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The Modern Age, Part 2

This part, being the longest of the series by at least 30 issues, and my personal favorite, is going to be a bit longer than the others.

John Ostrander took up the mantle of writing The Spectre in 1991.

The first issue sets the tone for the entire series. Jim Corrigan pays a visit to Louis Snipe (you remember Louis, from the Golden Age?) he tells Louis that he’s “tired”, that he just wants to stop, and get the eternal peace he so desperately wants. Even after Louis dies, he wonders why he isn’t allowed peace.

While visiting Louis, Jim runs across a woman named Amy Beiterman, who worked with patients in the hospital. After talking a bit with Jim, she suddenly finds him outside of the building—they were several floors up, and in the midst of gunfire. Of course, she also noticed the bullets go right though him and she starts freaking out. Around the same time, Jim goes and meets up with her, and she resumes freaking out after seeing him turn into The Spectre before then.

Amy and Jim slowly but surely fall in love, Jim using Amy to anchor himself into the real world, as he tries to better understand his mission and eventually try to achieve his peace. Amy also has a cop friend named Nate Kane who says “Balzac” and is generally afraid of sick people.

But things like this can’t last. It’s not the nature of the world, nor the nature of comic books.

While all this is going on, we learn that the various characters introduced in the 80′s run (Kimmie, the assistants in the psychic detective agency, and even the separation of Corrigan and The Spectre) were simply created by Madame Xanadu using power that she had demanded from The Spectre. It was also during this little bit that Xanadu essentially stole all of The Spectre from Corrigan, and used it for herself

She proceeded go through and punish various men until Jim told her that The Spectre wasn’t a neutral force. The Spectre was angry. He was wrath. He had to be fought. Xanadu eventually returned The Spectre to Jim, and he returned to fill power.

Within the same arc that Amy was introduced, Ostrander introduced a villain named “The Reaver”, who would kill women with HIV or AIDS. A very specific thing. Why is this important? Amy has HIV. As The Spectre learns of this, he places Amy “under his protection”. But Madame Xanadu says Amy will die alone.

Also introduced is Azmodus, a shadow-feeding villain that takes pleasure in ruining Spectre’s shit.

Eventually, The Reaver finds Amy, and we learn that Amy is the one who gave Reaver AIDS. Following beating the hell out of Nate, who was also protecting Amy, Reaver hunts down and eventually beats Amy near-to-death. As she lays dying in an ally, Nate goes up to her, having regained himself, and freaks out—he can’t touch sick people. The Spectre, distraught but also having his mission, goes off and finds The Reaver.

Madame Xanadu approached the dying Amy, saying, essentially, that they couldn’t prevent her from dying, but they will prevent her from dying ALONE.

After Amy dies, Nate hunts down The Reaver and kills him just before The Spectre allows him to see the error of his ways.

It goes from there.

Following Amy’s death, The Spectre begins to have doubts in his mission, and we’re introduced (or re-introduced, if you will) to Father Richard Craemer. Craemer was featured in Ostrander’s run of the Suicide Squad, and was essentially a Catholic priest who didn’t preach the teachings of Cathol. Of course, Craemer also unintentionally caused the destruction of the nation Valtava following his first encounter with The Spectre.

Of course, the destruction of a whole nation needs explaining. The Spectre went to the nation, following a confession with Craemer, and found that the entire nation was filled with hate and sin to the point that the soil itself was saturated with it. Seeing no other alternative, The Spectre killed everyone and everything, setting the country on fire. To punish the leaders of the factions, who both wanted the land for themselves, The Spectre forced them to live on this ruined and dead ground.

Needless to say, this didn’t go down too well. The Phantom Stranger showed up, and was rather pissed off by what Craemer did, albeit inadvertently. But The Stranger was no … stranger … to The Spectre, and decided that the best thing to do was to gather up a group of the strongest mystics out there. The group was: Etrigan (the doggerel-speaking demon housed inside of Jason Blood), Zatanna (the magician lady who says stuff backwards¹ ), The Phantom Stranger himself, Dr. Fate (or rather, one of the people who is supposed to be Fate), and Madame Xanadu. Though Xanadu was not really thrilled with the idea of working with the Stranger. They were going to call upon John Constantine as well, but Constantine was busy being unconscious in his own puke.

