My legal obligation as a comics blogger: A post about Stephanie "Spoiler" Brown

So I had kind of an unusual experience Friday afternoon. I was sitting in my wingback armchair, enjoying a pipe and a good book, which is how I usually spend my leisure time, when I heard a thunderous knock on my front door.

Standing on my porch were two clean-cut looking people in their mid-thirties, one male and one female, each wearing dark suits with ties and carrying expensive-looking briefcases. When I cracked the door and asked if I could help them, they said they were from the Comics Blogosphere Bureau of Regulation and asked if they could speak with me for a few minutes.

I was naturally skeptical, and told them I’d never even heard of any such an organization, but they quickly produced badges, as well as I.D.’s and some very convincing paper work.

So I welcomed them in, offered them seats and asked what they took in their tea, when they abruptly cut me off and asked me to have a seat.

From their briefcases they produced a manila folder with my name of it, full of print-outs of my past posts, a few unflattering headshots of me, and other information pertaining to Every Day Is Like Wednesday. They curtly informed me that I had yet to broach the subject of Stephanie Brown in any great detail.

For those of you who don’t know, Brown was a minor heroine in DC Comics n the 1990s and early aughts who went by the name Spoiler, was Robin IV for about fifteen minutes, and then died a violent death in one the stupidest Batman stories ever written, a distinction which would immediately be surpassed by the story that immediately followed it.

She’s also, somewhat surprisingly, become incredibly popular online (Particularly for a character who never carried her own title…or miniseries…or one shot. Or, um, solo story. Anywhere. Ever). She’s also become emblematic of online comics feminist criticism, a popular Exhibit A in the case arguing rampant sexism in Big Two comics. Mostly because Batman hasn’t erected a glass case with her uniform in it, as he did for Robin II when Robin II died.

Anyway, the two agents in my parlor this afternoon informed me that I was legally obligated to post at least 1,000 words about Stephanie Brown on my blog a year, or else risk losing my comics blogger’s license. I could appeal of course, but there was no guarantee the judge would side with me, and in the mean time they would be able to seize my blog.

All in all, it seemed far easier to comply, so here we are: A rather lomg post about Stephanie Brown.

As it turns out, the timing couldn’t be better, as it’s Stephanie Brown week at Project Rooftop, the website where talented artists redesign superhero costumes, often coming up with designs that are one hundred to one thousand times better than what DC and Marvel had previously designed for the characters.

As usual, Dean Trippe came up with the best. That’s it at the top of the post. He mixes Brown’s Spoiler costume with her Robin costume, and comes up with a look that’s better than both. If I ran DC Comics, I would have long ago put Trippe on the payroll and given him some fancy title like Senior Vice President of Teen Aesthetics and Fashion Consultant, and a one-sentence job description: “Redesign all of our teen heroes so they don’t look quite as stupid as they do at the moment.”

Trippe’s previously drawn the best Supergirl ever, the best t-shirt version of Superb*y, and a not-so-bad version of Batgirl (although I couldn’t see the Cassandra Cain version wearing either of his designs; the cape and skirt one being cooler than the Catwoman-like one).

I like Trippe’s Spoiler costume so much that it actually makes me wish DC would bring Spoiler back to life and start putting her in their comics again. Of course, that’s a popular position among people who write about DC comics on the Internet, what gives this declaration weight here? Well because, in all honestly, I never cared about Stephanie Brown one way or the other.

In fact, I find the strong emotions swirling around the Internet about her rather fascinating, as I can’t quite figure out what makes her so special. Certainly there are plenty of other Tim Drake love interests, dead or in limbo, whom no one seems to insist on seeing more of.

Just as there are plenty of other Gotham vigilantes, female or otherwise, dead or in limbo, whom no one seems to care about.

And God knows there are plenty of female supporting characters in comics who were killed in stupid stories that were, at worst, offensive and, at best, tone deaf. What makes Brown so special? Is it that she’s a little bit of each?

Trippe offers a nice, evenly toned overview of the character’s history in his intro the Project Rooftop entry.

I personally found her intriguing in her first appearances, in some of Chuck Dixon’s earliest Bat-writings, when he was still transitioning from the series of Robin miniseries to Detective Comics.


If I remember my Bat-history correctly, Brown made her first appearance in a three-part story that ran from TEC #647-#649. Dixon reintroduced second-rate Riddler The Cluemaster to Gotham (previously he had fallen far enough into joke status that he was part of the Injustice League/Justice League Antartica in the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice titles).

In addition to Batman and Robin, someone else kept spoiling Cluemaster’s schemes, and the big reveal was that it was his daughter in disguise.

It’s a neat origin for a heroine, playing off the teenagers rebelling against their parents idea, although Dixon played it straight and soap opera-y, instead of going for the inherent fun and laughs in the situation.

I’m sure in a black and white drawing, the original costume didn’t look too bad: A body suit with a hood and a full-face mask (to completely conceal her identity). But for the first few years of her existence, the costume was often hideously colored a sort of fuchsia. Sometimes it would be straight purple, sometimes more of a lavender, but more often than not, it looked fuchsia, and the sleek bodysuit was full of 90’s style ornamentation—shoulder pads, pockets, belts and straps that didn’t seem to do anything but make the costume less appealing. Additionally, the gloves, boots and mask were often more of a navy than black.

Brown began appearing in Dixon’s ongoing Robin almost immediately, and I dropped the title around that time (Not because of Spoiler; it was honestly just a coincidence).

See, Dixon is a great pop comic book writer, but he’s far better at coming up with cool action movie-like plots than character work (For a good example of this quirk of Dixon’s writing, think of just about any Dixon-written DC story of the 1990s. Okay, now change the protagonist, from Robin or whoever stars in the one you’ve chosen to Batman or Nightwing or Green Arrow or Catwoman or Black Canary. Okay, now how does the change in protagonist change the plot? Exactly).

Having seemingly abandoned the far more interesting King Snake and Lynx as Robin archenemy and love interest, Dixon started using Cluemaster and Spoiler in pretty the same roles and, well, if heroes are defined by their villains, and Cluemaster’s your main villain…

Dixon cultivated a romance between Robin and Spoiler, which seemed rather unconvincing to me (Did Tim Drake really have time for girls? As a reader his age at the time, I had a hard time suspending my disbelief enough to buy a 14-year-old high schooler who was popular, serving as Robin, keeping his secret life from his family, and had an active love life. Still, Brown was better than Tim’s previous girlfriend, Arianna, since she was actually a vigilante, giving her a leg up on people who weren’t vigilantes).


Let the record show: This costume is pretty sucky

Over the years, all kinds of questionable things would happen with the character, including her getting knocked up (not by Tim, who’s totally still a virgin I bet*.), having the baby and giving it up to adoption. It was all very after school special-y.

For a brief time, when Batman was being an especially antisocial dick, Spoiler was the only Gotham vigilante he was talking to, but her presence in Bat- stories really betrays the fact that DC wasn’t quite sure what to do with her.

One month she was blacklisted by Batman, the next he was personally training her, the next she’s retired. Then she’s Black Canary’s apprentice, then she’s blacklisted again, then she’s Robin, then she’s blacklisted again.

I never cared for her as an ongoing component in Robin, or in the Bat-books in general, where she seemed to occupy a weird space between accepted agent of the Bat Family (like Azrael, Robin, Nightwing, Oracle and Batgirl), black sheep (like Huntress) and just some random vigilante who only appeared in stories written by writers who loved her (like Anarky).

