The Spirit #11 – Review

By: David Hine (writer), Moritat (artist), Gabriel Bautista & Pia Guerra (colorists)

The Story: The Spirit takes on Central City’s illegal immigrant problem, mafia style.

The Review: A good story can be told given any length.  In fact, when page or word limits constrain a writer, it forces the writing to cut the fat and keep only the material that works—which, given the babbling style of some writers, can be a very good thing.  But you can’t deny the benefits of getting more room for storytelling: it allows you to get better immersed in more detailed, richer settings and characters, and seeing how they evolve.

With the second feature now cut from the title, Hine has more freedom to deliver a more involved, plot-driven story, unlike the character pieces he’s given us before.  Not that those weren’t good, but they did end up relegating the Spirit to a kind of symbol in those people’s lives.  In this issue, the Spirit gets a sticky, but fairly clear-cut case, giving him a more active role in showing why he’s the hero of choice in Central City.

What’s more, the supporting cast also gets involved.  Usually Dolan gets relegated to expository duty, delivering the newest details of a case for his vigilante partner to tackle.  Here, Dolan’s balancing act as ally of both justice and crime lets him use his own brand of power to take down the human trafficking ring popping up in his city.  Kudos to Hine for getting Ellen involved by way of her ties to progressive community action groups.  In one issue, you get the vigilante, government, and citizenry working together to remove the same plague.

The addition of the Octopus’ manpower to their efforts is a surprising element, but great for bringing some character to these Zoot-suited bozos.  It goes to show that even in the crime world, there are degrees of despicable behavior.  You got to love Mr. Ovsack’s explanation of how he’s on the high road here: “Our drugs are clean, we don’t sell guns to kids, our girls are all over eighteen.”  But Hine wisely reminds us that mobsters are mobsters, as the factory explosion (with all the immigrant workers still inside) grimly shows.

The Spirit is an interesting mash-up of the pulp detective and the masked vigilante, but so far, we’ve only seen him work his gumshoe skills.  Half his charm is how he sort of just improvises in action, and obviously no one’s expecting him to be a martial artist on the level of say, Batman.  Still, there are a few points in this issue where he gets way too lucky, even for him—like how did he instantly close the distance to beat on those guns-a’blazing thugs?  Or why did that one henchman use his gun as a clobbering stick instead of a gun?

Moritat’s art is one I like to call sketchy with style.  It’s different from the sloppy, unimaginative work of certain other artists—I won’t name names—in that even with the less clearly-defined lines, he’s still able to get across a fantastic level of detail: the specific character designs for each Octopus henchman, Mr. Ovsack’s cigar smoke forming the shape of a skull, the signs and architecture of the buildings.  Bautista and Guerra provide some dark, moody colors, but they fit very neatly into the tone of the story, and really bring life to the drama.

Conclusion: The title really benefits from the additional page count, delivering a much more textured, lively story than before.  It’s a great example of the pulp genre, though if Hine brings in more unexpected elements (i.e. robots), this series will become much more than that.

Grade: A-

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Dolan’s been in the business so long, he knows the upper henchmen by name: “Tiberius!  What are you doing here?”  By the way, how awesome is it to have an Asian mobster in a pimping suit with the name Tiberius?

– Woah!  Those things hanging on the statue are freakin’ human hands!