Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [75]
The market itself affected the stories. The cost of newsprint had risen substantially, which forced the comic book section to shrink to eight pages, with talk of reducing it to four. Newspapers were dropping the section, but when Eisner talked about abandoning the feature, editors asked him to reconsider. Eisner agonized over whether he should continue. The Spirit had been a part of his creative life for a long time, and even with papers dropping it, it still generated considerable income. As Eisner told Tom Heintjes, “It was a dilemma I often found myself in when I became a businessman and an artist.”
Subscribing newspapers complained about the falloff in quality. The art, they said, didn’t look like the Eisner style that readers were familiar with. Eisner had to agree. He felt that the scripts, largely written by Jules Feiffer, were still strong, but with his attention divided, Eisner found himself relying on artists unable to imitate his style. “The obvious was staring me in the face,” he wrote later. “Rather than allow the quality to disintegrate (which might hurt my professional reputation, not to mention pride) the better part of valor would dictate that I discontinue the feature. But I was not ready for that yet.”
In a “last gasp” effort to instill new life in The Spirit, Eisner hired Wally Wood, an exceptionally talented artist who had worked for Bill Gaines at EC (Entertaining Comics) and who would eventually work for Mad magazine. Wood joined Eisner as a freelancer after a blowup with EC, but he wasn’t interested in contributing only to the Spirit’s backgrounds, as Eisner hoped. Eisner worked out a system that found him discussing scripts with Feiffer, who would write dialogue for the installment. Eisner then did rough pencils and turned the art over to Wood. Given the talents of the three, this might have resulted in sensational work, but it didn’t happen, mainly because these stories, which placed the Spirit in outer space, confounded readers and the comic’s creators alike. Feiffer, no science fiction fan, hated the entire idea. Readers wondered what happened to the detective who walked the streets of the big city. The syndicate grumbled that the change was too radical, that the art was nothing at all like Eisner’s. Eisner pleaded for patience, to no avail.
Outer Space Spirit, as the series eventually came to be known, while beautifully drawn and innovative for a time when the United States’ exploration of space was still nearly a decade away, was an ignominious curtain call for Denny Colt and The Spirit. For all his considerable gifts, Wally Wood could be unreliable when he was drinking, which was often enough, and he struggled with Spirit deadlines, missing one entirely and forcing Eisner to throw together a weak installment that didn’t fit into the series. Eisner pressed on, planning an unusual series called Denny Colt: UFO Investigator, but only one episode was ever published. As much as he would have liked to see The Spirit continue, Eisner realized it was impossible. Jules Feiffer was about to enter the service, Wally Wood was unpredictable, and Eisner had seen enough. The final Spirit entry appeared on October 5, 1952, ending a run that lasted 645 installments over a stretch of more than twelve years.
Eisner regretted his decision to let his groundbreaking series hang on for as long as it did: “Looking back I have to say that it’s a blemish on my career that I allowed The Spirit to