Comics Fondle

Simultaneously, peanut millionaire Ivan Tovaroff is murdered on his estate and Hildie and Ellen are kidnapped from Commissioner Dolan’s home. The Spirit investigates Tovaroff’s murder and finds information implicating Tovaroff’s second-in-command in the murder. As the criminal goes for his pistol, the Spirit is saved by Satin. They only have a few moments for a reunion before the rest of the gang arrives to find their leader dead-but no matter, they have their hostages… Hildie and Ellen and Hildie is worth a fortune to Prince Glenko, or so one of the hoods explains to a confederate over the telephone. In the meantime, Ebony reports Hildie and Ellen’s kidnapping to Dolan, who immediately connects the two cases. Prince Glenko arrives and recognizes Satin as Hildie’s mother. The Spirit intervenes as the thug’s get ready to go with Hildie and Satin (Hildie being an heiress to Tovaroff’s Nazi, not peanut, fortunes). Hildie frees her newfound mother and Ellen, while Satin explains the situation to Ellen. Satin shoots down the remainder of the thugs and leaves Ellen to care for the Spirit, off to England with her daughter. As he recovers, the Spirit mumbles Ellen’s name instead of Satin’s, which Ellen takes as a good sign of his affection…

The third panel of this story, the gun shooting Tovaroff. has some great fingers on the offender’s hand. Bulbous but fluid, it really sets an art tone for the story. Lots of panels per page, lots of art for not much action. A lot of what I said about Eisner getting bored with short present action timelines (in the previous post on “Dolan’s Origin”) are made irrelevant by this story. So irrelevant, the passive voice in that sentence isn’t going to bother me enough to change it.

There’s also a really funny sight gag with Ebony so despondent he puts a pistol to his head. Dolan comments on it before dragging him off to help Hildie and Ellen (the plot hole–how Dolan connected the two cases–will go unmentioned). The gun bit is just really funny and really captures the air of this story, which has a lot going on, from female jealousy, to a mother and daughter reuniting, to the Spirit secretly wooing Ellen a little bit. It’s not much of a story, in terms of consequence, mostly it just brings back Satin and gets rid of Hildie (after a week). But Eisner’s execution of the story is fantastic. I love reading stories without expectations of what’s coming next and this one’s a fine example of such a case.

My only complaint, besides, perhaps, the functional nature of the narrative, is on the last page, when Satin embraces Hildie and tells her they’re going to England. Maybe I’m just Eisner illiterate, but the face looked all wrong. Satin looked like the girl in the first (Detective Comics #27) Batman story. Does Eisner just draw her differently from everyone else in the series?

But otherwise, a really visually dynamic story.

collected in “The Spirit Archives: Volume 12” (Will Eisner)

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