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The Changing of the Guard

After Jim decided he was done being The Spectre, there was a big deal about it, as I mentioned earlier. Every hero and their brother got together to wish him off. Of course, there was still the matter of what to do with the spirit of vengeance itself. Such an idea can’t really just fade into the background. So they decided to do a changing of the guard.

This brings us to the first part of it, Day of Judgment.

Day of Judgment is one of those mini series events that takes place but really shouldn’t have because of circumstances in the continuity. I’ll go into all that in a later writing.

The general idea behind Judgment is this: The Spectre, now without a host, is tricked into going into Hell by the Demon, Etrigan, and is taken over by a fallen angel named Asmodel, who wishes to use the power of The Spectre to unleash Hell on Earth because he was pissed off about being a fallen angel.

How did this happen? Well, Etrigan falsified a claim for judgment by jamming a finger into his eye (what?) and this called down The Spectre. The Spectre, being without a host, attacks Asmodel and manages to hack his wings off. Etrigan remembers and old spell and binds Spectre to Asmodel with a feather from his wings.

Yeah.

At the same time, Neron, who was introduced in the ’90s during the crossover arc Underworld Unleashed (which crossed over with The Spectre and a bunch of other series) decides he wants in on the action, and jumps into the Spectre as well. This kind of starts freaking people out. The Spectre, the agent of God’s wrath, is now filled with two creatures that are straight from Hell. They need someone in The Spectre to get them out, so they go to the only fellow they know who can do it, your friend and mine: Jim Corrigan.

Corrigan, however, won’t have any of it. Finally resting, and with Amy in heaven, he relinquished the role of The Spectre and will not take it back, citing he’s found “peace”. This doesn’t set well with the heroes who are watching everything to go…well…hell. So they decend into Purgatory and look for a soul that will help them. They find unlikely assistance in Hal Jordan, who had just recently sacrificed himself (as Parallax) to reignite the sun during Final Night.

Hal is desperate to redeem himself following his madness as Parallax, and so the heroes (reluctantly) accept his assistance, but still are worried that he might go rogue and start killing people again.

However, Asmodel-Neron-Spectre is still out there, being powerful, and all of that.

Along the way (actually, in the first issue) a group of people are introduced called The Sentinels of Magic. They are: The Phantom Stranger, Deadman, Madame Xanadu, Dr. Occult, Alan Scott (going by “Sentinel” at this point), Raven, The Enchantress, Felix Faust, and Ragman. These people are gonna try to stop this new Spectre before he fucks up shit any more than he’s fucked it up (I’m of the opinion that this should be a line in at least one mega-Crisis.) and they go down into Hell to do their thing.

But, things start winding down. Hal manages to get inside The Spectre and the three hosts start to duke it out with each other until The Spectre force itself decides to ask what each of them thinks they’re doing. They each go through, talking of Judgment, Vengeance and Power until they get to Hal.

Hal was the only one who felt himself undeserving of the power, because of what he’d done. He felt he deserved punishment, but sought redemption at the same time. The Spectre decided that his punishment would be to merge with the Force. Neron and Asmodel are then cast out, and we see the new Spectre. Hal Jordan. His new mission has just begun.

After that, Hal Spectre appeared in several other series. JLA did a cross over two-parter with him called Soul Wars that featured some of the greatest designs ever. I mean, really. Spectre-Batman and Spectre-Superman were pretty awesome to see. He also did a couple of things with the JSA (who weren’t sure if it was still Corrigan, but figured it out after the shift in personality).

With Legends of the DC Universe we learned of a new approach of Heaven. Which is nothing new. Heaven and Hell are recreated with every writer in every story. Heaven is how you make it. Everything is one big spirit thing, and molds itself to whatever you want. Hal, in attempting to have a better understanding of himself as The Spectre, ends up talking with his mother, Barry Allen, and Ollie Queen. At the end of the three-issue arc, Hal casts out the “wrath” aspect of The Spectre and decides to devote himself to becoming a spirit of redemption, instead of one of vengeance. An odd concept, to say the least, but interesting and fitting with Hal and his desperate need to prove to everyone that he’s not Parallax anymore.

Following all of that, Hal was given a solo series. The fourth run of The Spectre, and easily my least favorite of them all. The 27-issue series branched off into many odd areas of quasi-mysticism and seemed far beyond what one would be used to from The Spectre. There wasn’t a lot of action in the old Ostrander/Mandrake or even from Moench’s run. Hal devotes much of his time in the first several issues meandering around astral planes attempting to find himself and his mission, all the while dealing with the “Wrath” aspect of The Spectre–which he had to end up merging with again to prevent a big fuck-up.

The series introduced M. Stigmonus, who is an incarnation of all of the doom-and-gloom aspects of society and feels the need to pester Hal about how everything is going to fail no matter what he does. Stigmonus also breaks the fourth wall frequently, which also helps to ruin any aspect of seriousness this run may have had.

The series, however, did nicely. Banking on the fact that Hal Jordan did has a lot of fans, who didn’t like the way Emerald Twilight turned him into a bastard. This was frequently expressed in the letters column. While many of the writers were not fans of The Spectre, they were fans of Hal, and were glad to see him return, even if he wasn’t a Lantern again.

The series continued on its odd twists and turns by creating the idea of “multiple” Spectres. Before, it was simply Jim and the Spectre, working together dealing with things case-by-case. With this, however, there were several aspects of Hal (while there still being a “Spectre-Prime” that was focal point of all of them) that went out and did Spectre-y things. They ranged from fish-looking things, to a guy in a double-breasted jacket, to a woman, to whatever else. Each simply worked because it was “impossible” for it to be done otherwise.

Hal also did crazy things like attempt to redeem Harvey Dent, but failed. He also met Santa. Met a variation of Satan, and wound up meeting all sorts of crazy people that I don’t feel like talking about.

There was also Helen Jordan, the niece of Hal, who played a significant role in that she was Hal’s tag-along because she had special powers and was one day gonna save the world of Stigmonus didn’t make her kill herself.

Abin Sur was also a part of it all. He was Hal’s comrade who gave advice at times. He also babysat whenever The Phantom Stranger wouldn’t.

Anyway. After the series was canceled, there were a few other times we he took place in other series. Specifically JSA in an arc called Redemption Lost where all of the redemption Hal attempted to build up by denying The Spectre’s true calling wound up exploding out of him in an odd oral and ocular vomit scene that really wasn’t called for.

Hal decided to go ahead and just be the Spirit of Vengeance again, and that brings us up to Green Lantern: Rebirth

Rebirth decided to take everything that had happened in the solo series and essentially tell you to ignore it. It also retconned Emerald Twilight and is easily one of the best works I’ve read.

To sum it up: After all of that, Hal is no longer The Spectre. The Spectre is now without a host.

Not a lot really happened with Hal as The Spectre. It was mostly Hal whining about trying to redeem himself all the while wandering around creation trying to fix problems he’d caused and help other people with their problems. The series could have been good, but they relied too much on Hal’s self-pity as a crutch instead of making an REAL arcs.

What could be next? I’ll continue in Part Five which I promise is far more interesting.