Batman was created in 1939 as a Superman knock-off by artist Bob Kane. The character would go on to become one of pop culture's most enduring; Batman has appeared in comic books on a monthly basis ever since his debut and, in the meantime, has gone on to conquer every other medium. His fame and influence long ago eclipsed that of Kane, an artist who's more famous for having created Batman than for his actual artwork.
The Spirit was created by Eisner in 1940, and was a rather generic crime-fighter whose only real overlap with the world of superheroes was the domino mask he wore. Peel that off, and Denny Colt was your typical policeman/private eye type wearing a tie and fedora and solving crimes with his head and fists.
Outside the insular world of comics, the Spirit is pretty much unknown, and is far more famous for being created by Eisner than for any of his own exploits (in fact, the Spirit's adventures may be the only ones that are more well-known for the way the artist laid them out than for what they actually were).
Eisner, of course, would go on to invent the American graphic novel, write the first aesthetic study of comics and create one of the largest and most influential bodies of work of any American during his 60 straight years in the field. He died just last year at age 87, with graphic novel The Plot awaiting release and more new work still on his drawing board.
Those meeting the Spirit for the first time here won't get to know him very well. Occasional Batman writer Jeph Loeb fits the two characters' worlds together in a seamless if obvious way (all of their villains team up to kill their respective police commissioner friends, so the Spirit and Bats team up to save the day). But since the Bat characters are all so much better known, giving them equal panel-time to the Spirit characters seems to short-change the latter; readers are bound to get more out of a brief Joker appearance than a brief Octopus appearance.
The art comes courtesy of Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone, who will be making DC's new Spirit series, and it's what makes the book worth reading. Rather than bothering with an Eisner impression, Cooke sticks to his own style, and he's a peerless artist. Good as Batman/The Spirit is, though, it can't help but amount to a sad reminder that without Eisner, the Spirit's just another masked crime fighter.
Dead Sonja, She-Zombie With a Sword No. 1
Blatant Comics
Writer Rob Potchak Jr. and publisher Blatant Comics get plenty of points for marketing genius, coming up with one of the best and most inspired titles for a comic book this year, and one that pretty much sums up the current state of the industry's mainstream. But then they lose those points and more for delivering a dreadfully unfunny and occasionally even shockingly offensive parody story.
The book takes zombie comics and barbarian comics, the two most popular non-superhero genres of the moment, and squishes them together into a book whose title is a clever rhyming riff on Red Sonja, whose current publishers no doubt wish they had thought of making a book by this title first.
But much like the already forgotten movie Snakes on a Plane, the title is the best part of the experience, and once you get past that, it's all downhill.