Number 1472: Spirit of the thing...

We’re finishing up our Week of Quality with an early Spirit Section, the 16-page newspaper supplement that Will Eisner produced for Quality Comics publisher Everett “Busy” Arnold. At some point in its 12-year life the Spirit Section became copyright by Eisner, but in this early example Arnold held the copyright.

This section, dated July 14, 1940, was the seventh to appear. It’s early enough that the Spirit has his flying car. I think Eisner made a wise move when he dumped that silly gimmick.

Chuck Mazoujian drew ’Lady Luck.” According to some biographical information Mazoujian left comics when he went into the service during World War II. After the war he went into teaching painting and figure drawing at Pratt Institute. Later Mazoujian went into illustration and commercial art.

Bob Powell did “Mr. Mystic” and had a long career in comic books.

Number 1428: The UFO Spirit

Orson Welles, the enfant terrible of theater, radio and the movies of his day, gets the Will Eisner treatment as “Awsum Bells” in this tale from the September 28, 1947 Spirit Section. I have scanned it from the blackline-and-graytone reprint in Warren’s The Spirit #2 (1974).

The update paragraph on the last page was new for the reprint version. The scripter (credited as Eisner by the Grand Comics Database) had been paying attention to the news stories that began appearing in June, 1947 about mysterious “flying disks” buzzing around in U.S. airspace.