And more seriously, he included appearances by several classic Golden-Age characters, including the Spectre's colleagues in the original 1940's super-team, the Justice Society of America. Ostrander even did an issue featuring the Spectre's Golden-Age sidekick (Percival Popp, Super Cop), a comic-relief character whom no one would have faulted Ostrander for sweeping under the rug in embarrassment. Unlike so many other heroes, the date of his origin remained fixed in the late 1930's, which I like. I haven't read very much of previous Spectre appearances, but it seems clear that Ostrander took pains to acknowledge his prior history, even incorporating it into his new stories. How well did Ostrander integrate his 'take' on the Spectre with his previous incarnations? For example, the Spectre was one of the oldest surviving characters in comics, created by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Bailey back in 1940 (in More Fun, one of the first comic book series). One mark of a comics writer's quality is how well he deals with the 'universe' his stories share with the works of others. And despite his rather personal contact with God - or perhaps because of it - he faced grave doubts about his worthiness, the justice of his mission, etc. Corrigan is not a particularly nice or charming person. The kind of shoot-first-ask-questions-later cop that was considered a hero in 1940 isn't regarded as all that noble by today's standards. but to what end? To avenge murder, to fight demons, to understand the evil in his own soul, or what? Ostrander's series was about Corrigan's efforts to fulfill - and figure out - his mission.Ĭorrigan was portrayed as a soul struggling. His somewhat nebulous calling was to confront evil.

The other was the Wrath of God, the same spirit that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and fulfilled Moses' threat to plague Egypt. (I use the past tense here because the series has ended, even though the character is arguably far from 'over'.) One was Jim Corrigan, a hard-nosed guns-blazing cop, abused son of a fundamentalist preacher, killed by mobsters in the 1930's. The character of the Spectre was a combination of two entities. But in general, The Spectre was a series that tried to do something different in the superhero genre. OK, so maybe the last one isn't that great a claim to fame. (Issues #1 and #13 coincided with Hallowe'en.) The paperback collection of issues #1-4 also glows. Which series has had the largest number of glow-in-the-dark covers in the shortest period of time? The Spectre had three in just the first 13 issues. Ostrander didn't miss a single issue (64 of them, counting the #0 issue and an annual) even while dealing with his late wife Kim Yale's cancer.ĭo any comics deal intelligently with real-world issues? The Spectre did on a regular basis. Whenever someone poses a challenge to fans of the superhero genre or DC Comics in particular, asking whether there are comics that do this or that, in recent years there was one answer that kept coming up:ĭo any comics show devout Christians as sympathetic, intelligent people? Catholic priest Richard Craemer served as a valued friend and advisor for the Spectre.Īre there any Jewish superheroes? Israeli hero Ramban appeared from time to time as an ally of the Spectre.Īre there are any recent series to keep the same creative team for more than a couple years? Writer John Ostrander and artist Tom Mandrake did nearly every issue of The Spectre together for more than five years. So I've updated this review to include the final year of the series, and the climactic quest to figure out what happened to God! And what could be bigger than the first 50-issue run of a series about an aspect of God Himself? Well, the series ended a year later with #62, because the writer and artist had decided to move on to other projects. To commemorate my 50th Beek's Books review, I decided to pull out the stops and review something big. Issues #1-62 (including #0 and annual #1) Beek's Books - The Spectre (comicbook reviews) Beek's Books - an ongoing collection of comic book reviews

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