I personally only warmed to her in the pages of Batgirl, a title I came to too late. The introduction of a new Batgirl struck me as a bit random in No Man’s Land, but when I actually tried an issue of Scott Peterson, Kelley Puckett and Damion Scott’s Batgirl, I realized what I was missing.


Same costume, suddenly pretty awesome-looking

I still can’t speak highly enough of that series, particularly the first 25 issues, which comprised one big complete story. Cassandra Cain was a heroine unlike no other in the DCU, and was the closest thing to either a martial arts hero and a manga protagonist that DC Comics was publishing at the time.

That first 25 issues of Batgirl essentially comprised an ongoing conflict between father figure Batman and mother figure Oracle over how best to raise a teen vigilante, one which, interestingly enough, was pretty much the Dark Knight version of Batman if he happened to be a mute, illiterate teenaged girl. Batman treated Cain like his ultimate weapon, and Oracle wanted to convince Cain to be a real, normal human being in addition to dressing up like a bat to beat people up. Cain herself leaned toward the Batman side of the debate.

Spoiler began popping up occasionally, and the girls formed a sort of friendship based on mutual need-fulfillment. Batgirl didn’t really have any friends (Robin was the only person her own age she knew, and he was kind of terrified of her), and Spoiler gave her someone to play rooftop tag with and have the occasional brief, clipped, reluctant talk with. Spoiler, meanwhile, still wanted to be a hero, but Batman had shut her out almost completely at that point, and she looked to Batgirl for training and a bit of Bat-approval.

If Spoiler didn’t work quite as Gotham Vigilante #8, or as Robin’s girlfriend, or as an ongoing Very Special Message in the pages of Robin, she worked quite well as a supporting cast member in Batgirl.




Spoiler walks in on Batgirl during a typical destroy all mannequins training session

And damn, did Damion Scott make that costume work. Check out those huge Spider-Man-sized eyes on her mask! I love Scott’s version of Spoiler’s costume, and I suppose the fact that she stopped looking stupid went a long way towards helping me to enjoy comic book stories about her.

And then things went to hell.

During that dark period between Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis, during which the quality of DC’s line of super-books began to slide, and so many of the “rules” of the fictional universe just seemed to fall apart, Bill Willingham was writing Robin. He was writing a pretty intense arc about Tim’s dad Jack Drake finally discovering his son’s secret identity, and understandably being a little pissed off that the weird millionaire he knew was secretly dressing his teenaged son up in tights and sending him against mass murderers every night.

So Drake did the responsible thing, respected his father’s wishes and quit the Dynamic Duo. So Batman turned to Brown and made her Robin. This wasn’t out of necessity. Batman’s gone thorough most of his career saying how he doesn’t need anyone else to anyone who will listen, and in cases where he needs to bounce ideas off some one or help kicking ass, it’s not like he didn’t have Nightwing and Batgirl on speed dial. No, he made Spoiler the new Robin basically as a classic Batman dick move, to shame Drake into returning.

This new status quo lasted three issues of Robin. Stephanie-Brown-as-Robin appeared in an issue of Batgirl and Teen Titans and maybe elsewhere during those months, but she was Robin far less time than Jean-Paul Valley or Dick Grayson were Batman. Or Huntress was Batgirl.

And this is why the frustration at Batman’s failure to memoralize these three months (Or, more specifically, DC’s failure to memoralize these three months through Batman) confuses me.

I don’t think anyone suspected for a moment that Stephanie Brown was ever going to be Robin for longer than a story arc, did they? Certainly it didn’t seem any more permanent than Jean-Paul Valley or Dick Grayson permanently being Batman. In fact, JPV got to be Batman for three rather sizeable story arcs.

Batman quickly fired Brown as Robin for some dumb-ass reason. Maybe because she just wasn’t as properly trained as Tim was, despite the fact that every two months or so Batman would forbid her to be a vigilante and would force her to quit training.

And then things get really stupid, because from there we get into “War Games,” one of the very worst Batman stories ever told. What makes the story so bad is its Countdownian transparency—you could almost see through the panels of art and dialogue bubbles a poorly thought-out memo listing plot points to get the various Bat-characters from Point A to Point B, no matter what. The result was a story in which all of the characters seemed to be either hysterical or stupid (or both), the events driving the plot don’t make any sense if you stop and think about them, and everyone’s actions seem to contradict their own fictional histories.

Stripped of her “R” blouse, Brown goes back to being Spoiler, and initiates a war game of Batman’s in an attempt to win his love or whatever.

The game assumes every crime boss in Gotham is stupid enough to answer an anonymous invitation in person with one body guard, and then that they would all somehow simultaneously kill each other by accident.

This somehow leads to a gang war so big that not even the combined forces of Oracle, Batman, Orpheus, Obsidian (Is that her name? The bald chick?), Batgirl, Nightwing, Catwoman, Robin and Tranatula II (Or III?) can possibly stop it.

It also hinges on Black Mask being able to go hand-to-hand with Batman, Barbara Gordon forgetting that she knows martial arts too and thinking that Black Mask could actually take Batman in a fight, and a were-scarecrow.

The centerpiece of it all? Black Mask torturing Spoiler to death with drill bits. Well, she escapes, but dies from the injuries sustained in the battle. It’s a cruel, depressing, relentlessly negative story, one which makes all of its heroes seem not only highly incompetent, but to be pretty bad people.

But as stupid as it was for DC to willingly engage in such an exploitive story with the cloud of women-in-refrigerator-ism still hanging like a thick, black cloud above them, and hard to refute claims of outright misogyny stemming from Identity Crisis leveled at them, it was also just a really, really badly told story.

The end result? Robin and Batgirl are sent to Bludhaven, Nightwing is sent to New York to go undercover as a gangster or some such shit, Batman is labeled a wanted vigilante by the GCPD like back in the old Year One days, Oracle moves to Metropolis and refuses to speak to Batman anymore, Orpheus is dead, Spoiler is dead, and, oh yeah, Leslie Thompkins, pascifist lifelong friend of Bruce Wayne, is a killer. Point B looks a lot different form Point A, and the story was just the most direct line between them, quality be damned.

That radical shift in the status quo was revealed to be little more than poorly-planned random change for change’s sake a few months (our time, a year Batman’s time) later, however, when the various Bat-characters would get another radical shift, for the most part, in the direction of their pre-“War Games” status.

One Year Later, Batman had adopted Robin, and the pair of them were in Gotham and on better terms with the police than ever before. Nightwing was back in the fold, although sent to New York to star in some exceptionally shitty stories (even by Nightwing standards). Batgirl was suddenly the Totally Evil Leader of the League of Assassins (I’m still waiting for the reveal that that’s the Earth-3 Cassandra Cain we’ve been seeing…the various “fixes” to the original shitty Robin arc don’t match up at all). Oracle seems to be speaking with Batman, but she’s still steering clear of Gotham City. Leslie Thompkins is simply not spoken of. Spoiler and Orpheus are still dead.

And there’s no memorial case in the Batcave for Robin/Spoiler.

Is this a big deal? I don’t think so. And I don’t think there ever will be one there, either.

