Random Back Issues #172 - The Spectre #57

This is the 8th issue of The Spectre to appear in Random Back Issues. God's loaded my dice.

Or maybe not, as the issue begins with Spectre finding the Pearly Gates busted open, and nothing behind them! No angels, no souls, no God. The Spectre and Jim Corrigan have been having their differences recently, but they both want to get to the bottom of this.

Corrigan suggests pounding the pavement, question some suspects. First to Limbo, where an extremely skeletal Deadman is hanging around, watching a bunch of shadows traverse a foggy canyon. Spectre explains God's missing, and Deadman busts a gut, to Spectre's displeasure. Deadman says his god, Rama Kushna, is still around, and he doesn't know the Spectre's God 'from spit,' but it ain't here.

Next stop, Hell. Two angels, Remiel and Duma, are running things, because Lucifer abdicated. Remiel is trying to reform Hell, make it a place souls are redeemed through torment. It's not going great. 'Whip them with love,' apparently being a difficult concept to get across. Duma is zoned out, ignoring Remiel to the point the latter considers murdering the former. 

Spectre kicks in the doors, wishing to speak with the Lord of Hell. Duma, finally showing some life, kneels before him and offers the Key to Hell. The Spectre barely resists, claiming he's no creature of Hell, which Remiel thinks is crazy talk. The Spectre can freely enter Hell, but not Heaven. Michael forced his compliance, and Spectre was given a Sisyphean task to complete, walk the Earth until evil is no more. Well, when you put it that way. . . God sounds like kind of a dick. Maybe it's good he's missing.

Or maybe not. When Spectre delivers the news, the demons go into a frenzy, calling him a liar and attacking him. Which does not go well, and makes the Spectre suspect Hell is behind it, until Remiel points out the demons are afraid. They exist in opposition to God, so if God's gone, will they cease to be? Oblivion terrifies even a demon. I guess Remiel never talked to Jason Lee's character in Dogma, since that guy preferred non-existence to Hell.

At a dead end, the Spectre departs, leaving Duma to cry over Michael's disappearance (I guess Duma loved Michael?), the demons to sulk back to their various fiery pits, and Remiel to remark that for the first time, he feels like he's truly in Hell.

Lucifer's enjoying retirement on a beach in Australia, watching the sunset. Must be nice to have a job that offered retirement benefits. He's unperturbed at Spectre's claim of God's absence, so Spectre sets out to question the pantheons of "lesser" gods. This will involve him barging into places he's not welcome and throwing his weight around like an asshole. Which could either be representative of Corrigan's style of police investigation, or the behavior of Christians throughout human history. Meanwhile, Lucifer sits on the beach, remarking the Spectre should have stayed and watched the sunset. 

{10th longbox, 70th comic. The Spectre #57, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny and Digital Chamelon (color artists), Todd Klein (letterer)}

Random Back Issues #152 - The Spectre #5

Remarkably, this terrifying experience is brought to you someone besides the Spectre.

The kid is Bill Hoffman. He's been kidnapped and buried in a graveyard, with only a measly pipe to provide air, and carry his cries for his parents to the surface. Unfortunately, once it starts to rain, the pipe also allows water to flow into the box!

The ones responsible, Billy's babysitter, her twin brother Eddie, and their stepdad, are currently fleeing the cops. Stepdad's yelling at Eddie, who insists it wasn't his fault he didn't see the cop when he ran a red light. Eddie tries to cut onto the freeway in front of a truck, hydroplanes, and they get broadsided, then blown up. This is bad, since they were supposed to call in Billy's location after they picked up the ransom. No one told the cops in the patrol car and now no one knows where the kid's buried. No one living, at any rate.

Turns out, one of the Hoffmans' friends is Amy Beitermann, and she knows someone who might be able to speak with the dead. Thinking about Jim Corrigan calls him to the hospital. Eddie clung to life the longest, so Corrigan enters his body to find his soul. He asks Amy to keep thinking of him, to act as an anchor. Eddie's soul has already moved past the land of the recently dead (where Deadman is just, hanging out, for some reason), so the Spectre descends into Hell.

He passes Louis Snipe, who betrayed and murdered Corrigan in the '40s. Snipe curses him, but Spectre says Snipe got what he deserved (being devoured by giant leeches.) Then Jim's dad appears (tied to a swastika with barbed wire) asking if the same is true of him, and if so, isn't it true of Corrigan as well, as written in some verse of the Bible blah blah. Spectre knows a trick when he sees it and calls out Shathan, Lord of Lies, still torn up from a previous fight they had.

