Pulp Friction #4 – Review

By: Mark Waid (story), J Bone (art), Rom Fajardo (colors)

The Story: Who will save us when the Spirit and Rocketeer are down for the count?  It’s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt!

The Review: After the four months it took to get from #1 to #2, I wasn’t expecting to see #3 for at least another month or so.  So it was with no small amount of surprise that I discovered #4 sitting on the IDW shelf in my comic book shop last week.  That, of course, left me with the question of what to do about #3; I wasn’t all that enthused about hunting down an issue in which I had only a very mild interest anyway.

Eventually, I did what I so often do: compromised.  I did rummage through the back issues for #3 (and, might I add, they had plenty in stock); I did not actually purchase the issue.  Instead, I thumbed through it, got what I needed to know, and discreetly placed it back where I found it.  Well, come on—it’s not as if Pulp Friction boasted such complications in the plot that I needed the issues near at hand for reference.

Pulp Friction #2 – Review

By: Mark Waid (story), Loston Wallace (pencils), Bob Wiacek (inks), Hi-Fi (colors)

The Story: The Spirit on a plane.

The Review: Four months—that’s the amount of time it took to get from the first issue of this (four-issue!) mini to the second.  And that’s only after a month or so seeing the issue solicited for release week after week until my local comic book shop gave up and redacted the title from their weekly newsletter entirely.  I don’t know if this is the consequence of a dual-publisher team-up or what, but it better not be a running pattern.

The problem with shipping delays is, even though they have nothing to do with the story itself, they still affect the story’s impact.  Ordinarily, each issue only has to have enough substance to carry a reader through the next month.  When you have an issue that must now carry four months’ worth of entertainment on its back (and possibly four more—God forbid), you’re only setting it up for failure.  It gets even worse when, as here, the issue isn’t outstanding anyway.

Pulp Friction #1 – Review

By: Mark Waid (story), Paul Smith (art), Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: East Coast mystery man meets West Coast daredevil.

The Review: What is it about pulp, specifically one era of pulp, that keeps readers coming back for more even decades past its prime?  If you ask me, pulp offers baggage-free entertainment: all the action and dramatic flair, without the challenging gray areas.  In a world where each piece of fiction is a different cocktail of increasingly wild combinations, pulp is the whiskey shot of genres: straight, to the point, and just what you needed.

Certainly, there has been no better age for the everyman character.  So many of our heroes nowadays have to be “special” in some way: a mutant, a prodigious intellect, a person touched by the hand of fate—someone who is different from everybody else.  The Spirit and Rocketeer are comparatively ordinary beneath their domino mask and space helmet.  Denny Colt and Cliff Secord aren’t brawny Adonis’ or super-geniuses or gifted with unusual abilities and powers of any kind.  They get by on their guts, a good dose of cleverness, and their values.

The Spirit #17 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: You ever get the feeling some people can only see the world in black and white?

The Review: As much history and acclaim lies behind The Spirit, it really doesn’t have much of a mythos.  You have the core cast, of course, and the faceless Octopus as Spirit’s possibly eternal archnemesis, and a handful of recurring characters, but unlike any other major comic-book figure out there, the Spirit has few defining storylines and even less continuity.  Most writers and artists use the series more as a vehicle to stretch their storytelling chops than to tell a substantial story.

In “Strange Bedfellows,” Howard Chaykin gives us the oldest plot in pulp, the “Whodunnit?”  Unfortunately, since he shares the issue with two other features, he has scale back his plot and character development to the point where you never really get invested in either.  Half the fun of these mysteries is having the detective make deductive connections from the facts you somehow miss, but Chaykin goes for the strategy of having the Spirit pull conclusions out of thin air, almost making them up as he goes along: “Wearing your husband’s shoes with Sandra on your shoulders, to leave those heavy size-twelve footprints…using a recording of Brian raging at you to sell his suicide…”  Brian Bolland offers strong character figures and detailed settings, but doesn’t use the black-and-white constraints to his advantage, making it look like very nice inks the colorist forgot to fill in.

Paul Levitz delivers one that feels like it barely moves beyond the conception stage.  “Lottery” revolves around Brenner, a newsman whose doormat personality makes him sympathetic, but no less shallow in depth.  As for Ivan, the conman who preys on the hapless newsie, his brilliant plan is to replace the state-approved lottery board on Brenner’s stand with his own, a blatant substitution that makes you wonder why frequent visitor the Spirit doesn’t catch on sooner.  It’s also baffling why Brenner doesn’t just ask the Spirit, whom he considers the only man who respects him, to help him out.  So you’re not inclined to feel all that moved by the unfortunate, but hardly tragic by any means, ending.  Dolan has a point: “Fools who play these games deserve to lose, anyway.”  Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez provides enjoyable, lively versions of our characters, but needs more inking; it all looks so pale you’ll find it difficult to stare at it for too long.

