[movielover]

This week, we have a short title, only 16 pages, a Spirit Section from Dec. 16, 1945, located here https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=68182

[positronic1]

Not one of the better Spirit episodes, unfortunately, but then Eisner had nothing to do with this one. Lou Fine? I don't know... maybe. At least it looks a little more like Lou Fine than the last one posted that was credited to Lou Fine.

The Lady Luck story by Klaus Nordling fares a little better -- this is more along the lines of a minor effort by Jack Cole. The humor helps, if you can get into the 'spirit' of goofy puns like "Count DiChange". I didn't read Flatfoot Burns, just skimmed it. Not much there of interest to me, and even less so for Jonesy, which is done in a style at least 10 years out of date. For this they dropped Mr. Mystic?

[crashryan]

Back in the mid sixties, when information about and examples of classic strips were scarce, I heard about how great Eisner's Spirit was. All I had seen were a few panels which didn't tell me much. Then I found one of the IW/Super Comics Spirit reprints. At last, I thought, I'll see what the fuss is about. I was mightily underwhelmed. It turns out all the stories in that issue were from the same period as the section we're reviewing this week. It wasn't until Harvey's 25c Spirit giants appeared that I finally understood the strip's reputation.

The draftsmanship is good. (I would agree that Lou Fine at least pencilled this story.) But the layouts are unimaginative. Almost everything is staged in a medium long shot with too much air. You can see Fine  striving for the slick illustrative style which eventually landed him mainstream advertising assignments. His approach just doesn't fit The Spirit. This combined with a flat story makes a forgettable episode.

"Lady Luck" offers some smiles, though. And I do like punny names like "Count DiChange."

"Flatfoot Burns" does nothing for me. Positronic is right about "Jonesy." It looks like a late 20s / early 30s Sunday page.

Maybe I just wasn't in the right spirit tonight (yock yock), but I give the whole package a "meh."

[The Australian Panther]

Well, Crash, my introduction to the Spirit was the two Harvey Giant Spirit reprints which came out (I think) in the late 60's. They were a superb selection of stories and blew me away. I think Harvey did the same with 'Fighting American' at the time. But no follow-up unfortunately. But I never saw any other Spirits for a long time. Crash, I agree with everything you said about Lou Fine and the Art. Exactly because, 'the layouts are unimaginative. Almost everything is staged in a medium long shot with too much air. ' I have trouble believing that the art is actually by Lou Fine. Even early in his career he had more style than that.For what it is its quite good, but it has no 'Spirit' vibe about it. But the writing is credited to Manly Wade Wellman who was no slouch as a writer. So what do we find? There are only a few elements you can put in a story, but its like Jazz, its what you do with it. And I think Wellman did a few things here to amuse himself. Why is the Spirit at the Dolan house late at night? And why is Ebony spying? Elements necessary to the story, but which don't make a lot of sense otherwise. Ebony doesn't react when a stranger asks him his business while he is spying through a window in the dark and then immediately tells him his name. Hello? The Spirit is uncharacteristically detached in this story. And he breaks the forth wall, 'What's your story Mortlock? We haven't read the synopsis of the preceding installments.'!
I get the impression that Wellman did the story on assignment, wasn't enthusiastic about it and 'phoned it in' putting a few elements in the story that make that clear. I do like his Ebony here, HE comes across as much more mature than usual. So, second rate for the Spirit, a bit better than average otherwise. Apart from the Art, the rest of this Spirit section is pretty ordinary. 
           

[narfstar]

I seem to have liked the Spirit story more than the rest here. I found it very amusing. It is interesting when I read the comments after reading the story. It seems my opinion of the art is just the same as everyone else here.

[positronic1]

Panther, I wouldn't call the Spirit's line about "What's your story Mortlock? We haven't read the synopsis of the preceding installments." breaking the fourth wall. It doesn't imply an awareness on the character's part that he himself is appearing in a fictional story. Why would that make you assume he's referring to a Spirit story? Serialized stories were common in those days, and so were the synopses of preceding installments -- but Spirit stories rarely ever used that format, because the stories needed to read as self-contained units, even where there was some continuity with previous weeks' episodes -- so there were no synopses. I think they finally used them near the end in the "Moon" stories, because that was definitely out of the Spirit's usual milieu, and if you missed a week or two, you'd have been lost wondering what was going on. Normal Spirit stories featuring continuing plot-lines with Silk Satin or someone would just pick up in media res. Here the line of dialogue is clearly intended as the kind of hard-boiled, flippant snappy banter you read in crime stories, with an off-the-cuff reference to serialized fiction stories of any type, but probably specifically crime fiction. Nothing odd there -- the Spirit exists in a world where serialized fictional crime stories exist, too. He could have just asked, "What's your story, Mortlock?" without getting smart-alecky about it and adding the sarcasm, but I guess Wellman was trying to get cute, and make the Spirit look like a tough, cynical type.

