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Spirit, The #6

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    Ian Jane
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  • Spirit, The #6



    Spirit, The #6
    Released by: Dynamite Entertainment
    Released on: December 23rd, 2015.
    Written by: Matt Wagner
    Illustrated by: Dan Schkade
    Purchase From Amazon

    When we last left Central City, Ellen Dolan learned that The Spirit was alive and well, Strunk and White were in serious trouble and The Spirt himself was busting heads left, right and center. This sixth issue, entitled Isolation Blues, takes us out of Star City, at least to start, and brings us to the lost island of Nawala Pulo. Here we meet a man who, after the Second World War ended and he got a 'Dear John' letter from his missus back home, never left the place. With nothing else to fall back on, he's allied himself with some of his former Japanese enemies and has managed to start hiring out his services as a mercenary. What he really wound up doing was working in a massive prison compound, a place set up to house only one prisoner…

    And this prisoner is well looked after, given more or less anything he wants. He even has a visitor, a woman dressed all in white who comes around about once a month or so to check in on things. Our prisoner strikes up a friendship with our mercenary guard, we learn his name is Frank, a friendship that comes in handy with the prisoner, who must be wearing that mask for a reason, makes is escape. The Spirit explains all of this to Strunk and White and also tells him that to this day, he has no idea why he was kept on that island in that prison for two whole years. But he knows how it happened, and he tells them about his attempts to bust up a weapons shipment coming through the docks one night, how that led to him hoping a plane…

    Meanwhile Ellen tries to sort out her love life. Archie knows The Spirit is back and he knows of her past with the hero while her old man starts to have second thoughts about his pending retirement.

    The plot thickens! The mystery behind The Spirit's two year disappearance from Central City is starting to properly unfold and while our hero himself is in the dark on a lot of this, by the time we hit the last page and least we've got a name - and that name, it's a clue. A vague clue, sure, but that's better than no clue at all. Wagner's shown a knack for writing these characters since the very first issue and that hasn't let up a half a dozen comic books later. He keeps The Spirit, the Dolans, and everyone else in line with the way that Eisner wrote them and he does a fine job of paying tribute to those old Eisner classics while at the same time expanding The Spirit's world a bit. It works. It's a good read, lots of fun, and a solid mix of action, adventure and intrigue.

    Dan Schkade's artwork, which is complimented quite nicely by Brennan Wagner's coloring work, remains top notch. Great use of shadow, plenty of art deco style in the backgrounds, and those splash pages are always a delight, especially to those familiar with the original stories. This all shapes up to a whole lot of good old fashioned pulp inspired comic book fun.

    All that and another fantastic cover from Erik Powell!






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