Strength in Numbers

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that comics, like everything else, don’t exist in a vacuum. Everything that comic-book readers think of as conventions, as benchmarks, even as cliches of the genre, had to appear somewhere first. Even something as basic as, say, the team-up.

Before 1941, despite the fact that the newsstands were positively overflowing with the cape-and-mask set, superheroes just didn’t team up. Never met, never hung out, didn’t even refer to each other. After 1941, though, things were very different, and not just in comics, either. The notion of separately created fictional characters meeting up in a “shared universe” has spread from its comic book origins to the worlds of prose, television and film.

So what happened in 1941? Five words, kids: the Justice Society of America.

Better get comfortable, as I believe it’s time for one of our longer hauls, as we explore the membership, history, deaths and rebirths of the original superhero team (and my personal favorite), the JSA.

The inception of the Justice Society has its roots in the same motivation as most other commercial fiction: profit. By 1941, the superhero business was booming, so much so that many characters were expanding past their original homes in magazines like ACTION and DETECTIVE. To be precise, to meet the demand for new Superman and Batman stories, the two characters were given their own solo magazines, in addition to their original locations. For other characters that weren’t quite popular enough to warrant an entire book all their own, but still had a rabid following looking for more appearances, All-American Comics (National Comics’ sister company, and one-half of what would eventually become DC Comics) created ALL-STAR COMICS, an anthology book that featured in its first two issues such characters as Hawkman, Flash, Green Lantern, the Spectre and a few others of the publisher’s first-string heroes, as well as less popular ones like Biff Bronson (love that name) and Red, White and Blue.

It was with ALL-STAR COMICS #3 that the revolutionary leap was made: if we’re going to have these characters in the same book, why not have them meet, and interact with each other?

Whose idea was it? Unfortunately, the exact answer has been lost to the sands of time, with the truth probably following somewhere within the following three names: All-American publisher M.C. Gaines, ALL-STAR COMICS editor Sheldon Mayer and ALL-STAR COMICS writer Gardner Fox. However, the rationale behind the team’s membership is much less of a mystery, as the charter membership consists of All-American’s most popular characters. To be precise:

The Atom: the pint-sized pugilist created by Bill O’Connor and Ben Flinton, as appearing in ALL-AMERICAN COMICS

The Sandman: Gardner Fox and Bert Christman’s pulp-style mystery man from ADVENTURE COMICS

The Spectre: Jerry Siegel and Bernard Bailey’s ghostly avenger, as seen in MORE FUN COMICS

The Flash: Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert’s super-speedster from the pages of FLASH COMICS

Hawkman: Another of Gardner Fox’s creations, also from the pages of FLASH COMICS

Dr. Fate: Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman’s mystical sorcerer from MORE FUN COMICS

Green Lantern: Martin Nodell’s magic-ring-bearing crusader from ALL-AMERICAN COMICS

Hourman: Ken Fitch and Bernard Bailey’s strongman, a miracle of modern science thanks to his invention of Miraclo, a chemical formula that gave him superhuman strength and speed for 60 minutes, as seen in ADVENTURE COMICS

Along with official mascot Johnny Thunder (a hapless goof who stumbles through adventures with the help of his magic Thunderbolt) from FLASH COMICS, this was the roster as of the team’s first appearance in ALL-STAR COMICS #3.

It’s almost as though the concept of the team-up had to settle in, because the first meeting of the Justice Society was little more than that, a meeting, as Johnny Thunder, upset at his exclusion from the newly publicized gathering, crashes the party with the help of his magic Thunderbolt, which at this point was still carrying out his wishes invisibly. As Johnny wishes he could attend the meeting, soon all the members are magically drawn to him, and he winds up invited along to the hotel where the Justice Society was planning to have dinner. At the dinner, Johnny recommends that each member tell a story about a recent adventure, and that’s pretty much the extent of the issue, as each member recounts a 7-page tale.

Interestingly, membership for Superman and Batman is only implied, as the Flash makes a passing comment that someone has to look after things while the rest of them are at the meeting. There is one more prospective member who makes an appearance, the Red Tornado, a.k.a. Ma Hunkel, from the “Scribbly” strip in ALL-AMERICAN COMICS.

