Spirit of the Shadows #3
Story: Daniel Ziegler and Nick Cagnetti
Script: Daniel Ziegler
Art and Colors: Nick Cangnetti
Every issue of Spirit of the Shadows adds new wrinkles to the tale of Eric Leroux and the various indviduals all circling around him. With each new revelation, old characters and events are seen in new light - sometimes good, sometimes bad. But always interesting.
Resurrection Man
Eric Leroux - the titular Spirit of the Shadows - lives again! Thanks to the witch Helena, Eric is once again among the living. And thanks to the Truth Serum she slipped him, his tongue is pretty loose, too. Eric tells her that he knows this wasn't his first resurrection, having been shot and killed several years ago for not leaving his lady love, Katrina. At first, he knew only darkness, then blinding light, as he found himself in the laboratory of the Mad Doctor Perkins (the very same one who told Helena that he was harmless, knew nothing of resurrection, and was at the mercy of Eric). Escaping from the lab, he found out that Katrina had moved on and married her fiancé. Furthermore, the act of resurrection had left Eric changed - his skin took on a green, almost scaly, tone - and he seemed to have developed bizarre abilties.
Upon learning that Dr. Perkins lied to her, Helena freezes Eric in place with a spell and takes off to confront the "good" doctor. Helena wants the doctor to help her resurrect her sister, Elizabeth. Perkins tries to explain to her the costs - supernatural abilities, "maintenance requirements," insanity, and the like - but Helena is convinced that her witchcraft can combine with his science to remedy those concerns. And nothing bad has ever happened from mixing science and sorcery, right?
In the spirit world, Elizabeth is continuing to gather the pages of Eric's book, just in case he returns. With each page she finds, more of his story is revealed to her... she sees him play Katrina's sonata from the shadows, in order to lure her away from her husband. He then confronts the husband, ultimately hanging the man. He then reveals himself to Katrina, who is unbothered by his physical changes, but tells him that things are different now; she is married. He reveals to her that she was married, as she sees her husband hanged from the rafters...
As Helena and Perkins begin the resurrection process to return Elizabeth to the land of the living, Eric remembers how to teleport and escape from the bubble Helena had placed him in. He races to Perkins's lab and interrupts the resurrection process, causing an explosion. Helena flees, vowing revenge against Eric for yet another reason.
Eric and Perkins look outside to realize that the explosion of energies has caused a convergence of the realms, allowing the spirits of the dead to walk free amongst the living once more. It is amongst these spirits that Helena finds a new ally - Katrina's late father, the man who killed Eric Leroux for the first time!
Strange Bedfellows
This book is nuts, and I love it for it.
It started out straightforward enough - Eric Leroux was killed, appears in the spirit world ("the in-between," if you will), and is given a book of his life story to read in preparation for his final judgement, which will determine if he goes "up" or "down." The book gets ripped apart, and he has to find the pages, so we get his story in pieces. It seems like he's a downright bad dude, kidnapping and killing women who happen to look a lot like his beloved Katrina. But this is just the beginning.
Okay, so maybe that wasn't super straightforward. But it's still a far cry from where we are at now. People who seemed like they were "good" and "harmless" have turned out to be anything but. Eric himself has far more to his story than first expected, and now we have the added wrinkle of the spirits walking the world again.
The revelations about Dr. Perkins in this issue cast his previous appearances in a whole new light, and make me wonder what else he is hiding. Helena's evil continues to grow as her quest to resurrect her sister gets met with more and more complications. And Eric himself continues to reveal more and more surprises as he remembers additional parts of his past. There's a lot going on at any one time in this book, but it's never overwhelming.
The unpredictability of this title is one of its greatest strengths - every time it seems like it's become clear where the story is going, there is another reveal or twist that drives things in a whole other direction. It's taking the kind of big swings with its characters and stories that you can only do in an independent title; you could never pull this many rug-pulls and twists in a Big Two book.
A Spirited Discussion
Daniel Ziegler and Nick Cagnetti continue to work together as a perfect team - the story by both of them is well paced, using the plot devices of the "life book" and things like Truth Serum to pull explanations and flashbacks from the characters that enhance whatever is happening at that moment. They move back and forth between the various cast members and locations effortlessly, giving everyone at least one moment in the spotlight.
Ziegler handles the script, and it gives each character a distinct voice and manner of speaking, so that it is immediately possible to tell who is talking even without the visuals. The dialogue is not overly dense or flowery, but rather is just enough to get the job done.
Cagnetti handles the art and the colors, and having one person tackle both allows for a seamless blend. The pale, sickly green tone of Eric's skin stands out from the flesh tones of those around him and suggests the reason why he wears the black and white outfit that he does. Helena's spell effects have their own look and feel to them from the colors alone, which makes her magic stand out from everything else around her. The flashbacks continue to be the most Kirby-looking parts of the book, with the muted shades compared to the vibrant tones of the present sequences. If this book was nothing else, it would be a visual treat - that it's also a heck of a good story is just icing on the cake.
Worlds Collide
Spirit of the Shadows #3 is another terrific issue, full of new revelations, twists, turns, and the promise of more craziness to come, brought to you by a creative team that know exactly how they want the book to look and feel, and pull it off in style. People are going to get tired of me telling them that they need to check this book out - and since each issue keeps going back to press for more printings, it seems like more people are - but I just love this book. It's unlike anything else on the shelves, with a story that continues to peel back more and more layers with each new reveal, plus art and coloring that is like the best possible fusion of classic Kirby style and modern sensibilities. Each new issue is an absolute highlight of my reading pile for that week, and this issue is no exception.