The Spirit:Corpsemaker #1

Writer, Artist and Letter: Francesco Francavillo

Published by: Dynamite Entertainment.

The Spirit is back, Will Eisner's legendary hero returns in Dynamite's new mini series Corpsemaker. This tale is an excellent start of a mystery story. We get the Central City Police force including police commissioner Dolan, investigating a dead homeless man. The Spirit and the Police decide that it's not really worth looking into so the Spirit and his partner in crime fighting, Ebony Smith take the night off. Ebony goes to catch up with his cousin Vince who is in town for the night, and we learn that Vince might have a pretty shady past. The pieces are set for the series with a nice opening chapter that leaves us with clues of what's going on without revealing too much. We actually learn a lot more from the opening page blurb then we do from the story itself, but it's such a well paced story that that doesn't matter. The tone of the characterization of the cast is spot on, and at times this feels like it actually could have been written by Eisner himself. I'm glad I got a chance to read this, and I can't wait for the next issue.

Francesco Francavilla handles the traditional role of writer and artist of the Spirit in this series. He handles both with equal zeal. His art style for the book is really a combination of the Eisner style with a little bit of Darwyn Cooke thrown in there for good measure. I love the art, it looks really good and the mood it sets fits the Spirit perfectly. Normally I hate such decompressed stories in comics, but it works well here. Since this is the first issue I do understand it not being quite as action heavy, setting the plate for that to come in future issues of the mini series. It was a well written story with excellent art, so I've nothing to complain about.

Thus far it has captured the spirit of the old school Spirit stories, and for a fan of the character such as myself that is a huge plus. The Spirit has been around for decades now so telling unique stories with is, I imagine quite hard. He has probably been published by more comic book companies then any other characters, including Quality, DC, Harvey, now Dynamite and even was carried in 20 Sunday Newspaper comic strips. This is a character that has had one of the most legendary people in all of comics create him and write him, so it probably is a daunting task to throw yourself into a book like this, but Francavilla did a great job with this first issue. A great read that I highly recommend.