Shathan's got Eddie's soul inside his body, like a heart. Eddie still protests nothing was his fault, but nobody's listening. Spectre claims Shathan is only trying to keep the Spectre from helping a child. Shathan fires back the Spectre is only here because he didn't get to punish Eddie himself. Spectre throws the first punch, but this is Shathan's realm, and he hits the Spectre with a buffet of the tortures Ol' Moonface inflicted on others. Cut up by giant scissors, trapped in a mirror and shattered, all that good stuff.

Spectre ultimately shakes it off, reaches into Shathan's chest and tears out Eddie. As he walks away, Shathan mentions a legend of a devil that repented his rebellion and merged with a human soul to walk the Earth. Is the Spectre that devil? Spectre dismisses it as another trick, but Shathan admits he would even stoop to the truth if it caused doubt in the Spectre's heart. (The answer, fyi, is yes.) The Spectre orders the gates of Hell to open, Eddie explains where the kid is buried, but before he can get too far into excuses, the Spectre chucks him back through the gates.

Back on Earth, Amy and Lt. Nate Kane get a rude surprise as Eddie's corpse sits up and reveals the kid is buried in a cemetery under the name Krause. Nate barrels off with two cops and Billy's dad, while Amy stays behind, trying to help Corrigan get out of Eddie's dead body. It's pouring rain, so the coffin is rapidly filling with water, but they manage to dig it up in time to save the kid. Now if Nate could only figure out how Corrigan got that info, and how Amy knows the "psycho detective."

{10th longbox, 24th comic. The Spectre (vol. 3) #5, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Digital Chameleon (colorist), Todd Klein (letterer)}

Random Back Issues #143 - The Spectre #19

After 50 years, Jim Corrigan finally gets that his mission is to confront evil in others to understand it in himself. Only took him leaving a friend to die alone because he just had to punish her killer, him basically wiping out the nation of Vlatava, getting possessed by Eclipso and nearly ending life on Earth, but hey! Jim's in the remedial class, any progress is encouraging.

The Spectre's going to get his chance to put this to work, because there's trouble brewing in New York City. An elderly rabbi was acquitted after he crashed his car into a group of black kids, killing one of them. This is after his sect bought up a bunch of  buildings in a predominantly African-American neighborhood and converted them into an enclave, off-limits to outsiders.

Tensions are running high, the cops are maintaining a perimeter around the enclave, but the Spectre flits right in and confronts the rabbi, who admits he hit the kids. Not intentionally, but he had known he shouldn't still be driving, and couldn't accept one more sign of his encroaching mortality. Old Moonface weighs the rabbi's soul and says that, taken as a whole, the good he's done outweighs the sin. Will the father of the dead child accept, "God says this man is no sinner?"

Yeah, me neither. The Spectre tries to disperse the angry people on both sides, and two demons of hate and anger emerge from the crowd and start brawling in the sky. It takes a couple of pages, but Spectre takes them down, and it's revealed his old foe Asmodus summoned them. Unfortunately, it's turned into a street fight down below during that, until the Spectre breaks it up. I guess the crowd could see his fight with the demons, but decided to have their own fight anyway? The rabbi emerges to apologize to the grieving father, but that's not helping.

So the Spectre makes them experience each other's grief. The concentration camps, dealing with the Klan. It seems to cool the father's anger, but the experience, the grief, something, kills the rabbi. Even when the Spectre isn't trying to kill people he still kills them. Frank Castle would not approve of such sloppy work.

In other plot threads, a young environmentalist who was set on fire by oil rig workers is reborn as Earth's water elemental (I assume this is picking up threads from Ostrander's Firestorm), and President Bill Clinton takes a break from being a scarfing Big Macs and being a creep to bring in one of his old professors, Nicodemus West, to discuss if there's a way to control or destroy the Spectre after he, you know, killed an entire country because he can't process grief in a healthy manner.

{10th longbox, 36th comic. The Spectre #19, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny and Digital Chameleon (color artists), Todd Klein (letterer)}

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.

Sunday Splash Page #328

 

"The Face of Mars," in Martian Manhunter (vol. 2) #1,000,000, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny (color artist), Ken Lopez (letterer)

The Martian Manhunter had long stints as a back-up feature in various DC books back in the Silver Age, and a 4-issue mini-series in the late '80s, but he didn't get his own, ongoing solo book until John Ostander and Tom Mandrake took a crack at it in the late '90s.

