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.

The Spirit #1 (DC Comics, 2006)

“Ice Ginger Coffee”
Writer: Darwyn Cooke
Artist: Darwyn Cooke (p), J. Bone (i), Dave Stewart (colors)
Publisher: DC Comics

This is the beginning of the anticipated new series featuring Will Eisner’s comic-icon from the 1940s. A few weeks ago, Batman and Robin joined the festivities in Batman/The Spirit #1 as Jeph Loeb and Darwyn Cooke cracked the bottle of champagne on the “S.S. Spirit” with “Crime Convention.” Now Cooke assumes the responsibilities as writer and artist, appropriately enough since Eisner himself pulled double-duty as the Spirit’s auteur. The Spirit may work best with a single creator, walking the fine line between cinema-style comics and pulp-inspired prose.

NNN-News anchor Ginger Coffee promises viewers that she will expose Amos Weinstock, alias The Pill, a leading drug trafficker in Central City. Since this is a comic book, he is appropriately mysterious and – as we later discover – appropriately grotesque. He could have stepped right out of Chester Gould’s Unused Ideas file. A “special guest” will blow the whistle on a live broadcast – but Coffee is kidnapped and held captive, while the Spirit employs a variety of stealthy tricks to rescue her. Now they’re on the run, hoping the police will find them before the hired torpedoes.

The chase goes over rooftops, through back-alleys and sewers, much to the perfumed Ginger Coffee’s distaste. To complicate matters, the reluctant damsel-in-distress undermines their escape attempt for the sake of a live exclusive. Bullets fly in this fast-paced, hardboiled thriller, and the chase sequence is exciting.

There’s a wonderful noir atmosphere, evocative of films like D.O.A. and Gun Crazy, which was desperately needed in the Batman crossover. The whacky hi-jinks of “Crime Convention” are dumped for more sublime humor, as Denny Colt faces off against criminals who are realistic and vicious. One jarring moment in the story, however, comes from one of the thugs. They’re far more realistic in this story, but I wasn’t expecting salty language. I assumed that Cooke would avoid PG-13 dialogue, in keeping with Eisner’s style. Well, this is the 21st Century …

Another concession to the 21st Century is Ginger Coffee, an African-American television news anchor. She’s a ratings-winner and quite spunky. However, her willingness to jeopardize her safety, and that of the Spirit, suggests that she’s not as street-smart as Lois Lane. Ginger probably gained her reporting chops by surfing the internet and sending the interns on latte errands. It’s hinted that she could become a recurring character.

Ginger carries most of the story, and prepares readers for the first appearance of Ebony, the Spirit’s young assistant. This dreadfully unfunny stereotype was the one major blight on Eisner’s corpus. In this new series, Ebony is no longer an Al Jolsen-caricature, speaking fluent “mammy” dialogue. Now he’s presented as a competent, young African American sidekick who isn’t above ribbing the lead character. Some fans felt that he was an anachronism, but Cooke’s make-over seemed a no-brainer to me. At least, he doesn’t resemble Samuel L. Jackson – who, recently, seems to be the model for every black male in comics.

Having cleaned up the supporting cast, the “Ugly Caricature” task falls onto the villains. The Pill is a distorted version of Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, covered with canker sores. He speaks in a courtly manner, before disposing of an interesting stoolie. Mr. Wang’s “memory-card” brain is mentioned in passing, before The Pill’s “acid touch” is demonstrated in passing. Unless these characters are going to surface in future Spirit tales, why did Cooke even bother? The standard “underworld boss” would have sufficed.

For that matter, was it really necessary to kidnap Ginger Coffee? She boasts that she’s “the nation’s TV crimefighter,” but posed no more threat to The Pill than the weather anchor. Once Mr. Wang is fried, Coffee is a reporter with no story, forced to resume arresting internet predators on hidden camera. Besides, killing a beloved television personality, especially one as sexy as Ginger, is bad for business. There’s the possible public outcry to consider; on the other hand, there are the law enforcement officials who feel publicly humiliated.

After making a disparaging remark about The Spirit, one cop gets an earful from Commissioner Dolan, who is presented as far crustier than usual. He doesn’t appreciate witnessing crimes live via satellite, but there’s more than embarrassment behind his gruff exterior. A quiet moment in Dolan’s office demonstrates his concern for Denny Colt, the masked man who could have been his son-in-law. His paternal fear, and the mistrust of the other officers, suggests that these events are occurring early in The Spirit’s crimefighting career.

This series shows tremendous promise, especially Dolan’s quiet reflection on the Spirit and his daughter, in simpler times. Could Darwyn Cooke be planning to explore Denny Colt and Ellen Dolan’s relationship? If he can make Ebony more palatable to modern readers, perhaps Cooke can move past Eisner’s simpler characterization of her as the swooning, unrequited love interest.

This self-contained story is a straight-forward “hero-on-the run” plotline, but it’s also fast-paced and fun. Now that the Spirit has made the leap into the 21st Century, here’s hoping that he finds a new audience.

*Originally posted on www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com as part of the "Sunday Slugfest")