Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The Spirit!

Alright Eryk. Convince me. The hardback was in the August solicitations. With my DCBS discount it'll probably come to $14.99. I'm a big fan of Eisner but not of Cooke. If it is in the true spirit (sorry) of Eisner I may consider overlooking the fact that Cooke is behind it.

Er... I'll get to convincing you later, LL, but first off, just let me say...

JEEPERS! I just read the latest issue, and it's a definite contender for coolest comic of the year!

Still waiting EDE.

The book actually came in at $12.49 for the hardcover so I'll probably go ahead and order it.

Oops! I completely forgot about telling you how great this series is, Scott! Hope you ordered it!

Anyway, I just read #9, and it continues to be excellent!

The Octopus returns! Ellen meets Silk Satin!

And more Ginger Coffee!

Denny is a dirty dawg.

The octopus/mortez arcs are also developing quite nicely. The Spirit / Satin scenes were priceless. As was Satin's meeting with Ellen at the end.

As far as structure/pacing go, this book is absolutely perfect. Each issue stands up as a solid story by itself, but there are ongoing plotlines that they contribute to.

Why the hell can't the rest of DC's titles work like this?

I really enjoyed the "Almost Blue" issue (the latest one I have read so far). It managed to marry a fairly contemporary music sensibility with the crime tales of the jazz age, with freaky meteors mixed in. Cooke definitely is a worthy heir to Eisner in his ability to use the Spirit as a framing device and launching pad for cool, compelling stories with one-off characters. He even threw in some issue-to-issue continuity in the search for the guy who died(?) at the same time and place as Denny. I can't wait to Ellen, Silk Satin and Ginger Coffee in the same story! Cooke really has a way with women (characters), doesn't he? I found my trades of New Frontier in the closet the other day, and was SO enjoying his Lois Lane, Carol Ferris, Selina Kyle and Iris Allen. He writes and draws them with this perfect mix of sex appeal, glamour gumption and grit that I find so appealing.

On a related subject, I caught some of the Sin City movie on the tube last night (can't BELIEVE it was on regular cable--standards these days!). As impressive as the imagery was--and who can claim Rosario Dawson in a Lashina-Style strappy dominatrix outfit is anything other than sublime--I am NOT looking forward to a Spirit film overflowing with kinky-looking hookers.

*sob* *choke* Cooke and J. Bone are leaving after issue 12.

*double sob* *double choke*!

I wonder what it would be like if Cooke took over the Legion...

My fantasy turned reality.

This just sucks! There is NOTHING good at DC that the !Q*($!@#!_)(#*#@!# who run that place won't ruin!

They knew I planned to drop it from my pull list after issue 12?

So, odds on Goddamn Frank Miller taking over to tie-in with the movie?

Well, considering that he's talking about going creator-owned only...

More bad news

Cooke + Legion = pure beauty and brillance. We can still dream...

Don't drop that Spirit yet... rotating creators for The Spirit?

A snippet from newsarama :

We saw Michael Golden as he signed at the Hero Initiative booth to raise money for the charity.

The artist said he is finishing up an eight-page story written by Gail Simone about The Spirit for DC. "I'm not sure where it's going to appear, but I believe it will be in The Spirit comic," he said.

In the story, Golden said (with a grin) that The Spirit "gets beat up, almost killed and comes back to life."

"It's a great little wordless story," he said. "There's no dialogue. It's all in pictograph. It relies heavily on the art, but the great thing about working with Gail is she's a great storyteller and puts down what she needs for the story, but she gives the artist all kinds of room to move and add things. When they asked me to do the Spirit story, I said, well, if Gail's writing it, sure."

I think he's talking about a story for one of the fill in issues that comes now and then.

At Baltimore I think they announced that Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier were going to be writing the monthly series. The artist wasn't announced. At least the series will be funny.

#11 - the wrap-up of the El Morte storyline. Not a big fan of zombies so this wasn't my favourite issue - I preferred the cloak and dagger/Eastern intrigues and femmes fatales.

Cooke introduced a very interesting character in this issue, though - Argonaut Bones, expert on ancient cultures, archaeolgist I suppose, complete with boyfriend Kimball Richards in happy domestic scene.

Unfortunately, it looks like Cooke killed Argo at the end, which I found to be unnecessary and disappointing. There could have been an entire Argonaut Bones series written by Cooke. It seems to be a DC disease - make them up, then kill them off.

#12 - a good ending for the Cooke/Bone/Stewart run. We get some background from Denny Colt's childhood in a story about his first teenage love, with the wonderful name of Sand Saref - who, of course, has gone bad and clashes with The Spirit. A happy and open ending; we could see her return at some point.

Not so for Hussein, who dies in this issue (they spelled his name wrong in one panel - no respect!). Is Hussein a Cooke creation or one of Eisner's original characters? He could have gotten more storytime, IMO.

#13 - 3 filler stories in the "Holiday Special", each distinctive in its own right but with that humorous twist that Spirit stories often have. I thought the final one by Gail Simone, Phil Hester & Ande Parks was the most interesting, with almost no words - and everyone getting their just reward in the end.

