In the 1970s editor Joe Orlando was looking for a new feature for Adventure Comics and with writer Michael Fleisher decided to bring back the Spectre. The Spectre, of course, debuted back in the Golden Age as a supernatural avenger of the dead. Julius Schwartz and Gardner Fox brought him back in the 1960s but the stories in Showcase and his subsequent ongoing were more cosmic in nature. These new stories would harken back more to the original concept but with the horror sensibilities that were now flourishing in the decade creating stories that were intentionally more in the mold of an EC horror story than traditional capes.As the likely apocryphal legend goes, Orlando had been mugged and decided to use this as fuel for stories of the Spectre playing the role of supernatural avenger, executing criminals in horrific ways. The gruesomeness of these stories, intentionally pushing things as far as the Code would allow them, eventually caused controversy leading to the feature's cancellation. In 1988 it was decided to collect the Adventure Comics feature into a miniseries, the first three issues reprinting the stories while the fourth would be new ones based on scripts left unproduced due to its cancellation.Because the feature largely wraps up just fine I'll be ignoring those unproduced-turned-produced stories and during this, the spookiest of all days, will storytime Wrath of the Spectre #1-3 which will cover the Adventure Comics run.
This one is positively quaint compared to what's coming.
Like so.
>>156132955I think it's funny that every version of Corrigan before Ostrander did not ask to be the Spectre, then Ostrander came along and was like "actually Corrigan talked shit at God until he got punished with the job and also he was sexist and racist"
There's not really much of an actual ongoing story in this feature but this story will introduce the closest thing to it in the form of Gwen Sterling, an heiress who falls for Jim Corrigan.
I'm wondering, what makes Spectre a beloved niche part of the DC universe but Stardust the Super-Wizard the work of a lunatic? Is it about the presentation?
>>156132982I didn't get that in the Silver Age stories either where Spectre wasn't so much Corrigan but more like Corrigan's cosmically powerful Stand.
>>156133030Well I mean these stories got the Adventure Comics feature cancelled and there's a story on Shooter's blog where he talked about how people like Mark Evanier and Marv Wolfman were at a panel absolutely trashing Fleisher's work in these stories as tasteless and trashy.
>>156133172>what the fuck is that face in the mirror>THAT'S MY FACE, PUTRID VILLAINthat felt personal. don't worry Jim, I think you're beautiful
I think this is a good example of how these stories were dancing all over the line of what they could get away with in a mainstream comic at the time. Seeing as this was also a book that featured Aquaman.
Thanks OP. I wouldn't mind seeing a DC Finest of pre-Ostrander Spectre stories.>>156133030Maybe it's just because I grew up in a post-Nightmare on Elm Street, post-CCA world, but I love this kind of stuff.
>>156132831Still fucking pissed that the last three WoS Adventure Comics stories (written in the 70s but not drawn until the 80s) didn't get included in the DC's Finest TPB. Especially since the WoS trade is super expensive and the Silver Age Omnibus included them.
>>156133312Yeah. Especially since those last three stories ties up all the plot threads and gives this run an ending.
>>156133306>Thanks OP. I wouldn't mind seeing a DC Finest of pre-Ostrander Spectre stories.There's a DC Finest collection that's literally just that, basically all or at least most of his Silver Age and Bronze Age appearances from his revival in Showcase up through a few All-Star Squadron stories around the time of Crisis.
>>156133282>one guy might stop coming to my fake seances>KILL HIM
>>156133312>>156133330If I had to guess, the reason is because the Finest was collecting everything pre-Crisis and this series came out well afterwards so technically those would be post-Crisis stories, I don't know. Maybe they also just didn't want to do only one issue of WoS?
>>156133341Good to know. I'm working on an old Showcase collection of Blackhawk stories right now, but I've got the second Doom Patrol and Deadman in the waiting.
There's also another feature in this issue called Adventurer's Club that was in Adventure Comics at the time. Why it was included in this issue I have no idea but I'm not bothering with it.
