The Spectre
1904 - Jim Corrigan is born.
1925 - 21-year-old Jim becomes a cop.
1929 - 25-year-old Jim is promoted to homicide detective.
1934 - 30-year-old Jim is killed by gangsters & becomes the Spectre's new human host. Madame Xanadu helps him understand his role. He is able to weild a fraction of the power of the Spectre.
1941 - 37-year-old Jim joins the Justice Society when they are formed after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
1945 - WW2 ends.
1949 - 45-year-old Jim's connection to his corporeal life is finally extinguished. He is no longer able to walk the earth as a mortal, and instead serves merely as host to the Spectre.
5 years ago - Superman & Pa Kent are saved from the afterlife by the Spectre.
2 years ago - The Spectre is usurped by fallen Angel of the Bull Host, Asmodel, in an attempt to escape hell and regain his seat in Heaven, which would disprove the infallibility of the voice and unmake reality. The Watchtower, Shadowpact and Zauriel go into the afterlife to find Jim to restore the Spectre, Asmodel is disincorporated as punishment.
1 year ago - The Spectre manifests in the battle against Mageddon, holding off the alien weapon long enough for Clark Kent to find and remove it's heart.
The difficulty with the Spectre is that the power at his disposal is so vast that his existence basically breaks every story he's involved in. The Spectre is the embodiment of the Wrath of God. The idea is that it's only by having a human host that the Spectre is capable of empathy with the human condition. The Spectre really hasn't ever had a period of declining popularity... it's always been featured in self-titled series and had a role to play in the larger world of DC. We just want to find the version that works best in our timeline.
The Spectre's Comic HistoryThe Spectre debuted in More Fun Comics #52, a creation of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel. We meet hard-boiled detective Jim Corrigan... he's actually described as 'Hard-Boiled' in his introduction, but this IS 1940 we're talking about, detective fiction was a very popular genre at the time. The first appearance actually doesn't include the Spectre himself, but rather shows his murder at the hands of some gangsters, who seal him in a barrel in concrete and throw him into the river... and his ghost ascending from his body and going into the clouds, where a disembodied voice tells him that he is to return to earth to battle injustice. He finds his own dead body in that barrel but is able to fly away, and in the next issue, he confronts the gangsters, defeating them in ways that actually are pretty ghastly. His finace, who had been kidnapped, is shot, but he is able to heal her with a touch. Knowing that he is just a ghost, he deliberately breaks off their engagement and makes himself a costume so he can use his new powers as the Spectre.
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The Spectre continued to appear in More Fun Comics, but of course also became a recurring member of the Justice Society over in All Star Comics. Like many of his contemporary Golden Age characters, he would make several appearances in the Justice League, but unlike a lot of those characters he also had his own ongoing series in 1967, as well as an extensive run of leading stories in the Adventure Comics anthology in the seventies. The story of the Spectre continued to evolve, his existence becoming more and more mysterious, his powers and methods more terrifying.
This continued to expand in the Post Crisis era... as the rest of the Justice Society was having its role in the world reimagined and continually retconned, the fact that the Spectre existed functionally outside of time meant he was essentially immune from the shifting continuity changes. He had another self-titled series in 1987, widely expanding his world and influence, including characters like Madame Xanadu and the Phantom Stranger. This was followed by yet another standalone series by John Ostrander. This is where the Spectre truly becomes a figure of vast cosmic horror, and it is defined as a terrifying otherworldyy force. |
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The late nineties saw some pretty big changes. No longer bound to Jim Corrigan, the role as its new host became a sought-after prize for a time before it was finally given to fallen ex-Green Lantern Hal Jordan. This was a pretty clever turn of events in the story of Hal, as it gave him a very complex redemptive arc and allowed him to continue to be a part of the larger DC mythology even after his death, although an argument could be made that by doing this, the Spectre essentially ceased to be it's own interesting character and was instead just a vestigial part of the Green Lantern story.
Following Hal's resurrection under Geoff Johns, the Spectre was again hostless. This was the catalyst for vast upheaval of the world of magic in the pages of the Day of Vengeance miniseries spinning out of the huge crossover Infinite Crisis. Without a host to guide it, the Spectre had no gauge against which to measure mortal sin, requiring all wielders of magic in the world to come together to stop him from destroying all magic. Following this story, the Spectre's new host was again an established character, this time to Gotham City detective Crispus Allen from the series Gotham Central. This allowed the Spectre to once again be its own unique story within DC, although its role was never as complex and as thoroughly explored as it was while Jim Corrigan was host. |
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Our Spectre StoryOur version of the Spectre, like a lot of our Golden Age Justice Society members, is going to focus as much as possible on the classic version of the character. There's no need for us to update him with new hosts, although since both of his later hosts Hal Jordan and Crispus Allen actually came from other stories within DC they're both going to be in the timeline elsewhere.
Our explanation of the presence of the Spectre, very specifically, is going to be his bond to Jim Corrigan. During the thirties and forties, Jim is able to continue to walk the Earth as a mortal, accessing a small fraction of the Spectre's power. This is the version of the character that serves as a member of the Justice Society, actually interacting with other costumed heroes. Crucially, however, his ability to manifest as a mortal does eventually end. From this point forward, the Spectre is an unknowable concept. It continues to rely on its connection to Jim Corrigan to provide it with a sense of human morality upon which to base its judgements, but we only see its influence on the world through the people it punishes. Its one true appearance is during the worldwide battle against Maggeddon, but other than this massive exception, the Spectre should be an unfathomable facet of existence beyond mortal understanding. |
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