Ostrander shifts between J'onn's Martian roots and his connections with people on Earth, mostly keeping the book from leaning too heavily one way or the other. It's made easier since the Martians had been established as performing scientific experiments on Earth in the distant past. So J'onn can run into remnants of the White Martians' experiments - drawn in slippery, toothy-ridden form by Mandrake - or even a few Martians that transferred their minds into human bodies and have been doing so for decades or more.

But you also have stories where J'onn has to contend with his brother Ma'alefa'ak, who gets a name that basically implies he's cursed (which she intended as a warning to Ma'alefa'ak), only for him to abduct and torture other Martians until J'onn catches him and his telepathy is shut down. Which leaves him free to create a plague that only attacks telepathic Martians and causes them to burn to death. That would be a great lesson in the danger of self-fulfilling prophecies. You know, if J'onn hadn't been the last Martian left on the planet.

Still, it leads to a lot about how J'onn lost himself in grief for some period of time before being accidentally brought to Earth. Ostrander delves into the nature of Martian beliefs (the Green Martians, anyway, he doesn't diverge from the "ruthless supremacists" mold Morrison stuffed the White Martians into), how J'onn perceives his duty as a "manhunter", things like that.

Those parts work pretty well. Mandrake's art, with those loose pencils and heavy shadows, is well suited for a species of shapeshifters. J'onn's telepathy, combined with some of the stuff he finds in the minds of his enemies, offers another avenue for Mandrake to bring a horror element to the work. It's not a horror book by any means - definitely closer to a detective book - but the nature of the Martian Manhunter's powers means he's going to face stranger, more dangerous things in the course of his investigations.

Likewise, the exploration of J'onn's life on Earth outside being a JLA member is interesting. Ostrander runs with the idea that J'onn has a lot of identities across the world, not just John Jones, private detective. Famous Brazilian authors. A Japanese boy who transforms into a giant robot. A dumb muscle super-villain (who somehow always screws things up for whatever gang he gets hired on to). A cat. It fits not only with J'onn's ability to assume different forms, but with his image of himself as a philosopher, striving to see things from many different perspectives.

One thing that doesn't particularly work is that Ostrander has Ma'alefa'ak kill J'onn's friend and partner, Karen Smith, after "John Jones" finally revealed the truth about himself, but before there'd been any sort of reconciliation or real conversation about it between them. It ends up leading to the DEO (mostly Cameron Chase of the short-lived series Chase) finding a story Smith started writing about the truth about John, and the DEO trying to force J'onn to tell them secret identities of other heroes, but there's never really any reckoning for J'onn about Karen's death, all the times he used his telepathy to make her forget things she saw him do, or where things were left between them.

I like Ostrander's work, but women have an extraordinarily high mortality rate in his stuff, there's no question.

I also don't love giving J'onn a long-standing enmity with Apokolips. It makes sense that Darkseid would want beings with the array of powers Martians have under his control, and symbolically, I can see it. Guy weakened by fire, venturing into a world with fire everywhere. A telepath roaming a planet full of suffering and death, where the inhabitants believe their pain is proof of their ruler's love. J'onn, coming from a people who routinely intermingled thoughts and bodies, as a way of connection and healing, against Darkseid, who wants all thoughts to be his thoughts anyone. Still, it feels a bit like punching out of one's weight class, even for the Martian Manhunter.

Sunday Splash Page #213

 

"Return to Maker," in GrimJack #39, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Ken Feduniewicz (colorist), Ken Holewczynski (letterer)

After Tim Truman departed, Tom Sutton took over as artist for 9 issues (minus the anniversary 24th issue, where Truman returned for a short story). Then there's two guests artists, including Shaun McManus, and in issue #31, Tom Mandrake steps in as the regular artist, a role he would maintain for the 25 issues, the most anyone drew of the ongoing series.

Mandrake brings the deep, creeping shadows and faces that look fluid to the work. Most of the time. There are issues in the middle where someone else is doing the inking (Jim McDermott takes a turn or two) and the shadows become a more solid, flat presence. There's none of that sense of them being alive and trying to swallow everything on the page. Mandrake's Cynosure is a bit cleaner, and the streets aren't nearly as crowded. Gaunt seems to be spending more time in places with high walls all around, hemming him in.

I think the big internal conflict up through Truman's run was whether what Gaunt believes about himself is true. Is he really true to his friends? Is his stubborn pushing for the truth, his refusal to let certain people have their way, get away with shit, actually for the best? Is there really any point to anything he's tried to do?

The Trade Wars seemed to answer solidly that he is a person that stands by his friends, because they did the same for him when he needed it. Whether his stopping Dancer and Mayfair from taking over the city was the right move probably depends on what one thinks is best for Cynosure, and how many people it's acceptable to sacrifice to get it.

