The DC Spirit - Darwyn Cooke!

When DC was finally able to move forward in 2007 with new adventures of The Spirit they picked Darwyn Cooke to take up the challenge of continuing Will Eisner's magnificent creation. It was a superb choice as Cooke's animated-inspired style blended nicely a noir feel with a modern sense of comics storytelling. 

They kicked off the series with a booster when they crossed over The Spirit with Batman in a Cooke-drawn one-shot. Jeph Loeb wrote this roller-coaster story which featured not only the two heroes but most of both of their rogue galleries who had joined forces during a convention to do away with the twin heroes. 

The series proper began with an updated setting. This was a modern but weary Central City in which The Spirit still battled the baddies with the help of Ebony White (redesigned to remove his stereotypical aspects). Ebony was shown as a sharp assistant, who helped the out-of-step Spirit with modern technology such as cellphones and other aspects of the information age. J. Bone was tapped to ink Cooke's stylish pencils which in the tradition of Eisner played with the storytelling. Ellen Dolan was the love interest, though it's made clear she loves Denny Colt. We are also introduced to a new savvy female television reporter named Ginger Coffee. 

P'Gell makes an appearance and is up to her usual attempts to come by wealth through a bit of romance and a bit of criminality. 

The Spirit's origin is slightly revised to include a hood named Elvarro Mortez who ended up with Denny Colt immersed in Doctor Cobra's weird suspended-animation solution. Whereas Colt was put into a crypt and so was able to get free of his internment, Mortez had a more cruel resurrection. This story formed a spine which flowed in the background of the many of the stories going forward. 

Silk Satin returns, but this time she is made a member of the C.I.A. and Homeland Security and is a very capable ally. 

Cooke was all too ready to play with the graphics, well within the tradition that Eisner had established decades before. 

Cooke supplies the cover for the "Summer Special" but we get stories by Walt Simonson and Chris Sprouse, Jimmy Palmiotti and Jordi Bernet, and Kyle Baker. Truth told, The Spirit always seems more at home in these shorter stories. 

The Octopus also returns, as mysterious but perhaps even more deadly. This Octopus does not play around nor seems particularly entertained by The Spirit's shenanigans. 

Cooke gives us some fantastic and sharp satire when he looks at the landscape of television news shows which have become hotbeds of misinformation and so put the society at large at risk. Something we are contending with even more today. 

The Mortez storyline comes to a finish when a horde of zombies descend on Central City and it's up to our hero and his friends to save the day. It's a very close thing. 

Cooke wraps up his run on the series with a fantastic retelling of the Sand Saref story, giving it a modern polish while staying very true to Eisner's original intent. 

Cooke leaves off with the cover for the thirteenth issue which is a Christmas issue. Inside we get a Halloween story by writer Glen David Gold and artist Edwardo Risso, another story by Denny O'Neil and artist Ty Templeton, and a third by Gail Simone and Phil Hester. 

Darwyn Cooke was a top-flight choice to create some fun but still engaging Spirit stories. He created a continuity which alas would largely be ignored by the talents who followed him. His act was a strong one indeed. 

Rip Off

Going Down Danger Street!

At first, I intended to give a no-holds barred issue by issue review of Danger Street. The limited series takes the often-forgotten heroes featured in the thirteen issues of First Issue Special, a Showcase-style series DC made use of in the Bronze Age. Not all of the heroes in the series were throwaways such as Warlord which went on to become a big hit for DC. The New Gods also have been revived time and again over the decades. Mainstays like The Creeper, Dr. Fate and Metamorpho find life now again in the pages of DC Comics. And even Manhunter has been used and to my mind somewhat abused over time. But others such as Atlas, The Green Team, The Outsiders (not the Batman version), Lady Cop, Starman (not the Earth II versions), and Codename: Assassin have been little used to say the least. 

