Excelsior!
This may not be the best place to put this, but DC is the publisher of it, so...
The Spirit June 2, 1940 - "The Origin of the Spirit"
So Denny Colt is pronounced dead and is buried in Wildwood Cemetary. He then crawls out of his grave. This is because he wasn't dead after all, but merely "in a state of suspended animation". Um, aren't corpses usually filled with embalming fluids before they are interred? How is it that Colt is alive with embalming fluid running through his veins? Or did the coroner forget to pump it into him?
If I find a whole lot more nits for The Spirit, I may start a new thread for it. Anyway....
"Good morning, Commissioner Dolan. May I come in?"
To the best of my knowledge Will Eisner owns The Spirit so technically it probably belongs in Licensed Properties.
On the other hand Captain Marvel is also a Licensed Property, but I have one or two posts about him here. *shrug*
While it's true that Will Eisner does indeed own The Spirit, The Spirit Archives are being published by DC. Of course, the trouble is that The Spirit has also been published by Warren and Kitchen Sink over the years, so...
Excelsior!
And Quality, plus a few other publishers I can't remember. (Harvey?)
The Spirit has been published by Register & Tribune Syndicate, Quality, Fiction House, Super, Harvey, Warren, Kitchen Sink, & now DC.
You know, since he started out as a newspaper supplement & did have a daily comic strip incarnation maybe he properly belongs in Comic Strips? ;-)
Tell ya what, KAM, you tell me where to put any other Spirit nits I have, (and I've got a couple more), and I'll post them there. You're the boss here.
Excelsior!
Let's honor the original incarnation & stick it in Comic Strips.
Oddly enough newspaper syndicates were worried about comic books popularity that they thought they could increase circulation by including an 8-page comic book insert.
No idea if it worked or not.
Of course, without comic strips there would probably be no such thing as comic books, so the syndicates worry is rather like a father worried that his son is stronger than he is.
The previous posts moved from Misc. DC Nits.
The Spirit June 30, 1940
According to the origin recap, Denny Colt, the Spirit's alter-ego, was buried for 24 hours before he clawed his way out of the ground. I doubt a coffin has enough air to last anyone 24 hours. And how did Colt break through the lid of the coffin to begin with? Much less dig through six feet of dirt?
The Spirit July 7, 1940
So the Spirit has a complete underground home in the Wildwood Cemetary. It comes complete with a lab and a garage for his autoplane. How could he have gotten such a facility built in total secrecy? There'd be virtually no way for all that to be built without a whole lot of people knowing. And where did Colt get the money? The reward monies for the various crooks he captures surely couldn't be enough to cover that kind of an expense, can it?
An autoplane? A car that sprouts wings and flies? Is that aerodynamically sound?
The Spirit August 4, 1940
Until this issue, the Spirit's gloves were yellow. Now they're the same color of blue as his suit.
A scientist named Yagor creates a group of walking dolls, that when they get the scent of someone they can track them wherever they go. Once they find their target, they explode. The first demonstration of one of these doll bombs show it following someone who has taken the subway. Miraculously, it knows which stop its target has gotten off at - even though there'd be no way for it to track its scent that way. Also, rather than following the trail through the apartment building that the victim lives in, it climbs the outer wall of the skyscraper - and still finds its victim. Now that's tracking!
A larger robot is sent to New York to terrorize the city. From its back emerges at least five of the doll bombs. It must be hollow on the inside to be able to hold that many of those bomb dolls. Otherwise, it doesn't look big enough to hold that many of the dolls inside of it.
The Spirit August 11, 1940
Homer Creep, who was engaged to Commissioner Dolan's daughter, Ellen, goes to the Spirit's Wildwood Cemetary hideaway to confront the crime figther. (Seems that since meeting the Spirit, Ellen no longer wants to marry Homer. Yeah, well, with a name like Homer Creep, I wouldn't want to marry him either. If I was a woman, that is.) The nit is, how did Homer know where the Spirit hid out? I thought that was supposed to be a secret that only the Spirit and Ebony White knew about? If it's such public knowledge, why hasn't the police arrested the Spirit? (He's been wanted for murder since the July 21, 1940 story.)
The Spirit August 18, 1940
The Morger boys have sworn to get revenge on the people who sent their father to the electric chair. 25 years after they make that vow, they gather to fulfill that oath. The Spirit arrives to stop them, but doesn't get there in time to stop the deaths of two of the people. The Morgers take the other two victims and lock themselves in a room behind a steel door. To get into the room, the Spirit takes his autoplane and flies through the roof of the house. Amazingly, this doesn't make scrap iron out of the car. It functions quite well at the end of the story.