The Spirit #16 – Review

By: David Hine (writer), John Paul Leon (artist), Daniel Vozza (colorist)

The Story: Cosplaying may not all be harmless fun and games…

The Review: I’ve actually been in Paris this past week for work, and let me tell you, it’s a beautiful town with some good eatin’ and mostly fine people.  In fact, my estimation of the French really went up a notch this week when I found to my dismay over the weekend that I hadn’t bought a copy of this week’s The Spirit.  Not one to shirk my reviewing duties, even overseas, I went on an internet search blitz and found Arkham, the best and possibly only magasin des bande dessinées Americaines in Paris.

It was there that I bought this issue for a blistering four euros (thank God DC “held the line”, or else I’d have had to pay the equivalent of an Olive Garden meal for the comic).  Still, you can’t beat taking the Metro to a quiet, ancient corner of the City of Lights, grabbing a fresh peach from a corner fruit and vegetable vendor, and perusing graphic novels in a Parisian LCS with French heavy metal playing in the background.  Call me a romantic, but that’s a life I can get used to.

But enough with praising the French, and let’s get on with praising an American.  I often hassle writers who use excessive narration mostly because they like the sound of their own ideas.  Hine sticks to giving you the facts, allowing the dialogue, art, and your imagination to do the rest.  He just channels that pulp language evocatively.  Ovsack: “A cool million bucks and the eternal gratitude of the Octopus to whoever brings me the Spirit’s head.”  Doesn’t get better than that.

The Spirit #15 – Review

By: David Hine (writer), Moritat (artist), Gabriel Bautista (colorist)

The Story: Oh, Honey—you were too good for him anyway.  Or is it the other way around?

The Review: If you’re any kind of optimist, you’ll believe that even in the most depraved of individuals, there’s a soul lurking around there somewhere.  Fiction spends a lot of its time trying to uncover the elusive humanity in people, and has about as much success as us doing the same thing in real life.  Sometimes characters end up redeeming themselves; other times you just have to accept them as lost causes.

Hine has this remarkable way of making you empathize with even the most hopeless of characters.  As atrociously as Honey Steel behaves fronting for the mob, you still can’t avoid being unaffected by her passionate claim that the Spirit loves her, only to find the valentines she believed to be from him came from someone else entirely.  Since Hine shows us how much Honey cherished those epistles, we actually feel the weight of a years-long betrayal with her.

Even though Hine emphasizes that she brings most of her troubles on herself, he always leaves room for sympathy.  After all, how can you not relate to a person who winds up in a grim state of life because she took her youthful indiscretions just a little too far?  As long as Honey could believe Denny, the remaining symbol of her innocence, would love and watch over her even from afar, she could continue her unsavory lifestyle.  Once that sweet fantasy gets shattered, any hope she has of salvation is gone, and the burdens of the life she lives collapses in on her.

As is traditional in a Spirit comic, names give everything away.  Honey Steel: sweetness coating a much colder, harder personality.  It drives her to gun down the only man she loves, and it keeps you emotionally in tune with her as she does so.  Then you have Honey’s ruthless, loyal bodyguard, Charlie Soft.  He may shoot you as indifferently as he looks at you, but there’s a devoted, even gentle heart under all that brawn.  When he reveals a longstanding trick on Honey that spiritually rips her apart, you see the innocent romance of his intentions, making you despise and feel sorry for him all at the same time.

These complications all turn around into a very Shakespearean brand of tragedy: the missed cues, impulses taken too far, the most unfortunate of timing, all of it narrated by Hine’s almost clinical voice, which actually serves to underscore the emotions within the story.  He sticks to the facts, only occasionally dropping the barest hint of judgment (“Charlie was quite the teacher.”), allowing us to make what we please out of the characters’ behavior and dialogue.  He uses his narration to frame the action and drama, rather than move it along, and he does so expertly.

The Spirit #13 – Review

By: David Hine (writer), Moritat (artist), Gabe Bautista (colorist)

The Story: Do I choose the super-hot puppet, or the super-hot real lady?  Decisions, decisions…

The Review: When it comes to fiction, you can’t (or you shouldn’t) really expect incredible realism, but you do expect whatever it is you’re reading or watching to mimic reality as best it can.  But when it comes to genre fiction, you’re much more willing to let certain things slide.  For romance, it’s the ludicrously chosen lovemaking moments; for sci-fi, it’s all the pseudo-science babble; and for pulp, it’s the private eye’s rambling, uber-macho monologues.