If fans didn’t start asking about it, I doubt anyone at DC would ever have even entertained the thought. The fact that Robin II still has a case likely has more to do with the fact that artists drawing the Batcave know from experience that the five things that signify a drawing of a cave as a drawing of the Batcave are a dinosaur, a giant penny, a computer, a parked Batmobile and a glass case with an old-school Robin costume in it.

I assume any Bat-artist drawing the cave could have drawn a Stephanie Brown-related memorial case in if they wanted to**, especially since clearly DC’s not real big on editing art to make sure characters are on model or that long dead people don’t accidentally cameo these days.

But of course, once fans started asking about a second, Stephanie Brown-specific case, then editors had to start thinking about one, and the obvious answer is that, “Good God, memoralize one of our greatest mistakes?! Why would we want to do that?”

I’m assuming DC wants to simply forget “War Games” and “War Crimes” ever happened (they’ve undone almost all of the changes effected by them already) and a memorial to the fallen Stephanie Brown would double as a memorial to those stories, just as the memorial to Robin II has always served as a memorial to “A Death in the Family.”

So I don’t think we’ll be seeing a case there ever, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.

Will we ever see Stephanie Brown again? That’s a more interesting question, I think.


Like I said near the beginning of this post, she was never really that popular a character. She was popular enough to guest-star here and there, but never carried a title of her own (Hell, Anarky got a mini and a monthly). So I don’t think there’s any kind of financial impetus to bring her back to life. And creatively, I think resurrection stories are to be avoided at all costs, because they simply erode the drama of death in your fictional universe.

But then, there was no real financial impetus to bring Jason Todd*** back to life, or Ice, and DC resurrected them both since Brown died. And both of those were accomplished in the most pedestrian, random ways (A character in another comic punching the walls of continuity in the case of the former, magic herbs in the case of the latter).

Hell, Spoiler’s fellow minor Bat-characters have had even more goofy resurrections.

Lynx, who, like Spoiler, died in “War Games,” simply appeared alive again in Robin…at least long enough to be killed by Batgirl a few panels later. Killer Moth, who was torn apart in Infinite Crisis, similarly just appeared alive again in “Face The Face.”

Next month, totally dead forever Ra’s al Ghul is expected to return to life in a storyline called “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul.”

So maybe Stephanie Brown did come back to life along with Lynx and Killer Moth in the Infinite Crisis/52 rejiggering, and she just hasn’t made the scene yet.

Or maybe she’ll come out of a Lazarus Pit like Ra’s in the next issue of Robin.

Or a Spoiler from one of the other 51 Earths will immigrate to the main one.

Or maybe the upcoming Final Crisis will involve some sort of final continuity rejiggering, which will essentially undo all of the stupid things that were done between Identity Crisis and Final Crisis, including all of “War Games.”

If and when she does return, however, I hope she’s wearing that outfit Trippe designed for her.






* Although I bet if we wonder if Robin’s gay enough, Dixon will be sure to write a story in which Robin totally bangs a bunch of chicks.


**Does Batgirl I have a memorial in the cave? In some stories there’s a glass case containing Barbara Gordon’s costume right next to Jason Todd’s. In others, there’s a glass case containing it elsewhere in the cave. In plenty of stories, there’s no sign of one, but then, in plenty of stories there’s no sign of a penguin statue, an assortment of penguin umbrellas, or Batman costumes either, but in other stories there are.


***Oh sure, it probably boosted sales on Batman for exactly one arc, and helped get Judd Winick more royalties off a short run on the title than he otherwise would have, but it’s not like we’re going to be getting a Red Hood miniseries or monthly. Or a Red Hood/Jason Todd movie. Or even DC Direct toys. Jason Todd doesn’t even have a marketable name or look at the moment; he’s just a secret identity of a former superhero.

October 4th's Meanwhile in Las Vegas... plus three other things

This week's LVW comics column features reveiws of



and



So go read it. If you want. No pressure. I don't care one way or the other, really. Seriously, if you don't want to go read it, that's fine. Don't.




Meanwhile, in other, less self-obsessed news...





1.) So I read Shortcomings Monday night, and my initial reaction was this: “Fuck you, Adrian Tomine!”

Yeah, yeah, yeah the art is really incredible and it tells a compelling story and blah blah blah, but Jesus God did it bring me down.

I don't know if I was just feeling particularly bummed out or lonely that night or what, but man was I depressed by the time I closed the covers.

And I blamed Tomine, for subjecting me to his unsympathetic protagonist and all the unsympathetic people in his life, none of whom seem like they should be in relationships, and yet all of whom are in them, gradually breaking one another's hearts and ruining one another's lives.

And the worst part of it all? The characters are all so sharply realized and realistic they're bound to remind you of yourself and people you know and the real world relationships you've experienced, either firsthand or among your friends and aquaintances.

Of course, the fact that Shortcomings was strong enough to effect my mood and mental state at all is a pretty strong reccomendation for how effective it is alone.

But Monday night, I was all "Fuck you, Adrian Tomine! Thanks for ruining my night, jerk!"

Luckily I had a trade collection of Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy’s 2002 series Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu on hand, and its mindless escapism offerred a welcome distraction from the dark mood Shortcomings left me in.

It didn’t occur to me at the time, as Tomine’s book was just the next one I needed to read to review and the Marvel trade was just the next one on my escapist-comics-to-read-before-bed pile, but now, a few days later, it strikes me what an odd double-feature that is.

I’m sure reading Shortcomings, which deals with Asian-American race issues through the prism of relationships between Asians and Caucasians, and Master of Kung-Fu, a story about a stereotypical martial artist hero fighting fucking Fu Manchu, back to back says something about me as a reader and the American comic book industry in general.

I’m just not sure what.

Anyway, a real review of Shortcomings—which in all seriousness is a great read—is in the works for next week.





2.) Speaking of graphic novels, Columbus writer Dara Naraghi’s Lifelike is in the latest issue of Previews. (Page 300, Diamond order code OCT07 3596).

If you live here and read comics, chances are you already know Dara, who’s been heavily involved in local mini-comic collective Panel and is a regular fixture at SPACE. He’s also probably the most often drawn man in Columbus, Ohio.

I’m not exactly sure why, but his fellow Panel-ists are always drawing Dara here and there. I think I’ve seen more drawings of him then I have of ex-Governor Bob Taft, and considering the latter appeared regularly in political cartoons for almost a decade, that’s saying something.

Anyway, the book is called Lifelike and IDW is publishing it. It’s a series of slice-of-life vignettes written by Dara and illustrated by 11 different artists, including fellow Columbusites Tim McClurg, Andy Bennett and Tom Williams.

You can read more about Lifelike here, and read much of it in its original webcomic format here.




3.) Not specifically comics, but close enough for linkage, is the documentary film Strange Culture, which is playing this weekend here in Columbus (You can read my review of it here). The subject matter of the film is the sad, scary, infuriating case of Steve Kurtz, a long-haired college professor, artist and activist who was investigated for bioterrorism when Petri dishes and lab equipment were found in his home when his wife died. (Completely coincidentally, as it turned out, although the authorities seemed to think the two things connected at first).

Because the case is still ongoing, there’s a lot Kurtz can’t talk about, and to help fill the screen with images, director Lynn Hershman often pulls panels from a comic book/sequential art story written by Timothy Stock and illustrated by Warren Heise.

