Here we see the Spirit in his secret identity. That’s right: the Spirit was just a cover for his real job, which was fighting crime under the name of Midnight.

Actually, no. The publisher of the syndicate whipped up Midnight when the Spirit’s creator, Will Eisner, was drafted for WW2. He was intended as a backup in case Eisner died and took the rights to the character down to the grave.  Midnight was a dead-ringer, but had a few differences – he hung around with Doc Wackey, who looks like a Grandpa character kicked off the Timbertoes, and the Spirit's faithful companion Ebony White, an embarassing racial caricature, was transmuted into a monkey. Which is worse.

Then again, there were those who said Midnight was just a ruse to protect his true identity, which was . . .