Goodbye, Spirit
IT WAS LONG PAST MIDNIGHT ON A HOT, WET JUNE NIGHT MANY YEARS AGO ... CENTRAL CITY LAY CHOKING FOR BREATH IN AN EERIE FOG ... A LONE FIGURE SPRINTED THROUGH THE NARROW, SOGGY WATERFRONT STREETS THAT WOUND LIKE GREY VEINS THROUGH THE FRIGHTENED CITY. IT WAS DENNY COLT, NOTED CRIMINOLOGIST. HIS MISSION: TO SAVE THE CITY FROM THE MAD SCIENTIST, DR. COBRA! [THE SPIRIT, 1951]
Will Eisner, one of the greatest comic artists that ever lived ... lives no longer, alas.
The mainstream comic book heroes of my youth were a mess - moody and plagued with self-doubt, to the point of being neurotic (sometimes they actually described themselves as neurotic). Themes of death and rejection were very big. The "Teen Titans" (who included Robin the former Boy Wonder) were total disgraces who were forbidden by law to wear their costumes because they had screwed up something big, so they wandered dark streets in slacks and turtlenecks, resenting each other. I vividly recall opening a Green Lantern comic and seeing the hero, in his nice green and black costume, standing with his head hanging and saying "Well, I guess I'll recharge my ring and see if I can manage to do that without screwing it up." Failure, inadequacy, death. Lots of stories featured images of heroes actually dying, showing their coffins or their tombstones with mourners surrounding them - the hero never actually bit the dust, but he was always hanging by a thread. Everybody was Sylvia Plath in tights. It was very, very common for the last panel of a story to show the Superhero, not smiling in triumph, but with his face in his hands, weeping.
Spiderman and the Green Lantern were extra notorious for their insecurities. That was too bad for the Green Lantern, because he had the best-looking costume of any Superhero, and he was probably the best-looking man, too. (All for nothing, since girls didn't read the Superheroes and I doubt if gays did either. ) Then there was the Silver Surfer, who surfed through space spouting metaphysical angst on the order of Pascal's "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread" etc. The Silver Surfer had something called the Power Cosmic, which was like The Force for semi-suicidal hippies.
So thank God for Will Eisner, whose work from the 40s and 50s was reprinted by Warren Magazine during these dark years. He gave me my comic book hero, Denny Colt, aka The Spirit.
The Spirit's hometown was Central City, which was like an extra-seedy Chicago, not Gotham or Metropolis. Central City was grimy and rusty. A lot of loose paper blew through the streets. It had corrupt political parties (The Prosperity Party and the Good Old Days Party, both rotten to the core) instead of nice respectable authority figures. Unlike other comic cities, Central City had weather - lots of it. It rained and snowed like hell, the wind blew, and they had awful heat waves where everybody oozed sweat.
The Spirit wasn't the sunny, smiling politician type, like Superman and Batman. The Spirit got mad - really flew into rages. He frequently got mad at his girlfriend Ellen (blond daughter of police chief, always plotting marriage, etc.). When he got mad at villains, he gritted his teeth and steam rose from his head, and then he would wallop the daylights out of them. Now the late 40s and early 50s were the days when Superheroes in other books never hit people - they just lectured them and outwitted them. The Spirit beat them senseless. Really awful beatings, where men would be flung end over end into a tangle of garbage cans. Their faces would squish up under his fist. They always bled, with blood streaming down their noses and chins, and their eyes would swell completely shut. Other comics almost never depicted blood, but in Central City it covered the sidewalks and poured into the filthy sewers.
The Spirit never used a gun, of course, but they used guns on him. The Spirit got shot more often than Dick Tracy. He would absorb massive barrages of gunfire, topple down a long flight of stairs, and crawl away trailing blood. Later he would show up, blood running through his fingers as he covered the wound, sweat dripping from his face, and get somebody to "dig the slugs out" of him. He felt real pain; it hurt like hell to look at him.
But he was also a nice guy - a believably nice guy, not the grinning cardboard goody two-shoes like Superman, but a real person that you actually believed cared about people, like the juvenile delinquents that he tried hard to set straight.
And he had the most incredible women - besides Ellen, there was a whole harem of female semi-villains (the term was "adventuress") like Silk Satin, Sand Saref, P'Gell, Thorne Strand, all with gorgeous eyes and killer bodies. They were the most beautifully drawn women in comics, and they were the only enemies who were allowed to run circles around the hero - because of course they were all deeply in love with him, and always sneaking away in last few panels to sob over him with big fat tears rolling down their cheeks. But the next time they came home from their little criminal activities, they would find the Spirit lounging on their couch, yawning and complaining that the perfume in their closet had made him dopey. He was incredibly cool and laid-back with women - with everybody, in fact. He would break into the crook's hideout and take a nap on the sofa until they got home. If they got irate with him or pulled a gun, he beat the utter living crap out of them.
