Of all comic strip/book detectives, none was as complex as The Spirit...
...even when creator/writer/illustrator Will Eisner wasn't the man behind the story, as in this case, where future Oscar, Obie, Pulitzer, and Writers' Guild award winner Jules Feiffer scripted and laid out the tale...
The Spirit was unique among comic heroes since he had not only his own feature in an anthology comic (Police Comics), his own monthly/bi-monthly comic book (from Quality, and later Fiction House), and a weekly comic book (distributed with Sunday newspapers throughout the country) from 1940 to 1952!
The newspaper weekly comic contained new stories which were then reprinted in the other comic books.
It also didn't have slick covers, using the same newsprint stock as the inside of the booklet, making them extremely fragile and hard to find in good condition today despite having a circulation of several million (you read that right) per issue!
This particular story initially appeared in November 25, 1951 newspapers before being reprinted in Fiction House's Spirit #3 (1952), where this version is taken from.
Written and laid-out by Feiffer (who started as an art assistant in Eisner's studio), the penciling and inking was done by Jim Dixon with Eisner himself editing, art directing, and occasionally retouching to keep characters "on-model".
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