“Scribbly” was a humor strip that featured the Red Tornado as a supporting character as a kind of neighborhood crimefighter, and her appearance here is much in that vein, as Ma Hunkel tears her longjohns on the way in and has to swiftly depart. Cameo aside, most don’t consider Ma a charter member of the JSA, despite her appearance here.

The next appearance of the Justice Society in ALL-STAR COMICS #4 took this formula to the next logical step, as the JSA is summoned to FBI headquarters in Washington D.C., and is given a mission, to close down a network of saboteurs working to attack the U.S. from within.

Each JSA member is given an envelope containing their orders, and the members go their separate ways to carry out their missions. Each member’s mission, when completed, leads to a man named Fritz Klaver in Toledo, and soon the JSA members converge on Klaver and close down his spy network, with Johnny Thunder even using the power of his Thunderbolt to transport the entire house, spies, evidence and all, to Washington, D.C. This, then, would be the formula for Justice Society stories for years to come: the team meets up or is otherwise collectively informed of a threat, goes their separate ways to investigate the matter, then reunites at story’s end to finish off the threat.

It’s a solid structure, so JSA writer Gardner Fox would use it again and again, allowing for new solo adventures of these popular characters by their own signature artists, while still giving excited readers something they’d never seen before: their favorite heroes teaming up.

The first membership change for the JSA came in ALL-STAR COMICS #6. As discussed here previously, whenever a character became popular enough to get his own solo magazine, in addition to his original anthology appearance, he would be named an honorary member of the JSA and removed from active membership, with a new member coming in to take his place. In this case, it was the Flash who had earned his own magazine and was leaving the team, with mascot Johnny Thunder initiated as a full member to take his place.

The team decided to have a little fun with Johnny upon his initiation, sending him on what they thought would be a wild goose chase of a mission, which instead, in typical Johnny Thunder fashion, left the newest member in way over his head, requiring the assistance of his fellow members to get him out of it.

ALL-STAR #7 is notable primarily for the only appearances of Superman and Batman as JSA members, as the new JSA chairman, Green Lantern, challenges the members to each raise $100,000 for relief to war orphans in Europe and Asia. Johnny Thunder boasts that he can raise $300,000, making it an even million, but when he fails to come through, he falls back on his magic Thunderbolt, who conjures up honorary JSA members Superman, Batman and the Flash, each of whom pony up the necessary 100Gs to make Green Lantern’s intended goal.

But the roster changes aren’t done yet. With the very next issue, ALL-STAR COMICS #8 reveals that Green Lantern has also been granted honorary status (having been given his own magazine, the aptly named GREEN LANTERN), and has left active membership in the JSA.

Also gone is Hourman, who most decidedly had not been given his own magazine. Instead, the Man of the Hour is rather ignominiously booted from the team, with only a note that “a leave of absence is hereby granted to the Hourman.” No respect, I tells you. This left two open spaces to be filled: the first was taken by Gardner Fox and Jack Burnley’s Starman from ADVENTURE COMICS, a rich playboy-type who fights evil with the help of a cosmic rod that allows him to fly and fire off bursts of energy.

Starman is already in place as a member as issue #8 begins, his induction apparently having taken place off-panel. The second empty spot is filled by Dr. Mid-Nite, a creation of Chuck Reizenstein and Stan Asch appearing in ALL-AMERICAN COMICS. The good doctor was the first blind superhero in comics, having lost his sight in an explosion, only to discover that he could see perfectly in total darkness, prompting him to invent his infra-goggles, which enabled him to see in daylight, and his blackout bombs, which would blind his enemies while he continued to see perfectly.

Doc Mid-Nite used his new abilities first to put away the mobsters that blinded him, then continued to fight crime in his new guise.

Anyway, Dr. Mid-Nite approached the Justice Society for help in tracking down the mysterious Professor Elba, who has created a formula that drives men insane, while granting them apelike strength. The members have various success in tracking down the mad doctor, but as usual, it’s Johnny Thunder who closes the case by blundering into the mastermind, Elba himself, and is about to become his latest victim when he enlists his Thunderbolt (now visible, you’ll note) to fetch the rest of the JSA.

(By the way, sharp-eyed readers will notice the slight change in Dr. Fate’s headgear that took place around this time, with a half-helmet replacing his earlier, and much cooler, full-head number.) With Elba no longer a threat, the JSA decides to induct Dr. Mid-Nite as their newest member. (And even make his pet owl Hooty their official mascot. Not that that’s particularly important: I just like typing “Hooty.”)

