DC COMICS
WRITER: Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier
ARTIST: Paul Smith
COVER: Bruce Timm

A movie star is murdered on the set of a movie and the Spirit must find the killer from a cast of thousands of suspects.

This is largely a comedy tale as the Spirit bumps into the various oddballs of tinsel town, many of whom are so jaded they don't even recognise him-- or see anything unusual about the fact that he is wearing a mask. The Spirit swiftly discovers that the victim was no saint and that a large number of people had reason to see him killed. Of course, every good mystery-fan knows that when you have too many suspects in a murder, then it is likely that they are all red herrings and that the killing will be something completely unrelated to them.

That said, it is an amusing story with interesting characters and some light-hearted action. Even the art owes more to MAD man Wally Wood than to the Spirit's creator, Will Eisner. It is so rare to see DC Comics do a comedy these days that this issue really stands out.

The only major complaint about this issue is that the hero is again left looking rather foolish. There have been too many comedy-oriented SPIRIT stories, coming one after another. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (do today's readers even know what a broken record sounds like?), THE SPIRIT comic and the title character may soon be seen as nothing more than a comedy act. That would be a great shame as the original SPIRIT could be quite gritty and realistic-- without resorting to acting like the GODDAM Batman.

This issue gets four stars out of five.