It was called “Suspect Culture” and appeared in 2005 small press multi-media book Supsect (which contains comics, drawings, essays, fiction and more on the subject of “the suspect in a post-9/11 world.” Heise has a an incredibly bold, detailed style, with his individual panels resembling blocky woodcuts.

That’s a page of it above. You can see seven more at his site (Click on “Suspect Culture” on the menu on the right).

Weekly Haul: October 3rd

Well, that was a terrible day for new comics. I didn’t get to the shop until a little later than usual, and I’d still plowed through my whole haul by 3 p.m.

Was it just me, or were there just fewer cool-looking books on the shelves this week? And I mean book-books. Floppies. Pamphlets. Chapbooks. Thirty-two-page, stapled comics with 22 pages of story and ten pages of ads. Whatever you call ‘em. There were an awful lot of graphic novels I passed by for economic reasons (I’ll get to you shortly, Empowered Vol. 2, and Richie Rich? Your day will come…someday. You have to wait until after Casper though, okay? Aaa! I Killed Adolf Hitler! You’re out this week, too? And a way-too-late-to-capitalize-on-52’s-momentum trade collection of good old not Renee Montoya The Question? I’m sorry, I need to put gas in my car this week. I’ll return for you. Soon. I promise!)

I held Howard the Duck in my hands for a while, unsure of whether or not to buy it. I imagine Steve Gerber in his polar Fortress of Steve Gerbertude, using some kind of telescope-like contraption of the sort Santa Claus uses in Christmas specials to check in on kids to see if they’re naughty or nice, and I felt the lens of it on me as I stood there. I like Ty Templeton a lot (his Civil War Howard story was pretty cool), I like comics set in Ohio a lot, and a flip-through revealed Fin Fang Foom and MODOK, but the art and bill-shape ultimately had me put it back on the shelf (If Howard doesn’t look like a Disney duck, that’s pretty much the whole joke gone right there, isn’t it?). Maybe if Templeton would have drawn it too…

The revival of another Gerber comic I really wanted to get was Omega the Unknown because a) I loved Omega the Unknown b) I love Farel Dalrymble c) I love Paul Hornschmeier and d) I’m curious about Jonathan Lethem’s comics-scripting abilities. But Diamond shorted my store’s shipment, so no OtU this week (If I make it back to the shop between now and then, check out next Monday’s Best Shots col at Newsarama.com for a belated review, though).

I was kind of interested in Cyborg Superman, which had a great logo and cover (I just love the image of C.S. trying on Clark Kent’s glasses), and guest-starred the Justice League, whom so rarely appear in not-terrible comics these days, but during my flip-through investigation I saw the League was only in a half-dozen or so pages, and Vixen was using her animal powers she no longer has, and Black Lightning was using his flying powers he’s never had, and so I put that right back down. I can’t entirely blame the writer and editors for not knowing about Vixen—I mean, to do so they’d have to read some pretty shitty comics—but Black Lightning flying through space? C’mon guys, there’s gotta be a DC Encylopedia in the office somewhere.

But I better shut up about the comics I didn’t buy before I lapse into a 2,000-word tangent about how ridiculous it is that The Joker’s Daughter was spawned from a universe that didn’t even exist until decades after she existed. Here then are the comics I did buy…





Action Comics #856(DC Comics) I’m not terribly fond of Geoff Johns’ version of Bizarro, as his imperfect duplicate of Superman is more of a mentally retarded Superman who kills kids simply because he doesn’t know any better (See also the un-finished Andy Kubert arc of this title, as well as Infinite Crisis for more of Johns’ deadly Bizarro). Bizarro is just one of those Silver Age concepts that shouldn’t be made dark and realistic, because when you play some of that shit too straight, you suck out the charm and inadvertently underscore the ridiculousness (and look a little ridiculous yourself in the process).

This issue, the second chapter of “Escape From Bizarro World” opens with a black and white homage to the Frankenstein film, and Bizarro contemplating killing a busload of children. In the present, Bizarro Luthor unleashes Bizarro Doomsday to destroy Bizarro, and we get to see heads smooshed and bodies severed by punches, making it your typical 21st century Geoff Johns DC comic book I guess.

While I’m enjoying the hell out of seeing Eric Powell let loose on Bizarro World, the story his art serves is only mildly interesting, and more so for how it suffers in comparison to other takes on the characters than anything else (All-Star Superman just did this story right down to the creation of Bizarro duplicates and the phrase “Bizarro Bizarro”).

Now, why is Bizarro Doomsday exactly like normal Doomsday? There’s nothing opposite about him at all.

Bonus! This issue also has an eight-page advertorial section featuring a team-up between Superman and the Airheads candy logo. I’d like to make a joke about decompression, pointing out how in the ‘70s superheroes could convince kids to buy junk food in just one-page, whereas now it takes eight times that, but I’m positive someone else has already made this exact same joke.

I will say those kids seem like a bunch of vapid assholes, convinced to turn their backs on a couple of bald dudes who love green and purple and are talking about how they just sealed off an entire city with a force field by a talking balloon that pooh-poohs the very notion of “civics” outside the classroom and offers a candy un-ironically called “Airheads.” Plus, kids, did no one tell you about candy from strangers? Do you know that talking balloon?

And I’m not sure what Lex and Brainiac did wrong exactly? Is the act of force field erection itself illegal? Does the City of Metropolis own the air around it? Did they violate a zoning code by putting that force field there? If there was a nefarious purpose to the plot, they don’t even get around to revealing it, let alone enacting it.

But the logo totally destroys a fire hydrant and assaults Brainiac, and Superman swoops in, tears a crosswalk signal out of the ground (surely that’s illegal) and wraps the pair up in it. I’m no judge, but I think Superman and the Airheads balloon probably broke a lot more laws than the Luthor/Braniac team.





Detective Comics #837 (DC) Oh DC, will you never stop trying to force your Countdown upon me? As this issue’s cover reveals, this is “A Countdown tie-in,” and it’s even written by Paul Dini, mastermind of the Worst Thing To Ever Happen to DC Comics (Dini is apparently the guy who cranks out memos full of bad ideas and continuity errors to give to less-busy writers to turn into the worst comic on the stands each week. I think. I didn’t pick up Gene Simmons’ Dominatrix #2 today, and I suppose there’s a good chance that might have been worse than this week’s issue of Countdown).

Anyway, this issue of Detective is totally Countdown-tastic, as it follows the reformed Riddler (seen in TEC as well as at least one issue of CD) and the reformed Harley Quinn (ditto) as they investigate a criminal hiding out in a Metropolis Amazonian Women’s shelter run by the Apokalyptian bad guy Granny Goodness in disguise as the Greek goddess Athena, whom apparently no one is all that surprised to find is both a) real and b) running a women’s shelter in downtown Metropolis.

As far as the execution of the tale goes, Dini frames it quite nicely as a test by Batman (who only appears on the last page), and much of the dialogue is decent, but it’s a very clumsy plot with some real wince-inducing moments.

Dini tries to explain why Harley isn’t in The Secret Six anymore (already explained in Birds of Prey) with a flashback continuity patch that serves no purpose beyond revealing that Dini shouldn’t be allowed to write Ragdoll (Nothing makes me appreciate Gail Simone more than when another writer tackles a character she excels at; see also Heinberg, Rucka or Johns writing Dr. Psycho). Upcoming DC comic Salvation Run gets rather obliquely teased, and there are plot points feeding into whatever’s up with the New Gods/Countdown business. I think Dini also introduces a new supervillain named Scylla (like the dead partner and lover of Peter David-created terrorist Charybdis, which I guess makes her Scylla II), in an extremely clumsy manner.

