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.

Incognito #5 – Review

by Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (art), and Val Staples (colors)

The Story: Ava Destruction and Zack Overkill go to ground before Zack discovers the awful truth about his origins.

What’s Good: Everything you’ve liked about Incognito returns for another month.  Sean Phillips’ art is a key example of this; completely consistent in its style, tone, and quality without any dips or hurry. It continues to capture Brubaker’s weird mix of dark, hard-boiled noir and bizarre, ray-gun toting 60s sci-fi.  Incognito has been nothing short of excellent every issue, and #5 is no different.

I said it in my review last month and I’ll say it again now: I really, really like Ava Destruction as a character. Once again, despite her clear mental imbalances and homicidal tendencies, she remains impossibly likable. In that sense, the reader’s own relationship to her mirrors Zack’s. She’s dangerous, bloody, and generally awful. Yet relentlessly attractive and compelling.  It’s her very strangeness and ruthless and carefree violence that pull us towards her. And when Brubaker adds a level of vulnerability to her this month, it only makes us embrace her all the harder.

The twist regarding Zack’s origin occupies a central place in this month’s issue, and while it conveys, thanks in no small part to Phillips’ art and Staples’ neon colors and that throwback grindhouse/sci-fi feel, it also truly is a culmination of Zack’s existential struggles. In fact, Zack’s discovery and the subsequent conclusion of this issue are both beautiful in their being a concrete yet almost surreal manifestation of Zack’s loss of identity. Indeed, it fits the title “Incognito” perfectly. Despite its reliance on strong interior monologues, this series once again serves to question the nature of identity and whether the concept carries any validity at all. At the end of this issue, I’m leaning towards “no,” and yet paradoxically, I still see Zack as a distinct person that I’m invested in. This is testament to Brubaker’s skill as a writer that avoids clear answers.

Simply put, this is a highly intelligent issue that takes the book’s themes to an extreme new  level, setting up a bloodbath finale that is sure to define what it is to be “Incognito.”

What’s Not-so-Good: The short pair of scenes with Zoe Zeppelin didn’t feel particularly integral, especially given how awesome the rest of the book was. They’re clearly there as to explain the S.O.S’s presence in next month’s battle royale, but I can’t see why they couldn’t have been shortened, or combined into one scene. Then again, I’m biased as I really just want more Ava.

Conclusion: As I said last month, Incognito is a book that has given one of the best writers in comics today the freedom to do what he does best.  This is a writer in his prime, without constraints, making his ideal comic book.  Bottom-line? Buy the book, buy the trade, just read it!

Grade: A

-Alex Evans

Incognito #4 – Review

by Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (art), and Val Staples (colors)

The Story: The S.O.S. has finally caught on to Zack’s night-time activities as our “hero” finds himself trapped in an unenviable situation.

What’s Good: Showing, not telling.  This phrase has haunted more or less every creative writing hopeful at one point or another, but in this issue, Ed Brubaker proves his mastery of the well-worn adage. Rather than have Zack tell us how his psyche is developing through textboxes, Brubaker uses his scenes and images to make these internal shifts all the more significant.

Two notable occurrences in this issue are the surprise office memorial for Farmer and the encounter with Amanda directly afterwards.  The former is a scene that shows Zack on the cusp of acknowledging an inexplicable positive in humanity and the “average Joe” he has so derided, yet due to letting the scene speak for itself, the reader almost seems more aware of this moment than Zack himself.  Meanwhile, the scene with Amanda plays up the feeling of paranoia that pervades this comic, making the reader actually share Zack’s anxiety right alongside him.

This is just a further nuance to the great writing that has continually propped up this series.  Paranoia is the game in this issue, and Brubaker plays it well.  Enhancing this is a further graying of the “good-guy/bad-guy” divide; not only is Zack hazy, but so too are the S.O.S., who turn out to be a far cry from SHIELD.

The character that sees the most development this issue is without a doubt Ava Destruction.  On the few pages that she appears in, she is utterly infectious.  Despite being terrifyingly insane and completely homicidal, she carries an undeniable charm and likeability.  The fact that we will be getting even more of her next issue has me excited.

Art-wise, Sean Phillips fans no what to expect.  The same dark, heavy pulp fare continues in this issue with no sign of slippage.  Phillips is nothing if not consistent.

What’s Not So Good: I didn’t feel that the internal monologue/textboxes were up the standard set by previous issues.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re still fantastic and were this any other comic, I would be enthralled; it’s only due to the unbelievably high bar that the series has set for itself that I find myself writing this.

I think a good part of it comes from what I mentioned about “showing, not telling.”  Due to Brubaker allowing the scenes to tell Zack’s emotions rather than the textboxes, the internal monologue becomes much more event-centered.  You don’t get the sort of overarching ruminating that you got in past issues.  It’s just feels simpler and more down to earth, with Zack more focused on his predicament than on the nature of his existence.

Also, I’ve always had a bit of a pet peeve for misleading covers.  Know that nothing close to a super powered battle between Zack Overkill and Zoe Zeppelin occurs in these pages.

Conclusion: Incognito remains an example of one of the top writers in comics today doing what he does best with complete freedom.

Grade: B+

-Alex Evans