The Comics Rack

There are many areas of the world of comics that make you say "HUH?" One of these is when it come to who did what in terms of pencilling and inking. For older comics, these credits are sketchy or often non-existant, or we are forced to rely on the memory of the creators involved. As an example, look at the six examples on the right. The first five are all scanned from The Spirit Archives Vol. 4 and the sixth is scanned from The Plastic Man Archive Vol. 1. Do they all look like they were done by the same artist? Nope, they didn't to me either, yet, if we are to believe all the available source material on credits for the Spirit, the first four were all by the same artist and it is here that the mystery of the Spirit credits begins.

I noticed these art differences while perusing The Spirit Archives Vol. 4 and, as much as I like the DC Archives editions, I find their credits to be often very inadequate. In the case of the Spirit, they simply give a blanket credit by stating that "Throughout the run of The Spirit, Will Eisner was assisted by several talented individuals, among them..." and then goes on to list 31 names, many of which are familiar to long-time comic readers. Unfortunately, none of these names are attached directly to any of the stories in any of the Spirit Archives volumes.

I next turned to The Spirit Checklist (which I located on the internet at Wildwood Cemetary), which was produced by cat yronwoode in the 70s with Eisner's assistance and has long been considered the final word on appearances and credits for The Spirit. According to the checklist, Eisner is credited with everything on the strip, with an assist from Bob Powell, until the strip that appeared on May 3, 1942, the fourth example at right, at which time Eisner is credited with "script, layouts, some pencils and inks. Lou Fine finished art w/assistants." Not much help there either and, quite frankly, I don't believe it, since the art takes a definite change with the February 8 strip (the second example on the right) and then shows many diverse hands at work (such as the March 1 example) through the May 3rd strip, which is documented as not being completely Eisner.

In the article on The Spirit in The Steranko History of Comics Vol. 2, Eisner states that Lou Fine, Jack Cole and Chuck Mazoujan were with him at the start of The Spirit with Bob Powell coming on board very soon after. This would place a number of artistic hands on the strip from the beginning, rather than at a later date. We also know that Cole drew The Spirit dailies (after the first 6 weeks) beginning in 1941 and it would not be a stretch to believe that he had a hand in the art of The Spirit Sunday section as well, which could be another possible explanation for the differences in art style from one strip to the next.

As to why the art changes on February 8, I can offer nothing concrete. Possibly Eisner saw that there was a real possibility he would be drafted soon and began to bring in other personnel to work on the strip. Deadlines may have been another factor and an extra hand or two from the Quality artist pool may have been brought in to keep things on schedule (remember that The Spirit section included Lady Luck and Mister Mystic as well as The Spirit.). It is also interesting to speculate on how far ahead Eisner and Co. worked. My guess is at least 3-4 weeks, but that figure is strictly a speculation brought on by the inclusion of WWII themes in the strip beginning in January of 1942. We do know, and it has been documented in several places, that Eisner took it upon himself to complete script and layouts for the strip upon receiving his draft notice and that these are the strips that start appearing on May 3rd, but again, there are no records of how much lead time he had (sources say that you had 30 days from notification to induction), or how many strips he completed before reporting for duty. This would also cause one to wonder as to how much work he was able to put into the regular strip during the period he was trying to work ahead.

The last two examples are included here to give you a point of reference into the other artistic hands that worked on The Spirit. The June 28 example is, as a guess, nearly all Lou Fine and I think it is safe to assume that it is beyond the point of Eisner layouts, especially since the rest of the story looks to be pure Fine in layout as well as art. The final example from is from a cover for Police Comics and is done by Jack Cole, albeit a year after the period under discussion, but I included it so you could get a feel for Cole's style of doing The Spirit. Eisner was often quoted as saying that he never liked the way Cole did the hat. Compare the Cole example with the May 3^rd example and draw your own conclusions.