More of the Spirit’s past exploits revealed!
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Wagner
Art: Dan Schkade
Colors: Brennan Wagner
What They Say:
As yet another piece of the mystery surrounding The Spirit’s lengthy disappearance is revealed, our heroes find themselves confronted with a violent attack at the hands of hired gun Pinky Fingers. The Spirit barely avoids the assassin’s bullet… but are his friends so lucky, as well? Central City proves to be no refuge from the long and deadly reach of the international crime-lord, Mikado Vaas!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While The Spirit continues to provide for an overall larger storyline that’s at play, it’s one that feels a little ill-defined. And that works to its advantage because it feels like we’re getting a more natural work that’s telling a number of stories at the pace of life itself, so that it becomes far more immersive. With the greater focus on Mikao Vaas recently and all that this new villain entails we’ve gotten a better look at how the Spirit survived his adventure and some of the things he’s been caught up with since. It’s also expanded our base of players well and while some (all?) have greater history from past incarnations they all feel like they’re made wholly accessible to new readers like me.
The flashback side of this installment is a lot of fun as we head to an earlier tale of the Spirit in Tangiers when he was retrieving a stolen necklace of importance to the local museum and ran afoul of some group that there wanted to kill him over it. This has him escaping from them by inadvertently climbing into the residence of Sachet Spice,a Crimson Tiger personality. We get a good nod towards her power and position in seeing how the thugs end up dealing with her but we also get a solid nod at how she operates in the way she nurses the Spirit back to health and treats him like a pet until he escapes. All of this serves to add another player into the mix, expand the crimson tiger story itself, and flesh out some of the Spirit’s earlier adventures. It gives it all meaning and greater impact as a fully realized and crazy world.
This nod towards Crimson Tiger helps to give others better understanding in the present with what they’re facing, which gets pushed to the side as there’s an assassination attempt on Chief Dolan’s life. It’s almost amusing that it happens while he’s inside the precinct as the assassin has some real stones to do that, but it leads to a solid chase and fight sequence with the Spirit afterward that you get caught up in that. There isn’t a lot of meat to this as it’s mostly setup for what’s to come as the assassin has some proper threat about him, and it allows for some good character material in dealing with what happens to Dolan as it all settles out afterward. The event almost feels like it’s out of place in some ways but it’s just that the full context hasn’t hit yet.
In Summary:
The Spirit has another solid and strong installment as it provides more context and information to what’s going on. The bigger story may not feel like it’s progressing here but we’re getting some good clues and information to make it a richer and more engaging story overall while also finding ways to include other characters into it. The Spirit’s tale in Tangier is definitely intriguing and it leaves me wanting to see a whole lot more of Sachet Spice and what she brings to the project. There are a lot of things going on here beyond the big picture pieces and just watching the movements of it all is really engaging since these characters feel so well realized. Wagner continues to find the voices for these characters with scary perfection and Schkade simply brings it to life in a way that feels like it’s the way it was meant to be all along. This is a solid addition to a larger work that’s simply amazing.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: March 16th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
