The Stop Button

It’s another slighter strip, with the Spirit rescuing a damsel in distress from her ex (the titular Ogre Goran), a psychopath who’s just escaped prison.

The opening is the prison break and it’s relatively solid business. The line work is wanting this strip, but the moody long shots of the action are still effective. The action shifts to the damsel, Mary, discussing Ogre’s prison break with her husband. Since it’s a comic strip, Ogre appears immediately following her statement, shooting her husband dead on the spot and ready to kidnap her. Luckily, Mary dowses him in alcohol and sets him (and the apartment) on fire.

Now, we know Ogre gets away because he gets in the shower and turns on the cold water. Also, there’s a panel (maybe the least discernible in the series to date) of Ogre getting away.

Fast forward a few days to Ebony trying to get the Spirit interested in the case. After initially discounting Ebony’s thoughts on Ogre’s survival (Spirit thought the shower was only running because someone wanted a bath), the Spirit agrees with Ebony’s conclusions—Ogre’s alive!

The Spirit tries to find Mary, only to learn she’s gone away with a man entirely wrapped in bandages. Ogre, post-burns. Thanks to Commissioner Dolan giving him information about Ogre’s old hideouts, Spirit heads (by boat) to an abandoned lighthouse where Ogre’s got to be holding Mary. Dolan heads to the lighthouse, too, wanting to beat the Spirit to the punch.

Spirit’s only cleared his “name” of a murder charge in last week’s strip, so Dolan competing with him doesn’t make much sense. It also doesn’t make sense how Spirit gets to the lighthouse by boat, but then his boat disappears and he can’t take it back to shore at the end of the strip.

Also nonsensical is Ogre having a new wife, who can—presumably, more appropriately—beat up Mary.

We don’t even get to see Spirit and Ogre’s fisticuffs.

Not a lot of pay-off in the strip, though it’s nice to see Ebony developing as a sidekick.

It’s also the dottiest the art’s been in ages. The line work gains slide back here.