The Spirit [Hardcover]

Though I'm ashamed to admit it, I've never read a single issue of THE SPIRIT until Darwyn Cooke's graphic novel collecting the first six issues of the new series put out by DC Comics. I've read comics nearly my whole life, and heard about Will Eisner and the Spirit for nearly as long.

To tell you the truth, the Spirit didn't fit my idea of a superhero. For one, there was the problem of no superpowers. And two, the costume was really lame for a kid who grew up with superheroes wearing Spandex and their underwear on the outside. The Spirit just looked too...real. That meant BORING to the child that I was.

So I went on for nearly fifty years with my assumption that I wouldn't like the Spirit.

Enter Darwyn Cooke. Actually, I didn't know that I liked him at first either. I thought his art was too raw at the time, too two-dimensional and unfinished. Then he did NEW FRONTIER, which became an overnight bestseller and is coming out as a straight-to-DVD animated movie soon. I picked up NEW FRONTIER and really liked Cooke's writing and art. His artistry is flamboyant and unique. He played fairly with the characters and showed real talent when reimagining the DC Universe for his story.

Now he's brought that same understanding of character to THE SPIRIT, a monthly comic from DC. He writes and pencils the comic, something that few people in that business do any more, or are skilled enough to accomplish. From what I understand of the character since I've been poking around after getting curious, he's captured the flavor, pacing, and zest of Will Eisner's work.

Denny Colt is a private investigator that cracks a big case but gets overwhelmed by the villains. He is also doused in chemicals that makes it look like he is dead. After he recovers and crawls out of the family crypt, he decides to remain "dead" and adopt a new identity to fight crime. He does this with the reluctant acquiescence of Central City Police Commissioner Dolan. Dolan also happens to be the father of Denny's girlfriend, Ellen.

Even though he looks like a 1940s private eye with a domino mask under his slouch hat, the Spirit is much more than a bare knuckles hero. He doesn't just investigate; he has adventures. Those adventures are by turns deadly serious, humorous, absolutely loopy, or anything in between.

As I read the stories, I was at first confused. Then I realized that the Spirit was a lot like Jack Cole's PLASTIC MAN series. Totally malleable. (Yep, that's a pun, and I'm not sorry.) I settled into the graphic novel for a light-hearted and fun read that vamoosed through the panels with the pacing of a runaway avalanche.

I call the volume a graphic novel, but that's doing the book an injustice of sorts. In this day and age when every writer and artist is trained to produce a five- or six-issue arc that will fit neatly and conveniently into a graphic novel format a few months later, Darwyn Cooke decided to be daring and write standalone tales. That's right, you can sit down and read a single comic-length story and get it all in one shot. That was like a breath of fresh air. It also made for more tightly plotted stories.

One of the other things I really liked about the book is the collection of secondary characters culled right from Eisner's works: the ever missing-in-action Octopus, P'Gell, and others. Cooke even introduces us to Silk Satin, a hard-as-nails female character and member of the CIA, and she's tough enough to take out Dirty Harry. You never know what to expect from story to story within the pages of this beautiful hardback book.

I do wish that some kind of primer with an art gallery of iconic Spirit characters had been included with the graphic novel as added value. I understood from the stories that some of the characters were ongoing from Eisner's original run, but it would have helped with more. Eisner evidently created a deep, rich world and Cooke is running elegantly with the ball. There's no reason for Cooke to try to stumble through all that had gone on before for Denny while in the middle of his own stories, and you can pick up enough to get by. But now that I'm hooked, that little bit of extra would have been great.

If you haven't read the comics and still maintain your love of great storytelling combined with sheer fun, pick up this graphic novel and prepare to be wowed. Cooke has brought major wowness to a whole new level.

Boy that Darwyn Cooke is a ballsy fella...how else can you describe a guy who decides to take on the legendary Will Eisner's greatest creation, The Spirit. Well ok...after all, Cooke has won an Eisner award so if anyone's entitled, I guess it's him. This hardcover reprints the first six issues of the new Spirit series from DC along with Batman/The Spirit #1. I certainly hope that people have been reading DCs Spirit Archives that reprints The Spirit's original adventures because Eisner is one of the truly great comic creators. Eisner pioneered many storytelling techniques; particularly in the way he framed his panels, which were more like a film director crafting a scene than an artist drawing a comic strip. While many early comic artists featured static backgrounds, Eisner's work was acutely detailed with often as much going on in the background as the foreground. The Spirit avoided being typed into any particular genre. The stories mixed crime drama, with action, humor, romance, horror and even film noir mystery.

