Morally, Educationally, and Theologically Incorrect
The history of the Spectre, my favorite misunderstood superhero
There’s a certain instinctual appeal to golden age superheroes. In many ways, the early incarnations of these characters were simplistic extensions of our own primal yearnings for power and domination through violence. Each month, Batman, Superman, Hawkman and others would use their special abilities to take down well-deserving bad guys with savage justice, often using excessive violence and occasionally even killing the offender (yes, even Superman did this!). The stories were rarely too elaborate, and there was never any doubt who would win. Each story served as more of a showcase for the character than an enveloping story; almost a “wouldn’t it be great to have superpowers and beat the crap out of people?” fantasy. Of course, the bad guys always deserved it. They were bad guys.
The Spectre was one of these golden age avengers. In a time before other superheroes even had origin stories (no, not even Batman and Superman), we first met the Spectre as a young detective being savagely murdered by ruthless criminals. With the simplest of explanations, a higher power returned him from the dead, instilled with powers to fight against his murderers, and the Spectre went all out. Charged with nearly infinite superpowers, the Spectre stared into one murderer’s eyes and literally scared him to death, then made a second murder decompose into a talking skeleton and then drained the life right out of him. His ghoulish appearance and nearly infinite powers (including the ability to grow hundreds of stories tall), enabled the Spectre to be the very best at roughing up criminals, always concocting morbid new ways to punish them for their crimes. Unfortunately, as the public began to grow tired of these repetitive vengeance fantasies and the demand for superhero comics began to wane, the Spectre became one of many superhero characters to be discarded, while only a few crowd-pleasing favorites remained.
Of course, superheroes returned with a bang in the 1960s, allowing DC to reintroduce many of its discarded favorites. Unfortunately for the Spectre, the American Comic Code Authority had been introduced only a few years earlier, designed to moralize comics and make sure they were delivering wholesome messages to young readers. Every individual comic book had to be approved by the comic code before hitting the press. Sure, writers could have toned down the Spectre in much the same way that they’d toned down Batman into a smiling figurehead with his “Holy Hannah!” boy sidekick, or Superman into a righteous upholder of “Truth, Justice, and the American Way,” but the Spectre had one distinct disadvantage. The comic code had specifically banned ghouls, monsters, and general references to the undead. Oops.
Fortunately, the comic code grew to relax its standards as time went on, and it eventually lifted the ban on ghouls and undead characters, so long as such characters were handled with taste. Thus, the smiling Spectre of the late 1960s was born. He was happy, corny, campy, and always delivered his rarely-deceased victims to the police. Unfortunately, one more obstacle lay in the path of this formerly thrilling character. The 1960s had brought about a new interest in superheroes, but the public was no longer looking for the same, tired old stories about beating up random bad-guys. They were looking for more struggles and obstacles to grab their attention. They wanted to see their heroes face convincing perils and come out victorious. As a result, the Silver Age was also a time of super villain arch enemies. Each hero had either a weakness or at least one nemesis that was just as powerful as they were.
Problem: The Spectre had near-limitless power. How the heck do you put him in peril each month?
Answer: Find a way to give near-infinite powers to some campy villain each month.
Not only did this premise get ridiculous very quickly, but the actual fighting got even worse. The Spectre’s battles were akin to watching two second-graders play “Superhero” on the front lawn:
“I shot you with my energy blasts”
“No, I had my magic deflector shield up”
“Oh yeah? Well I had my anti-magic deflector power bands on”
“No. I used my magnetic abilities to strip you of all metal before you shot me”
“Oh? Well they’re not made of metal”
“Fine then. Before you shoot me, I use my magic powers to summon a dragon to eat you”
“But you’re dead!”
“I did it right before you shot me”
Monthly battles were reconciled through new and elaborate explanations of how astral combat worked, no doubt written by the same kind of illogically imaginative people that emulate Jedi/ Sith battles in the halls of most comic conventions.
Well it’s no surprise that the Spectre didn’t win over too many readers in this way. After eight try-out appearances in various titles over the course of two years, the publishers were ready to abandon the character. Finally, a full year later, they decided to make a go at one last serious attempt to resurrect this character: they had him fight a time-traveling pirate.
The comic was cancelled soon after.
