Five Passengers opens on a moody airstrip with an unlikely cast. A local schoolteacher’s favorite assignment is to bring the youngsters to watch the flight to Washington D.C. Each student gets to pick one of the passengers they’re watching board and write a fictional biography of the person. Given the strip will eventually involve foreign agents and other ill-intentioned folk, it’s strange no one ever thinks the schoolteacher’s off. The pilots even comment on the teacher and his class; it’s a regular field trip.

The school field trip is just a bookending device, however, and the action quickly gets underway with the incredible events aboard the airplane once it is in flight. There’s a mobster turned FBI informant on the plane, and the only way the mob can get him is to take him out on the plane, then for the hitman to parachute. A concerned older passenger observes, dressed entirely in blue, but can’t possibly be Spirit in disguise because he’s not just wearing glasses, he’s also got an old man white hair tuft beard.

It’s the Spirit, of course, who’s there on an unrelated case. Also, on board on an unrelated case is that foreign agent, who aids the mob hitman in his escape before turning to his own, now easily attainable, business. So everyone’s got their own agenda, there’s the potential for numerous double-crosses, and as long as the knocked out flight attendant doesn’t roll out of the plane, every Passenger will have either died or killed another passenger.

Then there’s a surprise after all that intrigue—which already will have involved parachutes, multiple disguise reveals, and a possible logic error in the narration text—but it’s not enough for Eisner; there’s got to be a comeback reveal. Then the bookend finish. Then something appropriately pro-British, because there’s a war on and everything.

Even the reveal at the end is basically just a cameo guest appearance, with some entirely functional dialogue to pass the time. Eisner and studio turn everything up to eleven with this strip—the opening has the class on the field trip to appeal to same-age readers, followed by almost immediate intrigue, violent mob action, and airplane peril. It’s a showcase of extremes, except there’s minimal Spirit fisticuffs. It’s not a Spirit action showcase, it’s a soft pilot for Spy Spirit’s Mystery of the Week. And it’s interesting to see Eisner and studio flex with narrative promises over visual ones. The strip’s a very accessible Spirit, especially in a newspaper full of war news.

The art’s entirely solid, with some moody panels but no real standouts. The timing is excellent, with Passengers using comedic comic strip timing in an intrigue setting and such. The strip’s successful; it just lacks any particular oomph, which is a choice given the guest star’s identity.

And, now, Killer McNobby takes the crown for most formal flexing Spirit strip. They do the narration entirely in rhyme, with accompanying illustration. It’s almost like Eisner and studio realized if they didn’t do something different with it, Killer would be maybe the fifth “Spirit vs. Titular (asterisk) Criminal” strip. Maybe tenth. It’s kind of a default by now, enough so they’ve been deconstructing the tropes recently.

Killer is a bad dude who starts small and gets bolder and more successful. His modus operandi is killing his victims so there aren’t any witnesses to his robberies. There’s a simplicity to the man, and Central City knows to fear him. But Spirit’s not scared, so they get into a fist fight from afternoon to the next morning in a lot in the slums. Gangsters either do or do not show up, the underworld definitely comes out, but the rhyme—there’s eventually a chorus, it’s a song, it’s an urban folk fight song for Spirit; it’s a big ol’ swing. But before I get too distracted by how well-executed Killer gets, I’ll note the incongruities in the lyrics.

The lyrics are impressive in terms of humor and rhyming; in terms of relaying the narrative as it plays out in the accompanying illustrations… they get a C. It happens a lot during the fight sequence, which is unfortunate because it’s a glorious fight sequence after the build-up. Once it’s clear we’re headed into fisticuffs, the rhymes either do or don’t make sense with the illustrations; they quickly become confusing. More confusing is the lyrics not making sense between the rhymes; they lose internal consistency for a while and just roll with it, presumably because they knew once you saw the fight page, you were reading as fast as you could to get to that one. Killer must have looked great on the newspaper page.

There’s not much story. Spirit just goes after dude when enough is enough. They get into the fight, they both have highs and lows, and then there’s the finish. And Eisner and studio change up the lyric structure again to get to a rhyme, saying whatever they have to say to get there. It’s ambitious, it’s successful, it’s just not particularly tenacious. They do an awesome, delightful strip. When re-reading the lyrics to try to understand how the underworld can all be in attendance without any gangsters, the art starts to feel distracting. And the way Eisner works the art to ignore traditional comic strip narrative—it’s far more expressive, both for humor and exposition. It just doesn’t always fit with the lyrics, except typographically, of course. There’s a not zero chance much of the song was written to fit the spaces between the visuals. Killer’s a gorgeously illustrated strip; they worked hard on this one, and they deliver.

Spirit’s been making lots of big swings lately, both in narrative and style; Killer McNobby’s the champ.

For now, anyhow.

Spirit’s been overdue for a nice, wholesome story, so when Thomas Hawkins starts the strip getting out of prison and the guard says, “Once a killer, always a killer,” it’s concerning.

