Comics Fondle

Dolan retells the Spirit’s origin. Young criminologist Denny Colt shows up at his office, promising to deliver Dr. Cobra in an hour. At Cobra’s hideout, Colt is ambushed and doused in Cobra’s concoction–a liquid to preserve humans’ lives up to a thousand years. Cobra and his henchman escape and Dolan finds Denny Colt dead. Some time later, a masked man calling himself the Spirit arrives at Dolan’s office to peruse his files. After the Spirit leaves, a suspicious Dolan heads to the Wildwood Cemetery, where Colt is buried. At the cemetery, Dolan witnesses the Spirit paying off informants for Cobra’s whereabouts. They leave and Dolan reveals himself to the Spirit, calling him Denny. The Spirit reveals his true identity and the two discuss what happened. Meanwhile, the Spirit’s sidekick, Ebony, is tailing the two informants, who go right to Cobra. A little while later, the Spirit arrives to confront Dr. Cobra. Cobra escapes from his sewer hideout and has the Spirit at gunpoint, but Dolan arrives in time to shoot Cobra, saving the Spirit. The Spirit informs Dolan he’ll continue to work outside the law and the two of them will be seeing quite a lot of each other.

As origin stories go, the Spirit’s is pretty bland. Apparently, Eisner felt he had to retell the origin for post-war readers (when he returned to the comic) and the result feels way too obligatory.

I always wondered why, for a comic called The Spirit, the Spirit was in it so little. Dolan’s Origin shows why–Eisner’s pacing is all off when fight scenes are drawn out, punch by punch. There are three or four significant pause points in Origin, the kind usually used for humor–only its being used as filler here.

What’s missing from Origin is charm. There’s no charm in the scenes between Dolan and the Spirit, there’s no charm to the villain (charm might be the wrong word, but Eisner always has a way of making villains amusing and appealing, but not here).

The funny thing about retold (or later revealed) origins–whether it’s The Spirit or Star Wars–unless they’re done really well, it’s impossible to believe, if these stories were the starting points, the series would ever be successful enough to get to a point where an origin would need to be retold.

Maybe I’ll have to break the Spirit plan and track down the first origin, just to see….

collected in “The Spirit Archives: Volume 12” (Will Eisner)

Technorati Tags: Comic Book, Review, The Spirit, Will Eisner