THE SPECTRE: SOME HALLOWEENISH COVERS

As Halloween Month continues, this week’s light-hearted and escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at DC’s character the Spectre.

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #431 (February 1974)

Title: The Wrath of the Spectre

Villains: Armored Car Robbers

NOTE: For people unfamiliar with the Spectre, here’s the basics. His secret identity is Police Detective Jim Corrigan who was killed in the line of duty. Through a special dispensation from Heaven, Corrigan’s soul was permitted to reanimate his corpse and resume his detective duties, but he was really an undead avenger carrying out God’s justice.

        When situations demanding greater than human intervention arose, Jim could become the Spectre, his ghostly form in which he wielded vast powers that he used against earthly villains as well as supernatural menaces.

Synopsis: An armed gang robs an armored car loaded with money. The criminals kill four guards while carrying out the robbery, so Homicide Detective Jim Corrigan is assigned the case.

When Corrigan’s investigation provokes violent reactions from the scattered felons he surreptitiously assumes his Spectre form and deals out his usual deadly form of justice. While letting the bullets fired at him by the increasingly panicked robbers simply pass through him, the Spectre causes the first robber to have a fatal car accident, causes the body of the second to melt down into goop and intercepts the third on an airplane where he makes the thug age into nothing but skeletal remains. 

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #432 (April 1974)

Title: The Anguish of the Spectre

Villains: Maxwell Flood and his hired killers

Synopsis: Wealthy industrialist Maxwell Flood has a team of hired killers plant bombs that kill his business partner Adrian Sterling. While investigating the murder, Jim Corrigan and Adrian’s daughter Gwendolyn feel an attraction to each other, causing our hero intense anguish because he knows that he is actually dead and is beyond any romantic relationship.

Gwendolyn Sterling is intrigued by the unspoken sadness that seems to keep making Jim try shutting her out of his life. This results in her witnessing one of the series of slayings that the Spectre commits this time, then sees him turn back into Jim Corrigan.

Caught in the act, Corrigan explains his abnormal existence to Gwendolyn. Though she is willing to accept their relationship’s obvious limits, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir style, Corrigan tells her no. 

NOTE: If you’re wondering, the Spectre killed the evildoers this time through brutally slicing them in half, turning another to dust and once again forcing another to instantly age to death.   

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #433 (June 1974)

Title: The Swami and the Spectre

Villains: The Swami and his hirelings

Synopsis: Gwendolyn Sterling, having grown bizarrely obsessed with Jim Corrigan in the short time they’ve known each other, has been seeking supernatural help to turn Jim into a completely human, living man. This leads to her being conned by the phony mystic called Swami Seelal.

Seelal sets up a phony “ritual” to take place at a cemetery at night. Meanwhile, Corrigan’s digging into the Swami’s past makes him realize he is really a murderer and that he uses his Swami act to trick wealthy women like Gwen Sterling out of a lot of money. 

During the bogus ritual at the graveyard, the Spectre saves Gwen from being killed by Seelal’s hired muscle. He does that by having spirits emerge from assorted graves and bury the thug alive. Next, the Spectre visits Swami Seelal, turns his body into glass and pushes him over so that his form shatters into thousands of pieces. 

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #434 (August 1974)

Title: The Nightmare Dummies (should be Nightmare Mannequins)

Villains: Zeke Borosovitch and his mannequins come to life

Synopsis: At a company called Monarch Mannequins, an elderly craftsman named Zeke Borosovitch has been informed he will be let go soon because machinery can turn out mannequins much more quickly than his hand-made method.   

We get a supernatural menace in this issue, as Borosovitch’s intense emotional investment in his handcrafted mannequins – especially the “female” ones that he pervs on – somehow enables him to animate them at will.

He has the mannequins brutally murder his superiors and even innocent truck drivers transporting Monarch Mannequins made by him. When Detective Corrigan gets wind of a series of seemingly impossible murders committed with no one on hand but mannequins, he suspects supernatural forces at work.   

