The Spirit is a fictional masked crime fighter created by cartoonist Will Eisner, who fights crime with the blessing of the city's police commissioner Dolan, an old friend. Despite the Spirit's origin as detective/criminologist Denny Colt, his real identity was rarely referred to after his first appearance, and for all intents and purposes he was simply 'The Spirit.' The stories are presented in a wide variety of styles, from straight forward crime drama and noir to lighthearted adventure, from mystery and horror to comedy and love stories, often with hybrid elements that twisted genre and reader expectations. Quality Comics was an American comic book publishing company that operated from 1937 to 1956 and was largely influential in creating the Golden Age of comic books. From 1940-1950, printer Everett M. 'Busy' Arnold reprinted Eisner's Spirit stories under his Quality Comics banner. Comic book stories from the 1940s and 1950s may depict some ethnic and racial prejudices that were once commonplace in American culture. Such depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While not representing the publisher's view of today's society, these stories are printed as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. Collects The Spirit #1-4 (1944 to Spring 1946).