The JSA took a step into world affairs in their next issue, with the members being sent to various South American countries on a covert mission for the U.S. government, then ventured into science fiction with issue #10, in which the JSAers use a time machine to head into the future in an attempt to bring back a high-tech defense against enemy bombers for the war effort. Here we see the Sandman’s first appearance in his new yellow-and-purple tights-and-cape ensemble, a look that was never as cool as the original fedora-and-gas mask look.

The war effort took even more of an emphasis in issue #11, in which the JSA members decide to enlist in the military to fight the war in the frontlines, rather than on the homefront and the occasional special mission from the FBI.

Accordingly, Carter Hall, Wes Dodds, Kent Nelson, Al Pratt and Ted Knight (otherwise known as Hawkman, Sandman, Dr. Fate, the Atom and Starman) all enlist in the army, while Johnny Thunder joins the Navy. Dr. Charles McNider (a.k.a. Dr. Mid-Nite) is commissioned to serve in the Army Medical Corps, despite his disability, and the Spectre – well, the Spectre’s dead, so he ain’t signing up for jack. The ultimate way to beat the draft.

Despite themselves, the JSA members all wind up drawn into action in their superhero identities while on duty, including Hawkman, who, while visiting his longtime girlfriend Shiera Saunders, who has also enlisted and is serving as an army nurse, runs into Diana Prince and lets slip that the JSA has somehow found out that she’s really Wonder Woman. By the issue’s end, the JSA’s military commanders have discovered the various superheroes in their midst, and have begun arguing amongst themselves over whose outfit has the most effective super-soldier.

In response, the commanding officer of the U.S. forces in the Pacific pulls the JSAers from the units and reforms them into the new Justice Battalion (including new member Wonder Woman). The JSA was back together again, as if anyone really had any doubt.

The next issue featured more wartime adventures, as the newly commissioned Justice Battalion tackles the Black Dragon Society, a Japanese spy ring working within the United States, planning to steal all of America’s weapon technology. This issue also began a tradition of Wonder Woman sitting on the sidelines acting as “secretary.” JSA writer Gardner Fox seemed to realize that a balance of stories would best serve the series, and alternated war themes with fantasy and adventure, as seen in ALL-STAR COMICS #13, “Shanghaied into Space!”

Here, the JSA members are surprised by a Nazi plot, draining all the air from their headquarters until they pass out. Rather than doing the practical thing and just killing them, the Nazis act in classic Bond-villain style, loading their unconscious bodies into rockets and firing them off into space, with each rocket sending a JSA member to a different planet. Hawkman has an adventure on Saturn, Sandman on Uranus, and so on. (Naturally, Wonder Woman winds up on Venus, where the beautiful female inhabitants are being oppressed by giant manly Meteor Men. Even though Gardner Fox is credited as writer, you can’t tell me WONDER WOMAN creator William Marston didn’t have a hand in this…) Naturally, the JSA returns to Earth, and even sends a little message to their “travel agent”:

The JSA was right back to the war effort the next month, but again, rather than a jingoistic punch’em up, they concentrated on humanitarian aid with “Food for Starving Patriots!” in which the team embarks on a mission to deliver concentrated dehydrated food to European civilians suffering under Nazi occupation.

This was often the approach the JSA would take to their war stories, reinforcing such concepts of charity and sacrifice as opposed to merely showing superheroes clobbering buck-toothed caricatures. Even the JSA fan club, the “Junior Justice Society of America,” promoted such ideals, asking its members to “keep our country united in the face of enemy attempts to make us think we Americans are all different, because we are rich or poor; employer or worker; native or foreign-born; Gentile or Jew; protestant or Catholic.”

Good advice even 71 years later. Who’d have thought we’d still need to be reminded?

Some Stars Shine Less Brightly

The year was 1941. National Comics was in a boom period like no other, practically owning the comic-book industry thanks to their unprecedented one-two punch of Superman and Batman. After some three and a half years of success, the company decided to put a big promotional push behind a new character, and even anoint it as the successor to the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader, claiming in a house ad that the new superhero “is certain to become as popular as the two great leaders in the comic field, SUPERMAN AND BATMAN.” And why not? After all, the creator of the new feature, artist Jack Burnley, had been toiling away on both Superman and Batman for over a year as one of their most dependable ghost artists, particularly on SUPERMAN. They knew he could deliver the goods, so a brand-new character from Burnley should be money in the bank, right?

