The Stop Button

This strip’s an incredibly (and intentionally) didactic tale. A young prisoner is about to be paroled and plans on joining the Slim Pickens gang. But just before his parole, wouldn’t you know it, he’s got a new cellmate… Slim Pickens.

Pickens regrets his successful life of crime. To convince the kid crime doesn’t pay, he gives his life story, starting with robbing a grocery warehouse and selling the produce on the street. That robbery includes killing the grocery store owner (who Slim worked for), which proves rather crucial later in Slim’s tale.

Then we get a recounting of Slim’s rise to power. Whenever he finds someone in his way, he just knocks them off and keeps knocking them off until he’s a-number one. Commissioner Dolan, the Mayor, and the Spirit are the only people he can’t bribe or kill.

When the Spirit finally comes knocking, looking for evidence to lock up Slim, everything starts going wrong. Not for the reader, who gets the treat of Spirit taking out Slim’s entire office of thugs in a beautifully rendered sequence. This strip’s got a bit too much of the dotty inks (with some very nice line work, too), but that page where the Spirit two-fists his way through the gangsters is sublime.

Minus some occasional Spirit observations, the strip sticks with Slim. We don’t follow the Spirit chasing him, but Slim running from the Spirit. He finds himself in an utterly contrived situation, and it convinces him he should’ve just stayed straight and not become a crook.

After Slim finishes telling his story, the postscript drives home the “crime doesn’t pay” message, just in case any readers missed it the other three times.

It’s a decent enough strip. The didacticism isn’t a surprise (or even particularly cloying) and the way Eisner constructs the narrative, the various reveals work well enough.

The dotty inking hurts some pages worse than others, but never enough to drag it down.

Spirit’s found a very reasonable minimum level. Even when the story’s a little simple, there’s always enough creativity in the art—if not the narrative—to keep things running well enough.