"Crimes of Passion" Issue No. 2 (1992 Series)

John Ostrander: Writer
Tom Mandrake: Artist
Todd Klein: Letterer
Dan Raspler: Editor
Digital Chameleon: Colors
Glenn Fabry: Cover (Painting)

Issue's introductory quote
(seen on splash page):
". . . But there are some that do not care what's gone, what's left:
The soul's in purgatory that come back
To habitations and familiar spots."
- W.B. Yeats, Purgatory

Issue Summary: This is an issue filled with ghosts and a slick, gothic mystery for a storyline. Because of this, the issue has a refreshing, traditional feel to it, solid as a four-post oak bed.

The tone is set by the evocative splash page which finds Jim Corrigan walking a mist-shrouded, long Island sound beach at night. Immediately, death seems close at hand: The husk of sea-bleached tree limbs and the sands of a dune are as spectral white as bones, translucent in the glow of a full moon. A night fog swirls around Corrigan. He is clearly walking half-merged and enveloped by his Spectre self, which softly swirls around him like a cape and cowl - as vaporous as the mist that floats over the sand.

The Splash Page - Long Island Sound as Limbo

In this issue, Corrigan/Spectre stumbles upon a murder while walking along the night seacoast, or rather the vestiges of an old murder. Corrigan sees a light flash in the window of a beach house, sees a woman illuminated by a seeming flash of gunfire. Furious that someone would commit murder while in his presence, The Spectre completely rages to the fore, taking over the mortal, Corrigan, entirely.

In full wrath, the Spirit rampages into the house moving through the walls like a ghost. Ironically, he does not find a killing in progress, but the ethereal, spirit-world remains of an old murder: The troubled spirit of a dead woman is floating, moving, through the house, the place (we are to soon learn) of her original murder. Spectre tries to communicate with the woman's wandering spirit, seeking to know what happened and who killed her, but the spirit seems lost in a world of distress and won't communicate. In a rage over her silence, the Spectre makes himself huge, blowing through the top of the house like a green volcano, demanding to know her history. Finally realizing that the woman's spirit will not - or cannot - talk to him, he vows to find her killers so that she might "know peace." The Spectre decides to employ the skills he once had when alive, as a police detective, to unravel the mystery.

Working as his alter self, Jim Corrigan, the Spectre learns that the spirit of the dead woman was named Jacqueline Connelly, and that, despite being married, had been the mistress of a rich business man named Bill Martindale. How rich is Martindale? Well, he built her a pretty, little house on stilts right along the Long Island Shore (the very one she haunts now); just to keep her handy. Martindale was, of course, married as well. The man currently in the death house for killing Jacqueline, however, is her husband, Mike Landau, whom Jacqueline left once she caught the heady scent of Martindale's wallet (Landau, demonstrating some pretty poor planning, is poor as St. Francis' pockets).

As Corrigan/Spectre unravels the murder of the spirit girl, social worker, Amy Beitermann, has become curious enough about Jim Corrigan to seek out his private detective office in a poorer section of New York City - probably the Lower East Side (Last issue Beitermann witnessed Corrigan survive a drive-by shooting in supernatural fashion and has since become obsessed with him).

When searching the dark, seemingly empty building for Corrigan's office, Amy sees - or thinks she sees - a ghost, a lovely greenish spirit of a girl; who scares Amy and sends her running for the exits. Just as she is leaving, she is called back by a Madame Xanadu, a tarot card/fortune teller who has office space in the same nearly abandoned building. Xanadu tells her not to be afraid, that she knows Jim Corrigan and is looking for him as well. Madame Xanadu tells Amy that she knows Corrigan "quite well" and adds mysteriously, "in all his incarnations." Though clearly put off her pins a bit by the ghost sighting and the odd Madame Xanadu, Amy manages to keep it together enough to offer her card, requesting a call if Corrigan should return. Xanadu agrees, and requests a contact as well, should Amy find Corrigan first.

After Amy has left the building, the ghost of the pretty, young girl returns; hovering over Xanadu.