In the July 21, 1940 Spirit tale, the Spirit becomes a fugitive from the law. (He's framed for murder). By this point in the series, he doesn't seem to be wanted by the police any more. What happened?
"Good morning, Commissioner Dolan. May I come in?"
Oddly enough newspaper syndicates were worried about comic books popularity that they thought they could increase circulation by including an 8-page comic book insert. - KAM
That's not quite accurate. The Spirit stories were 7 or 8 pages long. But they weren't the only comics in the supplements. Two other comics were included. The other two were Mr. Mystic by Bob Powell and Lady Luck by Chuck Mazoujian.
Excelsior!
The Spirit August 25, 1940
Lessee, the Spirit wears a hat, a blue suit, a nice pair of shoes, but no socks. Personally, I wouldn't think fighting crime in dress shoes and no socks would be that comfortable. (This lack of socks is a regular occurance throughout the strip.) Incidentally, on page 6, it appears that the Spirit has suddenly gotten ahold of a pair of brown socks. That, or whoever was doing the coloring for this tale forgot to color the space between the end of the Spirit's pants and the top of his shoes a flesh color.
"Good morning Commissioner Dolan. May I come in?"
The Spirit September 8, 1940
Commissioner Dolan must share the same architect as Dr. Stephen Strange of Marvel Comics. Both live in houses that have a circlular window with crossbars that fall at weird angles. (Page 4, panel 8)
It seems that Orang, the Talking Ape has kidnapped Ellen Dolan, the Commissioner's daughter. The Spirit reasons that the ape will go to Sumatra, the only region where his type of ape is to be found. The Spirit orders Ebony White to fill the autoplane with extra gas. I don't care how much gas you put into a car, I don't see it being able to cross all those thousands of mile to Sumatra. Not without a refill. And carrying extra fuel would only weigh the car down further, making it that much more difficult to fly, much less gain altitude.
The Spirit and Ellen are tied to a tree. The Spirit strains his muscles until he snaps the bonds. Luckily he doesn't hurt Ellen in the process. I mean, as the Spirit is pulling against the ropes, he should be digging the ropes deeper into Ellen. They are tied to her, too.
Commissioner Dolan must share the same architect as Dr. Stephen Strange of Marvel Comics. Both live in houses that have a circlular window with crossbars that fall at weird angles.
Probably a sign that Steve Ditko was a Spirit fan.
Hmmm, The Spirit & Spider-Man could both be described as hard-luck heroes...
Yeah, that'd be my guess - that Ditko was influenced by Eisner. It was really kinda weird seeing that window in an issue of The Spirit, though. Which is pretty much why I mentioned it.
The Spirit January 5, 1941
The Spirit goes up against a baddie who calls himself "The Black Bow". He's an archer, natch. To protect himself against the Black Bow's arrows, the Spirit wears a "cork body protector". Yeah, I'd imagine that cork would be a wonderful means of protection against the high velocity impact of a steel tipped shaft. If we're talking about thumbtacks - maybe. :\
The Spirit January 12, 1941
In this issue, the Spirit, a master of disguise, impersonates a one-legged old man. To accomplish this impersonation, the Spirit wear a blue raincoat and has his leg strapped down so that the back of his thigh is touching the back of his calf. To do that, he'd have to be a helluva contortionist, as well as have a very high tolerance for pain. It is virtually impossible for me to get my leg in that position standing up. I can do it kneeling, but not standing. Then there's the question of his foot, which would probably leave a bulge at the back of the coat. Moreover, the coat does not extend below the knee, so it should be very easily seen by anybody that one leg is fatter than the other.
The Spirit January 26, 1941
The Spirit is captured and taken aboard a plane. He's forced to jump out of the plane through its bomb bay doors. He grabs hold of what appears to be the landing gear strut. Then as the plane, flying extremely low (yeah, it's coming in for a landing, but still too low), the Spirit hooks his feet onto a branch of a tree and uses the branch to come back down to Earth. Given how fast planes fly to stay in the air, two things should have happened - the tree branch should have broken when the Spirit's feet hit and so should the Spirit's feet.