Each issue of this mini also had text pieces going over the history of the Spectre and the Adventure Comics feature in particular. I'll include them at the end of each issue.
>>156133447>if you enjoyed our slasher movie villain, you might also like our objectivist conspiracy crackpot.
When talking about the reasons why the feature was cancelled, Paul Levitz mentions that some younger creators had been badmouthing it as being artless and trashy. Here's the blog post I mentioned from Shooter about an SDCC panel where most of the panelists trashed Fleisher to Shooter's chagrin.https://jimshooter.com/2011/08/some-marvel-tales-and-other-horror_24.html/Interesting too, he also kind of dismisses the whole "Jean died because Shooter thought she deserved to be punished for her crime" angle of Dark Phoenix Saga. He simply says that he mostly just thought the original ending was really weak and needed to be more dramatic.
Issue 2And yeah, as I usually do when I storytime things I'm taking small breaks inbetween issues.
>>156133495Shooter had a mouth on him.
This is probably my favorite story of the Adventure Comics run.
>>156133495Even Len Wein was in on it? That Comics Code shit messed people up worse than Twitter.
>>156133696There's also the infamous interview where Harlan Ellison called Fleisher, in so many words, a twisted person because of his stories which led to Fleisher suing him for defamation. Although in Ellison's case he was saying it as a compliment. So Fleisher's stories seemed to be above and beyond for a lot of people.
This is probably the most gruesome death in the entire series for me. It's pretty funny that all they had to do to get away with it is say that he's really a mannequin so it's all good.
This is likely the most infamous story of this run. For whatever reason the death seems to have stuck with people the most. In one of the text pieces Fleisher said he was intentionally calling back to an old EC story he liked with this one.
>>156133846it's funny seeing what everyone always clamors for, for Batman to actually kill the deranged superpowered lunatic, on the page in an official DC comic.
>>156133874And now we have the character who basically seems to serve as the voice of the "You can't just execute mass murderers" characters like Bruce.
>>156133922in the Ostrander run he gets Amy Beitermann to fill that role and it gets to an annoying point. Things don't end well for her
>>156133742Fucking wild. I can see why parents may clutch at their pearls seeing stories like this alongside far tamer stuff, but I really can't get over creatives wigging out over this. With that in mind though, I can see why Fleisher would be agitated enough to respond like that.
>>156133980I should read Ostrander's series some time since the Finest was the first Spectre stuff I'd ever gone out of my way to read and I really enjoyed it. Is the DeMatteis series with Hal worth reading at all too?
>>156134023haven't read that one, sorry
>And then he turned him into a block of wood. Spookiest shit I've ever seen.
>>156134054I don't get it, is this an AU Clark that is not Superman?
>>156133983It's kind of funny that at the time something like this, an entire roomful of people (including children) being murdered was way beyond the pale. Then 30 years later you have something like Civil War just casually killing a portion of an entire town and nobody blinks.
>>156134078Nope, just a character for this series. He shows up in these two stories, eventually produced ones in WoS, and in two Doctor Thirteen stories that guest-starred the Spectre.
This might be one of the more ridiculous stories if only because of the villain.
>>156133922It's Glark Gent.
>>156134195It's not like Corrigan doesn't have a history of humbling the real Clark as well.
Brutal
>>156134221>"what the fuck kind of death do I do for the mooks?">looks around at desk>"EUREKA!"
Is the story where he kills a group of communists in this series?
>>156134263Do you mean the one with the Symbionese Liberation Army riff? If so then yes.
>>156134109We literally saw an ad for O'Neil's Question, and while that was rated mature it has stuff that's realistic and far nastier to me than anything in this book.
Issue 3>>156134319You also have to rmemeber that these stories were originally published in 1974-1975 while this mini is from 1988. So a full 13-14 years later and things had changed dramatically. They'd change even more when you have stuff like Sentry graphically ripping Ares in two on page in full detail with gore and everything in a mainstream event comic.
>>156134392Jim just looks kind of miffed about digging himself out of the grave.
>>156134433"mondays..."