"Sooner or later, Jimmy" says Madame Xanadu, as though talking to herself, ". . . Sooner or later - We will find you, Kimmie and I." Xanadu looks at the spirit face hovering above her. "Won't we, Kimmie?"

" . . . Yes . . .," says the ghost, her eyes closed.

In the second half of the issue, Corrigan and the Spectre solve the murder of Jacqueline Connelly by first exonerating both ex-love interests, Bill Martindale (rich man) and Michael Landau (poor man) - although the Spectre's methods of "exoneration," as we will learn as the series progresses, can be as horrifying as any punishment (more on this later). Corrigan learns that the true killer was Jacqueline's goodie-two-shoes twin sister, Judith Connelly; who killed sister Jacqueline after a confrontation about the latter's promiscuous lifestyle. As Judith attempts to explain her actions, the Spectre rises in horrifying wrath and kills her, forcing her off the edge of a seacoast cliff.

Thinking that he has found peace for the murdered Jacqueline, her returns to the ruins of the beach house to find Jacqueline's spirit still wandering aimlessly, in seemingly more distress that when he first discovered her. As the Spectre slowly transforms back into Corrigan, he begins to understand that a need for vengeance isn't what keeps Jacqueline Connelly in the material world. The spirit of Jacqueline has reasons all her own - ones he has failed to understand.

In the final few pages of the issue there is one, last development: We find Inspector Nate Kane on the final page inspecting a murder along the docks of Lower Manhattan, where a young woman's body has been discovered bobbing among the pylons in the East River. We learn that it is the body of the young woman we saw murdered last issue by Danny Geller. We learn as well that this is the latest murder in a spree of serial killings the press has labeled, the "Reaver" killings. Thus, Geller is called "The Reaver" by the press (only we know his identity).

And a second body has been found at the same scene: While police divers were busy searching the river for any evidence where the body was floating, they dragged something off the bottom: A very old oil drum filled with cement, which they have hauled up onto the dock. The veteran, Nate Kane, knows that a cement-filled drum in this part of town can mean only one thing: "Gang style," he says simply. "So, instead of one murder, I got two. One with a trail that's gotta be fifty years cold and dead."

Inspector Nate Kane at the scene

Cold and dead indeed, Inspector Kane. As we discovered last issue, the mortal Jim Corrigan was given a cement coffin by gangsters and dumped into the East River. This discovery is obviously his tomb. In the last panel, we see dockworkers with blowtorches, opening the drum, revealing the cement casting inside. Kane suggest they take the cement plug to the morgue and see if the boys in forensics might do a casting to identify the victim.

"Get the dead some justice," says Kane, "if we can still find any in this burg!"

(Justice, Justice, everyone in this issue is obsessed with "justice")

The Cool Stuff: Rape, Insanity, and Murder - The Spectre as Monster

When I try to describe the Spectre, I always stumble when tempted to refer to the character as a "superhero." He has supernatural powers, certainly - nearly omnipotent powers, in fact. But once the Spectre overwhelms his human host, Jim Corrigan, and has moved front and center; his actions are seldom heroic - quite the reverse, in fact, particularly in this '92 incarnation from the artistic team of Ostrander and Mandrake. With this issue, the team defines a character that is terrifying - even monstrous - in both actions and motivations.

Let's begin with the magnificent painted cover by Glenn Fabry: Clearly, Mr. Fabry's vision of the Spectre is not one of a "heroic" figure. With the corrupted, pitted skin; the blackened lips and teeth; and the glowing slit eyes, the depicted character is, to say the least, not an obvious agent of good. In general, this '92 series had tremendous covers, and Mr. Fabry gives us a gem for issue #2.

Within the story, it is a significant moment when Corrigan remarks that he plans to exercise the "skills" he possessed when a living New York City detective to crack the case. The reader may be forgiven if it is assumed the detective plans to employ Holmesian deductive powers in sleuthing out the murderer. As we shall see most graphically in the forthcoming issue #3, Corrigan's depression era methods of police work were, to be generous, more tradition in their procedures. That is to say, he simply beat the living shit out of people ("innocence" was completely irrelevant) until he got information. No "Elementary, Dr. Watson" here. And more importantly, once the guilty were given names, they were arrested with a spray of bullets, making lawyers and their fussy trials unnecessary. In this great issue #2, Spectre follows his mortal host's rulebook to the letter, albeit his supernatural powers give Spectre's 'beatings" a completely different gravitas.