When Borosovitch has Gwendolyn Sterling abducted by his living mannequins and tied up as an obvious prelude to something worse, the Spectre arrives just in time. Borosovitch has an army of mannequins attack our hero, who defeats the animated figures by melting them down.

As a final punishment for Zeke Borosovitch, the Spectre turns him into a mannequin himself and it gets burned alive, unable to speak or move.

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #435 (October 1974)

Title: The Man Who Stalked the Spectre

Villains: The Grandenetti Crime Family

Synopsis: Through a comic book coincidence, Homicide Detective Jim Corrigan is assigned to let newspaper reporter Earl Crawford observe him in action for a few days. Crawford is trying to get to the bottom of the sightings of a Spectre brutally slaying criminals in the New York City area.

NOTE: At the time, DC Comics explained that this series (beginning with Adventure Comics #431) dealt with the Earth ONE counterpart of Jim Corrigan and his Spectre alter ego. Therefore, he seemed brand new to the public, unlike his Earth Two forerunner, who had been around since 1940.   

Jim Corrigan repeatedly manages to slip away from Earl Crawford when he needs to become the Spectre and slaughter his way through the Grandenetti Mafia Family. Eventually our hero has whittled the organization down to just one remaining Grandenetti brother left in the command structure.

Earl Crawford sleazily goes to that brother to warn him about the Spectre. Grandenetti dismisses what Crawford says as nonsense and is about to have him killed. The Spectre shows up in time to save Earl, and he kills the last Grandenetti brother by turning him into wood and sawing him to pieces.

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #436 (December 1974)

Title: The Gasmen

Villains: The Gasmen

Synopsis: Earl Crawford, having had his newspaper reject his story on the Spectre’s wipeout of the Grandenetti Mafia Family, continues to scour the city for another shot at a Spectre story. Terrorists calling themselves the Gasmen use poison gas to kill around 60 people at a New York City car show.   

Next the terrorists demand a billion-dollar ransom to refrain from a similar but larger attack. The NYPD are ordered to coordinate the ransom exchange with the Gasmen. The Spectre kills off every single terrorist in his usual brutal ways, and when Crawford discovers Jim Corrigan on hand in the awful aftermath, he asks him if he saw how it happened. Corrigan says no. 

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #437 (February 1975)

Title: The Human Bombs

Villains: An unnamed mad scientist and his Human Bombs

Synopsis: A scientist of supervillain levels abducts assorted New Yorkers and enthralls them to serve as his Human Bombs. He sends them forth under his control to pull off robberies by threatening to set off the bombs they are wearing if they aren’t given what they want.

Gwendolyn Sterling, still running her late father’s business, is among the abductees, prompting Jim Corrigan to look into her disappearance in his free time. Once he learns who is holding her, he becomes the Spectre.

Next, he deactivates the bombs worn by the thralls, undoes the hypnotism and faces the electronic ray-guns of the mad scientist. The Spectre wins and has the villain’s own sea creature devour him.

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #438 (April 1975)

Title: The Museum of Fear

Villains: The Taxidermist

Synopsis: Detective Lieutenant Jim Corrigan’s latest homicide investigation leads him to a mad taxidermist and his thugs. The group is behind the abductions of human beings and zoo animals so the Taxidermist can kill the people and animals, then stuff them for his macabre collection.

So …

Step One: Abduct people and zoo animals.

Step Two: Kill them and stuff them.

Step Three: Profit ..?

The Spectre unleashes his brand of justice by making the gang’s taxidermed gorillas come to life and tear all of them limb from limb. 

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #439 (June 1975)

Title: The Voice That Doomed the Spectre

Villains: The Symbiosis Liberation Army and the McLaren Gang 

Synopsis: Jim Corrigan becomes the Spectre in order to save wealthy Gwen Sterling from the terrorist group called the Symbiosis Liberation Army, a reference to the real-life Symbionese Liberation Army. After the Spectre causes the strangulation deaths of all the S.L.A. members, Gwen devotes herself to once again trying to convince Corrigan to marry her, assuring him she can accept the limits to their relationship.

