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The Spirit Archives, Vol. 19 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Darren

The times, they are a-changing. It seems that is true for The Spirit as well. Given it’s a weekly comic strip, those changes aren’t necessarily obvious at the micro-level, as you read through these superb archive editions collected by DC comics. Change is, after all, as likely to be a gradual development as a sudden change of pace. However, reading The Spirit stories collected here, it is clear that things have subtly shifted over the past year or so. It’s not quite the harbinger of doom that we’d see over the next couple of years as the strip died a long, slow and painful death – it’s more a change of focus on the part of Eisner, as he seems to continue to push the character boldly forward.

Denny Colt is the Spirit? No!

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Dolan, Ebony, Eisner, Ellen Dolan, Lou Fine, Monica, Nazi, Peligros, Spirit, The Spirit Archives: Volume 12, The Spirit: Femmes Fatale, United States, Will Eisner, world war ii | Leave a comment »

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 18 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Darren

I seem to be opening each of these reviews with a reminder that The Spirit is in fine form, and that it continues to be a superb piece of pulpy entertainment. I continue to be astounded at the relatively consistent standard that Eisner works to, week in and week out. More than that, though, I am continually impressed with the vigour and ingenuity that the writer and artist brings to his work. Just when you think you have The Spirit figured out, it throws another curveball, effortless switching gears and becoming something a bit different than you were expecting. Sometimes it’s a technicolour noir story, sometimes it’s a treatise on humanist philosophy, sometimes it’s a western, sometimes it’s romance, sometimes, its comedy, sometimes it’s tragedy. Sometimes it’s all and more.

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 18 doesn’t necessarily have a single story that can be measured against The Story of Gerhard Schnobble that we found in The Spirit Archives, Vol. 17, but it’s still a testament to Eisner’s storytelling sensibilities and his strength as a writer and artist.

The board walk…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Deadeye Dick, Dolan, Ebony, Eisner, Ellen, Ellen Dolan, Nazism, New York Herald Tribune, Prince Valiant, Shanghai, Spirit, The Spirit Archives: Volume 12, United States, Will Eisner, world war ii | Leave a comment »

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 17 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Darren

The Spirit Archives, Volume 17 contains perhaps the best-loved Spirit story of all time. Indeed, you could make a compelling argument that The Story of Gerhard Schnobble represents perhaps the best seven pages that Will Eisner ever produced, beautifully encapsulating all the magic of the creator’s work, tempered with the same awareness of the harsh realities of life. This collection continues to offer The Spirit at the peak of its run, and The Story of Gerhard Schnobble simply sees all these elements that have been working so consistently for so long coalescing into something that is practically transcendental.

Beginning with a bang…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Ambrose Bierce, arts, Damned Thing, Dolan, Ebony, Edgar Allan Poe, Eisner, Good Will Hunting, House of Usher, London, new york, Princess & The Frog, Spirit, The Spirit Archives: Volume 12, United States, Will Eisner, world war ii | Leave a comment »

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 15 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Darren

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 15, finds Will Eisner in the middle of a very strong run on his most iconic creation. While this collection of stories doesn’t necessarily do anything new or radical, it does offer an example of a master storyteller at the height of his powers, crafting entertaining and exciting pulpy adventures on a weekly basis. Indeed, this run of stories offers a fairly efficient cross-section of what the strip was capable of at its best, perhaps more than any of the volumes surrounding it. While it might not be the very best collection of Spirit stories written, it is a pretty handy introduction to the character and his world.

Doesn’t somebody want to be wanted?

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: A Contract with God, Adam, Al Capp, Dolan, Ebony, Eisner, Gretel, Hansel & Gretel, Killer Mike, Lamp, Octopus, Raven, Spirit, The Spirit Archives: Volume 12, United States, Will Eisner | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Jack Reacher

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Darren

Much like its eponymous leading man, Jack Reacher is efficient. That’s probably the best thing that can be said about this adaptation of Lee Child’s One Shot. Coming in at two hours, the movie manages to keep everything relatively under control. Any fuzzy logic is masked by the smart decision to keep things moving at a quick enough pace, distracting from the fact we’ve seen it all before, or that the characters seem especially paper-thin. At times, Jack Reacher suffers from being a little too shallow, a little too safe, a little too predictable. While Christopher McQuarrie can be an excellent writer, he seems to be only developing as a director. He handles movement reasonably well, but the direction amps up the melodrama to almost unbearable levels at certain points in the film.

It’s not terrible, and it’s certainly not an out-and-out failure, but I’d struggle to argue that it’s a successful franchise launch. For most of its runtime, Jack Reacher succeeds at merely being inoffensive and trying not to weigh too heavily on our patience. It’s not the most convincing of victories, but it could have been a lot worse.