The time where Mandrake is the artist would seem to reaffirm this, but it also presents more of the downside to his personality. GrimJack being exceedingly stubborn and refusing to give up is great when he's fighting on your behalf and things are bad. Less so when it makes him put you in danger because he's determined to have things a certain way.

The main plot is that Mayfair and Dancer are no longer allies. Instead, each of them are trying to assume power in their own way. Mayfair ropes in BlacJacMac at a time when he's lonely and frustrated, while Dancer finds allies in a lower quarter. Meaning demons. Ostrander knows to give Mandrake the opportunity to draw creepy, crawly monstrous looking things with slime and too many eyes and teeth.

GrimJack finds himself in the middle, trying to piece everything together and get enough people on his side to actually win. But, he wants the win on his terms. Specifically, he wants to be the one who kills Dancer, for a specific reason I will try not to spoil here, and that leads to him making bad decisions. Bad decisions that result in additional casualties on his side.

Ostrander puts Gaunt through some heavy trauma as soon as Mandrake's on-board, and then, gives him a chance at some peace and resolution. It seems to work. A few characters remark he seems less haunted. But what we see over time is that he hasn't abandoned his old ways and gradually, the same flaws resurface. What looked like an unwillingness to abandon a friend, might have just been Gaunt being pissed someone was trying to use him. 

He lost a couple of friends during the Trade Wars when he got outmaneuvered. He loses a few more here, but they're more self-inflicted wounds. In the first go-round, those losses sent him into a dark place. He doesn't fall as far this time, but he gets a glimpse of the consequences of his actions, and it's a whole lot worse from his perspective. But we'll get to that next week.

Random Back Issues #77 - The Spectre #44

Just because you're dead, doesn't mean you get to go around without pants. 

Jeez, third issue of The Spectre this year. Today finds the Spirit of Vengeance hunting pieces of the American Talisman, a spiritual MacGuffin the Founding Fathers used to create an avatar of the colonies to help them combat Great Britain. I think Ostrander retcons Uncle Sam to be one of the later representations of that avatar, but maybe it was already that way.

One of the pieces was sent to Helen Belcanto by an author she works with. Helen's the best editor at thus publisher, but has hit the glass ceiling hard. All the execs, all old men, sit around laughing about how they won't let her in, and she can't play hardball because she 'hasn't got the equipment.' Not really accurate. It may require balls, but it also requires something to strike them with, and I'm sure she has no shortage of options there.

Anyway, the talisman seized on her frustration and anger and created Hellion. Who promptly lit those execs on fire. Well, the Spectre's not down with that, so away we go. Hellion smacks him across the chest with some flaming chains, and when he's surprised it left a mark, asks if he's surprised a woman is capable of such a thing, then binds him up in the chains. He doesn't seem too troubled. Probably thinking, "Man, I make my chains out of spiders or animated children fingers. This stuff ain't shit."

Then Madame Xanadu shows up and complicates everything. Helen, or rather a past life of hers, is Xanadu's daughter. Originally, Xanadu taught her magic, but Past Helen reached for power she couldn't control and it destroyed her. This has repeated itself through the ages, while Xanadu keeps trying to save her. She thinks this might be the last chance. Well, yeah, if the Spectre casts her into Hell.

The Spectre, showing an unusual amount of restraint, leaves them to this and summons live cop Nate Kane to Salem. By pulling him through a railway station bathroom mirror and dumping him out a different mirror. Nate's not pleased, but agrees to locate Helen's home. Except things are getting weird when he steps outside. He's back in Pilgrim times, right as a bunch of folks prepare to hang a woman accused of being a witch. Nate, in period appropriate clothes, barges in and pulls a flintlock pistol on the leader, right as everything snaps back to the present, leaving a lot of confused people. The time distortion is coming in waves, so Nate goes against the flow, figuring he'll find the source.

Back in the boardroom, Hellion and Xanadu are arguing about the best ways to achieve the freedom to be women, however they define that. Xanadu doesn't think using repression and violence against men, as they have against women, will achieve it. Hellion, who points out she didn't kill the executive circle, merely used her version of the Penance Stare on them, plans to do that to everyone. The Spectre finally rejoins the conversation, stating he's not going to allow that.

Moonface acknowledges Hellion has a fair complaint about how women have been abused, but points out somehow Hellion's causing these ripples in time, causing women in this time to suffer horrors that were inflicted on women in the past. It's harming the innocent, and he'll stop her if he has to. Xanadu warns he has to go through her first, over Hellion's protests she doesn't need protecting. I mean, she hasn't been destroyed yet, but the Spectre also hasn't really attacked her, either.

