Pundits and Punishment

 

The Spirit #10

And there is another beautiful cover. The guy’s name is Darwyn Cooke, ladies and gentlemen. You should go hunt down everything he’s done, ’cause it’s all that good looking.

This is a bit of an odd issue. It’s basically a combination of murder mystery and media parody. Someone is killing off the political punditocracy, and instead of sitting back, cracking open a cherry coke, and enjoying the culling, the Spirit decides to track down the killer. If you’re idea of a good time is watching a crazed killer hunt down barely-disguised versions of Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Stephen Colbert, Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper, Hannity and Colmes, and more, then you’re gonna have a plenty good time with the fictional schadenfreude.

And yes, it is making a fairly serious, though screamingly unsubtle, point about the rotten state of our TV news media. And though some parts of it are a bit preachy, I particularly liked some bits — there’s a page where a bunch of news anchors blather about their colleagues getting wiped out, and the crawls at the bottom of the screens are about horrible disasters and tragedies — real news shoved aside for the sake of ego-inflated pundits talking about themselves.

But it’s still fun. The mystery was actually excellent — the solution is wildly improbable, but it’s still got the oomph that a good mystery needs.

And the entire comic is jam-packed with Darwyn Cooke’s gorgeous, gorgeous artwork. Why ain’tcha run out to the store to buy it yet?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Didn’t you hear me tell you to go get it?

Comments are closed.