Get to Know a Hero: Spectre
Prepare for universe hop.
You make it? Good.
I wanted to catch everyone up on Spectre because DC just made a huge change in the Spectre’s character. Then, being the Fox of comics, cancelled his book, Gotham by Midnight, which pisses me off to no end. Luke pointed out this is my fault for getting attached to a DC book in the first place. Regardless, he’s hanging out at the front of my brain pan, so you all get to think about him too.
Well, everyone except DC. Which entity apparently they don’t give a crap about the character period, which is odd considering he’s been around for 75 years, because I just went to the DC website to do research and he doesn’t have an entry in their character index.
Fuck. Well, to Wikipedia we go.
*Ahem*
Aliases/Alter Egos: Det. Jim Corrigan, The Spirit of Vengeance, Spirit of Redemption, Avenging Wrath of God, The Ghostly Guardian, The Man of Darkness, Raguel, Hal Jordan (twice)
Vital Statistics: Corrigan is from the time before significant backstory. Sorry.
First Appearance: More Fun Comics #51 (Jan 1940), fist solo story in More Fun Comics #52 (Feb 1940) (the “more fun” bit being rather ironic considering in his first appearance Corrigan is murdered).
Powers: Poly-location (multi-location?) (limited), vast knowledge of events on Earth, time manipulation, shape shifting, telekinesis, illusionist, near invulnerability, immortality, remembers events before Crisis.
Affiliations: Justice Society of America, All-Star Squadron, Archangels, The Justice League
Romantic Partners: Some chick named Clarice
The Lowdown: Jim Corrigan got the shit end of the stick when he was murdered on the way to his own engagement party. Refused entry to the afterlife by “The Voice,” he was sent back to the mortal plane with a hitchhiker: the spirit of Divine Retribution known as Spectre. He was commissioned to destroy all evil. Understandably, he started with his own murderers who met their ends in decidedly grisly fashions.
Corrigan/Spectre joined the JSA, but then left Corrigan’s body and started to function independently. During the mid 40s, Spectre was cast as a guardian angel to a farcical cop in another book entirely and then, when Corrigan enlisted to serve during WWII, drifted into non-entity status. Because, you know. Killing Nazis definitely isn’t a worthy pastime for the SPIRIT OF DIVINE FUCKING VENGEANCE, is it? Probably because that would have made fucking sense.
The character was revived in the 1950s as a member of the Justice League and as a partner to Silver-Age Flash. He was given his own book in 1967 and partnered with Batman (which actually does make sense, wonder of wonders). He maybe sort of died again in 1970. There’s a crypt and Doctor Fate… who the hell knows what’s going on when that dude is involved.
Spectre was revived yet again in 1974 after a DC editor was mugged IRL and decided the world needed a… decisive hero. The ten story run was criticized from go for being too gruesome. Eight of the ten planned issues were eventually published, though they appeared sporadically over a fourteen year period.
There were some missteps, a stint as head of a supernatural detective agency, and an appearance in Neil Gaiman’s Books of Magic (coming to us from THE AGE OF THE SPEEDO AND BAD PONYTAILS).
Spectre was reborn once again, the effort led this time by John Ostrander, who examined both Jim Corrigan as a brutal cop and the Spectre as the uncompromising spirit of Divine Justice, willing to extract his pound of whatever’s available from anyone who had ever done wrong from dictators to a 90 year old woman who had spent her life trying to atone for a murder she had committed in the 20s.
Corrigan’s spirit eventually found peace and he relinquished the Spectre. A fallen angel attempted to gain the spirit’s power; Corrigan was asked to return to life and take the mantle once more. He declined and who came along in his stead? Hal Jordan, who seriously screwed the pooch in the Parallax storyline and had a lot to make up for. Why Hal Jordan? I don’t know, maybe because they both wore green and that way, the creativity involved in the costuming was minimal? You can see they didn’t make much effort to freshen up the dialogue either.
Then, no atonement for Jordan because some genius retconned Spectre inhabiting Jordan so as to prevent the Parallax entity from doing so once more. Which makes sense. Hal Jordan has always been a douchebag and I don’t really see him being one for atonement.
(I know, right?)
After that debacle, unable to function properly without a host (despite having done so without issue on previous occasions), Spectre went ripshit and did a bunch of really nasty stuff to a bunch of people, some of whom were “good” some of whom were “evil” but all of whom probably deserved it. Except, perhaps, the innocent folk of Atlantis who had their home obliterated by a rampaging Spirit of Wrath.
Cue Infinite Crisis crap.
The next person to be cursed with Spectre was Gotham Central’s own Crispus Allen, who was murdered by a corrupt cop named Jim Corrigan. Not the same Jim Corrigan. We’re going to have to let that WTF go to the universe, kids. Yes again, I have no explanation.
Then there’s some crap with Blackest Night. Whatever.
The latest incarnation of Spectre is the original Jim Corrigan, updated to Gotham here and now, as portrayed in Gotham by Midnight. In it, Corrigan is the head of a sort of special forces police unit that investigates all the weird cases. Corrigan struggles with the Spectre, resisting his manifestation and usually failing, though he does manage to keep his hitchhiker from destroying the entire city.
Issue #9 was released last week and this is where the holy shit came in: Spectre has never been the Wrath of God. He has never been the Spirit of Divine Justice.
He has always been Corrigan’s inner demon. Corrigan’s rage, Corrigan’s fury.
Corrigan’s jusice.
So much fall out. What happens when a man who believes has his faith crushed? When a man who thinks (deluded or not) he has been acting on the will of god finds out he isn’t special, he isn’t Chosen? That’s he’s as vicious and brutal as everyone has accused him of being. Perhaps even more so? A good man, a decent man in a crap situation. A survivor of Gotham.
So many places to go.
And the book is cancelled. Along with any chance we had of seeing his origin manifest because freakin’ NBC cancelled Constantine.
Son of a bitch!
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