Hellion is very similar to the "man-killer" type super-villainesses the comics had back in the '70s and on from there, which is kind of rough to read. It can easily feel like someone using a strawman argument, but I think the point is this is just Helen's anger and frustration given physical form. It's not all of what she thinks and feels, just the part that's hurt and tired, which is why it's causing unintended harm, as Xanadu warns her. YMMV.

Hellion senses Nate breaking into her apartment, where Helen's body is in a sort of stasis. She rushes off, Xanadu sics her pet demons on the Spectre to keep him away from her daughter. He swears she'll suffer if Nate's harmed, which Xanadu rebuts, pointing out she can't die. I don't think the Spectre would really make her life unending torment as he warns. He'd get bored eventually.

You can imagine how happy Hellion is to find a strange man in her apartment. The Spectre and Xanadu follow before she can harm Nate. Ultimately, everyone agrees (well, not Nate, no one asks him) Helen has the right to choose what she's going to do. She'll just have to accept the consequences. Helen rejects the power, wishing to be more than just anger, and hands off the talisman piece, remarking, 'it's not part of me or any other woman.' 

Xanadu offers to teach her more about magic, and Spectre's left wondering if the talisman can ever be whole if it truly excluded so many from the dream of America? Well, you get enough people who agree with its vision of America, like the Republican Party, sure.

[10th longbox, 40th comic. The Spectre (vol. 3) #44, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny (colorist), Todd Klein (letterer)]

Random Back Issues #66 - The Spectre #52

You and an unpleasantly large percentage of people in the American prison system.

Last time we looked at Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre run, the Spirit of Vengeance was out of control because Corrigan couldn't deal with the pain of losing someone he cared about. Today's issue is from about 3 years later, and the Spirit of Vengeance is out of control because Corrigan's having problems.

I'm sensing a recurring theme here.

But first, a dream sequence. The Spectre has been resting inside the soul of Corrigan's cop partner, Detective Kane. This is due to a combination of factors including, but not limited to, the Spectre using his lifeforce to sustain Gaea during Final Night and the Spectre getting stabbed with the Spear of Destiny by the Avatar of White Supremacist America. Completely serious about that last bit, by the way. Also, we just missed the issue where Spectre tries to judge the Joker and ends up getting his power stolen by him. Damn.

Anyway, Kane finds himself in what he thinks is a dream, but soon realizes is a memory of Corrigan's. A memory that involves Jim shooting a woman named Julia Edmonds and her falling over the edge of the Manhattan Bridge. The Spectre denies any knowledge of this and sets out for another fine day of vengeance. 

And what finer place to punish the guilty than a prison? Boy howdy, does the Spectre get down to business. Starts with a guy who shanked someone in the prison yard just to get some quiet time in solitary. Crushes him between the walls of the cell. Then resurrects a bunch of guards to beat the shit out of one that beat a prisoner to death for kicks. And on and on, all except that guy up above, one Mihcael Lincoln, who is set to be executed tomorrow night. The Spectre says that's not his concern, and takes off.

Reverend Craemer is woken up a short time later by Corrigan, who admits to feeling a bit out of control. No shit. Corrigan can't figure out why he and Spectre aren't on the same page. Craemer suspects that Jim is growing beyond his cut-and-dried, black-and-white mindset, but the Spectre can't change. He's a spirit of vengeance, period, full stop. Which presents a problem without a clear solution. 

So Jim decides to table it, and focus on saving Michael Lincoln. He approaches Lincoln's public defender and learns the execution is still on for that night. The Spectre not killing someone, is not considered proof they are innocent of the murder they were imprisoned for. This is what happens when they won't let you put the Ten Commandments outside courthouses any longer, is probably something Mike Huckabee would say. Also, the governor doesn't want to look like he's intimidated by the Spectre, so execution, ho!

That evening, as they prepare to administer the lethal injection, the Spectre appears. He tells them, again, Lincoln is not guilty. The warden tells him he better not try to stop the execution. Real pair of balls on that guy, but the Spectre says he's not there to stop it. Mortal legal matters aren't his jurisdiction. However, he's told them Michael Lincoln is innocent, so if they kill him, that's murder. And we all know what the Spectre does to murderers! 

