The Spirit #10/6/1946
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe October 6, 1946 Spirit section introduced P'Gell — a French femme fatale and serial black widow who would become the most enduring and complex foil in Will Eisner's entire run — making it one of the most creatively significant single entries in the strip's twelve-year history. The story, titled 'Meet P'Gell,' opened with P'Gell addressing readers directly from a chaise lounge, announcing 'I am P'Gell…and this is not a story for little boys!' — a bold, self-aware narrative choice that placed a villain, not the hero, at the emotional center of the tale. That structural inversion — foregrounding a morally ambiguous female character with full agency over a masked crime-fighter — was genuinely unusual for American comics of 1946 and pointed toward the literary experimentation that would define Eisner's post-war work. The issue's splash page has also been singled out by comics historians as a showcase of Eisner's cinematic design vocabulary, blending color, black-and-white, deep shadow, and integrated title lettering in ways that had no real parallel in the mainstream comics of the era.
ComicBooks.com Value
Find on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
The October 6, 1946 section arrived at a pivotal transitional moment for The Spirit: Eisner had returned from his World War II military service, and Jules Feiffer had recently joined the studio as an art assistant around 1946, beginning the collaborative post-war phase that would produce some of the strip's most celebrated work. The Spirit ran as a weekly insert distributed by the Register and Tribune Syndicate to up to twenty Sunday newspapers, reaching a combined readership of roughly five million readers at its peak. Eisner operated a studio of assistants who contributed inking, backgrounds, and lettering, so while Eisner is credited as the strip's creator and primary author, individual sections from this period were collaborative productions — a standard practice in newspaper strip work of the era.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of P'Gell, the Spirit's most recurring femme fatale, in the story titled 'Meet P'Gell' (also known as 'P'Gell of Paris').
- P'Gell is introduced as a black widow operating out of Istanbul/Turkey, seducing and marrying wealthy men who die under mysterious circumstances, before eventually relocating to Central City.
- In her debut story, P'Gell attempts to gain immortality by seducing the inventor of a youth formula, and is thwarted by the Spirit.
- The issue's splash page — depicting P'Gell addressing the reader directly — has been cited by multiple comics historians as a standout example of Eisner's cinematic composition and integrated title design.
- The issue was published as part of the Register and Tribune Syndicate's weekly 16-page tabloid supplement, distributed to up to 20 Sunday newspapers.
- Jules Feiffer, who joined Eisner's studio as an art assistant circa 1946, was part of the collaborative team active at the time of this issue's production.
- 'Meet P'Gell' was reprinted in Quality Comics' The Spirit #21, in Kitchen Sink Press's The Spirit #2 (November 1973) — a dedicated all-P'Gell issue — in DC Comics' The Spirit Archives Vol. 13 (2004), in a Salleck edition (2010), and in Will Eisner: The Centennial Celebration 1917–2017 (Dark Horse, 2017).
- P'Gell went on to appear in numerous subsequent Spirit stories, spawned a dedicated Kitchen Sink hardcover (All About P'Gell: The Spirit Casebook Vol. II, 1998), and appeared as a central antagonist in the 1987 television film adaptation of The Spirit.
Cast · 7 characters
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in The Spirit #21 (1950), The Spirit #2 (1973), Ilustración + Comix Internacional #1 (1980), Heavy Metal Magazine #8 (1983), Comix #7 (1984), Spirit #6 (1985), The Spirit #10 (1985), Spirit #[2] (1985), The Spirit Casebook #[nn] (1990), From Aargh! to Zap! Harvey Kurtzman’s Visual History of the Comics #[nn] (1991), Will Eisner's The Spirit Archives #13 (2004), The Best of the Spirit #[nn] (2006), The Spirit: Femmes Fatales #[nn] (2008), Will Eisner's The Spirit: A Celebration of 75 Years #[nn] (2015)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.