Since the launch of it, there’s been one thing I think has been missing from Darwyn Cooke’s THE SPIRIT, namely a sense of adventure in the storytelling. Compared to what we may remember most about Will Eisner’s work on THE SPIRIT, Cooke’s storytelling has appeared tame and surprisingly traditional. Cooke hasn’t played with the page yet in the way that Eisner occasionally did. Now to be fair, Eisner had his share of six or nine panel pages, very traditional and staid but those aren’t what we remember when we think of The Spirit.
We remember the splash pages and Eisner’s imaginative incorporation of the title into the design of the page. We remember the pages where Eisner broke out of the traditional layouts, where the art dances around the page to draw us into the story. But Darwyn Cooke’s SPIRIT is a much different beast than Will Eisner’s SPIRIT. With more advanced use of color and with more pages, Cooke doesn’t have to be as inventive as Eisner had to be. With at least fourteen more pages for a story, Cooke can take the time to develop his story with more traditional storytelling methods.
If there is anyplace where Cooke has been inventive, it’s in the splash pages. These have been some of my favorite sequences in this title so far.
These title sequences, spread over two pages, have been were Cooke has made his mark the most. Eisner had to quickly establish a setting or a mood with his page.
This took up about an eighth of the entire space Eisner had to tell his story so Eisner had to make each one really count.
Cooke has a bit more leeway. Even with two pages, his splash page doesn’t account for nearly as much of the story so he goes a different way, making his more akin to title sequences from TV or movies. Even with a static image, like the one above from issue 6, he manages to capture a mood and even some movement, stretching the image across two pages in a widescreen manner. You almost get the feeling of a James Bond or even Spider-Man movie title sequence (and I really hate the title sequence of most super-hero movies.) You actually read that image left to right, starting with an innocent enough picture and then ending with the shot of the Spirit.
This splash and the one from issue #1 both remind me in ways of the title sequence from Batman Beyond, a title sequence that Cooke actually worked on. There are the same dark and stylish mood in the comic and the TV show that highlights some of what Cooke is doing in his THE SPIRIT.
[tag]The Spirit, Darwyn Cooke, Dave Stewart, Will Eisner, Batman Beyond[/tag]