The Spectre #8 (Feb. 1969)
"The Parchment of Power Perilous"
Author: Steve Skeates
Artist: Jerry Grandenetti and Murphy Anderson
Synopsis: An elderly mage thinks twice before concluding the blasphemous incantation he has already begun incantations for.
"No! This must not be! It is evil - far more evil than I ever expected!"
His anguish cries of regret are overheard by a young pupil who shares none of his master's reservations and decides to intervene. Seeing that the wizened practitioner of black magic is preparing to burn the parchment from which he had been reciting, apprentice Narkran rashly strikes a blow upon his teacher's head causing instantaneous death. Continuing the ritual, Narkran finds himself in possession of the tremendous power his master chose to reject but events beyond even his control however, prevents him from completing the transaction.
The apprentice feels the room swirl about him as he is ejected into another plane of existence where the rapid influx of unceasing power threatens to destroy him. Acquiring all the knowledge of the known and unknown universes, Narkran is alarmed to realise that due to his body's inability to contain such energies, "soon -- I will die!" His only hope is to conclude the incantation as transcribed on the parchment he left on Earth. Returning to our planet, Narkran discovers that more than two centuries have lapsed between our reality and his.
Also returning to Earth is The Spectre following "an exhausting mission" which the text assures us has no bearing upon current events. So drained is The Spectre that when he reconvenes with Jim Corrigan as the latter deals with a pitched gun battle, he offers no assistance despite the nature of the life and death drama which has enveloped him. Not willing to grant entry to his body until The Spectre helps him out of his jam, the astral avenger acquiesces begrudgingly and more than just a tad recklessly. Though a bolt of "eldritch energy" achieves the desired effect of incapacitating the three members of The Carstagg mob who have Jim Corrigan cornered in an alley, The Spectre's carelessly hurled bolt strikes a fourth, intended target - that of an innocent passer-by. Oblivious to this fact, The Spectre finally joins Corrigan and things progress as usual for the pair... until that evening.
As Corrigan sleeps, The Spectre is extracted from his host by an unknown force. Carried into an astral world of white doves, harps. and ivory gates, The Spectre is judged by a voice. Whether or not this is The Voice of the original run or simply a voice isn't clear.
"Agent of Good -- for abusing your powers, you shall be punished! You acted impatiently... without thought... as would an irresponsible human! Because of your rash act, an innocent man was almost killed! If you choose to act like a human, so shall you be judged!"
So it is determined that The Spectre is to now be burdened with a weakness which "shall change from time to time... it will become apparent only during times of stress, when you are most likely to act rashly". The Spectre - who will dismiss these events as a dream when he awakens - returns to Corrigan where he rests. Meanwhile, Narkran has learned that while only a few minutes has passed during his transformation, it is to a new Earth which he heads, an Earth far enough into the future that he reasons it is unlikely that the parchment he seeks will still be found in his master's castle. This not so trivial catch concerns the villain little for so insurmountable is his power that by simply setting foot on Earth, he will automatically know where this relic is to be located.
As Narkran approaches our world, his presence is detected by The Spectre who confronts and scans the mind of this curious 18th century relic.
"His thoughts! So powerful, so overwhelmingly sinister... they are forcing me back with their sheer power!"
Learning of the brute's intentions of and for the parchment he seeks, The Spectre makes his resolve to stop him known and the pair duke it out. Shortly after their slugfest begins, the ghostly guardian's vision blurs and then disappears completely. Now recognizing that his dream was reality, our hero compensates for his lack of vision by surrounding himself with "psychic energy" which acts along the same principles as radar with its waves bouncing off his environment and painting a picture for The Spectre to use to his advantage. The plan works, Narkran is knocked unconscious, and The Spectre's sight is restored. Only one last detail needs to be addressed.
"That parchment he was searching for! Is evil... far too evil to let remain on Earth! I must destroy it!"
Problem is, The Spectre doesn't know off-hand where to locate it. Recognizing this fact, the ghostly guardian muses that if he were in Narkran's shoes the answer would immediately present itself once he set foot on Earth. And with that, The Spectre has his solution.
Placing the 18th century ware on his feet, The Spectre sets down on Earth and like some sort of cosmic diving rod, The Spectre becomes capable of tracing the lines of supernatural energy to an old, run-down house in Salem. The Spectre discovers the parchment whose potential has seemingly gone unrealized in the previous two centuries since it left Narkran's hands and burns it. Heading to space, he "grinds the ashes into dust... and grabs the smoke from the fire before it can drift into the atmosphere..."
Returning to his foe, The Spectre returns Narkran's shoes but before he can decide what to do with the creep, the fiend explodes as a consequence of not having completed the ritual he set out to do. With this problem solved, The Spectre flies to Earth where he checks in on Corrigan. Finding his partner smacking around the rest of the Carstagg gang, The Spectre vows not to interfere this time around, but...
"I shall never be allowed to forget that one rash moment of mine! It will haunt me the rest of my days!"
Thoughts: The Spectre is at last given a weakness of sorts though 'inconvenience' might be a better word. While it's an interesting idea having this vulnerability change from time to time - this issue it's blindness, the next (if it is referenced again) it'll be something else - its potency as a threat can't help but seem weak when The Spectre is still left with the tools to overcome it. If the idea is to provide The Spectre with limitations, then having him display some previously unspoken of radar sight to fill in the gap only draws attention to how limitless his bag of tricks truly is. One also has to question whether it is wise for The Voice to hamper their tool for routing out evil in this manner. Assuming that The Spectre's origin remains intact enough that The Voice has shanghaied him to carry out their business, then by hurting him they should also be hurting themselves. I mean, if I assigned a doctor to rid the world of sickness then witnessed him doing something rash, me taking away the use of one of his hands would just seem spiteful and not productive.