This is not to say that the smiling Spectre was a complete waste. There were genuine moments in his earlier Silver Age appearances where the writers attempted to get around the comic code in presenting the Spectre’s vengeful side. In one issue, he drops two villains from hundreds of feet up in the air, deciding to scare them with a fall and then grab them before they hit bottom. Unfortunately, something else comes up and the Spectre is forced to leave. So what exactly happened to those bad guys? In another such adventure, the Spectre turns a criminal into a candle and then lights it. The candle lets out a scream before melting away into nothing. Tricking censors is fun! Inevitably though, the censors seem to have wised up, and the Spectre’s later appearances held no such clandestine acts of morbidity as a result.
Fast forward four years to 1974, and we’re now in the bronze age, where superhero titles have grown a bit darker, a new horror genre has emerged, and the Comic Code Authority has faded into little more than a figurehead presence, watching vigilantly for protruding nipples in comic book pages. The stage is finally set for the triumphant return of our ghoulish avenger! Once again, the new incarnation managed to end almost before it began, but this time the Spectre’s downfall was due to an entirely different factor. I would even argue that the bronze age Spectre’s commercial failure was caused by its artistic success.
The bronze age was a period in which superheroes were getting more “real.” Batman became haunted by the memory of his parents’ murder, Spider-Man failed to save a friend from drugs and a romantic interest from death, Green Lantern learned that he was powerless against the evils of racism and greed, the X-Men constantly dealt with failure, the death of teammates, and the issue of discrimination, and Ant Man succumbed to depression, alcoholism, and spousal abuse. It wasn’t enough to watch our superheroes struggle against exterior threats anymore. Readers were beginning to understand that complex abstracts, solution-less obstacles, and self-doubt were the most deadly enemies of all.
This was fascinating new territory for previously overdone, two-dimensional tired old dinosaurs from the Silver Age, and it might have applied well to the Spectre too. After all, he was an undead man that had been denied entrance into heaven, but who could never truly live amongst mortals. He’d even turned away his romantic interest in the golden age, deciding that he could never truly love a woman as a ghost (very mature territory for the golden age!). But the Spectre was no tired old standard that had been fighting crime for the past ten years. He was still under-used, his innate potential so unfulfilled.
For this reason, writer Michael Fleisher took The Spectre in the complete opposite direction. He went back to The Spectre’s roots, took the original golden age premise of the overzealous avenger, and brought it back to life, aided with a stunning quality of art that had never been imagined in the golden age. Through vivid artistic detail, we saw the Spectre employ his power to terrorize, traumatize, and (yes) kill really really bad guys with cruel imagination and a sincere lack of remorse. Each issue began by showing us just how evil The Spectre’s prey was. These weren’t just guys who knocked off a bank. These were villains who killed needlessly for money and delight; villains worthy of the Spectre’s revenge. The Spectre used some of his favorite old standards, decomposing one criminal into a screaming corpse begging for mercy, melting another one into a fleshy pulp (this time without turning him into a candle first), and turning a third villain into glass and then shattering him. In one instance, a barber used a hairdryer to beat a man to death, so the Spectre enlarged his cutting sheers and cut him in half. In another, he leaves his retribtution for a female murderer (who also models) until the end, leaving us to wonder what kind of mercy he’ll show to a woman. In an almost gleeful response to this unspoken question, the Spectre shows no such mercy, aging her before the audience’s eyes until she collapses to the ground, a fleshy, rotting corpse.
Though each issue conveys a basic plot, it avoids complexity, delighting only in the deliverance of unadulterated “justice”. It’s morbid, brief, and exemplifies the best qualities of the golden age, realized with a far more mature execution. Unfortunately, this unflinchingly savage, yet simple character of righteousness couldn’t find an audience with readers of the day that wanted haunted heroes making complex decisions under the weight of lofty morality. The Spectre was the antithesis of this, which might be why I find his bronze age adventures to be such a welcome, guilty escape from my other favorite titles. When comic books remind you too much of your own convoluted world, filled with complex problems that require patience and self-restraint, the Spectre harkens back to a time of simplistic fantasy escapism where all evil in the world can be easily vanquished and pathologically tormented for the pain it's caused.
The bronze age Spectre appeared in Adventure Comics 431-440 (Jan/Feb 1974- Jul/Aug 1975). He has since been replaced with several heavily revised versions of the character.
