The Spirit tv series with Sam J. Jones
In July of 1987 ABC aired a movie based on Will Eisner's comic The Spirit. It starred Sam J. Jones as the title character and Nana Visitor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) as love interest Ellen Dolan. Trivia: 28 years later the two actors appeared in Seth MacFarlane's Ted 2 . The sidekick in the comics was a racial stereotype called Ebony, in this production he was renamed Eubie and played by Bumper Robinson. The movie leaned more towards camp, as was the way comic productions were handled then. It was meant to be a pilot, with more episodes already written, but was never picked up. Who knows, if the series was picked up it might have been a more accurate representation of Eisner's work than the Frank Miller movie. Preview Clip | The Spirit | Warner Archive