But anyway, they go and try to convince Spectre not to do anything, but The Stranger is mildly certain that Heaven will not allow The Spectre to actually destroy all of the Earth. Despite his own thoughts, he has created this team and they make an attempt on the Spectre just in case. However, along the way, we’re reintroduced to Eclipso.

Eclipso, we learn, was the ORIGINAL spirit of vengeance, and was replaced by The Spectre after Eclipso went a bit bonkers. Because of this, Eclipso views The Spectre as a “usurper” to his power, and seeks to beat the ever-loving-shit out of Spectre when he can get a chance. The two battled, and the Stranger’s team was there occasionally attempting to fight Eclipso and The Spectre. But somehow or another, Eclipso merged with The Spectre, and wound up becoming the dominating force behind it.

Eventually, however, Jim regained control of the Spectre, and Eclipso was banished into a skull-shaped rock up in the orbit of the earth.

The Archangel Michael appeared shortly after the end of the battle, and informed everyone that, no, Heaven wouldn’t let The Spectre blow everything up. And The Stranger pointed out that he was not omniscient and everything went as close to normal as it could be with one major exception—the Spectre now understood his mission.

Prior to this battle, The Spectre believed that his mission was just to confront and defeat evil. But following this, he learned that his mission was to confront and understand evil, so that he may come to understand the evil within himself and within others. It took him 50 years, but Jim finally figured out what he was sent back to do.

Of course, that didn’t stop the [U.S.] Government from freaking out. And with just cause—giant guy with near unlimited power shows up, you wanna stop it. So they send a fellow out to get information on The Spectre, his weaknesses, his friends, anything they can. Here we meet up with the old Justice Society of America: Carter Hall, Jay Garrick, and others. It’s through this that we learn the only thing The Spectre is weak against is cocaine—err, The Spear of Destiny². The Spear was last in possession by Adolf Hitler during World War II, we discover, and it seemed to be the only thing around that even touched The Spectre.

So, they get a hold of The Spear and send the only person they can think of who stands a chance against The Spectre: Superman. But there’s one problem—Hitler’s hate and spirit were transferred into the Spear through magic, and anyone sensitive to magic will be taken over by Hitler in a manner of speaking. As it’s been established, Superman is a massive wuss when it comes to magic, so it he gets taken over rather quickly.

Of course, while this goes on, The Spectre is in Asia, doing battle with a water elemental who was sent from the Earth Spirit—Gaea—in an effort to help cleanse herself. The Spectre winds up going down into the spiritual center of the earth, and taking with the spirit to better understand everything.

But Super-Hitler can’t allow for giant water elementals to blowing up big businesses, so he decides to take matters into his own spear (this isn’t making any sense) and lashes out against the aspect of Gaea, which prompts The Spectre to freak out and go after Superman. The two fight, and The Spectre is wounded and falls back. They also eventually come to understand the Spectre has recanted his stance of “Fuck the Earth”. Then they eventually get the spear thrown into the big rock that houses Eclipso and all is well.

Sort of.

All while this has been going on Azmodus has been preparing for a big fuck-all battle with The Spectre, in an effort to determine just who is the best man. Along the way, we learn bits about The Spectre’s past.

Following Eclipso’s removal as the spirit of vengeance, and Spectre’s placement, the Spectre became a prominent force in Judeo-Christian myth/history³ Not only was The Spectre the force who unleashed the ten plagues upon Egypt (or Ægypt, as it’s spelled within the text), but also was the force that split the waters of the Red Sea and casted judgment down on the ancient world.

That is, until Jesus showed up. Once Jesus showed up, the rules changed. Jesus, being essentially forgiveness in material form, outright contradicted The Spectre, and The Spectre was sent into Limbo. Once Jesus was crucified, The Spectre said “Fuck this” and burned out of Limbo. That is, until Michael said, “You cannot walk the earth without being tied for a human host.”

The Spectre wouldn’t have it, but Michael didn’t care, and decided to get himself a host for The Spectre anyway. But he changed his form, and became a Hindu avatar, and found the spirit of a man who was demanding the justice of God. The way he did so was rather reminiscent of Jim’s as presented in the earlier issues of the run. This man became The Spectre, and in doing so broke the bond of destiny that he held with his family and forced them all to go through various reincarnations.

