Isn’t it safe to say that Superman is the greatest DC creation of all time? Yes? Cool. Prepare yourselves for someone who, in terms of sheer power-scaling, makes Kal-El look like a toddler with a bottle of milk. Not many people are aware that Action Comics, the birthplace of Superman, was not the first comic book series published by DC. Even their most well-known series, Detective Comics, did not start printing until 1937.
More Fun Comics, home to some of the best occult-themed characters in comic history, such as Doctor Occult and Doctor Fate, has the honor of being the first formally published comic book anthology in DC history. Jerry Siegel managed to outclass his renowned creation by embracing the lore surrounding the Creator of Our World in 1940, two years after introducing Superman to the world.
Superman was created to be the ideal hero: a model citizen, a good human being, and a law enforcer with a moral conscience. It is little surprise that when Siegel went to Earth for inspiration, he came up with one of the most powerful and enigmatic figures ever to grace the pages of a DC comic book.
The Spectre first appeared in More Fun Comics #52 and has since evolved into a Final boss-like figure in DC, appearing during the most pivotal, continuity-altering events and sparing our cherished heroes from an untimely death time and time again. This is Spectre’s Origins – Explored, and we are going to look at this Spirit of Vengeance who Embodies God’s Wrath.
But First – A Guide to Spectre’s Origin Story
A lot of the character aspects that have come to define The Spectre were set in stone pretty much with his first appearance. We knew, from the beginning, that he was an agent of The Presence (DC’s version of God) and that his purpose was to impart Divine Justice to those who sought to prey on the weakest. The rest of his history was never fully explored because of the sheer ambiguity of his cosmic power scaling.
Spectre has gone through multiple iconic comic book writers like Jerry Siegel, Gardner Fox & Doug Moench, but neither of them could ever give us a convincing backstory for the entity itself. Jim Corrigan was familiar to us, and we have had a tenuous relationship with him at best. For all we knew, The Spectre might as well have been God cosplaying as an ashy Goth superhero who liked to let loose by wearing out his knuckles on criminals.
It was only when John Ostrander became the lead writer for the Spirit of Vengeance’s third solo outing that we got his proper origin story, and we’re so glad that Ostrander was a theology student because he’s managed to weave together a superhero tale with Biblical myth seamlessly without cheapening either of those narratives. Before, the explanation was simple; Jim Corrigan was tasked by The Presence to impart judgment in His Name, and the powers he received turned him into the Spectre. Ostrander’s work with Spectre Volume 3 dove deep into his Biblical origins; and it is both tragic and downright terrifying.
The Fallen Angel Who Repented – How Aztar Became The Spectre
In the beginning, there was nothing. Then God opened its Hand and gave life to the Universe. Within 3 seconds the world He’d created was plunged into division & open rebellion because, as the age-old adage goes, there was trouble brewing in Paradise; only in this case, it was the literal kind. If you’ve known anything about The Bible or Christianity in general, you’d know that not everyone agreed with the world that God had created. Every great leader will always have his detractors; and for God, his greatest detractor was Lucifer Morningstar.
The Angel who’d come to be known as The Devil had convinced a few of his brethren that the Supreme Overseer of All Creation should be him, not his Father Yahweh, and attempted to dethrone Him as soon as he’d created the Universe. As you might have guessed by now, this didn’t work out and God cast down every rebel angel into the void that is known as Chaoplasm. This domain would come to be known as Hell to modern man, and while most souls are “dragged into” the nether world, there is one that ascended from it.
The Fallen Angel known as Aztar realized the folly of his actions and arrived at Heaven’s gates to repent for his sins. Though he’d been a prince among demons in Hell, he wanted the gift of forgiveness from his Creator and was confronted by the archangel Michael as to what his true intentions were. Aztar prostrated himself before Michael, acknowledging his wrong-doing and taking responsibility for the sins he had committed against the Hand that made him. He offered himself up to whatever punishment God chose to impose upon him, and it was at this moment that the Fallen One was granted his chance at Redemption.
An entity as powerful as God could not operate across the Universe of His own agency without risking ripping it apart. So, He created aspects of Himself through which he could function and dole out judgment over his nascent Creation. These aspects were manifestations of His Will, and they functioned as independent personalities, each with their own Holy Quest, and over time came to be recognized as Spirits. Radiant was the Spirit of God’s Mercy; she embodied His kindness, compassion & pity.