The opening pages have the Spirit staking his claim on Central City against all the mobster vermin that threaten to take it over.  His speech, in almost any other circumstance, would be incredibly corny, but in this title, with Hine’s expert handle on pulp narration, you just get pumped up to hear the Spirit say, “They’re all wrong.  Dead wrong.  This is my city.”  The smash cut to our hero giving the beatdown to thugs across the red light district is icing on the cake.

Hine also brings his characteristic twist of drama into the proceedings.  The Professor’s puppet fetish is of course driven by personal tragedy from his past, although Hine smartly leaves events open-ended: was Esmerelda (the model for the Professor’s first lady-bot) really his first sweetheart, or just love from afar?  Did she betray him, or was he just paranoid of her doing so?  And was her subsequent death truly “an accident,” as the Professor states?

These are some juicy questions, but Hine never answers them—at least, not directly.  He sprinkles the issue with subtle clues you can weave together for your own conclusion: how the eyes in Esmerelda-bot’s disconnected head follow the Professor around the room; how he covers her unblinking face while trying to seduce Ellen Dolan; and the haunting final embrace between him and the restored automaton (“I love you…I’ll always love you” never chilled you more).

The Spirit #12 – Review

By: David Hine (writer), Moritat (artist), Gabriel Bautista (colorist)

The Story: You ever get a feeling from dolls that their eyes keep following you around the room?  Well, you should be worried—because actually they might kill you.

The Review: With any genre of art, you’ve got a few ways of going about it: stick to conventions for a traditional, if formulaic, work; stretch the boundaries and give a new spin to the genre’s spirit; or bring in elements from other genres for a mash-up category all its own.  An ongoing comic has the luxury of using all three routes as it sees fit for the story it wants to tell.

For the first leg of his run on The Spirit, Hine gave pretty standard fare as far as pulp stories go: mobsters and their dicey business, femme fatales, private eye cases.  But lately he’s grown more confident in offering more dramatically challenging material, and now he’s even bringing a bit of retro (even uber-retro, since puppeteers and their servant golems are old news for fiction) sci-fi stuff to the table.

By itself though, the robot mannequin concept would seem gimmicky and out of place in a title so obviously rooted in straight-up detective work.  But Hine smartly doesn’t give too much focus to the puppets themselves (although the Spirit doll is all kinds of creepy fun), but rather to their creator, mad-scientist assassin, the Professor.  What started out as a rival mafia premise is slowly becoming more of a character piece, the kind of thing Hine’s proven himself very good at.

The little layers Hine gives to the Professor this issue elevate the old man from creepazoid to a sympathetic figure.  Even though we know nothing of his history, the way Hine writes his behavior and reactions, especially to Ellen Dolan, says a lot about what a life starved of love he’s had—it certainly explains the robot-dame he has as his escort, and why her physical affections towards him in the end result in her beheading.

The Spirit #2 – Review

By Darwyn Cooke (Writer/Artist), J. Bone (Inks), Dave Stewart (Colors)

After my heavy bashing of issue #1, I left off by saying that my fingers were crossed on this series and I hoped that the stories would pick up. Well, I seem to have gotten my wish. Issue #2 jumps right off the rack (or back issue bin as the case may be) with a great cover featuring P’Gell. It is reminiscent of the classic femme fatale covers that graced Spirit comics in the early 50’s. This was all the incentive I needed to open the book and give it a whirl.

This issue centers around the “Maneater”, P’Gell, as she attempts to seduce and marry a Middle Eastern prince who is responsible for the death of someone important to her. With revenge on her mind even The Spirit will have his work cut out for him trying to stop her. We also get a glimpse into the life of The Spirit’s alter ego, Denny Colt, as Cooke addresses the already well trodden path of living the double identity of both masked crime fighter and regular joe.

Issue #2 improves greatly over the almost forgettable events of issue #1. The characters seem deeper and more individual. The contrasts of cast and settings (respectively) are turned up quite a bit leading to greater detail in both. Cooke’s art is allowed to stretch its legs a bit with more action shots, as well as a more detailed story line with a few small twists thrown in. I was also pleased to see a nod to the classic splash/title page images that are so distinct in Spirit stories of old.

This story runs circles around the first issue, and while not perfect, definitely changed my mind about the series. My scorecard now reads 1-1. I hope the trend continues towards wins in the future. Issue #3 here I come, a day late and a dollar short. (Grade: B)

-Chris Williamson