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The Spirit #6
Posted 06 Jun 2007
Writer: Darwyn Cooke
Letters: Jared Fletcher
Ink: J. Bone
Colors: Dave Stewart
Publisher: DC Comics
5.00 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Adam McGovern
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The Spirit’s no superhero, and neither are his writers and
artists — but Darwyn Cooke has done the impossible by living up
to Will Eisner’s legacy and leading it forward. With his keen
sense of mid-20th century stylishness and anime-influenced hipsterism,
Cook has captured all of Eisner’s cockeyed charm and edgy
innovation. Denny Colt is still the lovable film-noire dope and
dependable set of knuckles he always was, amidst a future-now of
“Cooke has evoked and advanced Eisner’s tricky layouts, social
satires and cinematic atmospheres well.”
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punk-rock dives and media-conscious madmen. The pop landscape is
littered with ill-advised updates from Blackhawk to Sherlock Holmes;
but no comic creator takes better lessons from movies than Cooke, and,
as in the early-’90s Brady Bunch franchise, the upcoming Nancy
Drew and the first Donner Superman flick, he’s wisely chosen to
update everything around Colt, leaving the Spirit himself as
both the series’ corny comic relief and its unchangeable
conscience.
Cooke has evoked and advanced Eisner’s tricky layouts, social
satires and cinematic atmospheres well. This is the first issue in
which he’s also tackled a structure that took up more and more
of Eisner’s run as the strip’s creator got increasingly
focused on the human-interest anthology form he’d base his later
career on: The framing sequence where the Spirit is mostly the rueful
MC or narrative bystander to someone else’s sad story. This
one’s about a spooky recluse musician, a magic meteor from
space, the fleeting joy it leads him to and the tragedy that causes,
but it’s really a parable about leaving others behind and
reaching outside your heart for happiness.
For a high-profile franchise book — even one as prestigious
as this — the pressure must be on Cooke to use this device
sparingly. But it’s vividly apt here: The Spirit can at best try
and put together the pieces of the ensuing catastrophe after the fact,
and maybe shelter a few innocents from the fallout; he is literally
outside of the story, and by definition this sturdy, idealistic lawman
is there too late for these lost souls.
Every fan knows that Colt was reborn as the Spirit after letting
crooks believe the rumor of his own death. In Cooke’s hands
he’s alive and well; this isn’t nostalgia, it’s
immortality.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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