Eclipso was the Spirit of God’s Wrath; he embodied His rage and was supposed to act as God’s Judge, Jury & Executioner. And then there was The Spectre; The Spirit of Vengeance, whose task would be to judge the guilty and the damned with cold determination and righteous condemnation. God gave Aztar a choice; he could leave his past behind, cleanse it with the burning fire of Vengeance and start over as an agent of His Will. Or he could return to where he came from and give himself over to lamentation.
With a final thought about the life he’d led so far, and a slim hope of recalling it someday, Aztar accepted his Creator’s Judgement and allowed the Spectre-Force to spread through his consciousness till he was no more; Aztar had been completely transformed into The Spectre, and he has been at the heart of every major Biblical event that revolves around the idea of Vengeance. It was The Spectre who bestowed the Mark upon Cain after Seth’s Descendent murdered his own brother Abel and was condemned to suffer by God Himself.
Centuries later, the Spectre would expand its portfolio by also becoming the entity that dealt out God’s Wrath. In his ceaseless anger, Eclipso started confusing abusing his role as the Spirit of Wrath to take personal revenge against mankind, whom he viewed as the most-flawed creation to have ever existed. He enacted The Great Flood in an attempt to drown the Earth and everything that lived in it. Thankfully, Our Lord had different ideas. God did 2 things to ensure evil would be contained definitively and that mankind would survive; he instructed Noah to construct his Ark, and sent The Spectre after Eclipso.
The Spirit of Vengeance denounced his peer’s malevolent actions and after seeing that he was lost to reason, tore his asunder, trapping his lingering essence into the black gem known as the Heart of Darkness. From that day forward, The Spectre also bore the mantle of being God’s Wrath Itself, having taken that role from Eclipso in the hope that rage would be served better in the service of righteous vengeance, and not blind revenge. For centuries thereafter, The Spectre would mete out God’s Judgement without hesitation.
It was The Spectre who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, whose depravity and avarice warranted a punishment paid in hellfire and sulphur. It was the Spirit of Vengeance who humbled the Great Pharaoh and unleashed the Plagues of Egypt, personally taking part in the deaths of the firstborns of the entire kingdom.
The Divine Wrath was the blast that brought down the walls of Jericho and stopped the sun in its tracks, aiding Joshua in his Holy Conquest of ancient Canaan. For years beyond count, it was The Spectre’s duty to keep humanity in check whenever it broke God’s Laws; the only exception to this duty was during the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth, when The Spirit of Vengeance was banished to limbo as God’s Vengeance & Forgiveness could not treat the Earth at the same time.
When the Son of God was treacherously murdered on the Cross, The Spirit of Vengeance attempted to make all of the humanity bleed for their grisly sin, but he was stopped by Michael once again. You see, Jesus had made God realize that humanity for all its flaws still held promise, and He had decreed that every Spiritual Aspect of his be tied to mortal flesh in order to temper their judgments; the first person to become the human host of The Spectre was an Indian man called Chakara, even though he didn’t understand the exact nature of his powers. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1940s when The Spectre’s existence would be exposed to the world, thanks to his latest (and arguably most recognizable) host; Detective Jim Corrigan.
Vengeance Unleashed: What Makes The Spectre So Special
Jim Corrigan’s hard-headed nature came back to haunt him when mobster Gats Benson apprehended him and killed him by throwing his body in a barrel filled with cement, and throwing the barrel into a river. Corrigan’s Spirit, unable to come to terms with his death while the people who killed him remained free, refused to transcend the mortal realm. Corrigan cried out that he had “seen damn little of God’s justice”, while he argued that at least his brand of justice existed.
God heard Corrigan’s call for deliverance and decided to merge the former cop’s spirit with the Spectre entity, making him the newest incarnation of the Spirit of Vengeance. Corrigan quickly used his abilities once to exact punishment on Gats and the present mobsters and broke off his engagement with fiancée Clarice to pursue a life of delivering human and Divine Justice. Corrigan and Spectre turned into a crime-fighting duo of sorts, investigating cases related to the material and the spiritual realms and meting out Justice on both frontiers.
The Spectre played a massive role in the events of Crises on Infinite Earths. It was the Spirit of Vengeance who delayed the Anti-Monitor’s attempts to re-write the history of the Universe, keeping it together with all his strength and might only to be rendered comatose by the experience. He’d return, only far less powerful than before and way more susceptible to the elements that surround his existence.