But after reading the series, I don't want to spoil in anyway what proved to be a pretty compelling yarn. This is a stew for sure, disparate characters thrown into a cooker pressure and then left to simmer. One is often left to wonder if the result will taste any good at all. I can say this brew has a heady taste indeed. The best I can say is that Tom King has created a story which is the Brothers Grimm meet Quentin Tarantino. We have a Princess (Lady Cop) and three Princes (Warlord, Starman, and Metamorpho), four Young Lads (Dingbats of Danger Street), an Ogre (The Creeper), a Giant (Atlas), two Knights (Manhunter and Codename: Assassin), some Monsters (The Green Team), some Rogues (The Outsiders), and sundry Dragons (The New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips). 

The story is narrated by the Helmet of Fate, which it turns out plays a key part in the saga as well. Characters arrive from all over and tumble into one another's lives. Some are connected in ways we never imagined. Some seem destined to clash. Most are just trying to survive another day. To describe the interactions and fates of the various heroes and assorted characters would be the spoil some terrific surprises. But it is sufficient to say that not everyone gets out alive. 

Here are the sundry covers for this series.  

Highly Recommended. 

Rip Off

Danger Street Signs - Dr. Fate!

In anticipation of a review of Danger Street by Tom King, Jorge Fornes and assorted cover artists I am representing my thirteen reviews of DC's 1970's Showcase-style comic 1st Issue Special. The books by King and company make use of ALL of the sundry heroes and heroines who appeared in these pages. So, let's continue. 

The ninth issue of 1st Issue Special just might be the best comic in the run. Written by Marty Pasko and drawn by the great Walt Simonson, this is a wild and wooly yarn of fell magic and ancient pseudo-history which shakes the typically stoic Dr. Fate to his core. The story is incredibly dynamic thanks to the artwork of Simonson who in this book breaks free of the more delicate stylings which had marked his work heretofore on such things as Manhunter and Sword and Sorcery. These are muscular pages rocking with supernatural action. The lusty Joe Kubert cover doesn't hurt matters either. 

Dr. Fate was always a character who seemed to get less attention at DC than he deserved. He had a run in More Fun Comics during the Golden Age, but after that little attention. His opposite number at Marvel Dr. Strange always seemed to have a series of some kind bubbling, but Dr. Fate never. Despite one of the best superhero outfits in the game he rarely if ever elevated above his roles as a sturdy member of the Justice Society of America in those delightful annual crossovers. I remember seeing him as drawn by Dick Dillin and Sid Greene and loving his look immediately, a look which didn't seem throwback in anyway as some of the JSA costumes did.

In this story Dr. Fate must battle a mummy named Khalis who seeks nothing less than the amulet that Fate wears and which gives him some of his powers. We get a glimpse of the weird life Kent Nelson lives with his personality sublimated under the magical presence of Nabu and we see his wife deal with the complexities of an existence in which she is isolated and her husband is only himself on rare occasions. The battle rages across the pages and it will come as little surprise that Dr. Fate wins the day. But his victory did not secure a series for him alas despite the potency and craft of his outing.  

The next time we glimpse a 1st Issue Special we greet the return of Joe Simon and Jerry Gandenetti and a gaggle of freaks. 

Rip Off

Paul Kirk Day!

Archie Goodwin was born on this date in 1937. He was simply one of the finest writers and editors ever to be in the comics arena. He proved himself a great writer on titles such as Iron Man for Marvel and Batman for DC. He was both a writer and editor for Warren Magazines, launching such well- remembered titles as Blazing Combat. It was in the pages of Detective Comics that he and Walt Simonson gifted the world with Manhunter. 

My personal manhunt is finally over. And as a little extra-special find for my birthday this year, I located a delightful copy of Manhunter - The Complete Saga from the small Excalibur publishing outfit. This was the very first reprinting of the amazing series by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson, and the only version of the Manhunter story I didn't already have.  And it's a much better package than I expected. There are great pencil drafts from Simonson when he was designing the character. And the late great Archie Goodwin supplies both a great foreword and afterword for the volume. And the short but sweet saga of Paul Kirk performs quite well in black and white. We are even treated to a full page of Goodwin's own distinctive cartooning. This was produced in 1979 by the Excalibur gang, not a time when upscale comic reprints were all that common. It was less than a decade since the original stories had appeared. 

