Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates, Review | Tagged: film noir, Francesco Francavilla, The Spirit, will eisner

Death Becomes Central City: The Spirit in The Corpse Makers #1

Published Thu, 26 Jan 2017 15:00:53 -0600

Francesco Francavilla is no stranger to all things weird and horror. His work on Afterlife With Archie is one of my favorite things in the world, and I am thrilled to see him take heed with a new Spirit comic.

We open with a death in Central City. A man is discovered dead by his friend who had only left him for a few moments to get some liquor. The police arrive, suspect no foul play, and take the body away.

However evil is afoot, and the body is taken to an unknown location before an examination can be done. Denny Colt, The Spirit, tried to intervene earlier in the case but was brushed off by his long time friend, Detective Dolan. After all, up until this point no one thought the previous unexplained deaths were suspicious.

Lightly defeated the Spirit has his friend and driver Eb take him back home. Before they leave Eb mentioned that his cousins in town, who may or may not be a criminal trying to turn his life around. For what it's worth, he is, and is recruited into a robbery after seeing Eb. Of course, Eb's cousin is then taken away by the same mysterious people who took the body from earlier, so now the Spirit will have to get involved.

Francavilla is a master at noir storytelling. His slow burn approach to creating a complex and involved story is here, but don't let that deter you. The Spirit is a great classic hero to read. It's frankly pretty hard to mess up a Spirit story (and yea, I liked the Frank Miller movie. I'm aware no one else did.) so Francavilla is in pretty safe comic territory. I'm excited to see this story develop further, and hopefully Eb's cousin is ok.

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