On Behalf of the Spirit

Yeah, so the Spirit is getting the living spit kicked out of it in pretty much every review out there. If you've read any of them, you've heard all the bad stuff already, but what none of them said was this: writer/director (and comic book re-inventor) Frank Miller has tried to distill certain mythic and aesthetic elements of the super-hero comic book into this two-hour movie and he's mainly succeeded. If you specifically love what super-hero comic books have to say and the way that they say it, then you will find a lot to enjoy about this movie.

And while I've got you here, check out Will Eisner's original Spirit comics; there's about a zillion collected editions around now (but this one's a fine place to start). If Jack Kirby gave comic books their energy and power, then it was Eisner who gave them their unique form of expression. It's been said that he invented the language of the comic book the way Orson Welles defined the language of cinema with Citizen Kane. And you better believe that this is the only place you are ever going to see the Spirit movie and Citizen Kane mentioned in the same paragraph.