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way for Burnley’s new character, the quintessential Golden Age also-ran, Starman. Let’s take a look at the Astral Avenger’s debut in ADVENTURE COMICS #61 (April 1941), and see if we can pinpoint where it all went wrong.

Drawn by Jack Burnley (although the identity of the writer is lost to the ages), Starman’s inaugural appearance opens with a wave of destructive sabotage across the United States. Everything from telegraph wires to power-generating dynamos spontaneously and mysteriously burst into flame.

At his wit’s end, the FBI’s “ace troubleshooter” Woodley Allen decides to call for the one man who can help:

Not exactly the Batsignal, but, hey, it’s something. Woodley there better hope he’s been wearing a lead suit.

Meanwhile, foppish hypochondriac Theodore Knight is sniffling his way through a high-falutin’ dinner with girlfriend Doris Lee, when the city unexpectedly goes dark. At the same time, a metal cylinder Knight carries within a hidden holster begins to vibrate, alerting him that he’s being summoned.

Knight makes his excuses and looks for a place to change clothes, transforming himself into — wait for it — Starman!

This, by the way, is all the origin we ever get for Ted Knight:

Ah. Superman gets “rocketed to Earth from an exploding planet.” Batman gets “parents were murdered by criminals.” Starman gets “solid scientific research.” How exciting. It’ll make an excellent movie. Ted definitely gets rooked in the origin department.

Anyway, courtesy of his invention, the amazing Gravity Rod, Starman flies out to his secret meeting place with Woodley Allen: an old abandoned shack. There, Woodley tells Starman who’s behind the wave of sabotage: a sinister band of conspirators known as the Secret Brotherhood of the Electron. Sounds like they have to pay dues and have weekly lodge meetings. Starman somehow deduces from this that the Brotherhood must have some sort of device that allows them to nullify ordinary electricity.

Hovering above the city, he conveniently notices some electrical discharge coming from a mountain range below, and investigates, discovering the secret lair of the Secret Brotherhood of the Electron, who have helpfully painted a large lightning bolt on the heavy steel door of their compound.

Starman busts in and interrogates an Electron thug, who quickly gives up the name of the operation’s boss, “an old guy known as Dr. Doog.” Starman locates Dr. Doog, but falls victim to Doog’s powers of hypnosis, finding himself “pinioned by a thought wall.”

Starman manages to resist the hypnosis, and evades Doog’s even more sinister scheme: a trap door. Ooooooooh, scary.

Next, Doog falls back on the old reliable hired goons, but Starman makes short work of them, although we’re not shown exactly how.

However, it’s been long enough for Doog to ready his final weapon, the devastating Ultra-Dynamo, but it’s no match for Starman’s Gravity Rod. And unluckily for Dr. Doog, in trying to escape, he forgets exactly where he’d installed his trap doors, and, well…

The crisis averted Starman changes back to Ted Knight and drops in on Doris for a little more abuse:

So what could Starman do exactly? Well, thanks to the Gravity Rod (later replaced by the Cosmic Rod), Starman was able to manipulate and control energy that the Rod somehow drew from stellar radiation, allowing him to fly, create force fields and protective spheres, expel destructive bursts of energy, levitate objects, and even manipulate the energy into shapes and forms, kind of like Green Lantern’s power ring. Otherwise, he was just a regular guy, with no real powers without his Cosmic Rod, although over time he gained the ability to manipulate the Rod mentally from a distance and even summon it to him, later explained as his having keyed the Rod’s frequency to his brainwaves.

A word about his costume: Granted, it’s a little silly, and definitely old-fashioned, but there’s an almost art-deco elegance about it that’s always appealed to me, particularly the headpiece and the cape. I also always liked the very utilitarian detail of the leather holster for the Gravity Rod on the belt — it seemed like something he picked up at Sears after a mission where he needed both hands for something.

