"A Rage In Hell" Issue No. 5 (1992 Series)

John Ostrander: Writer
Tom Mandrake: Artist
Charles Vess: Cover
Todd Klein: Letterer
Dan Raspler: Editor
Digital Chameleon: Colors

Issue's introductory quote
(seen on splash page):
"Hell is truth seen too late."
--H.G. Adams

As promised last post, in this issue Spectre takes a trip into Hell - and what a rip-snorting journey it is.

As with many issues of the 1992 Spectre series, issue #5 tells a complete, stand-alone story. I get the feeling often when reading this 1992 Spectre incarnation that John Ostrander, who I feel is one of the great comic book writers of the Modern Age, had many fine comic book plots bouncing around in is head at this point in his career and was silly grateful for the chance to tell them via the Spectre mythology. The story here is one of his best conceptions.

The basic plot premise is a humdinger: A gang of petty criminals kidnap a young boy and conceal him in an underground pit they have constructed in a graveyard, complete with air tube. After picking up the ransom money and racing from a police chase in a wild getaway through the streets of New York, the gang is killed in a car crash. The problem is that all the kidnappers die before they can reveal to police where the little boy is hidden. Jim Corrigan/Spectre must chase the soul of one of the recently killed kidnappers straight into Hell for the information!

Is that a cool idea or what?

The splash page - "A Rage in Hell"

After the spectacular splash page in which we see the little boy kidnap victim buried (who we will soon learn is named Bobby Hoffman) deep underground in a small cubicle, the story begins in earnest with the gang of kidnappers racing through the streets of New York City. Before the 3rd page is over, the driver has lost control of the getaway vehicle and careened into into a fuel truck where two of the three gang members are killed instantly in the resulting fireball. The survivor, wheelman Eddie Vega, is rushed to the Siegel-Baily Hospital emergency room where he soon dies of his horrible burns. The parents of the kidnapped boy, the Hoffmans, are distraught as no one is left alive that knows where the kidnappers have hidden their boy.

Hospital social worker and Spectre confidant, Amy Beitermann, is friends with the Hoffmans and brings in Jim Corrigan, as Amy is aware that as the Spectre, Corrigan can communicate with the newly dead. Corrigan agrees to chase the kidnapper's soul into limbo, but explains to Amy that he will need her to be his point of "focus" to the mortal world to guide the Spectre back from wherever his soul search may lead him. Beitermann solemnly agrees, and the Spectre enters Vega's body through his dead eyes and follows the spirit trail into Limbo. Spectre follows the kidnapper's spiritual 'silver thread" through the terrain of Limbo only to discover that Vega has already passed to his eternal judgment: Hell!

Mandrake's "Hell"

The heart of the book, then, is Spectre's spectacular battle with the demon, Shathan the Eternal (this will be the second battle between these two. Spectre first battled Shathan, who is also known as "The Lord of Lies," in Showcase #61, April 1966). After many pages of wonderful artwork and a battle worthy of the hellish circumstances, Spectre defeats Shathan handily and extracts the whereabouts of the kidnapped child. Leaving Vega's soul to burn forever in Hell, Spectre returns to the shell of the kidnapper's body and tells police where "he" has buried the child (Mandrake's reanimation of the body of Vega, charred and ruined, is worthy of the the glory days of EC Comics).

The Hoffmans, Amy, and Inspector Nate Kane rush to the graveyard and dig feverishly in a terrible rainstorm, extracting the boy from the waterlogged ground just in the nick of time (the underground box was quickly filling with water via the air tube and the flooded graveyard). The comic ends with Kane realizing that something is very strange, even supernatural, about Jim Corrigan and deeply concerned over his involvement with his friend, Amy Beitermann (With all the focus, naturally, on Jim Corrigan and Spectre; it is easy to forget what a great cop and good man is Inspector Nate Kane. He is, in fact, the hero of this tale as far as the Hoffmans are concerned. It is Kane that appears to crack a dying Eddie Vega, and it is Kane that lifts Billy Hoffman from his almost grave. Ostrander was smart enough not to make Kane the bumbling cop foil so prevalent throughout noir movies, comics, or television).

A really fine comic book from beginning to end. Ostrander's script is imaginative and tight accompanied by Mandrake artwork that is among the series' most thrilling.

Inspector Nate Kane on the job

The Cool Stuff Part I: A tale well told

With this issue we see Ostrander and Mandrake really settling into the Spectre mythology with profound confidence and ease. The two artists had worked as a team before (Grimjack, Firestorm), and on this title they fell into a good, solid groove very quickly. This issue is a fine example of the pair's excellent chemistry.

Ernest Hemingway once compared good writing to an iceberg: the majority of both lay beneath the surface unseen.

The real glory of great comic book story telling is how succinct and efficient it must be - how it will guide the reader toward deep backgrounds and unseen lives in so little pages. The components are the same for both excellent comic book or novel writing; i.e. characterization, plotting, etc. - it just all must be expressed in an extremely condensed way with a seamless twining of words and pictures. It is such an awesome format when done well, and so incredibly demanding!