Gearing up for a franchise…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: christopher mcquarrie, film, Fuzzy logic, jack bauer, Jack Reacher, kiefer sutherland, Lee Child, London, Movie, non-review review, One Shot, Reacher, review, robert duvall, Rosamund Pike, tom cruise, United States, Werner Herzog | 4 Comments »

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 14 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Darren

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 14 finds Will Eisner back in full swing. The Spirit is truly firing on all cylinders, after taking about a year just to get everything lined up after the creator returned from military service. The success of this volume isn’t so much that Eisner is doing anything especially new or innovative. Rather, it seems like The Spirit has made a note of the aspects of the strip that work and has decided to concentrate on those stronger elements. This six-month stretch on newspaper strips doesn’t necessarily contain a record-breaking number of stand-out stories, but there are far fewer duds that we’ve seen before. There’s still a couple of Ebony-centred stories, but they’re few and far between. The other annoying kid sidekicks are mostly demoted to black-and-white one-line “P.S.” strips at the bottom of the page, and don’t intrude on the narrative.

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 14 isn’t so much about doing things better, as doing them more consistently.

Getting into the Spirit of things…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: art, arts, balkans, Bastille, Bastille Day, Blackmail, comic strip, Comics, crime, Derek Dooley, Eisner, fiction, Harry Truman, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jules Feiffer, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Manhattan Project, Nuclear weapon, Online Writing, Spirit, Spirit (comics), The Spirit: Femmes Fatale, United States, Will Eisner, world war ii | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Django Unchained

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Darren

“They’ll call you the quickest gun in the South,” bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz remarks to the freed slave Django Freeman. The cliché would suggest that he meant to say “West”, but Django Unchained has its mind firmly on the Southern United States. Producing the film, writer-director Quentin Tarantino argued that he wanted to produce a “Southern” rather than a “Western”, and he has done an admirable job. However, what’s really remarkable about Django Unchained is the way that it balances Tarantino’s trademark grindhouse aesthetic with considerable mature nuance. Django Unchained is the story about two bounty hunters tracking down wanted men dead or alive, but it that doesn’t mean that it is afraid to tackle more substantive and challenging aspects of American history.

If you’d asked me whether I thought that Tarantino could produce a powerful and insightful exploration of slavery in the Deep South before I saw Inglourious Basterds, I would have hesitated before answering. Django Unchained is smart, sophisticated and thoughtful, but never pretentious, never pandering, never dull. In a rather unlikely way, it is the most mature film Tarantino has ever produced.

An ice cold killer…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Candie, christoph waltz, Django, django unchained, film, German language, inglourious basterds, jamie foxx, Leonardo diCaprio, Movie, non-review review, quentin tarantino, review, samuel l. jackson, Schultz, Southern United States, Stephen, tarantino, United States | 10 Comments »

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 13 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Darren

With Eisner now back on the strip for over half-a-year, The Spirit is forging ahead into the middle part of its run. Many commentators and pundits would argue that the few years following Eisner’s return from military service were among the best in the strip’s history, and it’s hard to disagree. While Eisner took the time in his first six months to tidy up loose ends – killing the Squid, sending Satin home with a daughter – here we see the creator building up the world he has created. This collection includes the strips introducing (and a number of subsequent appearances from) both P’Gell and the Octopus, arguably two of the most important characters introduced into the strip following the Second World War. There’s also a sign that Eisner is branching out a bit, and pushing the strip out from the shadow of the Second World War. After all, a new era of prosperity and a Cold War were both just around the corner, very fertile ground for the creator to explore.

A banner year?

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Cold War, Collecting, Cove, darwyn cooke, DeSoto, Earth, Eisner, frank miller, history, Michael Kors, Nazi, Octopus, Postage Stamp, Recreation, Shanghai, Smuggler, Smugglers Cove, Spirit, Stamps, Turkey, United States, Vortex, War crime, Will Eisner, World War I, world war ii | Leave a comment »

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 12 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Darren

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 12 marks Will Eisner’s return to the strip. To be fair, the writer and artist had returned for the last two entries in the previous volume, but this is the first book entirely composed of Eisner’s post-war Spirit stories. While I don’t think Eisner had quite found his groove yet – the best was still yet to come – it’s amazing how dynamic the comic feels after reading the non-Eisner material. It’s easy enough to point to the Eisner-esque tropes and tricks, the techniques and the plot devices and the philosophy that faded from the strip in has absence, but there’s also something much less tangible here. There’s certain energy, a je ne sais que, that had been absent for the previous couple of years, returning in force.

Eisner is back. And, in a way, so is The Spirit.

It’s like he was never gone…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: American Vampire, Eisner, history, holocaust, Mike Richardson, Post-war, Scott Snyder, Spirit, The Spirit: Femmes Fatale, Twentieth Century, United States, Wars and Conflicts, Will Eisner, World War I, world war ii | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Big Goodbye (Review)

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also next year’s release of Star Trek: Into Darkness, I’m taking a look at the recent blu ray release of the first season, episode-by-episode. Check back daily for the latest review.

I actually enjoyed The Big Goodbye on a lot of levels. It’s not a great Star Trek episode, but I don’t think that the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation produced a great episode. Even those episodes I do not actively hate are still significantly flawed. The Big Goodbye has more than its fair share of problems, but it does several things right. It never pretends to be more than it is, and it allows Patrick Stewart to do a lot of the heavy-lifting. Stewart is effectively charged with selling the episode to the audience, and he does a tremendous job. The result is something quite similar to the eponymous holonovel – something diverting and entertaining, but hardly profound or essential. Given the quality of the surrounding episodes, “diverting and entertaining” seems like just what the doctor ordered.