The Spectre's fist stop, naturally, is to the prison cell of Michael Landau, pauper and former husband of the slain, Jacqueline Connelly. The Spectre doesn't beat around the bush: In an effort to extract the "truth" from the unfortunate Mr. Landau, The Spectre envelopes him in his cloak and creates around him a private universe of supreme punishment. "This is Justice . . .," roars Spectre, as an electric chair of the mind materializes and clamps Michael down. Spectre moves in close, fondling a bundle of electric cables connected to the death throne. Spectre hisses through clenched teeth. "This is retribution for the death of Jacqueline Connelly!" and throws a switch hanging in space with one hand while gripping the cables in the other. His body has become the conduit, and this imaginary world turns a brilliant yellow as electricity consumes the body of Michael Landau. Landau's eyes bulge and neck muscles strain against the head strap as he shrieks is innocence.

The torture chamber that is the Spectre's world flickers and Michael is now naked and small in a landscape of brimstone. He rises to one knee in a world of dank smoke and fire. "This can't be . . ." he says, looking around as he shields his face from the blasts of heat.

“No. No. No. No . . . This can't be . . .”

"This be Hell, Mortal," thunders Spectre, transformed into a 50 foot incarnation of Satan, complete with yellow, goat eyes; sharp fang teeth, and a purple worm of a tongue six feet long (Mandrake will display a Bosch-like skill throughout this '92 series in rendering the infernal eternal, and this issue's horrifying vision of Beelzebub is a fine example of same: The massive ram's horns; pendulant, female breasts; and the dense, hanging patch of wire-coarse pubic hair make the Unclean One's sex repulsively unclear). After screaming his innocence throughout the ordeal, Landau finally passes the test: "I believe you, Michael Landau," says Spectre grandly, returning to normal size and the material world. Spectre now stands over Landau, who has been reduced to a fetal mess, cowering on the bed of his jail cell.

"Be of good cheer," advises Spectre just before vanishing. "I am now convinced of your innocence and I will prove it!"

But Landau doesn't hear this consul - does not, in fact, hear anything anymore. Spectre has crushed his mind. "No more," babbles Michael over and over, shredding a sheet from his bed. "No more. No more."

Tying one end of the sheet strip off around an upper horizontal cell bar, Landau ends his shattered life - which Spectre has convinced him, has slipped into a whirl of hellish madness - by hanging himself.

Next stop in Spectre's trail of "justice" are the corporate offices of William Martindale, where Corrigan marches into Martindale's high-rise office, slams the executive back into his plush chair, and demands the truth about Jacqueline Connelly's murder. Give me the truth, Corrigan says cocking a clenched fist, "or shall I just beat it out of you?"

Martindale makes the mistake of demanding the usual things one would from an investigating policeman: an arrest warrant, a Miranda reading, a lawyer, etc.; to which Corrigan responds by becoming the Spectre and giving him a Spectre style beat down. Entering Martindale's mind through the man's eye sockets (a ghostly flowing of green vapor from Corrigan's hand through the now-blank eyes of Martindale), Spectre finds himself in Martindale's world - one where the businessman sees himself as a Conan-like barbaric raider astride a kingdom of gold and treasure, attended by nearly naked, Hyborian wenches. "Raider, Reaver, Ruler . . . All of these I am!" Martindale brags. "Look upon my might and despair!" Martindale's might is, naturally, all in his mind and elicits nothing but a peal of thundering laughter from Spectre. "Know the truth," says Spectre.