But enough about the words, can we talk about the pictures for a moment? As usual, the Simone Bianchi cover is pretty strong, although I’m not quite sure why he used the Justice version of Riddler instead of a DCU one.

The interiors though…

Look, I like Don Kramer and Wayne Faucher’s work; I just like it elsewhere. I mean, it’s not their fault that they’re not Rags Morales or J.H. Williams (the artists first announced as Dini’s partners). The real-world weirdness they infused the JSA with was neat, and their Batman and Robin and even their Joker are pretty okay, too. But I hate their Riddler, as they seen unable to draw a derby hat (their Riddler seems to be wearing a green plastic helmet at all times) and their representational style seems horribly wrong for a character like Harley.

She was literally created as a cartoon character, and so Kramer and Faucher’s style is the complete opposite of what best serves the character. It’s weird too because DC should have a long, long list of great artists who have worked on their animated-style stuff over the last 15 years or so. Sure, maybe Bruce Timm (the best Harley artist, obviously), Darwyn Cooke or Ronnie del Carmen* are too busy. What about all those guys forced to draw in Timm style on the animated-style books, all of whom would kick ass in the DCU, like Templeton, Carlo Barberi, John Delaney or Rick Burchett? What about Johnny DC alum Sanford Greene? Or any of the guys who worked with Dini on his Jingle Belle books for Oni and Dark Horse? (I would kill to see more Stephen DeStefano art in the DCU after seeing his book-ends of the first Bizarro anthology. Seriously—kill. Anyone. Just name ‘em, and I’ll kill ‘em. I’d kill you, dear reader).

By the way, when did Catwoman’s pal Holly stop being cute…?




JLA/Hitman #2 (DC) Remember how great the Morrison/Porter/Dell era of the Justice League was? Remember how great Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman was? Remember how great JLA/Hitman #1, which had Ennis and McCrea teaming the stars of those two great late ‘90s DC series together, was?

Well, this issue is just like that.

Having spent the first half of the series reintroducing us to Tommy and his world, Ennis and McCrea spend this issue focusing mostly on the battle between Parasite-infected NASA workers and Tommy and the now-powerless League, stuck on the Watchtower and in danger of becoming collateral damage in a U.S. nuclear strike against the Parasites.

Tommy makes for an excellent gateway character into the world of the old(er), god-like League, and there are some neat little exchanges here, from his reaction shot to Flash’s speed, to his epitaph for Wonder Woman (“Gutsy broad,”) to his argument over firearms with Batman while gunning down their Parasite-infested foes (“It’s okay, they’re set on stun!” he shouts while shooting their legs out from under them). Ennis does a perfect job of using the two character properties to define each other, whether the League is completely ignoring Tommy (as when he asks, “So do you go round every day an’ feed him?” when they pass Aquaman’s tank) or engaging him over using lethal force.

Ennis draws big bold lines under what, on its face, is an absurdity of the Justice League and their sort of superhero—they never kill and they never torture, no matter how high the stakes get—not to ridicule that stance, but to celebrate it as the difference between superheroes and real people. Not to get too heavy on you guys or anything here, but this is one the most serious and thoughtful explorations I’ve ever seen of morality in a Justice League comic, certainly the best since JLA: Classified #3, when Superman lectured the Ultra-Marines about killing.**

And, like that three-pat arc of JLA:C, this story addresses a hard question of real-world ethics and morality among the superheroes without diminishing them to the point of being immoral cowards and hypocrites, like the mind-wiping, magical-lobotomizing, neck-snapping, back-stabbing, secret-keepers we’ve seen in the DCU from Identity Crisis on. (Hell, just a few weeks ago in Black Adam, Superman was dropping a perp off for Batman to torture information out of).

And that ending! Swear to God, I thought I was going to cry. With the main story set as a flashback within the framing sequence, Ennis has constructed a powerful and affecting epilogue to his long-since ended Hitman storyline. That it’s one of the best JLA stories in years as well is just a nice bonus.

As for McCrea, he has a bad panel of Wonder Woman here and there (see page 13, panel 4), but otherwise does an incredible job, with both Tommy, whom he should have down pat by now, and the five Leaguers who appear in the story. Capable of big action and subtle facial expressions, beautiful women and strong-jawed, broad-shouldered men, I wish DC could find him another super-monthly. Say…I don’t know…JLoA? They seem to be having trouble finding someone who can actually draw to put on that title…




Metal Men #3 (DC) Man I wish I was the patient sort, because I’m sure this reads a lot better in trade than it does in a monthly, mainly because there’s just so much to it. There are two-to-three parallel stories occurring in each issue, one in the present, one in the past, and one outside of time looking in, from the ancient past and/or the future. So here’s the third issue, which has chapters seven and eight of the story. Chapter seven is set in the present, and deals with Magnus and the Robot Renegades (Yay, new re-designed L-Ron!) battling the Death Metal Men, while chapter eight is set in the past, and deals with Magnus’ relationship with Helen (and metals). A familiar villain rears his big bubbly head (here’s a hint: “GLAH”), and if this were any book other than Metal Men, I’d be irritated to see him again as he, like Deathstroke, really needs put on a Do Not Use for Three Years list to recover from relative overexposure. But he’s a Metal Men enemy, so if he’s going to menace anyone, I’m glad it’s Magnus.





Parade (With Fireworks) #2 (Image Comics) See that guy in white in the background of the cover? He participated in a gun fight between Fascists and Communists that occurred in #1, yet the judge sentenced our hero to six months in prison, and let the dude in the hat go free. Can you believe that shit? I mean, just look at that guy! Look at that big, black, bushy moustache! And his triangle shaped eyes! He’s clearly a bad guy! I really liked the first issue of this series, and this one is more of the same, which, in this case, is a positive. Now that it’s over, the whole thing seems a little weird in that this was a two-issue series. You don’t see a lot of two-issue series. It’s too small to collect into a trade, unless creator Mike Cavallaro has other, similar stories he plans to tell that this story could be collected into a trade with someday. And if there is no thought of putting it in a trade some day, I wonder why Cavallaro and Image decided to release it as a two-issue miniseries instead of just one big fat six-dollar one-shot? Weird.




Super-Villain Team-Up/MODOK’s 11 #4 (Marvel Comics) I hope this book is selling like gangbusters, so that the “MODOK’s 11” story arc will be followed by another story arc. Otherwise, this is about the worst name for a comic book series ever. Except for all of those Countdown Presents ones with fifteen uninteresting words in them (Tangent: I hate any title with the word “Presents” in it, unless that word is preceded by the name of a comic book company or a person. Like, Punisher Presents: Barracuda, what the hell is that? It makes The Punisher sound like an entertainment mogul or something.)

What could they possibly follow up a story about MODOK going all heist movie on the Marvel Universe with? I don’t know, but this Fred Van Lente character seems to write pretty well, and the Portella/Pallot art team? Far better than the likes of the Living Laser and Rocket Racer deserve (What kind of crazy world do we live in, where Rocket Raccoon and Rocket Racer are so beautifully drawn, while the Justice League has this happen to them?)