Jim turns her down, feeling it would be unfair to her. Tormented by his own feelings of love for Gwen that night, Corrigan asks God to lift from him the burden of being the Spectre. God grants the request, and Jim wakes up in the morning as a normal, living man.

Corrigan shares the good news with Gwen and they make plans to get married. Resuming his detective duties in the meantime, Jim gets wounded by a bullet in the shoulder one day when taking on the murderous McLaren Gang. Corrigan shot a member of the gang dead but is found to have acted properly.

Because of Gwen’s wealth, the media covers her impending marriage to Detective Lieutenant Jim Corrigan. The leader of the McLaren Gang sees the reports and orders that Corrigan be killed for revenge.  

ADVENTURE COMICS Vol 1 #440 (August 1975)

Title: The Second Death of the Spectre

Villains: The McLaren Gang

Synopsis: In the final few days before his wedding to Gwendolyn Sterling, Detective Lieutenant Jim Corrigan is ambushed and killed by the rest of the McLaren Gang.

The mobsters dump his body at Gwen Sterling’s door and drive off.

Gwen cries over Jim’s corpse, while, in the Afterlife, God explains to Corrigan that his mission as the Spectre is far from over. Jim Corrigan’s dead body is once again animated by his Spectre self.

The ghostly figure mercilessly kills every single member of the McLaren Gang, then says his final goodbye to Gwen Sterling as they both sadly accept that they cannot be together.

NOTE: Though there were three more stories ready for this 1974-1975 Spectre series, they were not printed in the 1970s, since Aquaman took over Adventure Comics beginning with #441. In 1988 a 4-issue miniseries titled Wrath of the Spectre reprinted all 10 of the above stories in the first 3 issues, while the 4th was used to finally publish the trio of unused stories.

WRATH OF THE SPECTRE Vol 1 #4 (August 1988)

Story One: The Arson Fiend

Villains: Freddy “The Torch” Fisher and Harrison DeMarko

Synopsis: After the Spectre saves potential victims of a ghetto apartment building fire, he resolves to find the serial arsonist who has been setting the brilliantly destructive fires.

Meanwhile, reporter Earl Crawford is also trying to find the arsonist.

The Spectre learns that Freddy “The Torch” Fisher has been setting the fires because he is being paid by slumlord Harrison DeMarko, who is collecting insurance money on the burned-down buildings. The Spectre kills the Torch, with Earl Crawford catching him in the act in the Torch slaying.

Crawford blames our hero for the death but winds up arrested for any of the Spectre killings that went unsolved and is sentenced to an insane asylum, convicted of being behind the deaths he has been blaming on our green & white ghost.

Story Two: The Maniac

Villain: Harrison DeMarko

Synopsis: Jim Corrigan risks reentering Gwendolyn Sterling’s life by recruiting her aid to clear Earl Crawford and get him released from the insane asylum. Next, the Spectre brutally kills off slumlord Harrison DeMarko for his role in the apartment building fires.

Story Three: The Voodoo Hag

Villains: A Voodoo Priestess and a Mr. Slater

Synopsis: Mr. Slater (no first name given), a member of the Board of Directors of Sterling Textiles, is trying to overthrow Gwendolyn as the company’s president. To that end he hires a Voodoo Mamba to use her powers to kill off other members of the board.

Detective Lieutenant Jim Corrigan and Gwen Sterling are again reunited as Jim’s investigation into the homicides of the board members leads to him taking action as the Spectre. He avenges the murdered victims by viciously knocking off Mr. Slater and the Voodoo priestess. 

*** In the decades ahead the Spectre showed up as a guest-star in other characters’ comic books as well as in other series of his own which ran for various lengths.   

FOR MY LOOK AT HALLOWEENISH COVERS FOR MARVEL’S SIMON GARTH ZOMBIE CLICK HERE.

FOR MY LOOK AT HALLOWEENISH COVERS FOR MARVEL’S GHOST RIDER CLICK HERE.