Spectre instantly infects Martindale's mind with a "true" image of himself, one where he is a middle-aged child playing in a toilet bowl. He kneels over the bowl, shit covering his arms to the elbows. His mountain of riches has become a pile of garbage. Around him the lithesome women have become obese, aged grotesques; complete with warts and missing teeth. One, holding a plunger like a scepter, grips a heavy chain that is attached to a dog collar around Martindale's neck; and crowds of well-dressed adults laugh at him. Finally, Spectre becomes gigantic and puts Martindale floating before him in lonely space, naked and small (the image here is meant to summon Divine judgment to mind: Spectre grows so large, finally, that the naked Martindale appears no bigger than a speck floating before the white of Spectre's eye) . Spectre realizes after peering into his soul, that Martindale, like the dead Landau, had nothing to do with Jacqueline's murder. Spectre learns, however, that Martindale allows others to believe he might have killed her to illicit an aura of danger, so helpful in the business world. "What a pathetic creature you really are," Spectre tosses over his should as he drifts away into space. He leaves Martindale cowering under his massive desk, muttering that he is a raider, a reaver, a ruler. "I am," he insists, covering his face in his hands like a child. "I am . . ."

Spectre has broken another mind and spirit.

In despair at not solving Connolly's murder through his usual tried and true, bare-knuckled methods, Corrigan visits the cemetery where Jacqueline Connolly is buried. While commiserating with Jacqueline's tombstone ("you have no rest, nor do I."), Corrigan meets Connolly's twin sister, Judith (who Ostrander has introduced very briefly by name earlier on page 9). Corrigan explains that he is investigating her sister's murder and would appreciate any information she might have. "Grief is a private matter," Judith tells him politely.

It we have learned anything in Issue #2; it is that withholding from Corrigan/Spectre is a very, very bad mistake. True to form, Spectre comes roaring to the forefront, invades the helpless Judith's mind, and simply rips the truth from her screeching mind.

And the truth Spectre finds, and the way it is handled by the artistic team of Ostrander and Mandrake, makes for some great comic book reading:

Once inside her psyche, Spectre encounters a dense landscape of red vines, laden with thorns. Their twining tangle is so massy, in fact, Spectre is forced to hack his way as through a heavy webbing of membrane (he transforms both forearms and hands into long, green machetes - Whick Whack whick whack). All the while Spectre is hacking though Judith's metaphoric hymen (hello, Freud!), there are voices speaking from the forest of red membrane, saying "You have no place here." "You will not be allowed to pass." "You are not permitted here."

Finally Spectre brutally hacks his way through the reddish wilderness to a tall, thin tower. Following the clear imagery, this is the fortress of Judith's vagina (we will learn later that Judith was the "good girl" of the family, while her twin, Jacqueline, was very promiscuous). "You build your castle walls strong, Judith Connelly," says the Spectre. The imagery suddenly becomes very potent, as Spectre transforms his entire arm into a monstrous, phallic totem, complete with a large Spectre/death's head at the tip. Spectre uses it like a battering ram; crashing into the tower. He finds her inside, dressed in a virginal white dress. "Go away," pleads Judith. "Don't look at me. I am alone here! Leave me alone!"

”You build your castle walls tall and strong, Judith Connelly.”

"No," says Spectre simply. And he just as simply takes her mind and soul.

Judith quickly explains under Spectre's spiritual bombast that she killed her sister, but that it was an accident. She had gone to the house only to reason with her sister, to try and get her to change her scandalous lifestyle, which was killing their parents. "All our lives," says Judith as the Spectre bears in, holding her by the wrists, "I was the good one - but, she was the one they loved the most! And she laughed at me!" She turns from the Spectre

Sensing Judith is hiding something more, Spectre turns her around to reveal the laughing, moldering, red remains of her sister - still somehow twined even in death - growing from her back. This twin seems a torn and ruined construct of blood and gore. "You killed your other self," howls the growth sister, laughing maniacally.

Judith begins screaming for it to stop, her intensity leading to a moment of self-immolation. Her anger and tension seem to explode, creating such psychic heat that her "tower" bursts into flames (sexual terror/release) with such force that Spectre, despite his omnipotence, feels himself burning and has to flee her mind.

