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I definitely agree with you there. I'm sad to see him leaving The Spirit, but I'm glad to see we'll have more projects coming from him. I'm also interested in Jett Vector from J. Bone as well.

Oh this is bad, very bad. For DC.

I think that my pull list has shrunk so low that it feels like I'm buying as many comics as I was just before the Clone Saga finally burnt me right out.

Fortunately, graphic novels/tpbs are still going strong and I think that the only thing that will change for me will be my purchasing habits on singles.

That said, The Spirit, whose sales weren't healthy to begin with, is likely to going to plummet, will get axed, and no one will be all that surprised.

That really sucks. The Spirit is one of my current favourites, so I'll be really sad to see it go. And unless they manage to get a truly amazing creative team to replace Cooke & Co, I'd rather the title just ended, to be honest.

I have to say, though, I really agree with what he has to say about the state of the industry and the direct market. Even from the perspective of a reader, I understand his frustrations. His lack of desire to work on most Marvel/DC titles is much like my lack of desire to read them.

Honestly, I'd rather see Cooke doing his own stuff, and maybe have DC release the Eisner 'Spirit's in a more affordable format.

I blame each and every one of you.

Yeah, my first reaction was a "Damn, already? That sucks!" too. But reading on I'm more excited about those next projects he mentioned than I'm sad that he's leaving Spirit. He's probably right about the direct market and the graphic novel format can give a creator more freedom anyway. So you're right Brian, not so bad news at all, in retrospect.

I suppose it'd be in bad taste to proclaim a great desire that instead of doing his own thing, Cooke instead heads right over and works on the Indiana Jones license Dark Horse just got?

Sure he'd be creatively limited, but I'd probably like seeing it more than most original things. Damn my sentiment.

It's bad news for those diehard fans of the Spirit. They'll probably have to endure Palmiotti or someone. Ouch.

They should do what Kitchen Sink did, and invite the best creators in comics to do one-off issues... I mean, in 8 issues, we had Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Neil Gaiman, Paul Chadwick, Joe Lansdale, David Lloyd... it was a pretty amazing collection of talent. I can't even remember all of them.

Somebody needs to put that in a trade.

Bad news, but can't says as I blame him.

You look at the monthly sales charts, and it's the same titles in the top 25 over and over, except the events which change by necessity. A book like this doesn't have a chance. Even though this doesn't seem like his main reason for leaving, it's frustrating for someone who follows the lesser-known titles- like you have to be grateful if these things even reach #12.

Yeah, they'd have to give it to, I dunno, JH Williams or Kyle Baker for me to keep buying the title.

But it'll probably be Palmiotti, Gray, and, like, Chaykin. Eh.

While I'll lament Cooke leaving with issue 12, I'm happy for Cooke taking a stance of what I've been harping about for ages; that the superhero market is dying out and not evolving. I love that he's disillusioned with the Direct Market and wants to focus on personal works. This makes me look forward to anything he does from here on in.

I'll most likely stay with the book, depending on who they have as the new creative team, but Cooke's stance is something I think will be a guide for others to look to and go their own ways into more original works.

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall as this went down. I suspect someone at DC (probably Dan DiDio) dropped the ball. Sad for Spirit, sad for Spirit fans but all in all a good move for Cooke. Hopefully he'll return to superheroes at some point because he really does do them so well!

I really liked that fill-in issue they did with the three different creative teams doing Eisner-length stories. Maybe even more than Cooke's work on the book. So I'd love to see them go to that format, even if it would probably sell even worse that it did as a self contained 22 pager. Really, I probaly just want another Kyle Baker Sin City parody.