There’s a certain instinctual appeal to golden age superheroes. In many ways, the early incarnations of these characters were simplistic extensions of our own primal yearnings for power and domination through violence. Each month, Batman, Superman, Hawkman and others would use their special abilities to take down well-deserving bad guys with savage justice, often using excessive violence and occasionally even killing the offender (yes, even Superman did this!). The stories were rarely too elaborate, and there was never any doubt who would win. Each story served as more of a showcase for the character than an enveloping story; almost a “wouldn’t it be great to have superpowers and beat the crap out of people?” fantasy. Of course, the bad guys always deserved it. They were bad guys.
The Spectre was one of these golden age avengers. In a time before other superheroes even had origin stories (no, not even Batman and Superman), we first met the Spectre as a young detective being savagely murdered by ruthless criminals. With the simplest of explanations, a higher power returned him from the dead, instilled with powers to fight against his murderers, and the Spectre went all out. Charged with nearly infinite superpowers, the Spectre stared into one murderer’s eyes and literally scared him to death, then made a second murder decompose into a talking skeleton and then drained the life right out of him. His ghoulish appearance and nearly infinite powers (including the ability to grow hundreds of stories tall), enabled the Spectre to be the very best at roughing up criminals, always concocting morbid new ways to punish them for their crimes. Unfortunately, as the public began to grow tired of these repetitive vengeance fantasies and the demand for superhero comics began to wane, the Spectre became one of many superhero characters to be discarded, while only a few crowd-pleasing favorites remained.
Of course, superheroes returned with a bang in the 1960s, allowing DC to reintroduce many of its discarded favorites. Unfortunately for the Spectre, the American Comic Code Authority had been introduced only a few years earlier, designed to moralize comics and make sure they were delivering wholesome messages to young readers. Every individual comic book had to be approved by the comic code before hitting the press. Sure, writers could have toned down the Spectre in much the same way that they’d toned down Batman into a smiling figurehead with his “Holy Hannah!” boy sidekick, or Superman into a righteous upholder of “Truth, Justice, and the American Way,” but the Spectre had one distinct disadvantage. The comic code had specifically banned ghouls, monsters, and general references to the undead. Oops.
Fortunately, the comic code grew to relax its standards as time went on, and it eventually lifted the ban on ghouls and undead characters, so long as such characters were handled with taste. Thus, the smiling Spectre of the late 1960s was born. He was happy, corny, campy, and always delivered his rarely-deceased victims to the police. Unfortunately, one more obstacle lay in the path of this formerly thrilling character. The 1960s had brought about a new interest in superheroes, but the public was no longer looking for the same, tired old stories about beating up random bad-guys. They were looking for more struggles and obstacles to grab their attention. They wanted to see their heroes face convincing perils and come out victorious. As a result, the Silver Age was also a time of super villain arch enemies. Each hero had either a weakness or at least one nemesis that was just as powerful as they were.
Problem: The Spectre had near-limitless power. How the heck do you put him in peril each month?
Answer: Find a way to give near-infinite powers to some campy villain each month.
Not only did this premise get ridiculous very quickly, but the actual fighting got even worse. The Spectre’s battles were akin to watching two second-graders play “Superhero” on the front lawn:
“I shot you with my energy blasts”
“No, I had my magic deflector shield up”
“Oh yeah? Well I had my anti-magic deflector power bands on”
“No. I used my magnetic abilities to strip you of all metal before you shot me”
“Oh? Well they’re not made of metal”
“Fine then. Before you shoot me, I use my magic powers to summon a dragon to eat you”
“But you’re dead!”
“I did it right before you shot me”
Monthly battles were reconciled through new and elaborate explanations of how astral combat worked, no doubt written by the same kind of illogically imaginative people that emulate Jedi/ Sith battles in the halls of most comic conventions.
Well it’s no surprise that the Spectre didn’t win over too many readers in this way. After eight try-out appearances in various titles over the course of two years, the publishers were ready to abandon the character. Finally, a full year later, they decided to make a go at one last serious attempt to resurrect this character: they had him fight a time-traveling pirate.
The comic was cancelled soon after.
