Jenny Sparks

It’s a day that starts like any other for the title character:  She wakes up in the bed of a one-night stand, smokes a cigarette, and then deals with Batman – who’s standing right there – regarding the superhero problem he’s brought her.  You see, years ago Jenny made a deal with the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel to help keep superheroes in line in these uncertain times and one of them has just broke bad.  Captain Atom has finally come unhinged and now believes that the incredible power at his command makes him a god.  So he does what any aspiring deity does and holes up in a dive bar with some hostages, and starts making demands.  This should be no problem for the Spirit of the 20th Century to sort out, right?  Except, didn’t she die at the end of that?  What the hell’s she doing here now?

Jenny Sparks was originally created in the pages of “Stormwatch” by Warren Ellis and Tom Raney and then she went on to lead a team that, for a brief moment in the early 00’s, changed all the rules.  She was gone for over two decades before writer Tom King and artist Jeff Spokes brought her back for this miniseries.  Why?  Well, it looks like King had this general idea about how the spirit of the 20th century is still hanging over into this one, along with some ideas about how a god and his subjects might interact, decided to mash them together and what we got here is something of a confused mess.  There’s lots of high-minded talk going on, but it never coalesces into anything compelling, let alone worthy of the universe-destroying drama at the end of all this.

At least Spokes does a great job bringing this all to life on the page.  He’s got an appealingly fluid style that works really well for human drama as well as superhero action, and the mash-up of the two that we see here.  It’s always enough to keep the story visually interesting, even when King has his characters yammering on about stuff that’s not.  I mean, it’s not all annoying, as there is the occasional interesting bit such as when we see Jenny deal with one of the scumbags responsible for the 2008 financial crisis.  Yet it’s not enough to make me think that bringing the Spirit of the 20th Century back was as good an idea as the writer thought it was.