In short, The Spirit was perfect. The kids moping over Spiderman's personal problems never knew what they were missing.
And so another good thing passes out of the world, but not forgotten or unnoticed. Go with God, Will Eisner.
Will Eisner, one of the greatest comic artists that ever lived ... lives no longer, alas.
The mainstream comic book heroes of my youth were a mess - moody and plagued with self-doubt, to the point of being neurotic (sometimes they actually described themselves as neurotic). Themes of death and rejection were very big. The "Teen Titans" (who included Robin the former Boy Wonder) were total disgraces who were forbidden by law to wear their costumes because they had screwed up something big, so they wandered dark streets in slacks and turtlenecks, resenting each other. I vividly recall opening a Green Lantern comic and seeing the hero, in his nice green and black costume, standing with his head hanging and saying "Well, I guess I'll recharge my ring and see if I can manage to do that without screwing it up." Failure, inadequacy, death. Lots of stories featured images of heroes actually dying, showing their coffins or their tombstones with mourners surrounding them - the hero never actually bit the dust, but he was always hanging by a thread. Everybody was Sylvia Plath in tights. It was very, very common for the last panel of a story to show the Superhero, not smiling in triumph, but with his face in his hands, weeping.
Spiderman and the Green Lantern were extra notorious for their insecurities. That was too bad for the Green Lantern, because he had the best-looking costume of any Superhero, and he was probably the best-looking man, too. (All for nothing, since girls didn't read the Superheroes and I doubt if gays did either. ) Then there was the Silver Surfer, who surfed through space spouting metaphysical angst on the order of Pascal's "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread" etc. The Silver Surfer had something called the Power Cosmic, which was like The Force for semi-suicidal hippies.
So thank God for Will Eisner, whose work from the 40s and 50s was reprinted by Warren Magazine during these dark years. He gave me my comic book hero, Denny Colt, aka The Spirit.
The Spirit's hometown was Central City, which was like an extra-seedy Chicago, not Gotham or Metropolis. Central City was grimy and rusty. A lot of loose paper blew through the streets. It had corrupt political parties (The Prosperity Party and the Good Old Days Party, both rotten to the core) instead of nice respectable authority figures. Unlike other comic cities, Central City had weather - lots of it. It rained and snowed like hell, the wind blew, and they had awful heat waves where everybody oozed sweat.
The Spirit wasn't the sunny, smiling politician type, like Superman and Batman. The Spirit got mad - really flew into rages. He frequently got mad at his girlfriend Ellen (blond daughter of police chief, always plotting marriage, etc.). When he got mad at villains, he gritted his teeth and steam rose from his head, and then he would wallop the daylights out of them. Now the late 40s and early 50s were the days when Superheroes in other books never hit people - they just lectured them and outwitted them. The Spirit beat them senseless. Really awful beatings, where men would be flung end over end into a tangle of garbage cans. Their faces would squish up under his fist. They always bled, with blood streaming down their noses and chins, and their eyes would swell completely shut. Other comics almost never depicted blood, but in Central City it covered the sidewalks and poured into the filthy sewers.
The Spirit never used a gun, of course, but they used guns on him. The Spirit got shot more often than Dick Tracy. He would absorb massive barrages of gunfire, topple down a long flight of stairs, and crawl away trailing blood. Later he would show up, blood running through his fingers as he covered the wound, sweat dripping from his face, and get somebody to "dig the slugs out" of him. He felt real pain; it hurt like hell to look at him.
But he was also a nice guy - a believably nice guy, not the grinning cardboard goody two-shoes like Superman, but a real person that you actually believed cared about people, like the juvenile delinquents that he tried hard to set straight.
And he had the most incredible women - besides Ellen, there was a whole harem of female semi-villains (the term was "adventuress") like Silk Satin, Sand Saref, P'Gell, Thorne Strand, all with gorgeous eyes and killer bodies. They were the most beautifully drawn women in comics, and they were the only enemies who were allowed to run circles around the hero - because of course they were all deeply in love with him, and always sneaking away in last few panels to sob over him with big fat tears rolling down their cheeks. But the next time they came home from their little criminal activities, they would find the Spirit lounging on their couch, yawning and complaining that the perfume in their closet had made him dopey. He was incredibly cool and laid-back with women - with everybody, in fact. He would break into the crook's hideout and take a nap on the sofa until they got home. If they got irate with him or pulled a gun, he beat the utter living crap out of them.
In short, The Spirit was perfect. The kids moping over Spiderman's personal problems never knew what they were missing.
And so another good thing passes out of the world, but not forgotten or unnoticed. Go with God, Will Eisner.
posted by Glen Wishard at 11:41 AM
<< Home