This is not to say that the smiling Spectre was a complete waste. There were genuine moments in his earlier Silver Age appearances where the writers attempted to get around the comic code in presenting the Spectre’s vengeful side. In one issue, he drops two villains from hundreds of feet up in the air, deciding to scare them with a fall and then grab them before they hit bottom. Unfortunately, something else comes up and the Spectre is forced to leave. So what exactly happened to those bad guys? In another such adventure, the Spectre turns a criminal into a candle and then lights it. The candle lets out a scream before melting away into nothing. Tricking censors is fun! Inevitably though, the censors seem to have wised up, and the Spectre’s later appearances held no such clandestine acts of morbidity as a result.
Fast forward four years to 1974, and we’re now in the bronze age, where superhero titles have grown a bit darker, a new horror genre has emerged, and the Comic Code Authority has faded into little more than a figurehead presence, watching vigilantly for protruding nipples in comic book pages. The stage is finally set for the triumphant return of our ghoulish avenger! Once again, the new incarnation managed to end almost before it began, but this time the Spectre’s downfall was due to an entirely different factor. I would even argue that the bronze age Spectre’s commercial failure was caused by its artistic success.
The bronze age was a period in which superheroes were getting more “real.” Batman became haunted by the memory of his parents’ murder, Spider-Man failed to save a friend from drugs and a romantic interest from death, Green Lantern learned that he was powerless against the evils of racism and greed, the X-Men constantly dealt with failure, the death of teammates, and the issue of discrimination, and Ant Man succumbed to depression, alcoholism, and spousal abuse. It wasn’t enough to watch our superheroes struggle against exterior threats anymore. Readers were beginning to understand that complex abstracts, solution-less obstacles, and self-doubt were the most deadly enemies of all.
This was fascinating new territory for previously overdone, two-dimensional tired old dinosaurs from the Silver Age, and it might have applied well to the Spectre too. After all, he was an undead man that had been denied entrance into heaven, but who could never truly live amongst mortals. He’d even turned away his romantic interest in the golden age, deciding that he could never truly love a woman as a ghost (very mature territory for the golden age!). But the Spectre was no tired old standard that had been fighting crime for the past ten years. He was still under-used, his innate potential so unfulfilled.
For this reason, writer Michael Fleisher took The Spectre in the complete opposite direction. He went back to The Spectre’s roots, took the original golden age premise of the overzealous avenger, and brought it back to life, aided with a stunning quality of art that had never been imagined in the golden age. Through vivid artistic detail, we saw the Spectre employ his power to terrorize, traumatize, and (yes) kill really really bad guys with cruel imagination and a sincere lack of remorse. Each issue began by showing us just how evil The Spectre’s prey was. These weren’t just guys who knocked off a bank. These were villains who killed needlessly for money and delight; villains worthy of the Spectre’s revenge. The Spectre used some of his favorite old standards, decomposing one criminal into a screaming corpse begging for mercy, melting another one into a fleshy pulp (this time without turning him into a candle first), and turning a third villain into glass and then shattering him. In one instance, a barber used a hairdryer to beat a man to death, so the Spectre enlarged his cutting sheers and cut him in half. In another, he leaves his retribtution for a female murderer (who also models) until the end, leaving us to wonder what kind of mercy he’ll show to a woman. In an almost gleeful response to this unspoken question, the Spectre shows no such mercy, aging her before the audience’s eyes until she collapses to the ground, a fleshy, rotting corpse.
Though each issue conveys a basic plot, it avoids complexity, delighting only in the deliverance of unadulterated “justice”. It’s morbid, brief, and exemplifies the best qualities of the golden age, realized with a far more mature execution. Unfortunately, this unflinchingly savage, yet simple character of righteousness couldn’t find an audience with readers of the day that wanted haunted heroes making complex decisions under the weight of lofty morality. The Spectre was the antithesis of this, which might be why I find his bronze age adventures to be such a welcome, guilty escape from my other favorite titles. When comic books remind you too much of your own convoluted world, filled with complex problems that require patience and self-restraint, the Spectre harkens back to a time of simplistic fantasy escapism where all evil in the world can be easily vanquished and pathologically tormented for the pain it's caused.
The bronze age Spectre appeared in Adventure Comics 431-440 (Jan/Feb 1974- Jul/Aug 1975). He has since been replaced with several heavily revised versions of the character.