The strip turns around immediately, however, as Spirit drops in to see Dolan and Dolan’s thrilled to tell him about how Hawkins is on his way up and Dolan’s going to remind him the cops have their eye on him.

Spirit, for his part, tells Dolan he’s the bad guy in this situation and is making it worse. And then proceeds to let Dolan hear more of it after Dolan threatens Tommy: crime is a social disease, and criminalizing and ostracizing ex-cons is obviously, objectively perpetuating the cycle. The strip cuts to Tommy at this point, presumably to save the reader from Dolan’s thoughts on Herbert Hoover, again.

And Eisner and studio deliver a one-page visualization of the cycle at work. Tommy comes across an old pal who offers him a job on a robbery; Tommy says, no, he’s gone straight. Except after a series of panels summarizing his attempts at going and, more importantly, staying straight, Tommy ends up at his old friend’s door, having lost a job, found love, lost love, lost another job, over and over.

The page’s didactic—Eisner’s audience for it is obviously the Commissioner Dolan type–but moves well and quickly makes Tommy into a sympathetic protagonist. So when Spirit intervenes and tries to keep Tommy from making a big mistake, it’s hard not to be on Tommy’s side, even as he loses that protagonist positioning.

The strip’s set up as a tragedy. Tommy’s cursed, whether through lack of opportunity or just past association, and only dumb luck and having the world’s only science hero in your corner is the only way to get out of that tragedy. Except even with the Spirit involved, he can’t beat the dumb luck if it’s bad. It’s incredibly frustrating and incredibly tense, and Eisner and studio rather nicely link narrative and visuals around Tommy. Because these frustrations aren’t the reader’s, at least not first. They’re Tommy’s.

The result is Spirit getting away with a wholesome redemption story mostly through summary and exposition. Some of the story events move incredibly fast; others take weeks to percolate. The pacing accelerates and decelerates as needed in quite strong work. Tommy never holds the protagonist slot for long, but he always connects–wonderful intensity to this strip. There’s a passion to it.

Plus, it’s a nice outing for Spirit and Dolan. Regardless of the sociological disagreement (though, let’s be real, one of them is right, the other is not), their character arc is nice. It’s been a while since they’ve had a mutually beneficial outing.

Oh, last thing… Dolan’s first remark to Spirit is the eternal Superman question: Are the glasses enough? Spirit’s leaning into the visual similarities between Clark Kent and Spirit in disguise, which is a fun surprise.

After the strip’s big creative adventures last week, Marta is a seemingly more conventional Spirit versus criminal-of-the-week strip. The slight deviations from the norm, such as the Spirit doing Sherlock Holmes-style deduction, actually make the strip feel traditional in its self-contained scope.

The action opens with Marta at the museum, leaving for the night. She’s been practicing her own painting by copying a master (a Renaissance Primitive, which either refers to a primitivist Renaissance painting, meaning it invokes the experience of a “primitive” setting, or it’s a reference to Flemish Primitives, and that usage refers to its artist being a creator of a new painting style.

The content of the painting isn’t important, though Eisner enjoys the phrase “Renaissance Primitive” itself, using it whenever the opportunity presents (just never with a definition). Perhaps as potentially disinterested as the strip’s reader in art history lessons, so too is Ebony the next day when he and Spirit visit the museum. Spirit has to save Ebony from having his head stuck between a marble statue lady’s arm and breasts; it’s (somewhat) discreetly done, but they do strongly imply Ebony’s intent. Not a bored, leaning mistake, either… instead, it gives “don’t grope the statues, young man” energy.

Anyway.

Spirit immediately realizes the painting has been stolen and replaced with a fake. Since it might be the museum curator doing a con, Spirit’s going to steal the fake and get to the bottom of it. Marta’s first half is a series of carefully executed, very quick, practically methodical, multi-step actions. Spirit sends Ebony for another painting to replace it, while doing a quick costume change and a smoke-bomb distraction. He’s also going to have a backup plan in case he gets stopped.

But it’s not just Spirit with the planning. After Spirit checks in with Dolan (who’s competitive but not negligently so this time around), the strip shifts over to the villain. The reader learns why the painting was stolen and that the thief has a detailed, intricate plan—involving the Spirit—to get revenge on another suspect. It’s not just deliberate in the exposition or plotting, either. There are visual cues. It’s delicate, fine work.

Spirit does unravel it rather brusquely on the last page, but the strip’s out of pages, and there’s quite a bit more to do after the solution.

Along the way, there’s a just okay action sequence. The art isn’t Eisner and studio flexing this week. There’s a lot to fit in, and they concentrate on getting the information into the panel–in addition to the visuals, there’s also a lot of dialogue since there’s a ground situation of vengeance to lay out, and the one fisticuffs bit is inert. Then the second-to-last page, which has visual clues for the reader for the reveals along with lots of exposition, feels like a different artist in the studio took over. At least on the layouts.

But the last page wraps it all together nicely, and Marta connects for the finish.

And, of course, it’s nice to see Spirit and Commissioner Dolan getting along so well.