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June 22, 2005
Wrath of the Spectre: Weird Adventure Comics!
I loved DC’s characters from the 70s that blended horror and heroes together in a new genre. These characters included Swamp Thing, Phantom Stranger, Deadman, and the Spectre. DC has recently released Wrath of the Spectre
As the foreword states, the editor, Joe Orlando, may have been inspired to create a vengeful Spectre series due to a recent mugging. Michael Fleisher had been Orlando’s assistant and was given the assignment to bring the Spectre back in a regular series. While the Spectre had been created in the 1940s, had joined the early Justice Society, in later years he had languished as a character. There was a 60s series that featured some good issues by Neal Adams and Murphy Anderson, but writers had difficulty with the character, making him more of a superhero one moment, and a supernatural character the next. Fleisher and Orlando decided to make each Spectre story a self-contained vignette (like the Phantom Stranger stories) about punishing criminals in various ways. Lt. Jim Corrigan is the Spectre’s human host, but he’s dead and exists for no other purpose than to help the Spectre seek out criminals. (They don’t recap the Spectre’s origin in any of these tales, which is amazing, as they definitely would today.) Corrigan usually traces the criminals down to their lair and unleashes the fury of the Spectre upon them. This is the fun part, where you see the Spectre turn criminals into glass, dummies, skeletons, etc. In one scene he uses a pair of giant scissors to chop a guy in half. It’s all bloodless and PG-rated but it’s a riot. The writing is pretty hokey. There is an ongoing subplot about a woman named Gwendolyn, who is attracted to Corrigan even though she knows his secret: “Jim! I don’t care that you’re a ghost! I want you to marry me!” Corrigan replies: “Oh, that’s a great idea! Nothing I’d rather hear than the pitter patter of little zombies running around the house!”
If you’ve only read the Spectre during the past two decades, you’ll find these stories a bit unsettling. The Spectre doesn’t exercise god-like powers (like he did in Crisis or Swamp Thing) other than transforming people into inanimate objects. There’s one exceptionally good story here about Jim Corrigan’s role as the Spectre and his relationship with “The Voice”—God, why couldn’t they say that? Corrigan asks the Voice to let him become human so he can marry Gwendolyn in a special two part tale.
What makes this collection worth buying to me is the great artwork by Jim Aparo. In the 1970s his artwork was at its peak when he illustrated the Spectre, Phantom Stranger, and the Brave and the Bold. Aparo artwork was consistently at high quality because he did the penciling, inking, and even the lettering. He seemed to use some of the same techniques as Neal Adams (using zip-a-tone), and he was equally as great at drawing romance, horror, and mystery stories. I’d love to see the Phantom Stranger stuff collected in a similar format, especially the ones done by Aparo and Len Wein. Nuff said.
