The Spirit (August 3, 1941) “Wanted Dead or Alive: The Spirit”

From the splash page, Wanted Dead or Alive promises a lot and delivers very little. Spirit is indeed wanted, and apparently dead or alive, but the police manhunts never give him the slightest trouble. Not even when he breaks into the police station and kidnaps Dolan and the Mayor. Spirit’s very cocky this strip, and oddly self-destructive. He’s wanted because he’s broken a murder suspect out of jail. The murdered is a foreign general who is in exile in the United States because the Nazis took over his country. The cops found the suspect going through the general’s papers. Spirit knows the general might have Nazi agents after him—the general was active in the resistance even in exile—and doesn’t think his execution by firing squad suggests a lone gunman. The reader gets all these details after Spirit has kidnapped Dolan and the Mayor (which comes after Ellen has a panel bitching out her dad for putting out the APB on Spirit). Spirit presents these details at the murder scene, which has…