The Spectre, part one.
Everyone has their favorite comic book character: Batman, Superman, Spider-Man. Some people even enjoy a collection of characters, grouping them as their favorites: one of the multiple incarnations of the X-Men, the original Fantastic Four1 or maybe the Justice Society of America. Those who do not read comics, but have watched the television shows or movies, have a favorite based on those. This is about my favorite character: The Spectre. Now, I am no Alan Kistler2, but I do feel myself educated in this character to the point where I could write a coherent piece about him. I will make the attempt, within here, to explain the various incarnations of The Spectre, as well as the various appearances outside of his main series, and his involvement in the various Crises that DC comics has gone through.
Let’s start this off with one very important question:
Who/what IS The Spectre?
Well, the character of The Spectre was created back in 1940 by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily. Siegel, as anyone who reads comics knows, is one of the co-creators of DC’s famous primary-colored superhero Superman. The Spectre first appeared in More Fun Comics #523, a comic series which featured other greats like Hourman and Dr. Fate.
The Spectre has generally been seen as an avenger, like all costumed heroes at the time of the Golden Age, but he was an avenger from “beyond the grave”. The Spectre was a near-omnipotent being who existed solely to remove evil from the world (I’ll elaborate upon this more within a deeper discussion of The Spectre’s Golden Age) and was a ghost.
Of course, this is probably not the kind of thing you were wanting, so let’s review things themselves.
The Golden Age
The Spectre first appeared, as I said, in More Fun Comics #52. However, he did not appear as “The Spectre”. He appeared, instead, as Jim Corrigan, the man who would be the “secret identity” of The Spectre—since, as it’s known, all Superheroes have to have a secret identity.
Jim Corrigan was a detective from a typical Golden Age generic city (they called it “Gateway City”). He was also engaged to a woman named Clarice Winston, your typical woman of the time. After receiving a tip from his stoolie—a man named Louis Snipe—with regards to gangster “Gats” Benson, Corrigan thought it best to bust up what they were doing (he also felt it would be beneficial, given that this situation would give him a promotion, which would help whenever he and Clarice finally married). Of course, this didn’t work out the way he had planned, and “Gats” knocked Corrigan out and put him a barrel of wet cement, sealed it, and tossed the barrel into the nearby water.
Pretty gruesome, eh?
But that didn’t stop Corrigan. Well, at least, a Voice4 decided Corrigan wasn’t done. The Voice decided that Jim was going to fight crime, and rid the world of evil. And that he did. His spirit rose up from the barrel, and Jim went to do battle with “Gats” and his posse—who had, at this point, kidnapped Clarice following her attempts to search for Jim. Jim then defeated the people, and freed his woman.
Discovering that he’s a ghost, Corrigan decides to call of the engagement (he says, actually, “I have simply ceased to care.” He’s a real class act, there.) and then makes his outfit to fight crime in (the white face and green cape/speedo/fairy boots/etc.) as well as doubling as a detective in his city.
Following that, which was needlessly long, and I apologize for that, The Spectre and Jim are involved with all sorts of things. The Spectre, who is still Jim, is caught up in various crimes, and Jim’s superior demands that Jim be the one to bring the Spectre to justice. Which is a bit ridiculous, considering all the times that Jim says he “got away” in the More Fun Comics. One would think a competent boss would remove Corrigan from that—but that would ruin the series.
Aside from the dealings with the Earthly police, The Spectre also deals with various supernatural and occult people. And he’s given an item called “The Ring of Fate” to deal with anyone who ends up a bit too strong for him to handle on his own. This works fine, and is a definite use of deus ex machina as it appears at the VERY moment it’s needed—almost to the point where it was just ridiculous.
Later on, they decided to lighten the mood of the rather dark series (“Dark” in the sense of mystical powers being used to commit drawn out killings of people) by introducing Percival Popp, The Super Cop, and turning Jim and The Spectre into near sidekicks to this bumbling excuse of a character. But, of course, comics were geared far more towards children.
But that’s not all The Spectre did. The Spectre, along with several others, was one of the founding members of the Justice Society of America, and was featured in several issues of All-Star Comics during that time. Of course, after a while, people grew tired of The Spectre, Percival, and everything else. He then faded away for a few years, only to come back with a vengeance (I meant to say that).
The Silver Age
The Silver Age of comics brought a whole new breed of people: Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, a new Bruce Wayne, Kal-El, and all sorts of other people. It also featured the return of “The Astral Avenger”, better known to most people as The Spectre.
The Spectre returned with better art and a much more power. Instead of things like The Ring of Fate to help him out, he had his near-omnipotence and mystical powers to bail him out. Of course, in an effort to balance out The Spectre with the modern villains, The Spectre became an “ectoplasmic” being. Ectoplasm being that stuff that apparently ghosts are made of. As The Spectre was now a being of a defined type (ectoplasm) and was a mystical superhero, he encountered much more mystical and occult villains. The kind of villains that happened to have ONE spell that he couldn’t get out of, kind of like how Superman’s villains either ALL have Kryptonite, or they are all magic-oriented.
The Spectre also had unusual stipulations on his powers. He could do almost anything—provided his foe’s power came from the proper mystical sources, elsewise he would have to “catch [him] in the act” of using his powers to remove them. The idea is rather silly, especially considering that within many issues of this run, The Spectre was barely there.
It’s the Silver Age, they can get away with this kind of stuff.
This was a rather short series, there were only ten issues, and there were a few “Showcase” comics, but I haven’t read those. However, within the series itself, there didn’t seem to be a large placement upon The Spectre himself. Issue #3, for example, dealt more with Wildcat and the foe of the issue than with The Spectre—who didn’t even appear until the last few pages.
The Silver Age also gave the impression that The Spectre was a separate entity from Jim Corrigan. By that I mean, while Corrigan was “the human form” of The Spectre, they conversed as though they were two completely different entities. Corrigan would have conversations with a physically separate form of The Spectre. Of course, I only bring this up as it was implied within the Golden Age that The Spectre and Jim Corrigan were the same person, and this sort of change was rather large. They had even go so far as to The Spectre and Jim have conversations as Jim lays in his bead and The Spectre sits, hovering above it attempting to figure out a case.
Of course, this isn’t the only time the congruency of The Spectre and Jim Corrigan is called into play.
[continued in part two]
- As of the writing of this article, Storm and Black Panther have temporarily replaced Sue and Richard Reed as members of the Fantastic Four. I am not not exactly well-versed in Marvel comics, so I cannot give the exist issues these events were determined in. [↩]
- http://alankistler.squarespace.com/ – Alan’s own website, filled with all of his stuffy that is like what I’m trying to do, only infinitely better. [↩]
- Originally, The Spectre was greyish, with a blue cape and such, as seen in the image I linked to within the essay. However, it was later changed to be white/green, and all previous issues were altered to reflect the change. [↩]
- “The Voice” is also considered an aspect of “The Presence”. “The Presence” is the general term DC has given to their concept of God. [↩]
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