Saturday Splash Page #148

 

"An Ill Wind Blows," in The Spectre (vol. 3) #27, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny and Digital Chameleon (color artists), Todd Klein (letterer)

Summer (and Fall) of Spiders is on a one-week hiatus, so we can get into the spirit of the season! Or is it the, specter, of the season? *arches eyebrow*

Audience: Boooooooooooooo.

The Spectre had been a bizarre figure, using comets and planets like whips and bludgeons to fight demons. He'd been the source of much ironic punishment to a variety of killers and criminals. He'd been a paranormal detective. In Ostrander and Mandrake's 5-year run, he's a bit of all those things, but mostly he's a being that needs to evolve.

Ostrander takes the approach that, after 50 years, dead cop Jim Corrigan never understood the task he was given as the Spectre. It wasn't to punish evil, but to confront, and most critically, comprehend, evil. The latter is difficult for both halves of the spirit. The Spectre itself was created to punish, without compassion or restraint. Corrigan's not big on those concepts either, feeling he's seen very little of them in his life, and so the guilty don't deserve them (though it's pointed out to him, "guilt" and "evil" aren't the same thing.)

As the Spectre tries to evolve and grow, Corrigan is forced to confront his past, his mistakes and his flaws. His tendency to focus on revenge, leading him to abandon Amy Beitermann and pursue her killer, when she pleaded not to die alone. To lash out rather than admitting he's in pain, which is not great when you have as much power as the Spectre. That's how an entire country (Count Vertigo's home of Vlatava) gets destroyed, an act of genocide that Ostrander never manages to square with the fact "Moonface's" old JSA buddies still speak with him after, let alone Superman or Batman letting that shit slide. The Spectre even acknowledges he killed children by doing so, and the Archangel Michael just handwaves it as 'extreme, but not unjust.' Are you fucking kidding me?

It's a part of the overall work that people (or souls) are often punishing themselves, rather than anything God's doing. And so Corrigan has to forgive himself his mistakes (in that regard, he's ultimately more successful than John Gaunt was in GrimJack.) But even if he came to some sort of peace with himself, that hardly means everyone else would be OK with it. Ostrander tried to go big to make a point of how dangerous a Spectre that's lost any sense of control could be, but in the process, created an anchor that sits around the character's neck for the remaining 4 years of the series. Even if the other characters don't mention it, I was always aware of what the Spectre did to Vlatava in, essentially, a grief-induced rage.

Part of the path of Corrigan's growth involves actually talking to people, instead of offering booming pronouncements before killing them in ironic ways. Ostrander uses a few existing characters like Madame Xandau or Reverend Craemer, who he introduced in Suicide Squad, and creates a few others like Amy (a social worker who happens to cross paths with Corrigan when he visits the man who helped murder him), or Nate Kane, a hard-nosed cop with a phobia about sick people. While they may sometimes console Corrigan, just as often they give him a metaphorical smack upside the head. 

That said, the book is far from focused on talking about feelings. Mandrake still gets plenty of chances to draw the Spectre dealing out horrific punishments or facing down slithering demons that make you feel grimy just looking at them. The Spectre often travels in another person's mind or soul, which gives the opportunity to get surreal with things. The Spectre may face a kaiju-sized version of the mobster that killed him, firing planets from a Thompson, or find himself caught in a funhouse of his own worst failures.

It helps to reinforce the growing divide between the two halves of the Spectre, one that is still ultimately a human soul, and one that isn't and never was. Corrigan will try to navigate these landscapes, while the Spectre, when left to its own devices, simply smashes through. It's a blunt instrument, and so long as Corrigan was content to be that way, there was no problem. But Jim Corrigan's a human, and humans can change, so that shared sense of purpose doesn't last.