Manhunter by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson is among the most treasured comic yarns in my long experience in the form. As Goodwin describes in his introduction to the 1979 reprint, the freedom to create something fresh and unusually lively was a result of two factors. One was that the series appeared in Detective Comics, which at the time was suffering a sales slump and so change was seen as good. And the other was that Manhunter was the back-up piece and so seen instantly as less important overall. So, things could change, and in the Bronze Age changes in the status quo of comics was much ballyhooed but rarely done with total commitment. Here was a hero who could do things other Comics Code approved heroes might not be able to get away with, hidden as he was in the shadows of a dangerous world but also in the back of a familiar comic.

I have now collected the Manhunter in all its forms. I picked up several of the chapters in real time as they first appeared and have filled in the gaps since. I've picked up the 1984 DC reprint, the 1999 reprint titled Manhunter: The Special Edition which hard on the sad news of Archie Goodwin's untimely death offered a new chapter, wordless but no less important to the core saga. I more in more recent years picked up the story in a collection of Archie Goodwin's best DC stories, and I even popped for the magnificent "Artist's Edition" which showcases Simonson's tasty pages in their full black and white glory. I love this little saga. I loved it then and I love it still. I am not alone.

The story taps so many of the pop-culture vibes of the era, with a Golden Age hero named Paul Kirk who has grown disillusioned and then dies in a tragic accident. He is revived by a cabal of evil men who seek to use him and his genetic make-up to help them conquer the world. He turns against these men and turns his back on power and immortality to recapture that which they seem to have stolen from him, his fundamental sense of self and his basic human need to shape his own destiny as much as he can. 

The notion to connect Manhunter directly to the vintage Golden Age hero of that named made most famous by the Simon and Kirby team was brilliant. Ironically though the Goodwin-Simonson Manhunter has been reprinted numerous times, the Simon and Kirby Manhunter tales have never been collected though they'd fit neatly into a single slim tome. It's an oversight on DC's part for certain. We've gotten good reprints of the Boy Commandos, the Newsboy Legion, and Sandman, but for some unknown reason no similar package for Manhunter. 

I first noticed something different about the writing of Archie Goodwin in his early Iron Man issues back in the late 60's when fresh from Warren he dabbled a bit for Stan "The Man". There was a deceptive simplicity to his writing that though it felt like it had not personal style was in fact rich with and inviting for that very reason. When he took the editor's seat at Detective Comics, I took notice and could feel that a more adult approach was evident in both the lead feature and the back-up. 

And then there's Walt Simonson who made his bones on Manhunter, a quick little series that lasted only a brief time but brought many awards and critical recognition to its makers. Simonson did not waste the heft the series gave him and went on to become a significant force in comics of the era. Reading Manhunter in various formats is like listening to a great piece of music in different performances, the greatness is always evident regardless. 

If they sell Manhunter again, I likely will buy it all over -- the music is so very, very sweet. 

Below are the splash pages for the series and the covers of the Detective Comics issues in which they appeared. All but one of the Manhunter chapters was in a 100-Page comic and those were absolute troves of wonderful stories from across the decades. Maybe that richness added to my ardor for the series. I don't know. 

The inventiveness of Simonson's pages is remarkable and reminds me of Will Eisner's delightful Spirit splashes and he was just getting started. (The story "Cathedral Perilous, the fifth chapter was specifically inspired by Eisner's Spirit stories, according to Goodwin.) Three of the seven Manhunter stories won Shazam awards (Chapters 1, 5 and the finale) and garnered best writer awards for Goodwin in 1973 and 1974. This series is so good that it has withstood all of the reboots by DC over the intervening decades. A remarkable saga indeed. Goodwin and Simonson returned to the character in the late 90's but before Goodwin could script the final pages by Simonson he passed away. Simonson refused to have anyone else write the story and it was published without dialogue of any kind. The storytelling is so keen that none is needed. The collection which featured this final new Manhunter tale also won awards. 

Comics don't get better than Manhunter! Now if DC would only reprint those classic Golden Age Manhunter stories. I have the few in magazines here and there, but we need a collection. 

Rip Off