The Wrath of The Spectre Comic Book Banter

The Spectre is (was, is, I don't know) a cosmic super hero who appeared in tons of comic books from the DC Comics brand. The character showed up in a "next issue" ad back in "More Fun Comics #51" which was released in January 1940. It received a real story in the following month of the same year and was created by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily. Like with a lot of comic book creators, there's a lot of debate as to who had more involvement with the creation, but whatever, the two worked on it and that's all I will say about that.

I got this a while ago, and I never did much with it, so I decided to scan in some photos for your guys, and will link you to a better blog.

The images are from the Bronze Age version...I think...I'm absent minded sometimes. The 1970's had The Spectre coming back to life and appeared in Adventure Comics #431 in 1974 and ran through a year or so of releases. It's funny to note that despite the 1940's run, it didn't really do a whole lot through the years. Ok, I take that back, it did some good stuff in the Silver Age (1960's) but not as much as the 70's...or better yet, I'll shut up and just point you to a better source Wiki Land.

The series was written by Michael Fleisher and drawn by Jim Aparo and in terms of "revenge" plots, the Spectre was always involved in retribution. The 1970's use of gore in horror could be paralleled by these kinds of comics. Well, if not horror, than at least films like "Death Wish" which featured a certain brand of justice that is seen in The Spectre comics of the same era.

Some of the criminals were melted like wax, turned to wood and run through sawmills, transformed into glass then allowed to fall over and shatter into many pieces. The fans weren't always enjoying it either, and it should be interesting to note that they wrote in and complained...which seems lame to me.

In the letter column, some fans indicated uneasiness with this depiction, and in #435, September-October 1974, Fleisher, perhaps in response or perhaps his plan anyway, introduced a character that shared their concerns, a reporter named Earl Crawford.

Whatever the case is, The Spectre deserves more attention, so here's a post dedicated to the character.















So there you have it, a quick and dirty post. You can read more about The Spectre, look at better scans, and read more about The Bronze Age of comics by visiting The Bronze Age of Blogs, a far better site than this one.