Originally posted on MikeRapin.com

Despite my normally going to the comic shop on Wednesday to pick up comics, I hit up the comic shop a total of three times this week.

Why? Well because 1) Tommy asked me to go on Tuesday, 2) Wednesday was new-comic-book-day and 3) Amra/Jared/Tommy wanted to go on Saturday.

So there I was, at Tardy’s and the four of us has been looking around at comics for a good 45 minutes or so talking it up and such when, as everyone was seriously ready to leave, I notice something… I noticed DC’s Justice Society of America Kingdom Come tie-in for Superman.

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I had low expectations for Frank Miller’s adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

The first time I saw a trailer for the movie I was instantly worried, gone was the cartoony style of The Spirit that masqueraded the violence in the comic book and in it’s place we’re given Sin City like effects that showcased the insane blood bath, but also distracted from the actual story making some scenes completely unwatchable.

More after the break.

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I went and saw The Spirit on Saturday. Yes, I saw it despite the terrible reviews and horrendous score on Rotten Tomatoes (because I trust the collective movie reviewers over individual reviewers and it was at 17% when I left to see the movie).

It is now about 23 hours after seeing that movie (as I write this) and my views of the film have not changed.

I knew before going into the movie that it was going to be outrageous, we all knew that. I knew there’d be a huge Sin City feel to it that we all wanted but still didn’t want to see. I knew that this was Frank Miller’s first solo movie as a writer and director. I knew that Miller’s previous movies written for the screen were Robocop 2 and 3–both I didn’t see but have heard were terrible.

So I went into this movie with pretty low expectations, I’m not going to lie. But despite all of the badness The Spirit had from everyone else I saw the film and, well, I kind of liked it.

**spoilers abound**

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In Case You’re Just Joining Us:

Vixen went back to her home country as soon as she found out that the man who killed her parents is free. She confronts him, only to discover he has super powers of his own. She suffers a nasty stomach wound and has a gun pointed to her head.

But the real review is after the break.

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Everyone knows where Batman begins, but to personally know where Batman began is another ideology. For me, Batman began before I could read. My father’s friend gave him a collection to hold onto until I was old enough to respect it, Batman: Year One by Frank Miller. Today, Miller is somewhat of an icon having written several gems such as Sin City, 300, and currently Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder. He always tends to push envelope and delivers with carnal genius. Thanks to him and his counterpart David Mazzuchelli, the illustrator of Batman: Year One, anytime someone mentions the Batman, the image of a boy kneeling in-between his blood-spattered parents resurfaces. It wasn’t until recently that I dug those books from their cave.

**spoilers after the break**

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As I slowly dip into more recent comics to pad out my endless list of must-buy classics, a few big names constantly crop up. Mark Millar is one of those names. In an attempt to both get into his stuff and try to somewhat get a handle on Marvel’s continuity so I could read Secret Invasion, I read Civil War, which I went on record as having liked it but not been wowed. Then I read the Superman Elseworlds tale Red Son, which is savagely brilliant. My interests finally piqued, I started picking up back issues of the titles he’s put out this year, which is no small task since the man apparently isn’t bothering to sleep or eat given the number of issues he’s written. Now that I’m finally caught up, let me try to explain why Mark Millar deserves every drop of praise he’s getting.

**spoilers and more after the break**

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For years, the thing that most kept me out of comics, more than the notion of it being for children, was the issue of continuity. It’s hard enough to collect comics as is, but studios force you to not only keep up with a character but drastically alter that character’s origin, life, and mannerisms on the whims of writers and the players at the top who see nothing but green in the potential for overhauls to sell. This places the burden square on the consumer, and it’s probably why DC Comics started slipping to Marvel, whose characters weren’t as old and thus didn’t require updates from old heroes who mostly existed to be World War II propaganda. To fix it, writers initially created two Earths; Earth-One was for the Silver Age heroes, the rebooted, younger versions of the original Golden Age heroes. Those guys were given Earth-Two. And the editors saw that it was good.

This move was a great short term fix, but anyone with a modicum of foresight could have seen the inevitable coming; if another Earth could be created, then why not another? And another? Soon, everyone and his brother had a baker’s dozen of slightly different versions of himself, and only people who had been reading long enough saw all this happen and thus could adjust easier. However, varying origin stories posed an issue to new converts: I want to start with definitive stories, but there is more than one Superman. Do I find each one’s great stories, or do I pick one or two? Is he really dead or is this just some lame copy? So, to sort it out- and make a nice profit in the process- DC hired Marv Wolfman to write a miniseries that would at least try to sort out DC’s glaring continuity issues for their 50th anniversary. The result was Crisis on Infinite Earths.

**spoilers and more after the break**

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Comics superstar turned director Frank Miller is bringing The Spirit to movie theaters this December.  My initial impression was that Frank Miller based the film, The Spirit on his graphic novel – later did I realize it was being adapted from a graphic novel by Will Eisner.  After leafing through the deceased writers work, I was baffled to see it be stripped down so carelessly in the upcoming film.  Miller has taken Eisner’s boy in blue and revamped him into something of a superhero, which he most definitely isn’t.  The masked vigilante detective is just a regular tough guy with a sense of justice and one hell of a lucky streak.  Luckily for Miller, he has a near free-reign on The Spirit adaptation.

By the looks of the movie clip on Mike’s post, the film’s action sequence seems to take on the humor of the originals, but the official movie trailers seem otherwise.  They’re so similar to Sin City (a no-brainer considering Frank Miller directed this film as well), and though visually stunning, they are alien to the originals.  I can’t imagine this adaptation will do the comics justice.  Will Eisner must be turning in his grave as we speak.

Though not all is dark and dismal in Central City…

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The mid 80s were a good time to be a geek. In the music world, metal was revolting against its glam stars and producing a host of thrashers who put out the best stuff since Sabbath; Master of Puppets, Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?, and Reign in Blood were sure to be spinning in the record players and tape decks of every acne-scarred social outcast in the country.

And what do social outcasts read? Comic books, that’s exactly right. We’re a hated and mocked breed, but anyone who read them in this era was about to have their reading material finally “legitimatized.” A new breed of writers was revolutionizing the medium, removing the redundant and intelligence-insulting wordiness that plagued comics at the point and replacing it with more concise and more adult language as well letting the art tell the story. And chief among them were two men, each from one side of the Atlantic: Alan Moore and Frank Miller.

**spoilers after the jump**
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I was sitting at my apartment today when I saw a tweet from none other than Warren Ellis which contained a link to a clip from Comic Con ‘08 that contained a fight scene from the upcoming movie The Spirit. The fight was between our hero, The Spirit/Denny Colt, and the antagonist in the story: The Octopus. Played respectively by Gabriel Macht and Samuel L. Jackson, the fight was utterly outrageous; hundreds of punches, smashes with concrete blocks and toilets are all over the place. It’s completely hilarious. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but from the clip it seemed to be that way.

Now, I don’t know if this was how Will Eisner had originally written the series, or if any other writer, wrote the story in a “Oh my god, this is effing outrageous” type of way, but wow, this clip just made think: is Frank Miller making a comedy?

More ranting and the clip after the break.

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