The Spirit

the spirit is a fictional masked crimefighter created by cartoonist will eisner. he first appeared june 2, 1940 in “the spirit section”, the colloquial name given to a 16-page sunday supplement, distributed to 20 newspapers by the register and tribune syndicate and reaching five million readers during the 1940s. from the 1960s to 1980s, a handful of new eisner spirit stories appeared in harvey comics and elsewhere, and warren publishing and kitchen sink press variously reprinted the 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.

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 denny colt, his real ident-ty was virtually unmentioned again, and for all intents and purposes he was simply “the spirit”. the stories range through 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.
while fighting the evil dr. cobra, young policeman denny colt was h-t by a liquid which put him in a state of a deep coma. believed dead, denny was buried at wildwood cemetery, but awoke from his grave 24-hours later. he established a base under his tombstone and using his new-found anonymity, he began to fight crime and protect the people of central city as the spirit.

his ident-ty is known only to his “driver,” ebony white and police commissioner dolan.
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