The Spirit February 2, 1941
A construction worker who specializes in making tunnels, decides to turn to a life of crime to earn more money. He recruits some of his fellow "sandhogs" (as they're called). They blow up a section of the underwater tunnel, steal the new section, closing off both ends of it. They then roll the tunnel section to a secluded part of the river. Mmmm. They rolled a cylinder weighing several tons along the bottom of the river... Wouldn't the river's bottom be essentially mud? Wouldn't it be quite difficult to not only roll the heavy cylinder through the mud, but equally difficult walking on through the mud?
How poor is this guy? Not very. I mean, he could afford to equip the cylinder with air tanks so he and his crew could breathe in it. He could afford their food. He could afford to refurbish the tunnel section so it would have an airlock system so he and his men could enter the tunnel without continuously flooding it. He could afford to outfit his people with scuba equipment. And more importantly, he could afford to buy at least six mines to be used to sink ships carrying valuable cargo. For a construction worker, it sounds like he was doing pretty well for himself. Why turn to a life of crime if you already have that kind of money? I'd retire. Hell, if doing construction, building underwater tunnels earns you that kind of bucks, I'm making a career change - now.
The Spirit Febraury 23, 1941
A man named Sam Smith returns home from work. There he encounters some aliens from the planet Argo. While pumping him for information, they let it be known that their planet has an orbit that brings it through Earth's orbit every 1,000 years. In another 1,000 years, Argo will invade Earth. Based on the information Smith has given the Argonites (?), the Earth will be very easy to conquer. Maybe so, but surely by the year 2941, Earth would be far more advanced and quite probably all the more harder to conquer. Especially if the invaders are basing the plans of their attack on the technology of 1941.
Of course, there's the problem of Argo's orbit. How could life exist on a planet that has such huge orbit? It would spend centuries away from a sun to provide heat and light. Plus, wouldn't the presence of such a foreign planetary mass cause a great deal of havoc on our little world?
No one, of course, believes Smith when he warns them about the aliens. Naturally. The Spirit gets involved when Sam Smith is almost hit by the Spirit's car. Denny Colt, the Spirit, is, of course, the only who believes Smith. This belief is based on a glove Smith found. Colt declares that the glove, which has only two fingers on it, is made of a material he's never seen before. It must therefore come from another world.
Anyway, Smith has managed to get a botle of nitroglcyren and is planning to use it to blow up the alienship. Miraculously, the nitro does blow up the ship, taking Smith with it. You'd think a ship that's made for interstellar space travel and landing on planets would be more durable than that. (Incidentally, it's too foggy for the Spirit to see any of this clearly.)
In the aftermath of the spaceship's destruction, the Spirit finds another glove. (Whatever it was made of, it survived the explosion, whereas not one other part of the ship did.) So, Denny takes the glove to the nearest observatory where the resident astronomer confirms that there is a planet called Argo and it just crossed the Earth's orbit in the last 24 hours. The scientist also identified the glove as being made of secrite, a fibre found only on Argo. O-kay. I would've thought "Argo" would be the native's name for their homeworld. If it is, how is it that an earthling knows it? As far as the astronomer's concerned, Argo has no life on it. They'd have to "be made of metal to live in that pressure". If it's an Earth name, why are the Argonians (?) using it?
How would scientists know that Argo only crosses Earth's orbit every thousand years? How would the astronomer know what kind of fibres exist on Argo? They only see the planet every thousand years. And finally, if Argo did indeed cross our orbit every 1,000 years, wouldn't it be in the news? Halley's comet was big news when it made its way through our system. The Harmonic Convergence of about a couple of decades ago was big news. Surely, this too, would be a big news item?
I had most of the same nits when I read that story. As for the orbit it could be calculated. Astronomers do the same thing with comet orbits. Also Pluto was only discovered in 1930, but astronomers know how it will take to orbit (I think 200 plus years).
As for the orbit it could be calculated. Astronomers do the same thing with comet orbits. Also Pluto was only discovered in 1930, but astronomers know how it will take to orbit (I think 200 plus years). - KAM
Tarim! I should have thought of that! Thanks for reminding me.
The Spirit April 27, 1941
On page 2, panel 4, the Spirit is reading the headline to the papers: "Professor Raven's Explosive Fails Army Test". However, succeeding panels (including the very one with a line spoken by the Spirit) indicates the Professor's last name is Ravel.
About that autoplane the Spirit has, how is it possible for an automobile to attain the necessary speed it would take to acheive flight? Could a car from the '40s run fast enough?