Filling The Vacuum??

Other comic companies continue to troll Marvel for their lack of a Fantastic Four book:

That's the splash page of this week's Green Hornet '66 Meets The Spirit #3.

That's right, a Dynamite comic about two separate licensed properties is giving us more Fantastic Four than Marvel.

Special kudos to writer Fred Van Lente for using Spirit's Central City as the launching point. Deep knowledge, and deeeeeep trolling.

First DC, and now Dynamite. Keep it coming, other comic companies--maybe public shaming from within the industry will prove more effective than my constant whining.

No, I will never shut up about this.

...And Then His Mother Threw Them All Out One Day...

Here's a ginchy little contest!

 Well, 50K was a tidy sum back in the day. So all of the Spirit's greatest enemies enter...

 And it's a close vote...

 And the prize is $50,000, right?

D'oh!!

Geez, $50,000 worth of comic books...uhhh...is it too late for me to enter that contest?

From The Spirit 11/25/51, as reprinted in The Spirit #3 (1952)

The Down Side Of Immortality!

A madman is threatening Central City (the Spirit's town, not the Flash's...hmmm, there's a Convergence story for you...) with a very unusual threat:

Good question, lady! How is that a bad thing!

So--not a utopia!!

Please remember that next time you donate money to defeat some disease--we still have to die of something, or civilization goes to hell in a handbasket.

Of course, that's all according to a (very) mad scientist, so, you know, grain of salt and all that.

From The Spirit: The New Adventures #1 (1998) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Ladies Love The Spirit!!

In honor of the upcoming Valentines Day...

Nylon Rose--Ellen Dolan's sorority sister, apparent crook, actually a free-lance operative for the FBI--likes what she sees when she comes to visit:

And when she gets him alone later?

And when some lady crooks get a hold of him...

It's a rough life being the Spirit...

From the Spirit Insert 3/17/1946, as reprinted in Police Comics #98 (1950)

Hide The Children And The Animals

Once the Borg Collective--oops, DC Comics--got their hands on the reprints rights for The Spirit, you knew it was only a matter of time until they began running original Spirit stories.

Well, that turned out surprisingly OK. Darwyn Cooke's run received pretty good notices, was generally enjoyable, and all in all did just about as well as anyone could hope to do producing book length stories in the 21st century based on an 1940s 8-page weekly newspaper comic.

After Cooke moved on, other writers and artists took over, mostly to "meh" results. Nothing as disastrous as the Frank Miller movie, mind you. Just no particularly inspiring stuff. (I myself dropped it several months ago).

So now the series shudders and gasps it's way to the final issue in August...well, just read the solicit for yourselves:

THE SPIRIT #32
Written by Mike Ploog
Art by Mike Ploog & Dan Green
Cover by Gene Ha
“The Celtic Stone” concludes! The U.S. Army, the mystical Cormac and the beautiful Adios are all fighting to control the powerful Celtic Stone, and only one can walk away with it! Eisner colleague Mike Ploog wraps up his dizzying 2-parter – and the current volume of THE SPIRIT – with a bang...
but stay tuned for a radical reinvention that will leave you breathless!
FINAL ISSUE • On sale August 5 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

Well, goodbye, Spir--hey, wait a minute!! Let's look at that final sentence again:

...but stay tuned for a radical reinvention that will leave you breathless!

Oh. My. God.

This is gonna get pretty ugly, isn't it?

"Radical reinvention?" Holy schnikes, that's can't be any good, can it?!?

Is The Spirit going to enter the DC Universe proper? Perhaps a back-up series in someone else's mag?

You know, given the timing...Jesus, if Geoff Johns ressurects Denny Colt in Blackest Night, why I'm gonna...

Still, I wouldn't have minded (and it would have made for an infinitely better story) if The Spirit had won the Battle For The Cowl...

I know there's no team, no content, no direction announced yet. But coy references to "radical reinventions" scare the hell outta me...Stay tuned...

UPDATE: As Anonymous posted below, our "radical reinvention" is going to involve a number of pulp properties teaming up. From this week's DC Nation (emphasis added):

Not only do I see Doc Savage and the Avenger standing side by side, but I see dark nights in in Doc's future and his closest friends taking flight with some ebony birds. And I see the Avenger in new cities facing new mystery men--if, of course, the spirit is willing.

So there we have it. Hardly what I'd call radical reinvention...at least based on what we know so far. But it could be fun. Is Dark Knights a Batman reference, though? Or The Shadow?

Please, Frank Miller, Don't Hurt 'Em

Well, we've all heard the quote from Frank Miller, about when he was offered The Spirit movie, and he realized that "Nobody else can touch this."

And why, exactly, did MC Miller declare to all other filmmakers "U Can't Touch This?" Break it down:

• No one else would have ever thought to give the Spirit super powers.
  
• No one else would have seen the brilliance of making the Octopus an insane genius scientist who discovered the secret to immortality, and who has the exact same super powers as the Spirit
  
• No other writer would have thought to change the Spirit's background from a criminologist and private detective to a rookie cop --because only MC Miller had the depth of understanding to realize rookie cops make much better detectives and crime fighters than those with actual experience and learning. MC Miller gets bonus points for giving the Spirit a new origin (rookie cop mysteriously gunned down) and then not devoting a single syllable afterward to wonder who gunned him down, or why.
  
• Only MC Miller grokked that the Golden Fleece (yes, that Golden Fleece) was actually an impenetrable shield protecting the wearer from all harm, a fact that even escaped the notice of the ancient Greeks.
• Only MC Miller could see that Sand Saref would be a much better character if you ignored her international espionage background and reduced her to a thief with "a thing for bling."
• Giving Denny Colt an intimate physical relationship with Death? Nobody else could touch that (OK, maybe Jim Starlin...)

So thank you, MC Miller, for saving us from those other writers and directors, who never would have thought of introducing any of these "innovations" to the Spirit movie. Hell, such pedestrian filmmakers might have actually made a movie that was tangentially connected to what the Spirit comics were about, and we certainly couldn't have that!!

And on that note...STOP!! Miller time!!