#SPECTRE DC BACKSTORY SERIES#

His fluid style was ideal for depicting the physicality of acrobatics and fisticuffs.īut here, with the assistance of the shocking colour palette, Mr Aparo made the character purposive and ethereal. Mr Aparo was best known for his very long involvement on Batman comics.

This however was the 1970s, and the pages oozed lurid pinks and lime green. If this run of the Spectre’s adventures had been published by DC Comics’ long-missed Vertigo imprint, we might have expected gritty haze and dark colours. Corrigan himself is not especially helpful: It is a sad and forlorn love, incompatible with the horror of the Spectre’s mission. Some critics have been savage in the characterisation of Gwen (not to mention the fact that Gwen was frequently depicted as tied up in nothing but her underwear). “I went to the Swami because I thought that maybe… just maybe… he could help us… help us… Oh Jim, things would be so wonderful if only… if only you were…” The Spectre transforms back to Corrigan to talk to Gwen about what she has done. The henchman is dragged into the soil of a graveyard by the dead at the Spectre’s behest, and the Swami is transformed into glass and shatters on the floor.

Falling in love with an animated corpse masquerading as a gritty cop was an unfortunate romantic twist for Gwen, and her efforts at trying to improve her position in Adventure Comics #433 led to the henchman of a fake mystic throwing a grenade at Corrigan and Gwen’s close call with a knife. There were some supporting characters – Earl Crawford, a heavyset bespectacled reporter with an uncanny resemblance to Clark Kent (wryly noted by Corrigan in issue #435), and hapless love interest Gwendolyn Stirling. Though he was one of the original members of the Justice Society in the forties, the Spectre never fit in very well with other “superheroes” in any of his incarnations, and least of all in the Fleisher/Aparo version, in which he is less a hero than an inhuman embodiment of insatiable, demonic rage. In the Spectre’s universe, there is no compassion or forgiveness, and no possibility of reform or redemption there are no excuses, mitigations, or misunderstandings, and most disturbingly, there are absolutely no limits beyond which punishment cannot decently go. As Thomas Parker of the Black Gate website concisely notes better than we could – Sadistic Vengeance and Grotesque Death - Still Only 20 Cents! – Black Gate : Here, the focus was upon the title character’s inherent creepiness and the single-minded nature of the punishment meted out upon mostly low-lives. The magical threats of the likes of Wotan and Kulak from the 1940s, which might have put the outcome of the story in hypothetical doubt, were gone. But we also see the odd low level supernatural threat dealt with in short and brutal order. The Spectre wrecked retribution upon criminal heavies, scammers and Neo-Nazis. None of the antagonists were traditional superhero villains, but instead were the sort of people a homicide detective with an eye for the weird might encounter (in a comic book context). Mr Fleisher applied a formula akin to a medieval cautionary tale.

#SPECTRE DC BACKSTORY SERIES#

The Spectre was a spirit of vengeance, harnessed to the body of the deceased police detective Jim Corrigan, and in this series the stories accelerated to a terrifying level. Mr Fleisher’s writing – both in the plots and the characterisation of the Spectre – was pitiless, ominous, and gruesome. The stories were written by Michael Fleisher, with artwork by Jim Aparo. In hindsight, there was a lot of variety on offer every month for a mere 25 cents.Īmidst this colourful ensemble of random characters, the Spectre’s tales from Adventure Comics are the best in that character’s long history. It meandered through completely unrelated tales. Adventure Comics instead pleasantly rambled along for decades. Both DC Comics and Marvel Comics issue a staccato fire of titles, creating a low numbering order so as to encourage new readers to enter the series ostensibly without the need to be across an enormous backstory. Its purpose was far from how the major American comic book companies publish superhero stories today. Adventure Comics was a long-standing depository for a wide variety of minor DC Comics’ characters: Superboy, Supergirl, Starman, Plastic Man, Black Orchid, Aquaman, Deadman, and Dial H for Hero. Recently, your reviewer has been revisiting stories from his childhood, including Adventure Comics.

Spectre dc backstory