Case in point: In the span of very few panels, Mandrake and Ostrander present and define a gang of three kidnappers and a very plausible reality for the characters. One gang member, who has a crew cut and thick neck (but is never given a name), is clearly the leader. He barks the orders. He speaks to the other kidnappers as underlings, and he is the man that must be pleased. The other two are twins - brother and sister, Eddie and Ellen Vega. Eddie is a small time crook, probably a purse snatcher or drug dealer. The nameless leader, who normally moves in deeper criminal waters, probably knows Eddie peripherally from the criminal network that exists in any city. Eddie's sister, Ellen (plain, not very bright) is pushing thirty and still working as a babysitter. One of her clients, the Hoffmans, have a little boy, Billy. The Hoffman's also have just enough money to attract the attentions of Ellen's ne'r-do-well brother. Eddie hatches a kidnapping scheme using his weak-will sister as the inside person. Realizing he has neither the brains or balls to pull off such a job without some professional help, he takes his plan to the fellow with the bull neck, who accepts participation in the caper only because it looks like such a walk in the park (Bull Neck has never liked Eddie, whom he considers small time at best - a whiner stoolie at worst).

The kidnappers three

But of course, the entire job is doomed from the get-go because of the shiftless, weak nature of Eddie's character. He has gone through his entire life blaming everyone but himself for his hard luck, his lack of advancement in life. Nothing, no poor decision or fuck up, is ever his fault. Neither is he ever at fault for the pain and suffering his petty life of crime or selfish behavior leaves in its wake. he just caught a bad break. Everything just seems to be always against him! He never means to hurt anyone! Even in Hell, once the Spectre tracks him down and rips his soul from Shathan's grasp, he is still trying to wiggle out of responsibility for everything: "This is all a mistake. It wasn't my fault. None of it," he pleads even as his naked and corrupt soul is being absorbed into Shathan (The demon's method of extracting Vega's soul is particularly chilling. More on this later).

As I say, with only a little imagination on the part of the reader, Mandrake and Ostrander make these characters and their criminal interrelationships very clear in only a few panels. How many panels? Six. The characters are present in a total of six panels over all the pages of the book. That's what comic book storytelling is all about.

The Cool Stuff Part II: Mandrake's Hell

While Ostrander has given us an exceptional script, one solid as a top; Tom Mandrake must be given the final victory here. His Hell is one of rich, red heat and ectoplasm 1 - of souls pouring like vomit from the mouths of demons and inverted crosses from which drip the red, doomed souls of sinners like blood - or like shipwreck victims slipping off a life raft to hurtle down through a red sea of fire. It is a universe of eternal damnation, of obscene tortures and eye-bulging pain. The reader can nearly feel the heat coming off the pages. Upon this stinking, crimson landscape; the Spectre battles the demon, Shathan, and Mandrake makes these pages vibrate with power. A particular highlight is the moment when the enormous demon tears the flesh away from his own breast like the bloody drapes of a curtain, exposing his red and dripping chest cavity. Therein we see Vega suspended like a Hellchrist from the veins and tendrils of the demon's insides as Shathan absorbs the the mortal soul straight into the hell of his own body. Stunning also is at the end of the battle when Spectre simply plunges his hand into the body of Shathan (Shhlluck!) and rips Vega's soul straight out of his chest like a heart (Ghyllggg!).

The Soul of Eddie Vega

"I have what I came for, Lord of Lies," says Spectre, showing his teeth in a rictus smile while holding Vega's gore-drenched soul in his clenched and dripping fist.

The Cool Stuff, Part III: The Legend of the Spectre

Within this issue, Ostrander gives us a fascinating teaser regarding the Spectre's origin. After the Spectre brutally defeats Shatahn and turns to leave, clutching Vega's soul like a bloody sponge in his grip, Shathan; now small and diminished, says, "wait."

There is a legend, he tells Spectre, of a prince of the damned, one of Satan's own, who rebelled against heaven with the Satanic Father. In repenting his rebellion, he was assigned by God to meld with a human host. this repented Prince of Hell now roams the Earth in service of Heaven.

"Are you . . . the Lord of Wrath?" He asks Spectre. "Would you . . . know if you were?"

It is worthy of note also that earlier Shathan, who has known Spectre of old, tells him that his trip to Hell has nothing at all to do with saving a boy's life; but rather is all about Spectre's lust to punish Eddie Vega personally. "He (Vega) escaped you by dying and you cannot accept that!" the demon tells him. Spectre dismisses all as more lies from the Lord of Lies, designed to sow confusion and doubt. Yet, the seeds of a satanic legend have been planted, and in future issues we will discover Spectre not as sure of his heavenly origin as he once was!

Deadman in Limbo

Oh, one last cool tidbit: As spectre chases Eddie Vega into Hell, we see the DC character, Dead Man, in Limbo, watching a eternal procession of souls marching from the light of life toward their final destinations. The series is full of DC Universe homages like this (like the hospital where Amy works being named the Siegel-Baily Memorial after Spectre creators, Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily). Nice to know this series is in the hands of a couple of artists that love the medium.

Heavens, what good stuff!

Next: Spectre takes on gang violence in "The Bleeding Gun." See you soon.

1: In the "credit where credit is due" department, the idea of Tom Mandrake's art having an "ectoplasmic" quality doesn't originate with me. In the letter column of issue no. 2, reader John Miller from Edinburgh, Scotland makes that astute artistic assessment of Mandrake's style.