By: David Hine (writer), Moritat (artist), Gabe Bautista (colorist)
The Story: Do I choose the super-hot puppet, or the super-hot real lady? Decisions, decisions…
The Review: When it comes to fiction, you can’t (or you shouldn’t) really expect incredible realism, but you do expect whatever it is you’re reading or watching to mimic reality as best it can. But when it comes to genre fiction, you’re much more willing to let certain things slide. For romance, it’s the ludicrously chosen lovemaking moments; for sci-fi, it’s all the pseudo-science babble; and for pulp, it’s the private eye’s rambling, uber-macho monologues.
The opening pages have the Spirit staking his claim on Central City against all the mobster vermin that threaten to take it over. His speech, in almost any other circumstance, would be incredibly corny, but in this title, with Hine’s expert handle on pulp narration, you just get pumped up to hear the Spirit say, “They’re all wrong. Dead wrong. This is my city.” The smash cut to our hero giving the beatdown to thugs across the red light district is icing on the cake.
Hine also brings his characteristic twist of drama into the proceedings. The Professor’s puppet fetish is of course driven by personal tragedy from his past, although Hine smartly leaves events open-ended: was Esmerelda (the model for the Professor’s first lady-bot) really his first sweetheart, or just love from afar? Did she betray him, or was he just paranoid of her doing so? And was her subsequent death truly “an accident,” as the Professor states?
These are some juicy questions, but Hine never answers them—at least, not directly. He sprinkles the issue with subtle clues you can weave together for your own conclusion: how the eyes in Esmerelda-bot’s disconnected head follow the Professor around the room; how he covers her unblinking face while trying to seduce Ellen Dolan; and the haunting final embrace between him and the restored automaton (“I love you…I’ll always love you” never chilled you more).
Her confrontation with the Professor and this storyline overall has been a great outing for Ellen, as her resourcefulness (a good shot and a lock-picker—Dolan must have had a heck of a time during her teenage years) and good-heartedness get full display. In the end, she breaks herself out of the damsel-in-distress mold and takes down her captors very convincingly. Frankly, you wouldn’t expect the daredevil Spirit to fall for any other kind of gal. I know I would.
The one downside is the Spirit takes very little active part in this arc, as he gets relegated to purely detective work in tracking his girlfriend down. Hine works the sequence well, speeding up the Spirit’s investigation by having him turn to some conveniently placed sources (let’s hope Sally the prostitute and Pinkie the town squealer become future feature characters), but it feels like the Spirit gets his sleuthing done a little too quickly, when it’d work much better drawn out.
Moritat is on fire this issue. The opening pages alone are worth their weight in gold, with that title splash page and all the neon sign designs he puts into the red light district. It’s his choice of paneling that lends Hine’s truncated detective sequences the tension they couldn’t have on their own. The page where he draws the panels out of bloodstains is an especial standout.
Conclusion: If this is the future of pulp comics, then consider me onboard—smart writing and ridiculously suitable art make for a story that rises above the conventions of its genre.
Grade: A-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – Ladrönn has been killing it with these covers—seriously, just look at the wealth of detail in all the props he puts into the Professor’s lab: the racks of tools, the creepily unfinished marionettes in the background, the newspaper scraps on the walls. And the coloring is as perfect as it can get.
Grade
Conclusion