Digging into the hard work of detecting!
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Wagner
Art: Dan Schkade
Colors: Brennan Wagner
What They Say:
The web of danger begins to tighten as The Spirit continues his quest to track down his kidnapper, the mysterious Mikado Vaas – and his best bet is to first locate the crime lord’s equally evasive daughter, Sachet Spice! Convinced that she is in Central City, The Spirit’s search leads him into unexpectedly fragrant territory. Meanwhile, Ebony and Sammy manage to find a lead to tracking down the mysterious assassin sent by Vaas, the cold-blooded Pinky Fingers. The explosive finale is coming… one that might change The Spirit’s world forever!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As this series has moved along, I’ve enjoyed it far more than I imagined I would since previous comic interpretations didn’t quite click for me. Seeing how Wagner and Schkade brought it to life, pulling off that very difficult opening arc without the title character that in turn made me a huge Strunk and White fan, was gratifying beyond words as so many other books do those kinds of arcs poorly. As we move into the final run of issues with this, I’m getting more and more apprehensive about not having any Spirit in my future from this team because they have been absolutely nailing it. Even in a relatively low-key issue like this it has all the right ingredients to delight that will stand out for some time to come.
The somewhat minor subplot of this book involves Sachet Spice putting out the kill order for The Spirit so that her plans can continue to move forward. We’ve had bad things go down already, but she’s simply done at this point. What becomes intriguing is that as The Spirit is off doing his own investigating side of things as he tries to find her, it’s Ellen’s fiance that ends up taking the spotlight here. He’s intent on finding The Spirit himself in order to clear the air between the two of them over her as he’s had enough of being pushed to the sidelines. After Denny’s apparent death, however, she filled him in on some of the things about The Spirit and that has him heading off to the secret lair under the gravestone. Which is exactly where our assassin du jour is ready to take out The Spirit, leading to a moment that should have had a lot more follow through in actually killing him off. I’m sure there’s an endgame to it but it felt weak considering what was at play.
More of the main plot, at least in my mind, is watching Strunk and White going through their detective work. As much as I like the banter between Ellen and The Spirit and his time searching for the right fragrance to find Sachet, it’s seeing these two heading to a club from White’s side of town called the Jive Spot. He’s here to get some clues on the assassin from Hinky Havens, with whom he has a difficult relationship. That makes for it’s own fun with engaging dialogue and some wonderful panel layouts from Schkade, but I just love how he tries to get Strunk to wait for him outside but he’s just oblivious as to why. While it does shift into that familiar “everyone gets along” schtick, it works because you can imagine Strunk being able to fit in anywhere, especially when he can talk sports.
In Summary:
With the pursuit of the assassin really as the main story here, and we do get closure there, it’s the supporting elements that worked better for me. Pinky Fingers certainly isn’t bad and there are neat moments that Schkade gets to bring to life in a great way with the action element of it, but I was more intrigued by his work with the Jive Spot and all that it entails, as well as the time with Ellen and The Spirit together. There are a lot of wheels in motion in pursuit of Vaas that are going on here and it really works well as even a quiet issue like this pushes a lot of things forward while expanding the scope of events at the same time. Wagner and Schkade continue to delight here and I’m hopeful for a lengthy relationship between the two based on this series.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: May 4th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
