A lot of people were concerned when Darwin Cooke left "the Spirit", and a lot said that they were dropping the book out of hand. I decided to stay on and give Sergio Aragones a chance, and I can't say that I'm sorry.

There were issues, of course... I mean, this was Sergio's first issue. My main problem was his handling of Commissioner Dolan. While Dolan has served as comedy relief for the Spirit from time to time, he's never been particularly incompetent. He also isn't generally portrayed as having a competetive nature where the Spirit is concerned. In this issue, though, those traits seemed to come through.

As far as the story goes, and the characterization of the Spirit himself (and Ebony, who is featured pretty heavily in #14), Aragones did a great job. The story was single-issue, and it held to the kind of stories that both Eisner and Cooke (and many others) have told in the past. If anything, I found Aragones' Spirit to be a bit more competent than Cooke's, relying more on his ability and wits than with lucking into situations, as Cooke's often did.

Hopefully, Sergio will tighten his characterization of Dolan (and daughter) and bring the Spirit's "family" into a little more unity, but aside from that, I think he's off to a pretty good start. It was very nice to get a meaty, one-issue story rather than six issues of splash pages like so many superhero books do these days. Aragones, it would seem, believes in panels.

All things considered, the book is staying on my pull list for the time being... I'm going to give Sergio a solid shot, based on his initial offering.

Curse you Kard! I was going to do a review! Aw well, eary bird and all that.

Luckily, most of the stuff I wanted to talk about you didn't. It was a good story, but like most first issues of a writer, I had issues. The story was very comedic, which makes sense for the man that created Groo the Wanderer, but in the Spirit, to me, it just went 1/8th over the line. Not a whole lot, but still over.

Another thing that bugged me was the use of technology. When they first announced DC (you can look at that as the company or the intials of Cooke) making a new Spirit series, they said that even though they'd have computers and cell phones, the characters wouldn't be text messaging or going over the top with the internet. Obviously, Sergio forgot that, because instead of Spirit just stating "I have a message from Dolan", he says "I have a text message from Dolan". Now if it was Ellen sending a TM, that'd be one thing. But I have a hard time believing Dolan would text Spirit instead of just call him. Another example was when Ebony says he can look up info easily because "When you have a Wi-Fi card in your laptop, the info comes to you!". Wi-Fi, seriously?

Before I was going to complain about the art, but the more I look at it, the more I like it and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense for the story.

I agree with Kard about Dolan. I always thought it was cool when the hero not only worked with the police, but when the police worked with the hero.

Overall, it was a good issue. I'm sure as soon as Aragones tightens up his game, it will be excellent.

I give it 8 of of 10.