Created by cartoonist Will Eisner, he first appeared as the main feature of a tabloid-sized comic book insert distributed in the Sunday edition of Register and Tribune Syndicate newspapers.

[1] The Spirit is the alias of Denny Colt, a private investigator and criminologist based in the fictional Central City, who falls into suspended animation while trying to apprehend the mad scientist Dr. Cobra.

He frequently encounters femme fatales over the course of his adventures, including serial seducer P'Gell, thief-turned-troubleshooter Silk Satin, and his estranged childhood friend Sand Saref; he also comes into conflict with his archenemy the Octopus, an unseen criminal mastermind.

Although predominantly a mix of crime drama, noir and mystery, the series defied reader expectations by wildly experimenting with genre and tone, including horror, slapstick comedy, romance, fantasy, metafiction and science fiction.

From the 1990s to the 2010s, Kitchen Sink Press, DC Comics and Dynamite Entertainment also published new Spirit stories by other writers and artists.

Widely regarded as Eisner's most famous creation,[2] The Spirit has been credited with influencing the later underground comix movement and such filmmakers as William Friedkin and Brad Bird.

In a 2004 interview, Eisner elaborated on that meeting: "Busy" invited me up for lunch one day and introduced me to [sales manager of the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate] Henry Martin, who said, "The newspapers in this country, particularly the Sunday papers, are looking to compete with comics books, and they would like to get a comic-book insert into the newspapers"... Martin asked if I could do it...

The syndicate people weren't in full agreement with me... [I]n my first discussion with 'Busy' Arnold, his thinking centered around a superhero kind of character—a costumed character; we didn't use the word 'superhero' in those days... and I argued vehemently against it because I [had] had my bellyful of creating costumed heroes at Eisner and Iger... [S]o actually one evening, around three in the morning, I was still working, trying to find it—I only had about a week-and-a-half or two weeks in which to produce the first issue, the whole deal was done in quite a rush—and I came up with an outlaw hero, suitable, I felt, for an adult audience.

Mystic" and "Lady Luck" in a 16-page Sunday supplement (colloquially called "The Spirit Section") that was eventually distributed in 20 newspapers with a combined circulation of as many as five million copies.

[14] Eisner was drafted into the U.S. Army in late 1941, "and then had about another half-year which the government gave me to clean up my affairs before going off" to fight in World War II.

[8] In his absence, the newspaper syndicate used ghost writers and artists to continue the strip, including Manly Wade Wellman, William Woolfolk, Jack Cole and Lou Fine.

"[17] In some episodes, the nominal hero makes a brief, almost incidental appearance while the story focuses on a real-life drama played out in streets, dilapidated tenements, and smoke-filled back rooms.

[10] As The Comics Journal editor-publisher Gary Groth wrote, "By the late '40s, Eisner's participation in the strip had dwindled to a largely supervisory role.

[20] The Spirit, referred to in one newspaper article cited below as "the only real middle-class crimefighter", was the hero persona of young detective/criminologist Denny Colt.

[21] Presumed killed in the first three pages of the premiere story, Colt later revealed to his friend, Central City Police Commissioner Dolan, that he had in fact gone into suspended animation caused by the villainous Dr. Cobra's experiments.

Using his new-found anonymity, Colt began a life of fighting crime wearing a simple costume consisting of a blue domino mask, business suit, fedora hat, and gloves (plus a white shirt and red necktie).

[22] The Spirit dispensed justice with the aid of his assistant Ebony White, funding his adventures with an inheritance from his late father Denny Colt Sr. and the rewards from capturing various villains.

Eisner later admitted to consciously stereotyping the character, but said he tried to do so with "responsibility", and argued that "at the time humor consisted in our society of bad English and physical difference in identity".

In an accompanying feature article in that edition, Eisner's former office manager Marilyn Mercer wrote, "Ebony never drew criticism from Negro groups (in fact, Eisner was commended by some for using him), perhaps because, although his speech pattern was early Minstrel Show, he himself derived from another literary tradition: he was a combination of Tom Sawyer and Penrod, with a touch of Horatio Alger hero, and color didn't really come into it".

[30] The complete song appears in the April 27, 1947 "Spirit Section", here titled "Ev'ry Li'l Bug", with Ebony credited within the storyline as its composer.

[citation needed] Several Spirit stories, such as the first appearance of Sand Saref, were retooled from a failed publishing venture featuring an eyepatched, pipe-smoking detective named John Law.

Jules Feiffer, who began as an art assistant c. 1946 and later became the primary writer through the strip's end in 1952, recalled, "When I first worked for Will there was John Spranger, who was his penciler and a wonderful draftsman; better than Will.

The first of these two 60-page issues opened with a new seven-page retelling of the Spirit's origin by writer-penciler-inker Eisner (with inking assist by Chuck Kramer).

Issue 30 of the Kitchen Sink series (July 1981) features "The Spirit Jam", with a script from Eisner and a few penciled pages, plus contributions from 50 artists, including Fred Hembeck, Trina Robbins, Steve Leialoha, Frank Miller, Harvey Kurtzman, Howard Cruse, Brian Bolland, Bill Sienkiewicz, John Byrne, and Richard Corben.

[43] Kitchen Sink also published a series of original Spirit stories in The Spirit: The New Adventures (March–November 1998), including contributions from Will Eisner, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland, Tim Bradstreet, Kurt Busiek, Eddie Campbell, Marcus Moore, Paul Chadwick, Neil Gaiman, Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Joe R. Lansdale, David Lloyd, and Paul Pope.

[44] In the mid-2000s, DC Comics began reprinting The Spirit chronologically in the company's hardcover Archive series, in an approximately 8x10-inch format, smaller than the Kitchen Sink and Warren publications.

Eisner's final Spirit story appeared in the sixth issue of The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, from Dark Horse Comics, published on April 20, 2005.

The series updated some concepts, with Ellen's Internet skills helping to solve a case, and Ebony White stripped of his racial stereotype characteristics.

The team of Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones became the series' regular writers beginning with issue #14 (March 2008), with Mike Ploog and later Paul Smith providing the artwork.

This imprint incorporated the 17-issue The Spirit volume two (June 2010 - Oct. 2011), written variously by Mark Schultz, David Hine, Lilah Sturges, and Howard Chaykin.