The Spectre #5 (August 1968)
"Fugitive from Justice!"
Synopsis: A masked man scales a mountain in Northern India and makes his way along the deserted streets of Daltonganj. Locating a dwelling wherein lives "a wizened old man", the stranger strikes the poor soul down from behind and makes off with a green orb glowing ominously. Safely back home "in his western world" the thief gazes into the orb and ponders curiously why it happens to reveal the form of an aimless drifter. Narrowing his focus upon a bullet the hobo holds in his hand though, the stranger understands his significance - or rather, the importance of the projectile. However, even as the gazer attempts to transmit the energy from the strangely pulsating bullet to himself, he watches with alarm as it dissolves in the wanderer's hand.
"No! ...No! It can't be... not when I'm so close!"
Cut to...
Chapter I "The Spectre means Death?"
A giant monstrosity of a man rages throughout a department store as panicked shoppers scramble. Responding to the incident, Jim Corrigan calls upon The Spectre to assist his men. Immediately, the terror directed at the behemoth quickly falls upon Corrigan's other self as bystanders shriek and flee in terror at "the dreadful apparition of The Spectre..."
While successfully preventing the startled crowd from harming one another in their mad dash by freezing time, The Spectre is unable to juggle this responsibility with the task of capturing the initial trigger of their fears - the giant fellow whose glowing eyes has earned him the sobriquet of 'Bright Eyes' courtesy of Jim Corrigan. Courteously erasing the shoppers' memory of ever having seen him, The Spectre is now free to muse upon the excitement his appearance caused.
"I realize I'm no Cary Grant, but that I would engender such stark terror is beyond my comprehension!"
Corrigan dismisses his partner's concern - "Look, Spec... you said it yourself! You're no Cary Grant! Now let's get back on the case!" - and while The Spectre is unable to detect a trace of the monster, Corrigan's men are able to provide his whereabouts via a report of the creature being sighted five miles out of town.
As The Spectre races towards the Shopping Centre where the being's rampage continues, he reflects upon the weakened state he finds himself in - a problem he attributes to not having had the opportunity to recharge himself with Corrigan's body. In an attempt to prevent the chaos of their last encounter, the grim ghost once again freezes time so that the assembled throng of spectators won't respond as before, thus enabling our hero to turn his full attention and brunt of his powers against the colossus. Unfortunately, neither The Spectre's blows have any effect against the monster, nor his firing "cannon balls of every known element... plus a few unknown ones -- at him!" Though such a bombardment should have some effect upon the creature, The Spectre finds him unscratched though he himself, has further weakened from the taxing drain of energy. When the hero fires blasts of anti-matter at the leviathan - "even I am affected to some degree by anti-matter" - his foe remains unscathed.
Adding to his troubles, The Spectre's "time-suspension" wears off though he is at a loss to account for why. With the crowd of people fleeing in terror from the hero, The Spectre's adversary uses his already formidable advantage to toss a tower at the terrified citizens as he mockingly invites the dark knight to once more, "freeze them in time... [so] they'll make even better targets!"
Chapter II "The Spectre -- Fugitive from Justice!"
Destroying the tower and shunting the mortals into "another time-cycle" (more on what that means in just a second), The Spectre once again takes note of his weakening state. Returning the displaced crowd to the present day, our champion discovers that he is unable to account for the whereabouts of three of the individuals he sent into the past. Locating one in Colonial America just as the hapless fellow is about to be stampeded by an onslaught of Indigenous Braves, Spec quickly pops the man back to the safety of 1968. On his second jaunt, things get messy.
Tracing the final two back to prehistoric times, The Spectre returns the pair to the present but in his exhausted state, draws a Tyrannosaurus Rex along with him. Though he manages to reduce the creature in size so that it can be carried off in the palm of his hand, The Spectre yet again finds himself the target of collective fear when 'Bright Eyes' shows up, expresses the emotion of terror upon his face, and triggers the same horror in those unlucky enough to be within their vicinity at the moment.
"It's death... come to get us!"
Concluding that it would be best if he were to distance himself from this unwanted attention, The Spectre uses more of his dwindling reserves of power to return the dinosaur to the past as through the orb introduced at the start of this story is gazed into by the face of its illegitimate owner.
"That's it, my unsuspecting pawn...! Keep using your powers -- until I can strip them all away..."
And with The Spectre's sojourn to pre-history complete, he returns to an alley near the scene of his enemy's last rampage where Jim Corrigan is looking into matters. Attracting his pal's attention, The Spectre tells him that he needs to enter his body "for a short rest" to regain the energy he's depleted. Corrigan however refuses. It seems that The Spectre's effect on the people of Gateway has not gone unnoticed and as such, Corrigan has been ordered to bring him in as "a public menace". His counter-offer is that The Spectre can enter his body on the sole condition that he stay there for good. Unwilling to discuss the matter, the emerald ghost attempts to force his way in, but in his debilitated state, is unable to break through the barrier Corrigan's will to keep him out creates. Arguing that "it would be time wasting trying to convince you that someone else is causing the fear", The Spectre flies off and suggests that if Corrigan is so intent upon capturing him, "follow me!"
The Spectre locates his prey who he challenges to a showdown. Shrinking enough in size so as to enter and study his opponent's body, The Spectre learns just what makes his adversary so unstoppable.
"A mysterious source of energy is simultaneously producing particles of matter and anti-matter within him... causing explosions! No wonder he can't be hurt in any way! He's continually destroying and recreating himself!"
Separating the matter from the anti-matter and then letting the particles come together suddenly results in a violent explosion which succeeds in taking down 'Bright Eyes'... along with The Spectre. Thankfully, Corrigan has taken his partner up on his challenge and arrives upon the scene which happens to be where the mastermind behind these events has been hiding out - The Psycho Pirate.