The rest of your criticisms are right on the money, though. I suspect that Wellman, an experienced pulp fiction writer who probably was new to comic scripting at this point, was having some trouble tailoring his stories for the unfamiliar (to him) format, dialing his material in for the audience, and learning what to put in and leave out -- and he clearly didn't think certain aspects of the story through for logical consistency. Or, he didn't think much of the medium itself, and like you say, was "phoning it in". On the other hand, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. While I don't think much of it as a story, it had to be hard going from writing pulp fiction where you had tens of thousands of words to weave your magic, to as few words as would fit into an 8-page comic story. Conciseness while retaining ALL the essential information and making logical sense isn't always as easy as it might look when you're looking at an old pro's script for the same number of pages.

My suspicions of the artwork not really being that of Lou Fine might be either because it's really not him at all, or because it was Lou Fine trying not to be himself, reining in his individual talent and strengths, and "toning himself down", to blend in with whatever he perceived to be "the established Spirit style".

[SuperScrounge]

Spirit - An okay, but not great story.

Lady Luck - Cute.

Wanted On Stage! - Okay.

Jonesy - Okay.

[crashryan]

Regarding Lou Fine...

If you look at how his art developed, it's clear that by the end of the 1940s Fine was working consciously to get rid of all traces of his early over-the-top superheroic style in favor of a conservative approach similar to that of the Johnstone & Cushing advertising comics. I can't pretend to know what was in his head, but I theorize that Fine was seeking the better pay and greater prestige of advertising work. In this he succeeded. Strictly in my personal opinion his mature style (The Space Conquerors, Peter Scratch, Adam Ames), though technically excellent, was so slick and controlled that it bordered on generic.

[positronic1]

Crash, good observation regarding Lou Fine, and one that makes perfect sense. Johnstone & Cushing was one of the best-paying markets for a comic artist, so there's a strong motive. Understandably J&C wanted artists with high technical skill, but not flashy, dynamic illustrations and panel layouts that called attention to the artwork. The main thing, in fact the only thing, was to convey all the information in the story as straightforwardly and unambiguously as possible. That made J&C's output look staid, static, and homogenized by comparison to the exaggerated, attention-grabbing style of art (which would continue to become even more so as time passed) preferred by most comic book publishers.

[narfstar]

Positronic I thought he was breaking the fourth wall until I read your comment. That makes sense. Especially since the statement made me look at the previous installment where I found nothing concerning this one.

[positronic1]

Positronic I thought he was breaking the fourth wall until I read your comment. That makes sense. Especially since the statement made me look at the previous installment where I found nothing concerning this one.

I think it looks puzzling at first, because's Wellman's "hard-bitten, wiseguy" Spirit characterization just seems wrong on the face of it -- at least it seems out of character for Eisner's later post-War version of the Spirit. Here The Spirit's just met this guy, ostensibly the victim of some crime, but Spirit's already acting the part of "bad cop" in cross-examining him, putting Mortlock on the defensive as if HE's the suspect. It's possible that Wellman was trying to show us that the Spirit already doesn't like Mortlock based on the fact that Commissioner Dolan has just identified him as an old schoolmate of Ellen's... (a potential romantic rival?) but that characterization doesn't seem right for the Spirit, either. Just one of many problems (as elaborated by Panther in his earlier post) that Wellman seems to have had in writing the Spirit.

[lyons]

The Comic Book Section is a flailing confusion of stories with adequate artwork.  It's as if the creators were trying to figure out what they were doing while they were doing it.  Even though The Spirit is a crown jewel of the Golden Age, this particular story doesn't live up to those expectations of achievement.  Jonesy is the best of the lot.  Though the book is a stinker, it is nontheless entertaining.  Thanks movielover.     

[crashryan]

Danger! Off-topic subject ahead.

Re-reading the Spirit story I suddenly remembered a movie from long ago. When I was a kid a low-budget independent TV station showed tons of old 1940s monster/fantasy movies. They must have bought a package from Universal, since they showed almost every Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolfman film out there.

The movie I remembered wasn't part of a series. It also wasn't very good. I think it had something to do with putting a man's brain into an ape. At any rate, throughout the movie a man in a suit is seen skulking about, peeking into windows like Ebony does here. He never interacts with the other characters. In fact, when the story wraps up we still haven't found out who he is! The final scene shows the mystery man sitting in an automobile looking into the camera. He addresses the audience: "Oh, you wonder who I am, eh? I'm the guy who wrote this picture!" Then he rolls up the car window, upon which has been lettered "The End." It was a true "WTF??!!" moment.

Does anyone know what picture this was?