| "The
Orphans"
(August 25, 1940)
In discussing […] "The Orphans"
(August 25, 1940), Eisner said he was beginning to discover the
power of the splash page, on which he would indelibly leave his
mark. Eisner's Spirit splashes have become
singular works that in many cases stand on their own. In his earliest
tales, he wasn't exercising the page's potential, but now he reached
for another arrow from his artistic quiver..
"When I began, I saw the splash merely as something
that should grab the attention of someone flipping through the newspaper,"
he said. "I soon became theoretical about it and saw it as
something more than a design element. It could set a scene, set
a mood, define a situation; anything, I thought. Here I started
with The Spirit, then led the reader to the orphanage. The splash
both grabs the eye and leads the reader."
This story introduces what became a pet topic for
Eisner — orphans. They were an ingredient of his early literary
diet, as he was a hearty devote of Horatio Alger's
tales of orphans' struggles to survive and prosper in a heartless
world The artist also sat through many silent movies that featured
orphans, such as Charlie Chaplin's The Kid.
"I(Continuedfrom page 16) try to establish an emotional link
to the reader, and I think people tend to establish that kind of
link with orphans," he said.
Throughout "The Orphans" is a sense of
a morality tale, culminating in the story's final panel. Eisner
said this type of story had a historical context that no longer
exists today. "This was sort of the order of the day; it was
very much in vogue back then. The end of this story was me cravenly
bowing to what I thought were the expectations of newspaper editors.
Comic books were still suspect, and although I got mail from older
readers, the editors thought kids were reading The Spirit,
so I felt obliged to put in that preachy ending."
Eisner was busily conducting experiments with lighting
and his character on page 5. In the scene, The Spirit
capably absorbs a vicious beating — a trait that would serve
him in good stead, as Eisner constantly stuck him in situations
where he survived only by dint of a rock-hard head. "I was
emphasizing that I wasn't doing a superhero," he said. "A
superhero simply would have snapped the ropes, knocked the crooks
out, the end. But The Spirit had to persevere.
Again, I was trying to make the reader see that The Spirit
was a flesh-and-blood human.
"I did this story in an era where boxing was
an extremely popular sport," he added. "And the ability
to take a beating and come out on top was admired by people."
Ever the Monday-morning quarterback where his own
work is concerned, Eisner said he would have handled the beating
a bit differently if he were doing it now. "I was using narrative
in a way that I now disagree with," he said, citing the second
tier, first panel on page 5. "I say now that that caption is
unnecessary, that The Spirit simply staring hard says all that needs
to be said." On the next page, the first panel of the bottom
tier, Eisner says that he would have shown Ripper "realizing
his defeat and giving vent to his hate," rather than simply
telling it to the reader. Referring to page 5's second tier, second
panel, he termed the shadow enveloping The Spirit
as "absurd. I was clearly going for some kind of dramatic effect,
but I didn't support it with any lighting anywhere else, so it sort
of draws attention to itself for no reason."
In choreographing the fighting on page 6, Eisner
said he wanted the action to reveal something about The
Spirit's character. "A scene like this underscores
that I wasn't drawing a character who could punch through a brick
wall or emit radiation," he said. "I wanted to establish
that he was as far away from that as possible. And by this point
I was getting him away from even the minor 'otherworldliness' that
was present in some of the earlier stories, with him rising up out
of the grave in a cloud of smoke. The Spirit had to be athletic
and wondrous, but at the same time look possible."
"Orang
the Ape Man"
(September 1, 1940)
The next story is where Eisner began treading
thin ice with his newspapers. "Orang the Ape-Man" (September
1, 1940) touched all sorts of nerves: racial, social, sexual, ethical,
and all points in between. When he wrote the story, he didn't intend
to fashion a recitation of mankind's bugaboos, he simply wanted
a story that was part King Kong, part Beauty and the
Beast. "I've always liked stories where animals exhibited
human feelings, and I've done many of them in The Spirit,"
he said. But this was early on, and it was unexpected. I was playing
with themes that some people felt belonged only to God."
According to Eisner, editors feared readers would
be offended on a number of levels: Christians would be offended
by a man giving cognition to an ape, while those living in the South
would imagine that the story was really about miscegenation.
Eisner said Martin, who was the embodiment of the
Midwestern propriety, questioned "Orang" but did not attempt
to persuade Eisner to restrain himself in the future. "Henry
Martin was not one to play boss. I was my own boss and a responsible
person. Obviously, I couldn't do just anything — I had to
keep in mind that The Spirit ran in family
newspapers, but I saw nothing wrong with the content of it."
Arnold, however, told Eisner to refrain from such "hideous"
subject matter in the future — not out of a sense of morality,
but because editors might bail out of the Sunday section. This type
of far-out story is exactly what Arnold feared most. "He never
wanted me to experiment, to be on the cutting edge. Whenever we
would meet, he would always say, 'Now remember, you're running in
family newspapers.' I think he saw me as a loose cannon, because
I was always coming up with ideas that departed from his view of
what would sell and be safe."
Eisner said he recalled receiving no complaints about
what I found the most remarkable event in the story — the
scene on page 4 where Elsa kills her father. Eisner evokes frightful
images in the reader's mind when he describes
the father's blood smeared on the face of his daughter as she kills
him. Did she consume some of the flesh? The mind fairly reels, as
does the stomach. Eisner demonstrates his increasing control on
page 7, where he leavens the intense action with an effective visual
gag. That Eisner felt comfortable stringing together drama, action
and comedy simultaneously portends the special mixture that would
soon mark The Spirit as inimitable.
