The late Norm Breyfogle spent about a year applying his exceptional talents to the Spectre. Here’s one of the best pages of the run: The Hal Jordan-merged Spectre vanquishes Sinestro, and — I kid you not — basically sends the dark member of the GL Corp to hell. (Well, Sinestro helps choose his own fate. It’s complicated.)
I wish DC had comics like this when I was a kid. (Well, with Jim Aparo’s version of the Spectre, and Neal Adams’ Deadman, maybe they did. Sort of.)
Tom Mandrake — criminally underrated as a storyteller — gets to have some fun with the DC occult universe in a page that’s somehow now twenty years old.
The bottom 1/2 splash featuring Etrigan (Demon), Phantom Stranger, Dr, Fate and Zatanna is definitely cool — and looks especially great in the original black and white.
And the long-time villain Eclipso —also apparently an avenging angel, but an evil one — merging with the Spectre to form a super-villainous apparition? Love it.
Neal Adams delivers a terrific Spectre action page from his third issue on the series, and the second he wrote, penciled and inked himself. I love the looks of terror and fear on the faces, especially in that last large panel.
(DC jammed quite a few creative changes through those brief 10 issues of the silver age Spectre, so it was apparently a good place to give Neal a shot at writing a “superhero” title.)
Of course, it’s nearly Halloween, so it’s time we take our annual visit with the ghouls, monsters and apparitions of the comic book art pages.
Batman and Spectre in the same issue with Kelley Jones on pencils? You KNOW some weirdness is most definitely in store.
Sign me up.
Jones (with writer Doug Moench of course) channels some of the classic sadistically vengeful Fleisher and Aparo Spectre in this issue — the second part of a two-part story. This wraith is not fooling around. (You can see why the infamous Comics Code Authority was completely meaningless at this point.)
And let’s just say Batman and Spectre disagree about a few things. Like capital punishment. And eternal Hell. Those sorts of things.
Terrific art team (John Beatty on inks), terrific page. Overall, a great run of Batman.
I have a sweet spot for the Spectre, and I love the way he dominates this Alan Davis cover of this issue of the Justice Society. Despite the fact that I am an enthusiastic fan of Davis’ work, this is the first (and only) cover he drew that I own. I should rectify that one of these days.
As a young teen, I was the perfect age for the crazy, but brief, Bronze Age version of the character written by Michael Fleisher and wonderfully drawn by Jim Aparo, which featured woeful fates for the character’s antagonists. This version of Spectre arrives (early 1974) at nearly the exact same time as does another anti-hero, the Punisher, across town at Marvel comics.
Justice is served, indeed.
Comic book historian Les Daniels discussed the origin of this version of the character in DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes:
“Joe Orlando was mugged and decided the world needed a really relentless super hero. The character came back with a vengeance … and quickly became a cause of controversy. Orlando plotted the stories with writer Michael Fleisher, and they emphasized the gruesome fates of criminals who ran afoul of the Spectre. The Comics Code had recently been liberalized, but this series pushed its restrictions to the limit, often by turning evildoers into inanimate objects and then thoroughly demolishing them. Jim Aparo’s art showed criminals being transformed into everything from broken glass to melting candles, but Fleisher was quick to point out that many of his most bizarre plot devices were lifted from stories published decades earlier.”
I had only recently discovered the classic EC Comics horror tiles, and these gruesome fates seemed to meld together the supernatural, horror and superhero tropes into one wonderful blended margarita of storytelling.
Definitely worth my 20 cents.
Fun fact: 1974 is indeed the year of the anti-hero. Wolverine appears for the first time a few months later. It took a while, but in 1982, a catchphrase summed up his personality. “I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn’t very nice.” Snikt!
The Spectre appears… and reappears. First appearances, Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze Age.