The doctor refuses to kill a healthy, innocent man. I don't remember the Hippocratic oath making any distinctions about guilt or innocence, but whatever helps you sleep at night, doc. The warden says they'll get another doctor. The Spectre will just show up again, with the same stipulation. Now the warden says they're just carrying out the wishes of the people of New York. So the Spectre replies, and I'd swear Mandrake's shadowing makes it look like part of his mouth might be smiling, that he would have to hold the entire state of New York accountable for the murder.

Keep in mind the Spectre already killed basically everybody in Vlatava already, 40 issues ago. The warden finally takes the hint, and Lincoln at least gets a stay of execution. Meanwhile, Kane's been busy digging into the Edmonds murder, and when the Spectre returns home and dives inside Kane's mind for the night, Kane readies a trap.

[10th longbox, 48th comic. The Spectre (vol. 3) #52, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny (colorist), Todd Klein (letterer)]

Random Back Issues #59 - The Spectre #15

At least when he's passed out in his own vomit he's not condemning his friends' souls to Hell.

The last time we looked at an issue of John Ostrander's Spectre run, it was a fill-in artist issue about a scientist that created life but didn't respect it. This time, we've got that good Tom Mandrake stuff goin'.

Jim Corrigan, and by extension the Spectre, aren't doing too well. A good friend of his died a few issues earlier while the Spectre was tangled up fighting a demon. Jim, being a man from the 1920s and 1930s, deals with his grief like you'd expect: He lashes out. Problem being, he's attached to God's Spirit of Vengeance, so the blast radius is pretty wide.

The issue begins with the Spectre in the Sinai, debating whether to just destroy the planet since humanity is such a bunch of assholes. I identify with that mood. The Phantom Stranger pops up to tell him that wouldn't be allowed. Spectre's not even sure if he'll do it, but if he does, who's gonna stop him?

 

The Stranger sets off to gather a team of magical forces to help him out. Inza Nelson's rocking the Dr. Fate helm, and she's game. The only other thing she had planned was to maybe use its power to clean up a neighborhood or reupholster her couch, so why not? After that, it's on to a drunkard, a demon, a sorceress, and a woman who does not die. 

 

Constantine is, as seen up top, unavailable. Although Inza offers to flush his system, and the Stranger basically says, "fuck that guy." Oh well, good thing he wasn't part of whatever ridiculous plan you had. Jason Blood's a little put out nobody ever shows up asking for his help, but to be fair, Jason Blood's kind of a pill. Etrigan is at least cheerful, and curious to see if he's stronger than the Spectre.

I said Etrigan was cheerful, not that he was intelligent.

That's as far as that plotline gets this month. The rest of the issue follows the Spectre, who ventures on to Cairo. A major Palestinian leader is there as part of peace talks, and the Israeli super-powered security group Ostrander and Yale introduced in Suicide Squad, the Hayoth, are there too. But not to kill him. While Saad had committed attacks against Israel, including some that took the lives of their leader Colonel Hacohen's family, he's pushing for peace now, enough extremists on both sides hate him. Better to protect him, and spare more innocent blood.

Well, a certain chalk-white spook in a green cloak has other plans for someone with innocent blood on his hands. The mage Ramban senses his approach, but the Golem's attempt to smash the Spectre gets him scattered over the landscape. Ramban's a little tougher, because his magic draws on the same power that fuels the Spectre. He tries reasoning with the Spectre, that killing Saad will result in more death, but the Spectre brushes that off. He'll just kill those murderers, and anyone else who kills in response to their murders. Brilliant. DC's Spirit of Vengeance may have needed to pass a literacy test, but clearly wasn't imbued with common sense. God must have created that on the 9th Day. 

 

Though Corrigan can't blast Ramban directly, he can pummel him with large stones. The last member of Hayoth, the assassin Judith, tries getting Dr. Saad to safety (after fighting his security detail), but when she reaches her team's room, Hacohen shoots her. His rage at Saad - plus a certain black diamond - has brought him under Eclipso's control. He pulls the trigger, but the bullet halts in mid-air, and turns into the Spectre. Neat trick. Eclipso calls him "usurper", since he was God's fiery hand first, and they have a brief skirmish before Eclipso bails. Spectre's ready to get back to handing out vengeance, but Ramban explains his life force is now linked with Saad. Will the Spectre take an innocent life to kill this man?

Considering he killed every single person in the civil war-torn country of Vlatava, minus the rival leaders, literally two issues earlier, because he deemed everyone a murderer? Seems like a risky gamble, especially if you're a person who was part of a covert government strike force. Really doubt Ramban's hands are clean, you know? But the Spectre leaves, though his opinion of humanity hasn't improved. And now Eclipso's got plans to take advantage of his unbalanced state. . .