Cooke has definitely managed to capture a lot of the feel of Eisner's Spirit. The stories in this volume do cover a broad range of plots and genres although it may border at times on being a bit too slapstick for my tastes. In the opening tale, The Spirit has to rescue a beautiful news anchor named Ginger Coffee who has been kidnapped by a crime lord known as the pill. The dashing hero almost regrets his decision, as the chatty newswoman just won't shut up. The second issue revives one of the Spirit's frequent protagonists, the femme fatale P'Gell, who made her first appearance in 1947. P'Gell's modus operandi is marrying rich men and then killing them. Here, she has set her sights on Prince Farouk, a Middle-Eastern prince. Later the Spirit teams with Batman against a host of villains including Catwoman, Poison Ivy, P'Gell, The Joker and the Penguin. This historic meeting between the two crime fighters combines Batman's stern approach to crime with the Spirits...not so stern approach. It's a fun story with the two contrasting heroes.

What I love about The Spirit is that he wasn't the best detective, wasn't the best fighter, or the toughest, and frequently showed his weaknesses perhaps more than any other hero and yet he always found a way to get by. Cooke's art isn't Eisner's. While he goes after that sort of noirish look to the book its with a modern sensibility and his art has a bit more of an animation look to it than Eisner's more gritty approach. That aside, I found myself quite enjoying the book and I think Eisner would be very pleased with the way Cooke is handling his creation.

REVIEWED BY TIM JANSON

Will Eisner's "The Spirit" is one of the classic works of the Golden Age of Comics, famed for the legendary artist's use of interesting angles, inventive plots, and a vast array of classy and dangerous women for the main character to deal with. The hero himself, a blue-hatted fellow who wears a domino mask as a token nod to superhero conventions, was mainly a vehicle for telling these stories, as opposed to a really exceptional character in his own right. This made the act of reviving "The Spirit" somewhat more challenging than it might have otherwise been, since it isn't mainly a matter of getting a grasp of the character's detailed personality; to resurrect this property, you need to resurrect a style of storytelling. The Spirit is a nondescript figure whose success or failure depends on how clever the stories he appears in are.

Darwyn Cooke, as a writer and artist, is one of the clear choices to have a go at reviving the Spirit, being perhaps the preeminent retro-ist in the current comics world. His "DC: New Frontier", which I personally found ot be more then a bit overrated, is regarded as a classic, and his art style borrows much from the Golden/early Silver Age art look. He is a well-known advocate for a light-hearted approach to stories, which suits the Spirit well. This strong colletion contains seven stories by Cooke: six issues of the regular title, and the "Batman/The Spirit" specia that he collaborated on with Jeph Loeb. The main series mixes standalone detective plots with an ongoing mystery that is just getting going at this volume's end. Briefly, the stories are:

#1, "Ice Ginger Coffee", introducing us to the Spirit's wrold, and reassuring audiences that Cooke can do silly puns on female characters' names just like Eisner (the titular reporter, 'Ginger Coffee').

#2, introducing the roguish and likeable Hussein Hussein, and revamping the classic Eisner femme fatale P'Gell. Cooke supplies her with a sympathetic backstory in order to explain her black-widowing ways, which you can debate the merits of.

#3, wherin Cooke revisits the origin of the Spirit for this series, telling it from different points of view, encompassing virtually every character involved. This is probably the most effectiv dramatic piece of the lot.

#4, with the return of Hussein Hussein and the updating of another of the Spirit's gals, Silk Satin, now a tough CIA agent out to prove she isn't an affirmative action case. We also get the return of the Octopus, the Spirit's Blofeld-esque arch-foe whose face is never seen.

#5, an oddball semi-satire of the consumer food industry that also contains some of the more violent moments in the series so far.

#6, probably the weakest story of the lot, about a group of musicians who get dyed blue by a meteorite. The Spirit himself is mainly an observer here.

Finally, there is the "Batman/The Spirit" special, which is almost entirely about two groups of villains teaming up, as well as the interactions between Police Commissioners Gordon and Dolan. This makes a lot of sense, since the supporting cast in "The Spirit" was always the life of the party. The result is a great deal of fun, and Cooke draws some very nice Bat-villains, in particular adding Harley and Ivy to his list of femme fatales.

Overall, Cooke is to be commended for his quality reimagining of Eisner's work; he expertly smoothes over the great embarassment of the classic stories (Ebony White), and touches up other characters in ways that make them a bit modern without losing their classic charm.

I must, however, join in with another reviewer here in noting the poor design of the dust jacket on this hardcover; in particular, the pieces that help define the "s" in Spirit seem destined to become bent or rip off.