Friday Night Fights, Ladies Night: This Post is Rated PG for P'Gell

Cast yer peepers on any one of those girlie posters advertising Frank Miller's Will Eisner's The Spirit (coming this Christmas to a theater near you...oh what a surprising gift from Santa!) and when you're done oculatin' and screw your eyeballs back in, you'll notice something's missing. Sure, there they all are: Sand Serif, Silken Floss, Plaster of Paris, Rory Gilmore, Deadly Little Miho, Gerard Butler, The Professor, Mary Ann...but is there a poster to commemorate the Spirit's deadliest, smartest, most successful antagonist? And I'm not talkin' about that guy with the striped gloves here. Because no: the greatest foe the Spirit has ever faced ain't in the movie: P'Gell, as beautiful as she is deadly and as deadly as she is...well, you get the picture. Even tho' she's not in it. It's prob'bly just as well...I can't think of a single contemporary actress who could adequately personify the wily, dangerous, breathtaking P'Gell. Despite her appearance in the modern-day Darwyn Cooke version of The Spirit, P'Gell's character is from a time gone, when femme fatales roamed the Earth like herds of fatalely things. No, you have to go back to the divas of yesterday to capture the essence of P'Gell: Marlene Dietrich, or Miriam Hopkins, or maybe Jane Greer:


Or, hey! Let's do something revolutionary...let's not cast a real or imaginary movie. Let's just go straight to the Master, Mister Will Eisner, to show just how deadly the female of the species is:


All panels from The Spirit section, May 25, 1947,
by Will Eisner and members of the Eisner-Iger Studio

"...Really," bemoans P'Gell in the splash panel to this Spirit adventure (see the original pencils and inks here), "what is there about me that simply invites trouble! (sigh)" I dunno, Miss P'Gell, you're purty and all, but you certainly look like the sorta dame Mama Bull told me to keep the heck away from. Aside from the fact that you're smokin'...you're also holding a cigarette. Well, what is she gonna do to our hero Denny Colt, the eponymous Spirit? Blow smoke in his face until he goes into a coughing fit? Uh uh. P'Gell is both more elegant and more physical than that:


P'Gell must have seen the movie Casablanca...heck, she probably inspired part of it...to quote Rick Blaine, she's a firm believer in the maxim "I'm the only cause I'm interested in." Which means that not only the law-enforcer Spirit but her criminal competitors are sure to fall foul of her forceful redecoration schemes:


P'Gell's not whistlin' Dixie (whatever that means). She must also be an adherent to the Gospel of Emily Post, for she makes sure the Spirit gets second helpings:


You tell 'im, sister.

P'Gell. Strong enough for a man, but hotchy motchy, whatta woman.


Bahlactus: his city screams. It screams "Don't eat me!"