The Big-Screen Spirit!

When The Spirit was released to the cinemas a nearly two decades ago now, I was hopeful that some of Will Eisner's greatest creation would be translated to the big screen at long last.  I'm not naive enough to imagine that the translation would be seamless or that I'd be completely happy, but I held out hope that given a solid comic book man like Frank Miller was in charge, that the essence of the character would remain.

I hoped in vain.

The Spirit we meet on the screen (Gabriel Macht) is a mopey self-absorbed hipster who bounces around town in his overly stylish tennis shoes like a noir Spider-Man. He's got some fetish for "his city" and waxes on endlessly about how he and the city are connected. (A bit too much of the Batman-brew for me.) That would be okay, save that this connection is largely ignored after an overly long set up.

As bad though as The Spirit is, the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) is a disaster. The mysterious largely unseen villain of the comics is transformed into a loquacious maniac who kills for sheer delight. Both he and the Spirit it seems have been transformed into supermen of a sort and battle each other out of some grand ennui which more than anything else seems to inform this culture. The city and its occupants seem bored, and the audience cannot be far behind.

The women though are beautiful -- Eva Mendes as Sand Saref, Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellen Dolan, Paz Vega as Plaster of Paris, Jamie King as Lorelei Rox, and Scarlet Johansson as Silken Floss. The filmmaking is at least stylish and visually arresting in places, but overall, The Spirit as imagined by Frank Miller rambles too far from the source material and finds itself lost. It's a rather dull story actually with some clever set pieces which after it's all said and done don't add up to a good movie. The Spirit deserved better. 

It's a shame really. Will never saw it. That's probably a blessing.

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A Tasty Spirit Jam!

Spirit Jam is a 1998 reprint of one of the more impressive artistic stunts of the Indy era. In the 30th issue of The Spirit Magazine from 1981, the folks at Kitchen Sink (spearheaded by in-house Eisner expert Cat Yronwode) arranged for a host of artists and writers to try their hand at a few pages of a single shared Spirit story. The story was kicked off and wrapped up by Will Eisner but in between were all manner of renditions of the 40's comic icon by some of the most potent names of the era.

Pete Poplaski penciled the wraparound cover. It's gorgeous and features the inking of the following talents: Peter Poplaski, Will Eisner, Milton Caniff, John Pound, Denis Kitchen, Richard Corben, and Leslie Carbaga.

Also included in the square-bound reprint was the four-page Cerebus Jam story by Eisner and Dave Sim. Eisner handled the Spirit figures and Sim most everything else.

And to close things off here are two wonderful renderings of the Spirit with some iconic heroes.

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The Lady Liberators And Much More!

This wonderful issue of The Avengers introduced the "Lady Liberators", a one-shot gang of Marvel's most dangerous dames led by the Valkyrie (who was in fact the Enchantress in disguise). 

(Marie Severin's early layout for this dynamic cover.)

It's one of my favorite comic books from one of my favorite runs in the series. The message of "Women's Liberation" is again front and center today as reactionary forces work diligently to claw back rights that women have enjoyed for decades. 

(Parody of the cover by Bob Layton)

Strong women in the public square terrorize far too many Americans who had a chance to elevate a strong qualified woman to the highest office in the land and instead selected a raving maniac and useful idiot for the former Soviet Union. Shame. 

Women in comics have always been a mystery of immense proportions. Comic books have almost always been the singular playground for young boys and later young men. Girls were allowed to read romance comics when those got invented and the MLJ line stays alive even today with its Archie line up. But comics are famously about superheroes and superheroes are for boys. We all know that.

So, when dames show up in the four-colored pages they are either damsels in distress or dames of great danger. This month has featured the latter, those women who are just as inclined to stand on the throat of any malignant mope who might imagine she needed saving. (I won't say whose throat I image they might be standing on.) Enjoy these exceedingly dangerous dames

Death to Male Chauvinism! 

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