Unfortunately, as cool as his uniform was, Starman himself was pretty bland. The whole business of pretending to be a weak-kneed milquetoast around your girlfriend at least made some sense with Clark Kent. After all, he had real superpowers to try and hide. Ted Knight didn’t even bother wearing a mask, yet he had no problem completely eviscerating his own relationship in the hopes of allaying suspicions. Self-loathing much, there, Ted?

Burnley’s art was definitely well done and leagues better than most of the other work seen in comics of the time, but it too was a little staid, having neither the noirish moodiness of Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson’s Batman or the dynamic crackle of Kirby’s Captain America.

The biggest problem, though, were Starman’s enemies, an endless parade of nondescript scientists and saboteurs with no real flair or panache, there was The Light, Captain Vurm, Baron X, the Green Arab, the Singapore Stranglers, and the list goes on and on. The only real winner in Starman’s rogues’ gallery was The Mist, who made his debut in ADVENTURE COMICS #67 (October 1941.)

The Mist, another disgruntled scientist, had attempted to sell his “inviso-solution” to the U.S. Government during the previous World War but was turned down, and as a result was scheming for revenge. And I gotta side with the Mist on this one: seems to me an invisibility formula just might be something the military would want to invest in. The Mist went on a traitorous rampage, not only stealing all kinds of government secrets thanks to his inviso-solution, but going so far as to coat planes with the material and prepare them for a bombing run over factory districts in Pittsburgh and Bethelem, Pennsylvania (an oddly specific plan for comics, I might add). Starman stumbles across the plot trying to rescue a sightseeing Doris from a cave-in, that just happened to also be the location of the Mist’s secret lair.

Apprised of the situation, Starman downs the Mist’s invisible planes, then goes after the Mist himself, who had re-kidnapped Doris and fled the scene in his (surprisingly visible) “space-ship.”

Starman melts his way through the hull, then takes out the Mist rather easily with a right cross; after all, he is just a floating head.

It’s the Mist’s visual design that sets him apart from the rest of Starman’s rather pedestrian antagonists. The floating, scraggly-haired head hovering above a swirl of mist and air is an innovative and creepy look for the comics of the time, even if it was revealed that he was only wearing an invisible cloak. When the character returned decades later, it would be revealed that repeated exposure to the inviso-solution had rendered him completely insubstantial rather than merely invisible.

National Comics clearly expected to go all the way with Starman, booting Hourman out of its popular Justice Society of America series in ALL-STAR COMICS to make room for him (also joining at the time was new character Dr. Mid-Nite, replacing Green Lantern, who had been awarded his own self-titled series).

However, if you’ll pardon the expression, Ted Knight’s star fell rather rapidly. He was booted from the covers of ADVENTURE COMICS after about a year or so, but remained a monthly feature in its pages for four more years, until 1946, when he was ousted in favor of Aquaman and Superboy stories. At about the same time. Starman found himself (along with the Spectre) unceremoniously and without explanation bumped from the JSA roster as well, their spots taken up by the returning Flash and Green Lantern.

When the JSA returned to comics pages in the 1960s, Starman was one of the first to be brought back, in part because he wasn’t a duplicate of a then-published DC hero like Hawkman or Flash, and no doubt also thanks to his unique and classic look.

Starman was really the perfect character for those kinds of guest appearances: a flashy, colorful costume and a simple, visual power, but not much characterization to have to contend with. He had another brief moment in the spotlight in 1965, when he and Black Canary were given a two-issue teamup stint in BRAVE AND THE BOLD, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Murphy Anderson, a couple of handsomely drawn but deadly dull stories that failed to set the world on fire.

They did, however, serve as inspiration for an intriguing connection between the two characters that wouldn’t be explored until decades later. By the 1970s, Starman was bumped again from the JSA, suffering a broken leg and handing over his Cosmic Rod to new JSA member the Star-Spangled Kid, for whom Ted later made his own version of the Rod, recrafting it into the Cosmic Converter Belt. The worst bit of retroactive history came with Roy Thomas’ handling of the character in ALL-STAR SQUADRON and INFINITY, INC., in which he declared that Ted Knight didn’t even invent the Gravity Rod himself, that he merely bought it. Fortunately, this idea would be dispensed with and ignored in the STARMAN series to come.

