Spirit #2: The Maneater

Writer: Darwyn Cooke
Artists: Darwyn Cooke and Jeff Bone
Publisher: DC Comics

“The Maneater” brings Denny Colt, alias The Spirit, into conflict once more with P’Gell, the woman with a past. Born in the slums of Paris, her beauty and cunning advanced her status in life, usually to the detriment of her wealthy, accident-prone husbands.

P’Gell appeared in seventeen of Will Eisner’s original stories. She was always motivated by greed and manipulated men to get whatever she wanted. In his first major deviation from the Spirit cannon, Darwyn Cooke has added a new wrinkle to her background. Eisner fans are certain to debate, and argue over, the merits of this plot twist.

Hussein Hussein is the special envoy to the visiting Prince of Karifistan, and is quite susceptible to all manner of bribery. Using her powers of persuasion, P’Gell acquires an invitation to a formal reception, convincing Hussein to “select” her as Prince Farouk’s escort. She ingratiates herself with Farouk, and their clandestine romance fuels the media rumor mill.

The Spirit suspects that Prince Farouk will join the ranks of P’Gell’s dead husbands, unless he discerns her motives and exposes her. He circumvents embassy security with an ineffectual disguise, but the confrontation with his old nemesis is interrupted by Hussein’s bodyguards. Cooke maintains the old tradition of roughing up our hero -- The Spirit does not emerge unscathed, but he repays the favor. In the climax, he punches his way through embassy security to rescue the unsavory Prince.

“You remind me so much of him,” P’Gell tells The Spirit. “Beautiful. Virtuous. And stupid.”

At this point, Cooke explains away her behavior with a personal tragedy. We are to believe that P’Gell is not inherently evil, but this “tarnished” quality dilutes her femme fatale persona. In Eisner’s hands, P’Gell had ice-water in her veins. She never allowed human sentimentality to dissuade her from material objects, and murder was the price of admission. You can’t walk away from a deal with the Devil…, especially not if you slept with her.

I can’t believe that female readers would cry foul at Eisner’s original P’Gell stories. She was an independent, intelligent woman, using her wily charms to fleece gullible men. She was an inherently evil character, but most of the characters in The Spirit were unsavory types. That’s the cornerstone of nearly all film noir and pulp fiction.

By explaining her behavior through personal loss, thus making her more “motivated,” she becomes a different character. Perhaps someone felt the need to distinguish her from Selina Kyle, who picked up the femme fatale torch as Catwoman, but this back-story hit more sour notes than the Liberty Bell.

In contrast to the lascivious P’Gell, our hero takes a moment to curl up with the lovely Ellen Dolan. Cooke has upgraded Ellen’s I.Q., but he has tinkered with her back-story, as well. She curls up with Denny and then scolds him for ducking out on their weekly movie night. Apparently, she’s unfazed by the fact that he was presumed dead in the original series, whereupon she developed an unrequited crush on The Spirit. Talk about Freudian: Ellen fell in love, never suspecting it was the same man, and he dodged a marriage by faking his death.

Ellen swoons: “Just the two of us, no killers, no weirdoes.” Later she calls up police files on P’Gell’s background, before Denny apologizes and dashes away. I suppose that once your fiancé walks back into your life, you gain automatic knowledge of his nocturnal activities.

Now that he’s established an Eisner-esque tone, Darwyn Cooke is veering off in his own direction. Cooke is keeping his cards hidden, so I’m withholding judgment on these revelations regarding The Spirit’s women. I’ll be very disappointed if he’s rewriting series continuity, unless this is a continuation from where Eisner left off. If so, we should have witnessed the moment when Ellen learned that Colt is alive and The Spirit. You don’t simply toss off a crucial moment like that in a flashback.

As for P’Gell, perhaps her “back-story” was fabricated to catch the Spirit off-guard. Words like “beautiful, virtuous, and stupid” invite suspicion. Maybe it worked on Prince Farouk and Denny Colt … not me, lady. I’ve read too many Spirit comics not to know better.
Originally posted to www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com on Monday, January 22, 2007.