So anyway, this is the penultimate chapter of the MODOK’s minions’ attempt to steal the whatever from whoever, and Van Lente’s still pulling surprises left and right. If some of them seem to come from left field, like the latest betrayal among the villains’ group, Van Lente plays their out-of-left-field-icity for laughs. He plays for laughs quite a bit, actually, but this one has plenty of well-drawn action and some crazy-looking vehicles for all the crazy-looking characters to ride in, too.





The Vinyl Underground #1 (DC/Vertigo) Two creators I know nothing of, writer Si Spencer and pencil artist Simon Gane, team with inker and Best Artist Ever Cameron Stewart for an old school Vertigo series that mixes ten o’clock police procedural TV drama with colorful characters that are each a random collection of interesting attributes and gives them the mission statement of occult crime-solvers.

For the record, I think occult crime-solving is right up there with superheroes, zombies and barbarians as a genre we don’t need to see any more comics about, but I was pleasantly surprised that this didn’t seem at all derivative of the Hellboy/BPRD model. I could easily see this story getting irritating at some point, depending on how pretentious it gets, but this first issue is all about introducing the four main players, and the mystery they’re going to solve, and so far it’s pretty engaging.

And that art? Absolutely unfuckwithable…just gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. The London setting, the English characters and the self-conscious supernatural hipsterism of the story all evoke the Vertigo of old, but so too does the vaguely British, mildly chunky and cartoony but still representational art style, not to mention Guy Major’s subdued color work.

At this point, my only complaint is that the title and the subject matter don’t match up in any obvious way (the protagonist is maybe a DJ, who leaves records as his calling card, which is why it’s called Vinyl Underground I guess…?). And that our main character is named Morrison Shepherd. It’s a name which immediately calls to mind a very popular comic book writer who really came into his own writing for this imprint back in the day, and it’s abbreviated by everyone who talks to him into “Mozza” or “Moz,” which makes me think of Morrissey, which makes me think about how awesome a comic in which Morrissey is a freelance detective solving crimes, occult or otherwise, would be.






*He’s responsible for a couple of early ‘90s Aliens comics for Dark Horse, a Harley and Ivy story in 1995’s Batman Adventures Holiday Special #1 and that black and white Harley and Ivy story “The Bet” that ran in Gotham Knights and was collected in the recent Batman: Harley and Ivy trade. I love that guy’s stuff, and he produces so little of it for comics. Sigh.



** “Quite frankly, as an alternative to some of the super-punishments we’ve had to devise over the years—execution’s a walk in the park. These ‘no-nonsense’ solutions of yours just don’t hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel.”

Satellite Era Spotlight: Justice League of America #163

Remember in last month's Black Canary Wedding Planner, when the betrothed superhero duo were chatting with one another, and the name Anton Allegro came up?

I imagine that line of dialogue was a bit of a question mark for everyone, because if you did know who Allegro was, then you knew that not only had he reformed, but that he had died. And if you didn't know who Allegro was, well, then you didn't know who they were talking about at all.

Well, this is who they were talking about—


(He's the one summoning demons of destruction to slay the superheroes as alliteratively as possible. He's not actually ten feet tall, the perspective on this cover is just kinda crazy. Note all the lines drawing the eye towards Hawkgirls breasts though. This one must have flown off newstands).

Yes, Anton Allegro was the heavy in the Satellite Era classic that we're spotlighting tonight, Justice League of America #163 (1979); "Concert of the Damned," by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin.

As villains go, he's kind of a lame one, but then, so are most League foes (Isn't it odd that, individually, the Justice Leaguers have tons of great villains, but when they band together, the only ones who step up to challenge them are goofballs like The Key, a space starfish and, well, Anton Allegro?).

Allegro has a shock of black mad scientist/mad composer hair, a diabolically pointed goatee and one of the worst costumes the human mind can conceive of. Its skin-tight black spadex, which he wears with a bowtie, mustard-colored pirate boots and gloves, and a huge purple cape which might have been kind of cool, if it weren't for the piano key fringe along the bottom.

His weapon of choice is a synthesizer, which is either so wicked awesome or which he plays so wicked awesome that its capable of, as he expalins on the cover, summoning demons of destruction capable of slaying superheroes. That's not quite as cool as a guitar that could do the same, but it is cooler than a fiddle, violin or a wind instrument, the sorts of weapons previous music-based supervillains used. It's kind of admirable that in '79 Conway was with it enough to give a music-based villain a synthesizer.

Less cool? His successor's 1985 application of the technology into a keytar:


(That guy actually took down Superman, Wonder Woman and Flash Barry Allen. The real Anton Allegro would give his life in a battle against the Soviets to save them.)

But who exactly is Anton Allegro and how did he come to be?

Why would he turn his crazy-powerful synthesizer on the Justice League in the first place?

This is all covered in "Concert of the Damned," which opens with a scene of Green Arrow walking into Oliver Queen's apartment through the front door:



GA is surprised to see someone lying in wait for him. Anton Allegro is apparently surprised to see Green Arrow at all, saying, "Frankly, I was expecting Oliver Queen-- But you, Green Arrow--you'll do quite nicely!!"

"Yes, I was expecting Oliver Queen. But you, Green Arrow, who look an awful lot like Oliver Queen, what with the blond handlebar moustache and weird pointy beard, and who seems to have a key to Oliver Queen's apartment for some reason--you'll do quite nicely!"

A.A. introduces himself, then his fingers, "darting with inuman speed" on the keyboard of "a bizarre electronic accordion," summon three primary colored monsters. The ghostly beasts shrug off GA's trick arrows, and lay him out with a "JAPOW" to the jaw.

Meanwhile, 22,300 miles above the Earth, the rest of the Justice League sit around a table, talking. They have a special guest with them, Zatanna's father Zatara, and the topic is a boring sub-plot from the issue in which the League battled The Shark and his dainty-handed monsters.

Zatanna summarizes:



"Spell of Amnesia," huh Z.? You might want to study that spell yourself. You never know when you might need to cast it upon a teammate who stumbled upon you and your co-conspirators in the act of magically lobotomizing a rapist.

Sudenly, a big red "BLEEEEEE" summons the team away from this Zatara family drama. It's the emergeny signal! On a monitor screen, the head of Black Canary informs the team that Ollie has been attacked. She's bandaged his whole head in gauze and laid him on the couch, and he seems stable, but someone has to go kick his attacker's ass. And that someone is the Justice League! They spring into action:



I love this panel. Not just because it looks like Superman has totally forgotten how to run (not as unlikely as you might think for guys who can fly) and is about to topple over, but because Batman's action pose is so dramatic. I can practically hear him shouting "Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Once the invincible champions of justice have gathered around the wounded Oliver Queen's couch, the bearded Leaguer recounts his first encounter with Anton Allegro.



After listening to him rant for five panels, Queen was beginning to suspect that A.A. was something of a nut, and was looking for a way to let him down easy, when he looked out the window and saw something that demanded his attention:



A group of men wearing strange uniforms were using a laser tank to rob a bank. These sorts of super-crimes always seem so weird to me. To rob a bank, you really only need a gun, or the threat of a gun. A tank seems a bit like overkill. And a laser tank? Where did they get it? Did they invent a laser gun and then mount it on to a customized tank? Did they build the tank themselves as well? It seems like if they had the skills necesarry to build something like that , there would be easier, more legal ways to make money than bank robbery. Hell, just sell the laser tank. I bet you could get a lot of money for one of those.

