![]() ![]() ![]() In one story the Spectre wipes out Vlatava, a fictional country torn by civil war, because everyone there has blood on their hands. Ostrander and Mandrake do an amazing job, though sometimes they fail the premise. 2, the Spectre has slowly begun a path toward redemption that would occupy much of the series. And that the Spectre isn’t his ghost but an angel of judgment bound to him (details of why and how came later in the series), its anger truly uncontrollable: when a dying woman begs Jim to stay with her, he has to hunt down the killer instead. Why would God require Corrigan walk the Earth until evil is erased? Why target murderous hoodlums rather than war? Pollution? Racism? It turns out Corrigan’s mission wasn’t simply to destroy it, but to understand it, and so understand his own angry, frustrated soul. The greatest strength of the first two volumes is that they take a hard look at the Spectre concept. The creators do a remarkable job combining elements of every previous run into something new. I’ve read the first two TPBs, Crimes and Judgments and Wrath of God and I wish more was out. Then came the John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake series of the 1990s, and this did click. Like a lot of Moench’s work, it didn’t click with me. ![]() The Spectre next had a three-issue run in the anthology series Ghosts, then got his own book again, scripted by Doug Moench, in 1987 (cover by Michael Kaluta, all rights with current holder) In this series the Spectre had greatly reduced powers, but still carried out his mission of vengeance, with Corrigan frequently locking horns with the Spectre over the Ghostly Guardians methods. When the Fleisher run was reprinted years later in Wrath of the Spectre, including the unpublished three, editor Joe Orlando said he’d heard second-hand that a lot of comics creators hated the series, hated the Spectre’s brutal execution MO, and that this played into the cancellation. Adventure‘s letter column said the sales had dropped after the first few issues. In terms of sales, however, the series was not a success: after ten issues of Adventure Comics Aquaman came in and replaced it, even though DC had three Fleisher-written stories that hadn’t come out yet. The concept of the Spectre as a brutal avenging angel (plus a couple of appearances in TV’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold)is the one every comics writer using the character has worked with ever since. My first post on DC’s Spectre ran up through Michael Fleisher’s 1970s series, which defined the Spectre in a way no previous series had done (I thought I’d have Part Two up sooner, but no). ![]()
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