Orang's last panel was an effort on the part of George
Brenner, Arnold's editor at Quality, to mollify Busy and
readers of The Spirit. "I had nothing
to do with that dialogue," Eisner said. "I wanted to have
The Spirit simply walking away from the scene, but Brenner wanted
something to placate the editors, to address the fact that God'
s law was supreme and was not to be defied. I didn't object; they
were just doing what they thought would shield us from criticism,
I suppose."
"The
Return of Orang"
(September 8, 1940)
Not content merely to turn up the heat he
was generating, Eisner sets the pot to boil with his next story,
"The Return of Orang, The Ape That Is Human!" (September
8, 1940). Eisner was borrowing a page from the immensely popular
newspaper continuity strips, whose stories would unfold over weeks
and would bring faithful readers back for each installment —
to newspaper editors it was manna from heaven. Unfortunately, the
story that Eisner decided to continue was probably the one those
same editors would have most liked never to have appeared at all.
"I recall this came about because someone at
the syndicate suggested I try continuity," Eisner said. "I
wasn't all that keen on the idea, because I was operating on the
premise that each episode would be self-contained, and that would
free me from having to develop and maintain continuity. After a
while, continuity can be cumbersome, and I wasn't going to build
that into my feature, although years later, I did try it again.
You can't do a feature as long as I did without developing some
continuity of characters, events and relationships."
But why Orang? "I became enamored of the idea
of the ape who had the mind of a man, so I wanted to explore it
a little further. I was heavily influenced by Edgar Rice
Burroughs's Tarzan novels, which
I think is evident. I remember enjoying doing my own take on the
Tarzan-type of situation."
There was also a pragmatic reason: Eisner was consuming
story material at a furious rate. "When I started, I had 10
or so plots written on a sheet of paper. That didn't last too long.
Doing a continuity allowed me to get more mileage out of the stories.
I wasn't interested in doing filler, but I thought that if I could
break one idea into two good stories, it would be helpful."
Helpful to Eisner, perhaps, but not so to the syndicate,
which began fielding complaints about the strip. Eisner said some
editors objected to Orang' s abduction of Ellen Dolan,
especially when Orang calls her his mate. "Some people at the
syndicate thought readers in the South would read all sorts of crazy
things into it, and in 1940 that was explosive stuff. But I think
the anticipation was bigger than the actual reaction, and I never
changed a thing."
"The Return of Orang" marks the first time
The Spirit left Central City. After this, Eisner
would take him to locales all over the earth. "It gave the
feature a fresh look, and it allowed me to put him in different
situations. That became important as time went by. l also enjoyed
the chance to draw these different settings. I can see that I was
challenging myself to do this."
The relationship between The Spirit
and Ellen Dolan is strengthened and developed by
the end of this story, where they engage in a bit of tonsil hockey.
"I wanted the kiss at the end of the story to resonate,"
he said. "That's not a sanitary kiss they're exchanging there.
And I think it left an impression of what their relationship was
going to be."
"Ebony's
X-Ray Eyes"
(September 15, 1940)
"When we discussed our final story,
Eisner tried to crawl under a carpet. "Ebony's X-Ray Eyes"
(September 15, 1940) was one of his first attempts at dealing with
Ebony White as anything more than a flunky. "It
was also one of my first attempts at all-out comedy." Eisner
had discovered by this time a structure for the splash page that
he used in all the stories in this issue: a large, dominant image
leading the eye to the first panel of the story. "I felt this
was eye-catching, and it allowed me to set the tone," he said.
"Here there's no doubt that it's going to be a funny story."
But in 1992, Ebony's look and his ethnic speech pattern
make Eisner cringe. "This is humor that was part of its time,"
he said. "I'm not going to defend it in today's terms. But
I know that all humor is a reflection of its time in which it appears.
Later on, Ebony became more educated and intelligent,
because that's the way the years progressed. At no time was he ever
a buffoon based on his racial characteristics."
Addressing Ebony's caricatural aspect, including
his "mushmouf" mien on the splash page, Eisner said this
approach had been a staple of the comics from its inception. "This
medium depends on stereotypes. Gangsters are certain types with
big cigars in their mouths. The good guys have nice faces and don't
smoke cigars. A cartoon communicates with the reader because it
employs commonly accepted images that the reader uses to identify
types of occupations."
Eisner said that in one significant way he feels
regret about Ebony — his speech. "I wish I had done that
differently, because it seems a little unnecessary in places,"
he said. "I think part of it had to do with my own limitations
as a writer, because later on I was able to handle it much more
gracefully." He added that despite whatever the criticism he's
received about Ebony over the years (which actually has not been
much) he says he has no regrets over how he chose to treat a minority
character as The Spirit' s dependable sidekick.
Ethnicity aside, "Ebony's X-Ray Eyes" is
gem-like with innovative artwork and constantly changing situations
throughout. Eisner said the story whetted his appetite to do more
comedy, he realized the flexibility he built into the series' premise
was beginning to pay off. And he was clearly paying attention to
the small things that make a story work; in the third panel of the
bottom tier on page 3, Eisner drew Ebony's hand as if it were translucent.
The "special effects" on pages 5 and 6 were achieved through
the use of negatives of Eisner's original art, which was drawn in
the conventional manner. The technology used is virtually obsolete
now, as photostat machines have largely given way to film negatives.
Summing up his feelings about Ebony, Eisner professed
deep fondness for the character. "Ebony had a dimension. To
me he was real and I treated him with respect and dignity. No apologies.
Period."
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