Corrigan recognizes the supervillain with a clumsy bit of exposition.
"It's the Psycho Pirate! That evil master of emotion, whom Doctor Fate and Hourman were supposed to have put out of commission some time ago!" (
Showcase #56)
Explaining that while Doctor Fate had placed a "magic mask" on him (the mask he wears at the start of this entry, I suppose) to prevent access to his powers, by draining The Spectre of his strength through his ill-gotten orb, he has managed to dissolve this barrier and is once again in possession of the ability to fully control human emotions. Demonstrating his power by reducing The Spectre and Corrigan to quivering wrecks, The Pirate recounts how the orb led him to a pulsating bullet from the drifter who now lays before him as the unconscious giant. The mention of this object strikes a cord with Corrigan whose memory traces it back to "the one I almost shot into Azmodus months ago!" (
Showcase #60). Recalling that he lost the gun in his scuffle with his foe at that time, Corrigan theorizes that this transient must have found it along with the magic bullet it contained. As for the bullet, it got absorbed into the hobo's body and transformed him into the creature The Spectre's been battling all issue.
Ordering his minion - who has now been restored to normal - to train his gun on the pair, The Psycho Pirate soon changes his mind.
"On second thought, make your work easy! Get rid of the lawman! It should be a feather in any crook's hat to bump off Detective-Captain Jim Corrigan!"
And with the mention of Corrigan's name, the derelict recoils in horror.
"J...Jim Corrigan?! It... can't be! I killed him... twenty years ago!"
Yes, this poor decrepit wastrel of a man is none other than "Gat" Benson.
Stumbling backwards in shock, Benson - ranting "No! No! You can't make me kill him... over again!" - bumps into The Psycho Pirate forcing him to drop the globe. Corrigan presses his advantage, slugs the fiend, and forces the still terrified Spectre to look at the master of emotion's "placid puss" as an antidote to his terror. The plan works and it seems as if The Spectre will get his rest after all.
Thoughts: I'm impressed by the amount of homework Neal Adams has done here especially considering how fast and loose The Spectre has been treated continuity-wise. "Gat" Benson; Azmodus; even The Psycho Pirate, though not the same one from those
All -Star issues of yesteryear, betrays an awareness of the broader scope Earth Two offers. Picking up a relatively minor detail such as the magic bullet in the gun Corrigan tosses away in his Silver Age debut and tossing the man who killed him in his Golden Age introduction into the mix is a nice bit of synchronicity - in fact, these would serve as the perfect ingredients for a story drawing past and present together in one epic tale - but unfortunately, Adams squanders what he has.
Overlooking the question of how Corrigan could simply forget about a gun containing a magic bullet he tossed away in some alley in Mountain City back in
Showcase #60 and not thinking too much about how "Gat" Benson could stumble upon this weapon when presumably he's living in Gateway, one has to wonder what purpose revealing this gargantuan monster as Benson serves. It strikes me as unusual that we haven't received anything approximating a flashback to The Spectre's origin yet. I suppose this would avoid touching the grisly nature of his beginnings as well as the fact that no element of his origin would explain why The Spectre and Corrigan are now separate people which I guess, is just a continuity mistake which has over time become fact - but if you're not going to flashback to More Fun #52/53, or explore Benson's pathetic decline in the years since, or deal with Corrigan coming face to face with his killer, why bother with him at all? It's disappointing.
I also have to question the logic of treating the public reacting to The Spectre with fear as if it's some baffling mystery. Shouldn't the public be wary, uneasy, uncertain of him? I mean, if this were a Flash or Superman story, sure, it would present an interesting puzzle to solve, but should Adams be drawing attention to the fact that as a ghost, The Spectre really isn't all that frightening or foreboding?
Interesting that Adams has The Spectre go back in time in this issue - it seems to be a recurring theme for the character which one might have expected to have gone the way of Gardner Fox when he left the title. Fox used previous centuries as part of his backstory and setting for Captain Skull's battle with The Spectre in the first issue of this title and utilized it before then when he told of his face-offs against Shathan and Ace Chance in
Showcase #61 and
#64 respectively. It's as if there's some unspoken rule that a Spectre exploit must include a trip the past at some point to be a proper Spectre story. Or perhaps Adams just wanted an excuse to draw that awesome looking Tyrannosaurus in this piece - if so, I'm certainly not complaining.
Once again, I find myself wondering how in-character Jim Corrigan is here. He's finally getting the attention he deserves, but due to the lack of focus until recently, it's hard to say just what is in-character and out of character for The Spectre's other half. It seems that for someone who reappeared in Showcase #60 wistfully wishing that he could still had the ability to transform into this supernatural being, Jim Corrigan sure isn't hesitant to insist that The Spectre become a prisoner within him once again when his name is dragged through the mud. On the other hand, he is supposed to be hard-edged and such an ultimatum does lend itself well to the nature of their relationship. Corrigan has girl problems because of The Spectre; The Spectre responds with "Buddy, I just saved the cosmos - you worry about that small stuff", Corrigan goes to bed for a good night's sleep; The Spectre leaps into his body with his other half responding as if he's got the coldest feet in the universe; The Spectre quakes in fear; Corrigan calls him a "fraidy cat", The Spectre is offended at people recoiling at his visage; Corrigan reminds him that he's no Cary Grant. I like this interplay a lot.
And so another issue comes to a close and sadly, it is Adams' last. Though he never got to really exercise the more surreal aspects of his imagination with his brief run, shots of The Spectre weak as a kitten hugging his knees to his chest, The Spectre demanding a final reckoning with 'Bright Eyes', and as mentioned, that incredible looking dinosaur in downtown Gateway truly are a sight to behold.
Interestingly, next issue will see the return of Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson and yet the series will never look more different.