>>156134433You'll see why but as has been said, he just kind of wants to die and be granted peace.
This is IMO the weakest story of the run by far.
Next is a two-parter which ends the Adventure Comics run so I'll break for another few minutes and then do those.
>>156134773monke
>>156134867oh hey it's adrian monk
Another memorable if wacky death.
Christ I really screwed that up.
Thus ends the Adventure Comics run. Three more scripts were written but not produced until this miniseries, taking up Wrath of the Spectre #4. But the direction seemed to change to try and be more of an ongoing story that ultimately would go nowhere. This feels more like a definitive and perfectly fine ending and honestly I kind of feel like by the end the formula was running a bit dry anyway with the last two stand alone stories being pretty weak.
I'll post the text piece for this issue and though I'm not dumping issue 4 I'll at least include the text pieces from it too.
>>156135223turns out if you make a "hero" who is actually literally invincible and almighty, thousands times more than Superman, you don't have much of a story on your hands, which is why anyone who tried to use Spectre later put more focus on the themes of religion and redemption.
And that finishes up this kind of impromptu storytime. I didn't really have any plans to do it but I'd finished the Finest volume earlier this week and since today is Halloween I just figured it was good timing.
>>156135263I think it's not even that as much as it is you can really only see so many variations on "criminals commit murder, Spectre kills them good" without much in the way of an actual story or characterization. A lot of people didn't but I actually kind of enjoyed the Gardner Fox stories where he's more of a cosmic superhero battling against these powerful beings from other dimensions or pseudo-Satans and shit, doing things like tossing pagan gods beyond the boundaries of existence. But that also runs into the same problem because it quickly turns into wondering how you're going to top yourself.
>>156134773If those apes had been on the cover it would have saved the series.
>>156135003>He Never Scored
>>156134023The Hal as Spectre run is worth reading as it is a really good character study of Hal and features an exploration of his relationship with one of his brothers.Sadly, Geoff Johns, for reasons unknown, DESPISED the run and right before Infinite Crisis, declared it non canon by saying said Jordan brother hated Hal due to his Hal kept abandoning said brother to tend to their mom (as their other brother had fucked off and started a family) do whatever the fuck Hal wanted. Culminating in a flashback sequence when Hal first fought the now zombie Black Hand, which explained that when Hal's mom was dying, Hal fucked off to join the Air Force to avoid dealing with it and he ended up having to get himself court martialed and kicked out on a dishonorable discharge when said brother who was alive and well just two-three years prior, killed himself since he couldn't handle being the Jordan family bitch boy anymore, as he finally got his revenge on Hal by forcing him to through away his military career in the worst possible way in order to force him to care for his dying mom.
>>156136387Johns' entire career is pushing through every stupid headcanon idea he had between the ages of 13 and 25 and basically getting no pushback from it because he was basically DC's top writer from the time he was given JSA and Flash.
>>156133495Based Shooter.
>>156133030Stardust the Super-Wizard is the beloved work of a lunatic
>>156137849Does anyone actually enjoy Stardust for non-ironic reasons?
>>156132942This is some Road Runner cartoon trickery lol
>>156138848Some people enjoy it for reasons of owning the libs.
>>156133030Presentation (if you actually read the Golden Age Spectre stories, Spectre kills people, but it's not brutal the way this 1970s comic is), but also because the Stardust comic is basically kind of like if someone read the Golden Age Spectre comics and the only takeaway was to do a superpowerful being who does horrific punishments to criminals. Golden Age Spectre punished criminals and sometimes killed them but there were always other conflicts going on because he has to maintain his Jim Corrigan identity, or his longing to be human. Sometimes there were things that Spectre had to overcome (you rarely saw that in Stardust). Stardust had no secret identity or regular supporting characters so it was just purely a guy fucking up criminals.Arguably, during the Golden Age, Spectre's stories started to get toned down in the final years, and even when he was first revived in the 1960s, he was still more of a superhero ghost than the horror hero you see in the Fleischer 70s run.
>>156132831Any specter stories where he turns a guy into a woman?