It's worth noting that by DCU standards, using a laser tank for a simple bank hold-up isn't really that big of a waste of fantastic technology. I mean, consider Flash's rogues gallery, with their freeze rays, weather controlling wands and Mirror Master's mastery of mirrors. Those guys could make millions working for the U.S. military. Mirror Master could completely revolutionize communication and travel. And yet they devote their genius and/or resources on pulling off the sorts of crimes that anyone with a blackjak and/or pistol could do just as easily.

So anyway, Ollie pushes Allegro out the door, promising him a check to tide him over, and, just before slamming the door on him, gives him some free advice: "Do yourself a favor--and get a job!"

Allegro curses him, but Ollie's mind is already elsewhere. That rampaging tank requires the attention of a man who can shoot arrows at it, so it's time for Green Arrow to appear on the scene:



Yes! I love Green Arrow costume changes! Look! He had his whole costume—boots, bow, quiver full of arrows and all—on underneath his business suit! And you couldn't even see a bulge or anything.

Also, look at what he's holding in his left hand, and what he's shrugging off his right shoulder. Apparently he was wearing two identitcal suit coats one on top of the other. I guess the offices in The Queen Building get pretty chilly.

And then, it happens.

Ollie fires a tuning-fork arrow he's been experimenting with to shake the tank to peices, and Allegro gets caught in the blast.



Now I know Ollie's the superhero here and Allegro's the supervillain of the piece, and that we're supposed to root for the former and hiss the latter, but, I've got to say, Allegro seems to have pretty good reason to hate Green Arrow, if not Oliver Queen.

I mean, he's walking out of a meeting, minding his own business, when a masked vigilante employs an experimental weapon against a tank in the middle of a crowded public street, a weapon that caused permanent, incurable deafness in Allegro, a musician, who's whole life is devoted to the production of beautiful sounds.

Naturally, Ollie felt bad about it, and paid Allegro's hospital bills and apparently kept sending him checks (until he lost his fortune), but Ollie insists that it was a "freak accident." An accident, sure, but c'mon Queen, no one put a gun to your head and made you shoot your experimental tuning-fork arrow at that laser tank.

So Superman picks the wounded Ollie up in his arms (revealing that Ollie is still wearing his quiver full of arrows on his back...which he'd been laying on. Man, Canary is the worst nurse!) and flies him up to the satellite to recvoer.

Green Lantern Hal Jordan power rings up a giant tuning fork , which is able to track the frequency of Allegro's music of madness. With his friends in a big green bubble, he swoops towards--



Wait, what? Massachusetts? Star City is in Massachusetts? Really? Really? I honestly had no idea. I always thought it was somewhere on the west coast, I think because I just assumed it must have been somwhere near Seattle, if that's where Ollie relocated to later. Massachusetts. Huh. Does that explain Ollie's liberalism then? Is he just your typical Massachusetts liberal? Or should I say Taxachusetts liberal? Eh? Eh? Hawkman knows what I'm talking about...

As for the last ten pages of the book, Allegro's music demons totally take out Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkgirl and Black Canary. Zatanna and Zatara have some boring conversations about why her costume keeps changing, and what's up with her mom. And Superman and Batman pull the old robot double trick on Allegro to save his hot ex-wife's life, which brings us to the blurb for the next issue, "Murder By Melody!"

I'm missing the next 19 issues of the series, so I have no idea what happens, but none of the Justice Leaguers seem to have been murdered, as they're all still around and available to have meetings in JLoA #183.

So you want to get into Darwyn Cooke’s Spirit…

I recently concluded a thorough analysis of all available sales data pertaining to the North American comic book market (I, um, spent about 90 seconds googling the sales charts), and I uncovered a shocking, appalling fact: Only about 20,000 people buy an issue of The Spirit each month.

If that seems like a lot of people to you (despite the fact that I prefaced it with the world “only,”), for comparison’s sake, it’s only one-sixth the number of people who have tuned in each month for a comic book about the Justice League’s board meetings, and one-twelfth as many who have tuned in each month to watch the Incredible Hulk punch people in the face.

And while board meetings and face-punches surely have their appeal, what makes the disparity of these numbers (as I remember them…from that thorough research mentioned two paragraphs ago) mind-boggling is the fact that whatever the merits of the Justice League and Hulk comic books, The Spirit is roughly a thousand times better. Wait, let me check my math…No! I forgot some zeroes! The Spirit is roughly one million times better than both of them…combined!

So why does it sell so poorly? Is it because everyone who buys comics except me and 19,999 other people are fools?

That’s a possible explanation. But surely there are other, less obnoxious and potentially offensive explanations (Particularly in case you aren’t currently reading The Spirit because, dear reader, I know you seem like an intelligent person with great taste and that shirt? It looks great on you).

I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe everyone wants to read The Spirit, that they harbor an innate understanding of its inherent awesomeness, but find themselves a little intimidated by the fact that the character is so long-lived and so revered, and therefore they aren’t sure where to start. I mean, DC, who now owns the character, have published like 20 over-priced archive additions of his adventures, can anyone just pick up an issue of current Spirit monthly comic book and bask in its awesomeness without first steeping themselves in arcane, nerdy knowledge?

Yes! Yes, they can! One of the great virtues of Cooke’s Spirit series, now in its tenth issue (and third-to-last issue, before Cooke leaves for greener pastures, and new creators come on), is that every single issue has been a complete, easy to read, highly accessible story.

And the latest issue, which was released just last Wednesday? It was probably the most accessible story yet. But since some of you still aren’t reading The Spirit, perhaps you need a little extra push.

So get ready to feel a firm pressure from behind dear readers, because after that interminably long and meandering introduction, Every Day Is Like Wednesday is pleased to answer all your questions in tonight's feature, which we're calling...




A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO THE AWESOMENESS OF DARWYN COOKE’S THE SPIRIT, PARTICULARLY #10, WHICH IS ESPECIALLY AWESOME



1.) Who or what is "The Spirit," exactly?

The Spirit is a masked mystery-man crime-fighter who, despite the colorful name and the domino mask, eschewed the Superman model of superheroes, sticking closer to the model of detective novel and pulp fiction protagonists.

Young big city detective Denny Colt was “killed" by a mad scientist, and immediately came back to life in a cemetery, getting a new lease on life after his supposed death. Making his new spooky surroundings his base of operations, he added a mask to his fedora and blue suit ensemble, and began battling crime with his fists and wits.

As a character, he wasn’t all that inspired a creation—you’d have a hard time picking him out of a line-up of similarly garbed crime-fighters—but his creator was such a talent that the execution of The Spirit’s adventures gave the character a long, long life (Sixty-seven years and counting).

That creator was Will Eisner, who was perhaps the greatest thing that ever happened to comics. Eisner is widely credited with writing the first graphic novel, the first aesthetic study of comics and beating Paul Bunyan and Davy Crockett in a fistfight in 1956. Comics’ version of the Oscars are named the Eisners after him, and when he died in 2005, he left behind an unrivaled body of work, having worked in the comics industry as long as there was a comics industry.

The Spirit, Eisner’s most iconic creation, starred in a weekly newspaper comic strip and a special pull-out section for over a decade, as well as in comic book-comics. The strip only sort of a crime drama, as Eisner infused the stories with a sense of humor and a restless sense of experimentation. Unlike most hero-centric strips of the day and today, The Spirit never completely committed to a single genre, and thus stayed a lot fresher than even strips featuring more popular characters (many of whom wore capes).

