The Crosspatch Reviews Comic Books

I miss Darwyn Cooke already.

How does this happen?  You’ve got four very good creators on a book, and the whole thing just falls completely flat. Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier are well-known for their humor, and Mike Ploog and Mark Farmer are two of the better pencillers and inkers (respectively) in the industry.  Yet somehow, both the script and the art fail to impress.

For starters, the voice for most of the characters is all wrong.  Ebony’s constantly bugging the Spirit to go to a pizza place, Ellen’s constantly calling her father old, and the Spirit is channeling a little too much Batman for my tastes.

Also, was I the only one who saw the ending on the third page?  I’ve read Rob Liefeld books with deeper mysteries.

There’s nothing really wrong with the artwork other than it’s just a major shift in styles from Cooke’s.  We’ll have to see how Paul Smith does next month.  I was hoping they’d get someone like Bruce Timm or another person with a similar style as a replacement, but it looks like that’s not going to be the case.

Maybe I’m jumping the gun a bit, and Aragonés and Evanier just haven’t gotten in the groove yet.  I’ll probably give this a few more issues just to see, but my first impression wasn’t a good one.