Both Corrigan and Judith Connelly find themselves back at the cemetery; where Judith further reveals that she had been in love with her sister's husband, Michael Landau, and now feels responsible for his suicide (although we know that Landau's death came after his encounter with the Spectre). Corrigan, learning for the first time of Landau's suicide, bursts into a rage and, as the looming Spectre; drives Judith over a nearby ocean-side cliff to her death, "I am the Spectre of Justice, he screams at her, driving her back as he transforms into a huge fanged skull with red, gaping mouth. "The collected wrath of the murdered dead, of justice mocked. And we will be avenged!" (Note the "we" here. Corrigan/Spectre must continually, over and over, avenge his own murder through the history of others in an effort to find peace for himself. His actions, in large part, are for his own benefit as much as they are for others). The Spectre pauses a moment to gaze down at Judith's bloody and broken body, stretched out over the rocky shoreline far below - as though admiring his work.

In essence, then, Spectre has raped Judith, broken her mind, and finally killed her by throwing her over a cliff. This, combined with causing the death of one innocent man (Michael Landau) and the breaking of another innocent man's mind (the pathetic William Martindale who was, after all, guilty of nothing more than being an ass hole); Spectre has had a very un-heroic day. Yet despite Spectre's rages and the horrible wake of trauma and death he was left, nothing he's done has brought the distressed spirit of Jacqueline Connelly peace. He returns to the ruins of her home and finds the spirit, if anything, in far more distress than ever. "I have failed to understand," says Spectre, slipping back into his Corrigan persona.

You bet you have, Jim.

Is Spectre a superhero? No. In fact, Spectre is the furthest thing from a superhero that any major comic book company has ever committed to a title. The Spectre doesn't even qualify as an anti-hero - you know the ones I mean - those characters that seem to choke the comic book universe: They don't shave very often and grimace a great deal. They're "brooding" or "troubled" and have a violent or "dark" side;" but who actually - and always -- have a heart of sugar mush.

No heart of mush for the Spectre, not by a good stretch. Consider:

In the course of this one issue, the Spectre has murdered the innocent, tormented the fragile, and destroyed countless peripheral lives (what of the Landau's parents? His siblings? The loved ones of the ruined Martindale, Judith, etc.?). He has, for all intents and purposes, raped and killed a woman that was "guilty," certainly, but who committed murder under extremely mitigating circumstances. And all for what? By book's end, the spirit of Jacqueline remains in a private universe of profound unrest for reasons the reader is left to imagine.

So let's do just that. Imagine this:

The Spectre has assumed that the spirit of Jacqueline Connelly still haunts the place of her murder to find retribution for her murderer. The Spectre, like many of us whom aren't supernatural, can only imagine a need for vengeance being strong enough to propel a spirit to walk the earth beyond death. Yet what if Jacqueline has lingered in corporal form for another reason? What if her spirit drifts through the halls and rooms so long after death in hope of offering forgiveness to her sister? To communicate a love and forgiveness she could never offer in life? What if Jacqueline's immortal soul needs to forgive her sister her own murder to find the peace of heaven? If this be true, it leads us to unhappy conclusions. It would mean that Spectre - with his blind wrath and narrow vision - not only is drenched in the blood of rape and murder; but - far worse - has condemned the spirit of Jacqueline Connelly to an eternity of spiritual unrest. He has, in fact, denied her Heaven.

The spirit of Jacqueline Connelly - adrift

All in all, we have here a terrific, thought provoking issue with a great, gothic story. Throughout, Mandrake and Ostrander make the reader question the rightness, and boundaries, of absolute, blind justice. As horrible as the Spectre is (as horrible as the wrath of God, perhaps?); we feel a certain kinship with him. Who doesn't seek justice? Who hasn't wanted to have revenge on all those that have wronged us? Vengeance belongs to the Lord alone, the Good Book tells us, but who among us hasn't longed to see our enemies scattered like trash in a hurricane? We are, after all, human.

This title, and this issue, makes us look at the price of overweening wrath without any element of human compassion or vestige of forgiveness.

The Yeats quote on the splash page is very appropriate to both the Spectre and to this issue, speaking as it does of a purgatory of familiar habitations. Yet, when I think of the Spectre, so angry and defeated in this issue, I always recall the words of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost:

"Me miserable! which way shall I fly?
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."