The man was eventually seduced by a demon, and renounced being The Spectre. In doing so, the demon and he bonded and became Azmodus, and fed on the shadows.

There were also numerous other Spectres before Jim, from numerous different religions.

But, the Spectre/Azmodus fight, yeah? So, here’s how it goes. The Spectre discovers that he is chained spiritually to Clarice, whom he left a part of himself with so that she would be brought back to life and stay alive for a long time. Clarice had a son, who had a granddaughter that bears a striking resemblance to her. In an effort to reunite with Clarice, he has Clarissa (the granddaughter) trade souls with Clarice. But that doesn’t work out too well, and Clarissa uses Clarice’s body and Azmodus’ help to incriminate Clarice.

The whole thing is a bit convoluted in attempting to explain it. It’s best to read it.

Eventually, Azmodus surfaces, and The Spectre and he duke it out in Hell. The Spectre gets power fed to him, but it doesn’t work because Azmodus has a direct feed to Spectre’s power through the body of Clarice. The two fight and Azmodus discovers that Clarice is actually a reincarnation of his beloved wife. Horrified by what he’s put his own love through, he repents what he’s done and The Spectre separates the two of them.

Not too long after this, The Haunting of America takes place. Because this storyline was obnoxiously long, I’m going to give this as quick of a summary as I can.

The founding fathers of the United States created a mythical “America”. This symbol was protected using The Talisman of America, which was broken up into a bunch of pieces over the years. “America” has been symbolized as Uncle Sam and various other things that become Uncle Sam.

Everyone is attempting to gather all the pieces of this thing, in an effort to control America and rebuild it in their image.

In this arc is one of the greatest pieces. Following a collection of people beating a homosexual couple severely, The Spectre dishes out a weak punishment, but is met with jeers from both sides. Those who did the beating said they were doing the work of God, so The Spectre should side with them. Those who were beat objected to how little vengeance was actually done. Jim makes his opinions known on the matter, which are easily suggestive of his living in the early decades.

Corrigan and Nate have a minor conversation regarding this, which prompts him to visit Craemer, who has been removed from the Catholic church by this point, and questions what he should do. Craemer asks “What if I were gay?” and Jim freaks out and goes up to heaven.

He meets up with Michael and asks “Are there homosexuals in heaven?”

Michael gives him a “Are you serious?” look and informs him that homosexuality is essentially irrelevant in heaven, because they don’t have bodies, and homosexuality is an aspect of the body. The Spectre gives a rundown of the situation and Michael tells him that humanity should keep to humanity and let God deal with that stuff.

Then along the way, Final Night happens. Final Night was when the sun was being destroyed by a Sun Eater and Hal Jordan sacrificed himself in order to save it. But, before that all happened, The Spectre attempted to see what the problem was and to see if it was with The Earth itself.

The Spectre attached himself to Gaea, and eventually felt the planet. The result left him overwhelmed and drained. Needing a place to rest to restore himself, he took refuge in Nate Kane, who was a little apprehensive about it.

Following this, Ostrander decided to go an interesting route, and bring back a Golden-Age superhero, almost.

Michael Holt, a rather intelligent man who had degrees in just about everything, was standing on a bridge when he was approached by some thugs. The Spectre, drawn to the event—and Michael—specifically made due with the thugs and talked with Holt. We learn that Holt was considering suicide following the death of his wife. The Spectre, not wanting this man to kill himself (“self-murder is still murder”). Told Holt the story of Terry Sloan—Mr. Terrific.

Michael was moved by the story of Terrific—a man who wanted to teach rough-living children the importance of things like “Fair Play”, and who died at the hands of both his friend and a ghost known as The Spirit King.

Just a few pages later, we’re introduced to a man in sunglasses, uttering the words “Call me Mr. Terrific. Because that’s what I am.” Michael also puts his own life on the line to help a few kids, if they kill a single person, his life for theirs.

However, to make an already long story a bit shorter:

The whole mess is cleared up whenever enough of the pieces are brought together, and several various people gather and using various spiritual energies, conjure up a new spirit of America, combined of the hopes and dreams of all of the people gathered and those represented by them.

While resting, Jim’s subconscious eventually leaked out and into Nate’s dreams, and Nate learned of a murder that Jim believed he had committed. And another murder that Jim believe he was framed for. Nate attempted to investigate these without Jim’s knowledge, but Jim eventually found out and spilled the beans about the whole ordeal.

