Spirit's villains; Are the men or women better?

[jugoyan]

What do you think out there? The answer is an easy one for me. The ladies win hands down.
If anything, just based on their names alone. P'Gell, Willo' The Whisp, Poison Ivy...I mean so deliciously Dickensian, who can resist.
And the Spirits enough of a chauvinist not to klop them one in the chops when they're trying to rub him out, which makes how he has to deal with them, that much more interesting and engrossing.
Plus, you can tell that in many cases such as P'Gell, you get that little thrill that maybe he WANTS them to hurt him?! When did Spiderman ever feel like that?! ( Okay, he was never done richly enough to have any real female enemies, so I guess that comparison's not fair.)

How about the men, I hear someone say...Yes, his male foes. Start with Dr. Cobra of course. Love Eisner's Mad Scientist like send-up of him...It looks to me like WIll Elder's "Mole" character in Mad number one from 1952...Obviously Elder may have read and seen Eisner's previous work...Was there an influence there?
Then of course, "The Octopus"...probably the Spirit's most famous nemesis...

What's your favorite Spirit enemy? Let's hear some spirit for "Spirit" villains...

[Spirit fan]

Women! My favorite is P'Gell. Hubba hubba.

[jugoyan]

Yes, the women, the women, the women!...But as I said above, the men can be made a case for. If you like P'Gell, I read in Warren reprint issue 5, the interesting "interview" with Eisner and P'Gell. Kind of like Edgar Bergen interviewing Charlie McCarthy, but Eisner used the beautiful puppet of his creation to elicit some interesting stuff...
...We find out that P'Gell started out with men as the concubine of a Nazi general at the tender age of fourteen. Eisner elaborates about her likes and preferences for and with men, and 'Gell dishes about why she loves the Spirit... Do look it up, you won't be sorry!

[Gary Chaloner]

Ahhh... they don't draw 'em like that anymore. Va-va-voom!

On male vs. female villains, I think Eisner had a rather even hand when it came to his bad guys and gals... interesting characters all.

I have a soft spot for Sand Saref though. And The Octopus. Such a delicious idea not to show him. Wonderful stuff!

I loved some of his pre-war villains as well, from the early years of the strip.

[jugyan]

Hi Gary...Speaking of his pre-war stuff...I hear occasionally about his late thirties work on pirates, called "Hawks of the Seas"...Ever read any of that? Do you think it's any good?
I saw a splash page for it the other day when I looked it up on Ebay, and copies of the collection aren't that expensive, but I wanted to know more before I "walked the plank" for it.
The page I saw reminded me a little of the old E.C. artists. Almost Johnny Craig like or perhaps like an infant Bernie Krigstein?
What do you think. Ever read this series? Was it a series, or was it small separate stories that foretold the way he'd do the Spirit?
Let me know if you have any info. on these. Thks.

[Calum]

The women, clearly. I mean how many Spirit women baddies can you think of? I bet it's double figures. Now how many men baddies? two? three? The Octopus, Dr Cobra and Mr Carrion are the only ones springing to mind for me (and i had to think to remember Carrion's name).

By contrast the female villains are many and varied, no two being similar. And this isn't just down to sexual preference either. Nobody could say that Hazel P Macbeth is an alluring temptress, and yet she's an interesting female Spirit baddie without a doubt.

[jugyan]

Heya Calum...Well sure, the female naughties outgain the men far and away..BUT...Don't discount or minimize the many "one and gone" badmen that pop up frequently...Indeed, they account for the majority of the Spirit's battles, but they're just not carried over long enough to become internalized in the reader.
One of my all time favorite Spirit adversaries, that by the tale's three part end becomes his chum, is the character, Dick Whittler. He seems a cowboy hick, but he's suave and calculating and much more than first meets the eye.
I LOVE this Eisner creation! He has more layers of personality and emphasis in this character, than some strips are able to encapsulate in a figure only after dozens or even hundreds of episodes.
Whittler plays dumb like a fox, and you realize that whatever happens he's already thought it out one step ahead.
After he realizes the Spirit's intentions are good and honorable, he swarms to his side like blue on the sky.
What an adversary ! You're breathing a sigh of relief when he becomes your friend!

[Calum]

he's no baddie though!

anyway, the Spirit would be lost if you removed the male OR female baddies from the stories, this is yet another thing Eisner did well, he included realistic characters of both genders, in many different modes, unlike some of the more child-oriented comic strips which were sometimes a bit heavy on the male characters. Another strip that distributed the genders evenly was Jack Cole's Plastic Man.

[jugyan]

Calum...Take a look at this three parter again. Dick Whittler is not a baddie necessarily by title, (he's a detective), but at the tale's beginning, he's definitely the Spirit's nemesis.
A bad guy in Spirit while if not a true baddie by definition of the spirit of a baddie, is still a bad guy in Spirit...if ya know what I mean!