There's a couple more issues to go in this story, and then there's some understandable fallout. Suffice to say, the Phantom Stranger's plan to attack the Spectre is a bust, but a different group has a little more success reaching Corrigan.

[10th longbox, 15th comic. The Spectre (vol. 3) #15, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny  and Digital Chameleon (colorists), Todd Klein (letterer)]

Sunday Splash Page #154

 

No Mixed Emotions Here," in Detective Comics Annual #5, by Alan Grant and John Wagner (writers), Tom Mandrake (penciler/inker), Jan Duursema and Rick Magyar (inkers), Adrienne Roy (colorist), Bill Oakley (letterer)

The only Detective Comics Annual I own, and Norm Breyfogle has nothing to do with it. Bizarre, I know. I feel as though I got this in one of those 5 packs on random comics you could get a grocery stores, and I liked it enough I actually held on to it.

This is, of all things, an Eclipso:The Darkness Within tie-in. I have no idea what that means, other than Eclipso is involved. And I don't know how much it relates to whatever the larger story was about, as Wagner and Grant seem to just try and fit the Eclipso stuff into a more general Batman story. Which is probably the way to go with these things. Over Marvel's last 15+ years of Big Event crap, the stuff I've liked the best is the titles that can use the Event to push forward what they were already doing.

In this case, Scarface is running a nightclub, where all the tables are bugged, so he can pick up intel on other mobsters' schemes. One of them mentions a $20 million heist the Joker pulled, but the money's never been found. So Scarface decides to bust the Joker out and get the location of the money. This is obviously a terrible idea, but he's made from a block of wood, so what do you expect?

But they are an interesting pair, the sort of old-school gangster in a suit, and the nutbag clown. The Joker's unimpressed with all Scarface's posturing and threats, just screwing around constantly. And Scarface refuses to play along with the Joker's antics, resorting the having his men punch the clown.

Batman stops a theft of a solid gold replica Ancient Egyptian bust, which had three black diamonds on his head. Commissioner Gordon ends up holding the diamonds, which feed on anger and hate. And Gordon's kind of pissed about the Joker being on the loose. 

Did I forget to mention it's the anniversary of Barbara being shot by the Joker? Funny how that works out. Barbara shows up in one panel, talking on the phone with her dad, telling him she's done her best to put it behind her, and he should too.

All of which leads to Batman, once again, protecting the Joker's life. Sigh. At least this time, it involves fighting a giant monster with the might of solar-powered toy lightsabers. You probably won't find another comic where Batman defeats a creature of shadows and hate by stabbing it through the heart with a knockoff lightsaber.

Considering the monster somehow doesn't kill anyone, I'm not sure Grant and Wagner made sure Mandrake was on the same page about that. We see one cop impaled on the creature's claw, and another basically eviscerated. Another falls out of a cop car the monster's holding above its head, so 20+ foot drop to the pavement. Then again, the one cop does says it's a miracle no one had died.

31 Days of Scans - Day 20

A story or book I could read over and over again. There’s a lot of those, but I’ll pick one in particular, though it isn’t a very happy one. I don’t know if the arc has a name, but it ran from GrimJack #31 up to #38 or 39, depending on how you want to look at it. Really, that doesn’t even cover it entirely, because there were so many things in this arc set up a year or two earlier in the book, and repercussions from it carried the rest of the way through the series.

I was going to do a plot recap, but trying to cover 8 issues of this series would have gone on too long, especially since I’d have to keep going back to describe things that happened earlier in the series that factor in. Basically, Gaunt’s worst tendencies and fears about himself all come together at the worst time. He’s dating an actual ghost, the fact she can’t die quite possibly part of the appeal to someone concerned about how many of his loved ones end up dead. He tries to help his best friend, BlacJacMac, get back together with his lady, because he feels each of them is letting their pride get in the way of something good (this turns out to be something Gaunt knows a little about), without success. Surly over that, he delivers some bad news to an old flame of his in a callous and straightforward fashion. The straightforward part is standard for Gaunt, who is big on truth, but not too concerned with its effects. As usual, this causes problems for him down the line, as it leaves Shari understandably furious.

Spook comes to him asking for help, and even though doing so will mean losing her forever – it involves completing her unfinished business – he agrees. Then he won’t leave when she asks, his stubborn desire to stay with her and see this thing through (and not walk away from someone he cares for) speaking up. It nearly gets him killed, and this puts him in a position where he’s all that stands between her and an innocent. Up to that point, he’s protected her, because he felt she deserved some revenge (not being above that impulse himself), but all the time he’s been hoping she’d be satisfied before it came to a certain point. He's out of luck on that score, as usual.