Of course, I'm not 100% certain that this Voice is
The Voice. It certainly sounds like The Voice of old, but The Spectre doesn't seem to recognize it referring as he does to it as "that voice" as if it were something unfamiliar to him. The fact that he dismisses his judgement as a dream - despite acknowledging that he's never before experienced a dream - suggests that the event was unusual enough for him for it not to seem real - something which his past run-ins with The Voice should have prevented. Weird that a supporting character of sorts is brought back into the mix only for The Spectre to not recognize it. Perhaps it was thought that it would take too much time or involve too many messy details to explain The Spectre's backstory and so brought in The Voice as a new entity altogether. Once again, I'm left wondering how much of The Golden Age Spectre's backstory applies to his Silver Age self.
I've owned this issue for about ten years or so and was instantly struck by the ambience Grandenetti creates with his faces pressed up against the pages leering grotesquely at the reader within his distorted panels, scratchy lines accentuating the aura of rapidly burning candles and making you question the stability of ancient, rotted framework, and the way that objects in the distance simply seem unstable - as if his linework would collapse into a pile of sticks if your eyes drifted too closely to the forefront of the scene. There so many little things he does here which lets you know Grandetti put a great deal of thought into his work being laying pen upon paper. Though The Spectre is detouring through one of his astral realms as he heads towards the viewer when he makes his entrance in this issue, one could almost mistake him for falling into a spiral vortex the way his out stretched arms can either be interpreted as him clutching at the sky or directing him through it and the way that the spiral beneath his feet can either be regarded as a star or as a vortex threatening to suck him in. When he is pulled from Corrigan's body we don't get the typical transparent and perhaps smokey but otherwise normal looking figure emanating from his form, but a distorted, scrunched up Spectre being violently ejected from a space into which he was not meant to fit look. I suspect that Grandenetti was thinking of old 19th/early 20th century photographs of mediums pulling ectoplasm out of their nose to influence this effect.
I could go on and on - from the psychotic way Narkran's eyes never seem to fixate on any one point yet flare with obsession to the dark surrealistic style he employs when depicting the astral realms - but will provide the following excerpts from Rand B. Lee's missive in this issue's letter column so I don't have to.
"Grandenetti gives the magazine what neither Murphy Anderson alone nor Neal Adams ever could: CHAOS!
Murphy's solo art is very, very slick. His fine lines and the minutiae he details so painstakingly (blades of grass, grains in boulders, pebbles, strands of hair) make every scene he creates stand out sharply and clearly. The world as depicted by him has no deformity, no dirt, no clutter; even his litter is clean! The perfection of each panel fosters a distinct aura of unreal orderliness that, like many Greek statues, is an ideal rather than a mirror. The word for Anderson-art is COMSOS, in the original sense.
Neal Adams is similar to Anderson's in its completeness (again, cosmos). It has, however, a quality that the other lacks; Neal's figures are tensely muscular and suggest bulk firmness.
Not so Jerry Grandenetti, whose work I would like to see unembellished by Murphy Anderson's unique style. 'Pilgrims of Peril' in Spectre 6 was bewildering in its artistic complexity. The colors were eye-staggering; the details numerous; the more than generous (even unnecessary) speed and radiance lines confusing; the backgrounds perplexing in their frequent distortion. The word for Grandenetti is, as I said, CHAOS.
Spectre belongs to a world of phantoms and magic and warlocks and demons and Good vs. Evil and bent reality; any artist who portrays him must have a bit of the wild weird in his style. J.G. fits that description -- to a 'T'!"
Richard Kalina, meanwhile, suggests that Grandenetti "made a mess" of issue six and Murphy Anderson "did a great, great job cleaning it up" while Paul Seydor praises the artist for his "imaginative page-spreads" and "Daliesque backgrounds" but feels that his Spectre's legs are "too stocky, too Supermanish to go with the lithe body".
I'd be surprised however, if any reader comments negatively upon Nick Cardy's fantastic looking cover. If there is one image which sums up The Spectre, this it. Interesting that it isn't quite in keeping with the cosmic adventuring Spectre we see here, but fits perfectly with what Aparo and Fleischer would do in the 70's. It makes me think of Julius Schwartz's "Why am I getting so many letters saying that the real Batman is being drawn by you in Brave and the Bold?" exchange with Neal Adams to which the artist replied "Because I know who Batman is supposed to be. Me and every kid knows who he's supposed to be". Cardy's image says "THIS is The Spectre!"
As for the story itself, I like that Skeates places an apprentice in the position of adversary to The Spectre rather than the master. There's something about the eagerness of a novice which energies this story in a way which I'm not an experienced practitioner of the black arts would have conveyed as well. The Spectre comes across as a bit of a novice himself, begging like a child to gain entrance to Corrigan's body and then dismissively, almost petulantly, hurling an energy bolt at his foes just to wrap things up. It's out of character, but I still have to credit Skeates for taking into consideration just what happens to The Spectre's mental state when he's placed in such a desperate situation. We've seen him at his most powerful; now we see him at his weakest and I appreciate the fact that each Spectre represents a being at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.
Kind of questionable whether wearing Narkran's shoes would have really told The Spectre where the parchment he sought could be found, but who knows? I guess it was charged with his energy and he was omnipotent so, sure, why not?
Next issue, we'll get three Spectre tales in one so it'll be interesting to see how three different creators peer into the eyes of you know who.
