Spectre, The: Crimes and Punishments
by John Ostrander, Tom Mandrake
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Ostrander, Tom MandrakeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-10-08
ISBN: 1563891271
Number of pages: 104
Publisher: DC Comics
Book Reviews of Spectre, The: Crimes and Punishments
Book Review: God's Avenger
Summary: 4 Stars
The Spectre is a DC character who was early on subjected to what I like to call the apotheosis of comic superheroes. The most obvious example of this is Superman, who was created as a sort of generic strongman bully in the '30s and evolved into a cosmic messiah by the '70s. The Spectre was the ghost of tough-as-nails cop Jim Corrigan sent back from the afterlife with a mission from God ("You shall remain earthbound battling crime on your world with supernatural powers, until all vestiges of it are gone!!"). To accomplish this ambitious goal, Corrigan was given abilities which allowed him to destroy evildoers in rather grotesque fashions, such as shrinking men into skeletons and splitting into multiple bodies to beat them to a pulp. His powers seemed limited only by his imagination, and he was soon growing to planet size to squash supernatural demons and snapping his fingers to make criminals disappear in a burst of color (Golden Age Spectre Archives, Vol. 1 (DC Comics Archives)).
Corrigan's abilities were toned down when he joined the Justice Society, a superhero team of the World War II era. He got himself a joke-cracking sidekick and turned to punching bad guys in the face rather than burning them alive. Soon enough, writers ran out of ideas for the character--how can you write someone who can smash planets in his hands?--and let him fade into obscurity.
In the '70s, the Spectre was briefly revived in the "Wrath of the Spectre" miniseries (Wrath of the Spectre) by Fleisher and Aparo, returning the character to his roots as an avenging spirit. Once again the ghostly hero was dishing out poetic justice to sinners, melting their flesh and cutting them in pieces with scissors. The series was controversial and short-lived.
During the '80s the character once again suffered from the apotheosis problem. A Superman story depicted him protecting the entrance to Heaven from superheroes. He was featured in Alan Moore's "Swamp Thing" run as a truly cosmic being who had lost touch with his humanity, guarding the gates of Hell and unsuccessfully battling a dark Satanic creature (Swamp Thing Vol. 2: Love and Death and Swamp Thing Vol. 4: A Murder of Crows). Meanwhile, he appeared in the DC crossover "Crisis on Infinite Earths" (Crisis on Infinite Earths), in which he literally single-handedly saved the universe from destruction. (And I mean literally: he arm wrestles for it.) This was followed by a solo series in which the Spectre was depowered considerably by God for his failures.
Then John Ostrander got hold of the character in 1992, and cranked him up to eleven. This collection is the first in Ostrander's criminally under-collected run, which lasted for 62 issues and brought the Corrigan character to a close after some seventy years. Ostrander managed to pull all of the disparate elements of the character together into a coherent narrative and pushed it forward by reinterpreting the Spectre as an aspect of the Divine Nature, specifically as the "Wrath of God." One might think that making a character a "part" of God would make him unwriteable, but Ostrander pulls it off magnificently by playing the two aspects of the character against each other. Jim Corrigan is the down-to-earth human side, and the Spectre is the wrathfully divine side: together they make one hero, but they are constantly at odds with one another. Ostrander uses this to consider theological and moral dilemmas: Is God a god of love? What is sin? Do we ever get the punishment we "deserve" for evil? What is the relation of dogma and divine reality?
Readers may not agree with Ostrander's conclusions on these questions--I certainly don't--but he asks them honestly and usually without trying to preach his own ideas. The problems of evil and of evil's prosperity are brought up, though of course never definitively answered. How could they be? Corrigan often wonders why he is compelled to avenge some evils and not others, and why in fact he is prevented from avenging some. If his mission is to battle evil "until all vestiges of it are gone," will his mission ever end? Ostrander studied to become a Catholic priest at one point in his life, later becoming Episcopalian, and the Spectre often has run-ins with Catholic priests both orthodox and heretical. Later in the run Ostrander unfortunately spends (or wastes, depending on your point of view) some time writing about the social concerns that concern him the most, especially in the "Haunting of America" storyline.
He ends the series on something of a deconstructionist perspective, ending Corrigan's story but leaving things open for the Spectre's future adventures. Attempts at revitalizing the character since then have been hit-and-miss, but they continue to this day. Ostrander's run is probably the best the Spectre has ever received, and you won't regret picking up this collection, nor any future collections DC might be convinced to publish.
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