“STARMAN series to come,” you ask? Indeed, Ted Knight was far from the last to bear the name Starman — which we’ll begin to discuss next time…

Dead Man Walking

You know, some superheroes have it better than others when it comes to origins. Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider; irritating, but hardly traumatic. Superman’s rocketship ride to Earth from Krypton? Maybe crippling emotionally, but hey, he was young – he adjusted. When it come to origins, nobody had it worse than the Spectre, who had to be beaten and drowned before getting his superpowers. Makes that whole “gamma-bomb explosion” deal look pretty good in comparison, doesn’t it? With Halloween just around the corner, let’s take a glance at DC Comics’ resident “spookerhero,” The Spectre.

As discussed here many times in previous installments, in 1939 publishers everywhere were scrambling to cash in on the unprecedented success of National Comics’ Superman and Batman. National’s sister company, All-American, was about to make their presence felt on the newsstands with their triple threat of super-types: the Green Lantern, Hawkman and the Flash. National’s competitors weren’t sitting on their hands either; Timely had already introduced Bill Everett’s Sub-Mariner and Carl Burgos’ Human Torch, and it was only a short while until Fawcett would unleash Captain Marvel on the world as well. National had their fair share of mysterious adventurers like the Crimson Avenger and the Sandman, but they weren’t really super-heroes (at least not yet – in the months to come, both the Crimson Avenger and the Sandman would find their cloak-and-fedora, pulp-styled modus operandi a thing of the past, and find themselves saddled with skintight long underwear and apple-cheeked boy sidekicks.). In an effort to corner the market, National set out to find superhero series for their two remaining monthly books: ADVENTURE COMICS and MORE FUN COMICS. ADVENTURE would soon see the debut of the Hourman, while MORE FUN would be the home of, you guessed it, the Spectre.

Created by writer Jerry Siegel (fresh from the success of Superman) and artist Bernard Baily, the Spectre makes his first appearance in February 1940, in MORE FUN COMICS #52. In the debut episode, hard-boiled police detective Jim Corrigan is set to marry his girlfriend, socialite Clarice Winston. Unfortunately, work keeps getting in the way: namely, singlehandedly busting up the operations of local crime boss “Gat” Benson. Before long, “Gat” has had enough, and kidnaps Corrigan and his fiancee.

In what has to be the grimmest origin sequence in comics ever, Corrigan is pistol-whipped, then stuffed in a barrel and covered with cement, and then dropped to the bottom of the river. And that’s it for Jim Corrigan. At least, it should be.

Corrigan comes to and finds himself hurtling through space, stopping just short of what looks like the afterlife, where a voice informs him that “[his] mission on Earth is unfinished…You shall remain earthbound battling crime on your world with supernatural powers, until all vestiges of it are gone!”

Before Corrigan can protest, he’s hurtling back down towards Earth, winding up at the bottom of the river again, standing next to the barrel containing his own corpse. Eeugh.

The sight of his own dead hand sticking out of the cracked barrel understandably fires up Corrigan, and he heads off to enact a measure of retribution. Along the way, he discovers he can fly, turn invisible, and walk through solid walls. Corrigan makes it back to the Benson’s hideout just as the goons are about to murder Clarice. Corrigan stares one of the thugs in the eyes, and he drops dead from fright. Another of the gangsters opens fire on Corrigan, but to no effect. When the gangster merely touches Corrigan, his clothing and flesh wither away to nothing, and the thug is quickly reduced to a mere skeleton, which collapses to the ground in a heap.

When “Gat” himself tries to amscray, he’s met up with duplicate after duplicate of Corrigan, and with a touch from them, he lapses into unconsciousness, and following that, mindless catatonia (which, compared to some later opponents of the Spectre, is getting off easy, quite frankly).

Before “Gat” passes out, he fires off a shot, critically wounding Clarice, but with a touch of his hand, Corrigan heals the wound, saving her life.

But it’s hardly a happy ending for Jim Corrigan. Dropping off Clarice, he ends their engagement, and moves out of the apartment he shared with a fellow detective, cutting himself off from all human contact. Finally, Corrigan sews himself a costume for when he battles crime as the Spectre.

(All that power, and he still has to sew? You’d think between the flying, invisibility, wall-walking, death-staring and duplicate-making powers he just got, not to mention when he melted that guy, he’d just be able to snap his fingers and make his new crime-fighting duds appear. Well, apparently not. Guess some things still gotta be done the old-fashioned way.)