So Gaunt does what he has to, whether to protect Spook or that innocent live is up for debate, but either way, it leaves him drained. It confirms his fear that he’s poison. That all his talk about standing by his friends is a lot of hot air, considering that what he ends up standing beside is a bunch of corpses. Coming back to a trashed Munden’s Bar full of dead customers, injured friends, a triumphant Shari, and the Lawkillers - having escaped being marooned in the past where Gaunt and Spook left them, and looking for payback on both - doesn’t help. That’s a problem for Gaunt, he sometimes makes decisions for petty reasons, or just because he’s hurting and doesn’t care if others do as well, and they come back to bite him. They may take a circuitous route to do it, they may gather momentum and extra suffering as they go - a person looking for payback on GrimJack will find no shortage of potential allies - but those ugly choices he makes always have consequences.

He ends up in a graveyard, alone against three killers, doing what he seems to do best, piling up corpses. I do want to take a minute to highlight the following exchange between Gaunt and the Preacher. As awful as the whole situation is otherwise, I find it really funny (Ostrander's knack for humor amidst serious moments coming through, or maybe it's Kim Yale. I read someone online this week who attributed much of the lighter bits in some of Ostrander's work to her.). It’s also a decent representation of a lot of arguments about differing interpretations of religious texts over the course of human history.

Interesting points, Mister, err, Preacher. Mr. Gaunt, your rebuttal?

Excellent points, GrimJack wins the debate for Cynosure Seminary and Bar and Grill! It all leads to Gaunt and the Major, a passel of history between them (some neither of them even knows or understands yet), in a crypt. Even as Gaunt’s run his target to ground, and readied him for the kill, all his ghosts are doing the same to him. Throughout the series, other characters have talked about “the Dark” this state of mind GrimJack descends into where he’s extremely dangerous to everyone: Whoever he wants to kill, his friends, and himself. Up to now, he’s either had someone there to pull him back, or he’s managed to survive through luck or fortuitous happenstance. This time, luck turns against him, and there’s no one else around. Some are injured. Some are dead(er). Some are distant physically, others emotionally, and Gaunt pushed everyone else away because he feared what might happen to them. Which means he’s on his own, and that’s not good.

Of course, even when the Major appears to win, appearances can be deceiving. So we get an issue of the Major, a man who knows how impermanent death can be, unable to enjoy his victory, chasing the man he was sure he’d put in the ground. Then we find out what happened to Gaunt, and Ostrander and Mandrake put some wheels in motion for further down the line, with the Dancer and his plans, with Gaunt, and with Spook.

What’s impressive is how, as I read the story, I can feel all this building up against him. Not just the enemies he’s made, but all the weight he carries inside. Ostrander and Tim Truman did this to good effect on a broader scale  in their run, with the Trade Wars. We saw how Gaunt, who tends to focus on the small pictures because he can’t stand the bigger one’s stench, can be manipulated by people claiming to be all about the big picture, and it leads to a lot of death and destruction. But he’s a means to an end, which doesn’t make him feel less responsible, but it affects mostly people he doesn’t know or care about, and the ones truly responsible would have done it with or without him. This one is more personal, everything is aimed at him, everything is happening specifically because of him. Because of things he did or didn’t do, jobs he left unfinished, jobs he should have considered finished sooner, words he delivered carelessly.

And it's a good story for Mandrake's art. Lots of atmospheric fog, mist, and smoke. Plenty of high dark ceilings, creepy graveyards, or bombed-out bars full of looming shadows. The characters are mostly older, worn, the years showing clearly, except the one who's already dead, and half the time she looks like a wailing banshee thing. It's not a pretty, happy place, but it's not a pretty story, either.

A best friend ought to know when to butt out in GrimJack #31, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), David Cody Weiss (letterer), and Linda Lessman (colorist). Gaunt doesn’t know when to give up the ghost in GrimJack #32, by Ostrander, Mandrake, Lessman, and Ed Panosian (letterer). Gaunt makes one last, doomed appeal to Spook in GrimJack #34, also by Ostrander, Mandrake, Lessman, and Panosian. Gaunt fights 3 crazy assholes in a cemetery that is naturally shrouded in mist in GrimJack #36, by Ostrander, Mandrake, Ken Holewczynski (letterer), and Ken Feduniewicz (colorist). The Major chases a GrimJack up, down, and all around in GrimJack #37, by Ostrander, Mandrake, Holewczynski, and Feduniewicz.