After fending off Azmodeus for the umpteenth time and recovering his former fiancee’s daughter’s soul from Hell, Jim Corrigan falls into a moral dilemma that causes the Old Testament version of the Spectre to resurface; and this version of the Spirit of Vengeance is all kinds of extreme. See, the entire point of tying the Spectre-Force to a human host was to temper its rather tempestuous personality and make sure that it doesn’t take the Eclipso route to vengeance.
But ever since Jim Corrigan began losing sight of his mission, viewing it as an eternally torturous existence instead, The Spectre Force’s hold over his psyche began strengthening; and it created utter pandemonium for the citizens of Earth. Unbridled by a humane filter through which it could sift its judgment, The Spectre began doling out judgments from a rather draconian lens. For instance; what kind of punishment should he inflict on a woman who killed her abusive husband in his sleep? Complexity crept into his philosophy, and it led him to make some rather fatal decisions.
Like the time he threatened to eliminate the entire population of New York if a wrongfully-convicted inmate on death row was served his death sentence. Or when he decided to wipe out the entire population of the tiny Balkan country Vlatava for its bloody history of conflict, depravity, and genocide. The Spectre left only 2 people from opposing sides alive to see if they would continue their petty squabbles even after losing the very reason for their conflict. It was this instance that spurred the US Government into action.
They requested Superman to use the Spear of Destiny- the same weapon used to inflict pain upon Christ on the Cross- to bring The Spectre to heel. Instead, Superman was nearly driven insane when The Spirit of Vengeance showed him the fate of the wielder of that Spear, which convinced the Man of Steel to step down. Jim Corrigan decided he was done following the path of vengeance and ascended to Heaven, leaving the Spectre to find a new host in the form of Hal Jordan. The former Green Lantern and host of Parallax tried to resist the nature of the Spectre and help it reform by turning it into the Spirit of Redemption. But in the end, it turned out that Hal needed the Spirit more than it, him.
Spectre was the reason Parallax was purged from his being once and for all, but in the process, for the first time in millennia, God’s Wrath was let loose upon the world in its primal state. And his predecessor decided to take advantage of this situation. Eclipso seduced The Spectre through its current host- Jean Loring- and loosed it upon all things magical in the DC Universe. The Spirit of Vengeance cut a bloody path through the sorcerers who defend the mortal realm, and his maddened killing spree ended with the death of Dr. Fate.
It was at this point that God reached out to His aspect, reined him in yet again, and bound him to the soul of Crispus Allen. Allen’s first task was to kill his own son, an act that reinforced just how terrible The Spectre’s duty was and gave Crispus lifelong trauma. His duty would not stop going after people close to him either, as when Allen targeted Libra, The Spectre sent him after his former partner Renee Montoya; aka The Question.
Allen attacked her in Gotham City on the day the Anti-Life Equation was going to be broadcast to the world. His actions caused Montoya to lose the Spear of Destiny, which ended up in the hands of a resurrected Cain who was using Vandal Savage as his host. Cain wanted revenge on the being that marked him those eons ago, and so he used the Spear to separate the Spectre from Crispus Allen, enslaving the former and killing the latter in the process.
It was only after Allen’s soul got the peace that he was able to regain control over The Spectre-Force and dish out Divine Judgement on every member of Darkseid’s apocalyptic dominion. But troubles for the Spirit of Vengeance wouldn’t end there; because when the demon Nekron broke into the surface world, his Black Lantern Power Rings found Crispus Allen’s deceased corpse and reanimated it as a Black Lantern, effectively trapping The Spectre within his body.
God’s Wrath was saved by the unlikeliest of entities when Hal Jordan decided to bond with the Parallax entity once again to release The Spectre and turn the tide in the favor of the Lantern Corps during The Blackest Night event. In the New 52, Jim Corrigan was revived and made the host of the Spectre Force yet again.
One of his most memorable appearances during this DC reboot was when God’s Wrath was trapped by Deacon Blackfire, thanks to his possession of the Spear of Destiny. Thankfully, Corrigan’s detective skills combined with Batwing’s determination helped them recover the strongest Spiritual character in DC from the clutches of a deranged, demonic cult leader whose soul had ascended from Hell.
What Makes The Spectre One of DC’s Most Powerful Heroes?
Any character that can keep the Anti-Monitor at bay and make The Joker feel remorse for his actions, however short-lived that might be, is certified OP in our books. The Spectre is without a doubt one of the strongest characters in DC history; stronger than even Superman. Being an aspect of God Himself, Spectre possesses every power that his Creator does and is said to be the second-strongest spiritual entity in the cosmos; behind God, of course. He is omniscient and omnipotent, capable of performing any feat required of him. T
he Spectre’s senses are tuned differently; he can sense whenever innocent blood has been spilled, or when something mystical transpires that shouldn’t happen in the first place. Once he has decided to take action, there is nothing that can stop him. He can traverse across dimensions without the hassle and has his own pocket dimension that gives him complete control over everything, and we do mean everything. The Spectre’s strength is such that he can use entire planets as weapons and has no-sold punches from Superman like he’s the Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania 12.