Following appearances of the Spectre tended to fall into two categories: either he was cleaning up all-too-human criminals, which didn’t really provide much of a challenge (it was mostly a matter of legwork), or he was facing more competent, mystical-type kinds of opponents. The mystic battles provided some of the more intriguing imagery, such as this moment from MORE FUN #55, in which the Spectre encounters Zor, another spirit like Corrigan confined to Earth, except devoted to the pursuit of evil. As the two ghosts clash, they grow to tremendous size, first towering over a mountain range, then dwarfing the planets themselves.

Despite the fact that there wasn’t a lot of suspense involved, it was probably the visceral thrill of the Spectre contending with poor mortal criminals that kept readers coming back month after month. Because he certainly wasn’t handling them with kid gloves. One of the messier incidents appeared in MORE FUN COMICS #56, when Jim Corrigan was investigating a wholesaler who was dabbling in extortion. When the wholesaler sends some henchmen to go eliminate Corrigan, Corrigan changes into the Spectre, allows then to try to get away, then grows to enormous size, picks up their car and crushes it to a pulp, then chucks the bloody wad of twisted steel away like a gum wrapper.

(The Spectre must have liked the “car-toss” maneuver, as he’d use it time and again throughout the forties.) Other times, the Spectre would fall back on the old reliable “death-stare,” which could either paralyze or straight-out kill those he used it on.

For a little variety, sometimes he’d just snap his fingers and vaporize the guilty, in a “brilliant flash of color.” Not a lot of room for due process in the Spectre’s world.

The Spectre was popular enough in the early forties to earn a spot in the Justice Society of America, National/All-American’s landmark superhero team appearing in ALL-STAR COMICS. Sometimes JSA writer Gardner Fox had to really stretch to accommodate the darker, larger-than-life style of the Spectre stories into the more grounded storylines of the JSA stories, which usually involved rounding up Nazi spy rings or organized crime bosses.

Still, the Spectre remained a constant in the series until about 1945, when he mysteriously and without explanation stopped showing up at the meetings. The Spectre vanished from the pages of MORE FUN in 1945 as well, having been replaced by Superboy. (The first 19 Spectre stories by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily are currently available in THE GOLDEN AGE SPECTRE ARCHIVES, one of the best-looking books in the series in terms of quality of reproduction. A little pricey at $49.99, but a handsome book nonetheless.)

The Spectre stayed vanished until the 1960s, when he, along with the rest of the Justice Society, was revived in the pages of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. The Spectre remained a supporting character for most of the next three decades, most likely for the same reason his original series was discontinued in 1945: it’s hard to convincingly put such an immensely powerful character into any real danger. There have been several noteworthy attempts to give the Spectre a solo series over the years, however. One of the most infamous was the 1974 run in ADVENTURE COMICS by writer Michael Fleisher and artist Jim Aparo.

Fleisher and Aparo hit the series with a vengeance, creating some of the most violent and bloody comics DC had ever published. Criminals in these books casually murdered policemen, bank tellers and innocent bystanders, all happening on panel, mind you.

From a narrative standpoint, the increased brutality of the crooks was necessary so as to justify the somewhat horrendous punishments the Spectre had in store for them, such as slicing them in two with a giant scissors, or melting them like a wax dummy.

Fleisher and Aparo’s Spectre run only lasted nine issues, from #431 to #440, but they’re well worth tracking down, not only for the startling stories, but for some of the most gorgeous art in Jim Aparo’s career.

Probably the best and most thorough exploration of the Spectre began in 1992, with a new SPECTRE series by writer John Ostrander and artist Tom Mandrake.

Ostrander stressed the dichotomy between the human desires and conflicts of Jim Corrigan and the Spectre’s role as the Spirit of Vengeance, occasionally having both aspects of the character manifest at the same time, and in direct opposition. Ostrander also took the character in some surprising new directions, including a story arc in which the Spectre destroyed an entire country in order to eradicate the evil that lay within.

Ostrander and Mandrake’s SPECTRE series ended in 1998 after 62 issues, and closed with a touching and unexpected resolution, as Jim Corrigan was at last released from his role as the Spectre and granted eternal rest. Unfortunately, the entire run of this excellent series is not available in trade collections, but take the time to seek out the back issues. It’s good stuff.