Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box17): Another of the done-in-one titles that DC was publishing at the time (the superb Palmiotti / Grey JONAH HEX being the other), the only fault in this issue being that not only did the team of Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith have the unenviable task of following Darwyn Cooke's run on the title but that all were working under the shadow of Will Eisner's long and incalculably innovative pen.

As much as I love The Spirit and his world, I find it to be, in the hands of anyone other than Eisner, lacking: Cooke did an admirable job, as did Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith – though the less said about Frank Miller's monstrosity of a film version (that being said, I'd argue that, had Miller tried him in comics (though maybe not the Miller of the mid-late naughties), it would've been a different story: film is clearly not Miller's medium, something I think (and hope) he's come to recognize) the better.

The missing piece in those non-Eisnerian hands? Eisner himself and that spirit (yeah yeah) of innovation: it's as much a part of The Spirit's character as the cape and cowl are to Batman, the radioactive spider to Spidey, and the S-symbol to Superman: to simply tell stories, no matter how enjoyable and fun, isn't enough to make the character resonate. Nonetheless, this issue – and the whole of the DC series – was, if not resonant, then at least both enjoyable AND fun.