The Spirit #10 – Review

By: David Hine (writer), Moritat (penciller), John Kantz (inker), Gabriel Bautista (colorist)

The Story: No one’s very fond of the cockroach, but Roscoe Kalashnikov is crazy about them—not in a good way.  And yes, his craziness involves guns.

The Review: Considering the ongoing nature of comic books, you’d think writers could afford to let their stars take a break from the limelight now and then to build up other characters.  When even incidental personalities get fleshed out, stories take on a whole new depth of flavor; you become that much more convinced this world exists out there, somewhere.

The Spirit is ostensibly about the titular hero’s never-ending struggle for justice in a city that resists it, but really, the star of the series is the traumatized city itself.  David Hine makes a pointed effort every issue to delve into the backgrounds of his featured characters, to the point where the Spirit feels like a guest in his own title.  The results are a Central City that genuinely feels populated with people, all with their own bag of inescapable hang-ups, damning flaws, and redeeming virtues.  It really brings home what the Spirit faces every day.

Take Roscoe Kalashnikov—great name, by the way.  The origins of his personal set of crazy are delivered matter-of-factly, in the voice of someone who has clearly embraced his screwed-up childhood.  But as the story progresses, Hine expertly teases out the stains still painfully lingering on Roscoe’s psyche, letting you get an almost sickening firsthand view of the guy’s total meltdown.  It’s a bit like reading Lolita—even as Roscoe pushes himself down the path to his own undoing, the little bits of honest-to-goodness insanity peppering his thoughts and behavior still invoke your sympathy.

The story takes on new meaning in light of recent current events.  I should stake my claim right here that Hine’s story is no intended statement on the Arizona shootings, but there’s an interesting reflection regardless.  You have a man with some disturbing psychoses that he represses, absorbing rather than healing the damage.  When the literal drop-in of one of fiction’s most potent plot devices—a loaded, silenced gun—comes his way, the unexpected consequences, hastened by the impulsive use of drugs, end up devastating him and others very quickly.  The beginning of the issue emphasizes Roscoe’s desire for power to put to use the self-control his father twistedly trains into him.   But once he gets it, you see how incapable he is at handling it, revealing the weak grasp of self-control he really has.  It may be an old story, but Hine executes it in gripping fashion.