The strip became known for its playful integration of the logo into title pages, its colorful character names (Bond girls have nothing on Spirit girls), and its regular guy hero, who might always get the girl and beat the bad guys, but often got his ass kicked pretty bad in the process.



2.) And who’s this Darwyn Cooke character?

Cooke is a Canadian comics writer/artist responsible for some of the most awesome comics of the 21st century (But it is early yet).

That his comics feature stripped-down, powerful designs and a highly cinematic feel is likely due in no small part to the time he spent in animation, having worked on Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond (this here’s all him), three series that together comprise a high point in American television animation (He also worked on a Men in Black cartoon I’ve never seen a single frame of, so I can’t vouch for it).

Much of his comics work can be a little hard to find, as it tends to be a single issue here, a miniseries there, and the occasional graphic novel.

In 2003, Cooke began an epic project entitled DC: The New Frontier, a sly meta-narrative about how the Golden Age superheroes gave way to post-war cynicism, with only the most popular surviving in a sea of men-of-action, post-superhero manly men heroes like The Challengers of the Unknown, The Blackhawks and their ilk, before the optimism of the 1960s gave birth to a new era of superheroics, the bright, happy, shiny Silver Age (Indisputably the company’s glory years).

In 2006 he took on monthly comics duties with The Spirit, a title he would both write and draw, with artist J. Bone lending inks, and Dave Stewart colors.



3.) Wait, wait, wait... If The Spirit’s adventures were only awesome originally because of Eisner, how could Eisner-free Spirit stories possibly awesome?

Hey, good question!

I wouldn’t have expected an ongoing, Eisner-less Spirit effort to be worth a damn, personally, but, as it turns out, Cooke’s Spirit revival is going to be abbreviated, lasting only about 10-12 issues (He’s on through #12, but #7 was an anthology style fill-in by three different creative teams, and I think another such fill-in is slated shortly), which now makes it seem more like an a long tribute rather than an ongoing attempt to exploit the Spirit brand (which, to be fair, currently doesn’t have all that much juice in it anyway. The character may have lasted a long time, but he's not moving action figures and DVDs the way Spider-Man or Superman are, you know?).

But Cooke and his collaborators managed to be respectful of Eisner’s creation (Will Eisner’s signature is on every cover, dotting the “i” in “Spirit”), keeping the, um, spirit of the original strip in tact while updating the elements that didn’t age so well (like wince-inducing sidekick Ebony White), and moving the whole franchise into the 21st century. A 1940s cartoon noir figure might seem out of place in a world of satellites and cell phones, but Cooke makes it all work.



4.)What’s this crap about a Spirit move?

Yeah, they’re making a movie based on The Spirit, because apparently everything that’s ever been a comic book will be turned into a movie until films based on comics stop making money. Which is really another reason you hold-outs need to get on The Spirit now; why wait until the movie comes out and everyone's talking about The Spirit? Start reading now, and get out in front of the trend. Your friends will think you're ahead of the curve, plus you'll have the background necessarry to complain online about the casting choices with the same sense of entitlement as the rest of us.

The film is currently slated for a 2009 release, and it’s being written and directed by Frank Miller, who has extremely limited film experience, although movies based on his comics have recently made several gazillion (Sin City, 300) at the box office, and that's probably the only experience he needs to be accepted by Hollywood.

If you’ve read many of Miller’s comics, particularly his more recent totally insane ones, then you’ve probably noticed that he seems like the Anti-Eisner. And maybe he is, but the dude does have mad respect for Eisner, so maybe the film won’t totally suck. (At the very least, it will have some appropriately extremely curvy women in it).



5.) So, am I up to speed now?

Hell yeah you are! Let’s take a look then at The Spirit #10, a typically great issue of Cooke’s volume of the comic, one which accentuates his ability to make the character’s adventures completely current without sacrificing any of its attributes. Cooke’s Spirit is both timely and timeless, and this one a little more so of both.



What makes it so timely? Well, Cooke uses youtube.com as a narrative device, taking the comic book panel-like square image familiar from users of the site and importing it into his comic to introduce the victims and suspect in the murder mystery.

And it’s a murder mystery that taps into the zeitgeist, dramatizing for our escapist delight the dream of all American media consumers: The brutal murders of cable television punditry.

This being Cooke doing a Einser-inspired Spirit however, these familiar faces have been simplified to cartoon character elegance, and their names scrambled into delightful little punning poems that retain their original sounds, only slightly out of order.

Of course, despite the fact that they look like real world pundits, and that they have names similar to those of real world pundits, and that they have personalities and schticks just like those of real world pundits, they are, in fact, totally not really based on any of those, so neither Cooke nor DC can be sued by the likes of Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh.

To make sure of that, The Spirit’s girlfriend Ellen Dolan and sidekick Ebony White (who no longer resembles the hideous, lawn jockey-looking caricature he did when Eisner first drew him in the ‘40s) visit a lawyer in the first scene to get him to sign off on the adventure...



And what does this adventure entail?

Well, Central City Police Commissioner Eustace Dolan (that's him above cajoling the supporting cast to join him in the rest of the story), TV reporter Ginger Coffee and The Spirit are investigating the spectacular murder of Dandy O'Lyon, "the left wing lesbian day-time chat monster." Upon leaving posh restaurant Fugli, O'Lyon, who can't possibly be based on Rosie O'Donnell since Rosie has brown hair and Dandy's blonde, was apparently burned to death in her car.

Who could have killed her?



Perhaps Trust Wimbag, the overweight, far-right talk radio gas bag who had recently launched into an on-air diatribe against O'Lyon?




Or perhaps Mare Nolty, a skinny blonde with an incredible temper who's prone to act like a maniac in public to cynically exploit self-created controversy to boost her own Q-rating? After all, she apparnetly attempted to throttle Dandy in public recently.

Now, when you heard the words "skinny," "blonde" and "prone to act like a maniac in public to cynically exploit self-created controversy to boost her own Q-rating," you probably thought of Ann Coulter, right? Well, that can't possibly be Coulter. I mean, not only did the lawyer on page one say that any similarities between the characters and real people are completely coincidental but, well, Mare Nolty is pretty hot, and, well, Ann Coulter is, you know, Ann Coulter.

Anyway, The Spirit thinks she's a good lead, and he sneaks into her apartment to question her. He doesn't find her quite as hot as I do, though....



Hmm, maybe it is Coulter after all...




What about "The King of Cable News," the host of Wally's Report, Wally O'Bellows?




Or Stewart Flober, a pretend pundit who "pokes fun at cable news" by pretending to be an O'Bellows-like blowhard and has a habit of referring to his audiene as "Nation?"




Soon, some of these supsects begin getting bumped off, leading to a scene where familiar looking and sounding cable news personalities report on "The Cable Killer," often times just before they themselves fall victim to him (or her or them).

By the way, Mustachio Hernandez? I'm totally naming my first son that.

Cooke's not just having fun caricaturing the human caricatures that populate cable news, of course. There's also a Very Serious Message, which Rush Limb--, er, Trust Wimbag vocalizes during a car chase with the killer...





And Ginger summarizes thusly:




There, I think we all learned something from that. Not only about the corrosive effect of the punditocracy on our mediascape, but also about how awesome Darwyn Cooke's Spirit is.