The Spirit first assumed its now-familiar Uncle Sam incarnation in 1870, when it resurrected a political cartoonist who had been killed by Boss Tweed. The second host of Uncle Sam fought in World War I. A third (the character's Golden Age incarnation) was a superhero during World War II but vanished at the end of the war, erasing any subsequent appearances from the fictional history of the DC Universe (although most of them had already been erased by the "Crisis on Infinite Earths"). In "The Spectre", the Spirit is resurrected in a new costumed form called the Patriot, but later reverts to Uncle Sam in a "Superman" issue.