comic book insert in the Sunday edition of Register and Tribune Syndicate newspapers.The story goes that Eisner wanted to do a detective feature. But the publisher insisted he do a superhero strip. Because after all , the musclemen in tights were what was selling at the time. Eisner's concession was giving his hero a domino mask to wear.

In the first story that appeared on June 2 , 1940 criminologist Denny Colt was presumed murdered by criminal mastermind / mad scientist Dr.Cobra. He was actually put into a temporary state of suspended animation. When he awakens he decides to fight crime as The Spirit. 

Visually The Spirit feature resembled nothing so much as a movie from cinema noir, with urban apartment blocks with rain slickened streets, back alleys, slinky femme fatales , pinstripe - suited torpedoes and darkened rooms lit by cigarettes. The character would have been the perfect subject for a movie. Or two or three. Much like Monogram's The Shadow series starring Kane Richmond.

In fact there were two Spirit movies. The first was a made for television movie in 1987. The second was a big budget production from 2008. Neither captured, excuse the joke, spirit of the comic. In my opinion the biggest problem with these two movies, and there were many, was they needed to be set in the 1940s or early 1950s.

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