Jim was investigating a murder of a woman’s husband, but wound up sleeping with the woman. Along the way, he was also seduced by her daughter (yeah, I know). The woman ended up killed, and they pinned the murder on Jim. Jim believed he was framed and set out to try to prove he was. We’re then shown memories of Jim shooting the daughter, and believing himself to have killed her.

Jim and Nate go through, attempting to figure this out, and realize that the daughter—who he thought he killed—is, in fact, still alive. So they go to her, in an attempt to discern the truth from Jim’s memories. As it turns out, Jim didn’t kill the woman. The woman was killed by the daughter and she framed Jim—as he suspected. The Spectre judged the daughter, and found that he would not punish her, as she’d been repenting and genuinely wanted forgiveness.

The Spectre, following all of this, went to Heaven to see if he was worthy enough to remain in his mission. He felt that he could not keep going with this if he had such a strong desire to kill a woman. But, as he got to the gates, he realized that Michael was gone and Heaven was empty. God was missing.

The Spectre, desperate to find God, searched through all the pantheon of all the Gods. Now, this gets a bit “rude” to some. Essentially, The Spectre goes to every pantheon demanding to see God. The Creator. To which a deity responds “Well, there’s…” and mentions the creator of that belief. The Spectre generally responds with “No, I mean GOD. The one-above-all.” and they say “Oh…no idea who that is” and he leaves.

The DC universe has been essentially monotheistic for years. It’s obvious from the Crisis on Infinite Earths that is the case. The beginning of the universe is seen with a giant hand holding all of Creation. That The Spectre, a direct aspect of The Presence, believes there to be only one God is not at all surprising. Ostrander went about this in the best possible way, I feel. But back to the story itself.

Having not yet found anything, he goes to The Source and sees a message written in fire which tells him to “look within”. Unsure what that means, The Spectre goes into the Earth and asks Gaea if she’s seen God. Gaea tells him that was granted life (etc.) by The Sun—Sol, and also tells The Spectre that Man is ruining her with his machines and poisons. The Spectre flips out, but is far too concerned with seeking God at the moment

He finds Craemer, and tells him of this, and Craemer suggests that Jim split himself from the Spectre just enough that the two can see into each other. “Within”.

They do so. Corrigan discovers that The Spectre was originally a rebellious fellow named Aztar. Aztar had decided he was going to repent what he had done, and was informed by Michael that he was going to be stripped of his past life—no memories or anything of the sort. Not exactly thrilled with this, Aztar asked where the mercy was in that. Michael said there was no mercy, but there was Justice.

The Spectre is investigating Corrigan’s spirit where he finds that Corrigan was abused by his father as a child. Getting “the devil” beat out of him and the like. We also learn of the past of Jim’s father, and bits of the trauma went through. In the end, they both find God, but find that God has turned on everything—going so far as to even devour Michael and every soul within Heaven.

Outraged, The Spectre seeks to act, but something in God strikes Jim as familiar. God is Jim’s father, or at least, this perception of God is Jim’s father. After dialogue, and action, God is killed by The Spectre and Jim is shaken. He tells Craemer “I think I killed God.”, who disregards the statement as absurd. Craemer sees God in all things, and cannot be killed.

Craemer then suggests that Jim have a proper funeral. It’s time for Jim to stop being The Spectre, and finally get the peace he both desires and deserves. Jim’s bones are gathered from the police office, and heroes far and wide appear to pay their respects. The original JSA, Batman, Superman, Swamp Thing is sent on behalf of Gaea, and so on. Many, many superheroes are there, each with their stories and memories of The Spectre.

Craemer says a prayer, and Jim casts the robes of The Spectre off, sending it to Limbo. Afterward he fades into Heaven, to by with Amy and finally rest.

Or, at least. That’s what he wanted.

1. Though, for a period of time in the 1990s, she had dropped saying spells backwards, and changed her attire. Prompting this conversation. [↩]
2. For those that don’t know. The Spear of Destiny is/was believed to be the spear that pierced the side of Jesus during his crucifixion. [↩]
3. Do not e-mail me telling me what happened in the Bible was true. That’s not what this is about. As such, and to accommodate people who think it’s not true, “/myth” is there. Get over it. [↩]