I continued with The Spirit after the Cooke run, but it's going on the delete list. Aragones & Evanier's Groo has generally been pretty funny, but they just don't work that well for me on The Spirit. Maybe it's more in keeping with the tone of the original, but the book seems more frivolous and repetitive now. Ellen is always mad at The Spirit, he's always chasing after beautiful women as well as criminals, he's more of a goof than when Cooke wrote him, and the criminals themselves are sillier.

Ditto on all your comments FC. I've continued with the Spirit since Cooke left but its really missing something here. The writing just seems more stale than anything...nothing new or exciting to really get me into the stories.

I don't like seeing the Spirit always played as a goof or half-wit. He should be effective and intelligent just as much.

So I see the last comments in this thread were over a year ago, and I see why. I wouldn't have responded if I hadn't been going out of my way to comment on *all* the titles I'm reading these last two months. The title just hasn't remained as engaging to me to make me want to discuss it after.

Basically since Cooke's exit, things can be described as 'hit or miss' with slightly more misses than hits. There are too many stories in the Spirit that seem contrived, redundant and just not adding anything original. And too many creators try to make it 'fun' and end up doing the opposite.

The latest two issues are a good indication:

#30 - by Michael Avon Oeming, who does the art on POWERS (with Bendis) and writes for several other titles. This issue was actually quite good, probably the best Spirit story of the last year and a good indicator of why its still worth it to pick up issues of the title. It was fun, had a complete story, maintained some elements of originality while obviously paying some homage to a classic Kurosawa movie. The art was highly enjoyable (I'm a fan of Oemings very quirkly and unique style) and above all it had a very well high pace to it that made it feel like an action blockbluster. I'd recommend this issue to anyone looking for a good Spirit story.

#31 by Mike Ploog, a classic 1970's writer/artist who worked on several of the great early 70's Marvel horror comics - unfortunately, Ploog falls into the same trap as what I described at the beginning of this post. The story he presents is kind of 'been there, done that' and nothing about it makes it seem like its unique to the Spirit; any other street-level protagonist could sub in. It also just doesn't have the energy that Oeming's story did.

And that's the basic pattern of the Spirit. Its usually one good story, two mediocre ones, and the ocassional stinker. I'm wondering how much longer this title can survive, which is a shame since the Spirit is one of the great characters in comics history. Of course, Frank Miller's movie didn't do it any favors.

I haven't picked up the monthly series since dropping it but did get the TPB Femmes Fatales. It was a lot of fun, all stories from the 1940s. Lots of P'Gell and Silk Satin (the best characters) but also a thoroughly rotten teenager named Saree. There were some great names which we didn't encounter in Cooke's Spirit run: Wild Rice, Silken Floss, M.D., Plaster of Paris (she sticks to men), Autumn Mews. Quite a few of these women end up dead (a moral lesson for impressionable children, I guess)!

So one year after the Spirit series begun by Cooke ended, and DC has another Spirit series, this one spinning out of the First Wave event. My initial comments about the title were there, but essentially, this series isn’t that different than the last one, and certainly maintains the spirit of the series (ugh, bad pun).

Once Cooke left, the Spirit series really seemed to meander and become rather dull, though there were a few good issues here and there. And while I was initially uninterested in this First Wave relaunch, my below comments reveal how I really was unfair in that assessment, and IMO, this Spirit series has been pretty excellent thus far!

I’ve now read #3, which finished the first story-arc, and #4, which kicked off the new one. And just like the above, I’m still very impressed by it! While I really enjoyed the single-issue style of the last Spirit series, I’m finding that these three parters are really great as well, so I don’t mind the change in format (and like all comic book series, I’d prefer a casual mix of all story lengths).

With #4, David Hine comes on, and lately everything he’s been doing has been comic book gold. His Batman stuff has been excellent and his creator owned The Bulletproof Coffin was surprisingly awesome. That continues in a big way with his opening issue which had everything going for it: intriguing plot; gritty street-level setting but not harping on the grimness; great spotlight of several different characters; great dialogue; fantastic pacing. Yes, all of those elements were present, but best of all was the way he, like Cooke, captures the essence of Eisner’s Spirit, but also like Cooke, totally makes it his own. I’m really looking forward to seeing more of it.

Artist Moritat provides some stylistic continuity for the first style and I’m enjoying his art more and more. It takes an issue to get used to it but it’s a really nice blend of grittiness and cartoony-ness.

My favorite part of the Spirit series thus far has been the Spirit Black & White back-ups, which after 4 issues have proven to be the single best back-up series of all the DC back-ups thus far. #3 had a great story by Michael Uslan and Justiniano, who showcased his talent, and #4 was by Wolfman, whose use of irony was very Eisner-esque and Phil Winslade, whose artwork here was much cleaner than his Jonah Hex stuff, showing another side to his art (and I enjoy it both ways). I’m loving these back-ups as very stylized stories where each word and each panel are used to the fullest effect.

I'm not sure which style Winslade used here, but when I think of his art, I always remember the Vertigo series Goddess he did with Garth Ennis. It was beautifull, clean and heavy on detail. IIRC, he may even have painted that series! You should check that one out if you missed it.