He is immortal, and cannot be killed; only dissipated until he’s pieced back together again. The Spectre can also become intangible & invisible at will, making him extremely hard to zone in on. He can fire projections and create constructs so incomprehensibly powerful, that no magical or superhuman being could withstand them. He can enter the minds of his victims and manipulate or intimidate them as he sees fit, which is what happened to The Joker.
When The Clown Prince of Crime obtained the Spirit of Vengeance, his only thought was how he could use it to torment Batman even more. Spectre wanted to end Joker’s pathetic existence, but Bruce argued that he didn’t even know what he was doing was wrong because of his insanity. The Joker’s brain made him crave pleasure, pain & impulsivity, but the Spectre decided that a lesson was in order.
For a brief moment, he restored Joker’s sanity and made him feel the weight of his crimes. The Joker was so traumatized by the experience that he slipped right back into insanity, and the Spectre left the Clown Prince of Crime to his fate. And in case you aren’t already convinced that he’s the strongest being in DC, he can literally warp reality at will, turning people into rabbits and trapping spirits into his own dimension where he reigns supreme and holds court over their worthless fates.
He’s like the Ghost Rider in that regard; except his penance stare is a billion times worse than that of the Devil’s Herald. The only way to physically harm The Spectre is to use a Biblical object like the Spear of Destiny, and even then there’s no guarantee that he might die. There are powers of his we haven’t even mentioned here, and we don’t think we need to either. The Spectre has established himself as one of the strongest DC heroes in existence, period.
The Most Accurate & Terrifying Depiction of The Spectre
One of the most-faithful on-screen translations of a comic book character occurred in 2010 when DC released a Showcase Special on The Spectre. It’s 11 minutes of peak John Ostrander-levels of philosophy interspersed with Batman-esque investigative shenanigans and we love it. In this special, Jim Corrigan is investigating the death of a successful film producer; and the father of his girlfriend Aimee.
Even though he’s not the assigned officer for the case, Corrigan manages to deduce that the men involved in the bombing were related to his entourage. The Spectre then confronts the perpetrators of this bloody crime and exacts Divine Justice by killing one via car crash and crushing the other’s body with a gigantic gorilla robot.
Jim visits his girlfriend and confronts her about her actions; he’d managed to uncover Aimee’s plot to kill and usurp her father’s fortune, and The Spirit of Vengeance was not going to let this avarice-riddled case of parricide pass on by. When intimidation didn’t work, The Spectre decided to show Aimee what her money had bought her.
In a cold moment of Divine Judgement, he unleashed a tornado of money in the direction of the woman who was supposed to be the love of his life. Aimee died because of immense blood loss; all the paper cuts she sustained from the hail of wealth drained the life’s blood out of her meager body. With his job completed, The Spectre transforms back into Jim Corrigan and calmly exits the scene in the dead of night, reaffirming his Divine Purpose in the realm of mortals.
Why The Spectre deserves More Recognition
Do you really need a reason to invest in The Spectre beyond the fact that he is the literal embodiment of God’s Wrath? The Spirit of Vengeance has had a rather troubled existence over the years, oscillating between a background presence and the key to resolving Crisis-level events. But the one thing that always intensifies every time he shows up in a panel is his dominating presence. The Spectre is a character you cannot keep your eyes off.
Everything he does reeks of confidence and Divine Purpose; and yet there is something so menacing about him that it instills fear into the hearts of whoever dares to cross him. He isn’t inherently evil, but there is something very unnerving about him. Whenever he shows up in a DC storyline, you know someone is about to get deleted to the Spectre Zone for good; and that’s what makes him so compelling.
The Spectre has some of the best dialogue work for a mainstream comic book character, and the layered complexity of his philosophical existence just tickles the intellectual nerd in us in all the right places. The Spectre is an enigma; and at the same time, you know exactly what he’s about. He’s Just, but his Harshness can outweigh his righteous purpose. He’s a character that truly embodies the shades of the grey trope in a way that isn’t cheesy; it’s downright spine-chilling. And for that alone, he should be on your list of comic book characters to keep up with; well, that and his rad character design.