The Stop Button

Despite the immediate follow-up to last strip, we still don’t get a big Spirit versus Orang scene. Spirit will track Orang to the ends of the Earth (well, Sumatra), but they never have a real, intellectual or physical showdown. Instead, they’re still in slightly different stories; ships passing in the night.

The strip opens with Spirit recounting last week’s conclusion—Orang is apparently dead, at his own hand. No real mention of him killing his creator, which is important since after Orang drags himself out of the river and to a doctor, he’s ready to be released on his own recognizance. His suicide attempt last strip came after he killed his creator, but he’s forgotten that guilt. And no one’s looking for the mad scientist.

Or at least not Commissioner Dolan, who goes to the doctor’s to see the talking ape. Dolan can’t come up with a reason to hold Orang, so instead, he offers him a place to crash while Dolan tries to find a law Orang’s existence violates.

Bored of waiting and seeing an opportunity after Ellen Dolan comes in and passes out at the sight of him, Orang kidnaps her and heads back to the jungle to rule among the lower apes.

All of these events occur in the first four pages of the strip (including the splash page); the remainder is the Spirit tracking Ellen and Orang through the Sumatran jungle and getting involved in the politics of Orang’s found tribe. Now, those politics involve fights to the death and the Spirit tied to a stake, but they’re just political squabbles. Spirit and Ellen are in a riff on a Tarzan story, complete with swinging on vines and (unlikely) punch outs with orangutans.

Then the finale—weeks and weeks after the start of the strip—gives Ellen and Spirit their first private moment (despite implying, you know, weeks and weeks of them).

Orang remains a very sympathetic villain and shirtless Spirit hacking through the jungle is definitely a vibe, so it all works out quite well. It’s just too bad Orang and Spirit never got to talk philosophy.