Next Issue: Jim Corrigan goes to work in "Crimes and Punishment." See you soon.

"Crimes of Violence" Issue No. 1 (1992 Series)

John Ostrander: Writer
Tom Mandrake: Artist
Todd Klein: Letterer
Dan Raspler Editor

Issue's Literary Quote: (seen on splash page): "It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forward in life, it is condemned to do so in death." - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Issue Summary: In this inaugural issue of the '92 series, Jim Corrigan aka The Spectre is searching for a man named Louis Snipe. In the first few pages he finds him - an old man dying in the public ward of a rundown urban hospital. Corrigan's link to the supernatural Spectre is quickly established as we see Corrigan transform into the Spectre as he stands over Snipe. Corrigan's has sought Snipe out because, as we will learn, Louis Snipe was one of the original gangsters that killed the mortal, Detective Jim Corrigan, fifty years previous (approximately 1940).

The Splash Page – A man out of time

Corrigan has sought Snipe out not only to reap vengeance, but also to examine the nature of the evil that lives in Snipe. Corrigan tells the dying Snipe that he has "secrets" about the nature of evil, an evil that has only gotten worse in the Spectre's half-century of mission; and the Spectre wants them all before he dies. The Spectre/Corrigan moves an ominous hand over the dying man, casting a black shadow that covers him.

We are introduced to two major reoccurring characters in this first issue as well: Hospital social worker Amy Beitermann; who interrupts Corrigan in his endeavors with Snipe. Beitermann introduces herself, offering help and consul (she instantly recognizes great pain in Corrigan and offers consul, assuming Snipe is a dying loved one). Corrigan excuses himself quickly and leaves the hospital.

”You have secrets, Snipe. I want them.”

Obviously attracted, Beitermann watches from a window as Corrigan leaves the hospital and walks out onto the street. Once on the street, he coincidentally becomes an innocent victim in a drug-related, gang-related drive by shooting. Amy watches the scene unfold, seeing a spray of bullets pass directly through Corrigan's body; then seeing Corrigan - suddenly filled with wrath - transform into the Spectre and vanish in a green vapor.

The Spectre quickly hunts down the drug pusher/killers and exacts punishment.

We are introduced to a second major character in Police Inspector Nate Kane, who interviews Amy while investigating the drive-by. It is clear that there is a relationship between Kane and Beitermann, as Kane calls Amy "kiddo," and his concern for her safety seems personal. Beitermann asks Inspector Kane if he might know anything about a man named Corrigan (she suspects or remembers that he might have had a grandfather that was a cop). Kane tells her there was once a cop named Corrigan that went "goofy" some time ago and became a "Psychic Investigator."

”It’s time you learned how if feels.” The Spectre in full wrath.

This first issue also begins a sub plot, following a serial killer loose in the city; a man named Danny Geller. We first met Geller leaving work, and he seems cloyingly humble as Uriah Heep. We follow him as he leaves work, prepares himself for a date, and buys flowers from a street vender. He meets a young woman, who calls him Eddie. She is very anxious (obviously a first date) and very eager to make a good impression. "Eddie," she says nervously, putting the flowers in a vase, "There's something you should know about me right off . . .!" "Don't worry, Sally," says "Eddie.

In a full panel we suddenly see him holding a huge knife, with the girl/victim's helplessly horrified face reflected in the steel. "I already know everything I need to know about you," he tells her, his eyes in deep sockets of black. In the final panel of the page, we see the flowers fall to the floor.

At the end of the issue, The Spectre returns to the hospital, enters the body of Louis Snipe, and does battle with Snipe in the hall of memories that is the dying gangster's soul. We watch as Corrigan is forced to relive his own death in Snipe's memory, and we watch as the Spectre rises to exact revenge. The Spectre eventually defeats Snipe, who is naturally young and supernaturally powerful in this, his own world of recollection.

The issue ends with The Spectre leaving the corporal, now-dead body of Luis Snipe and exiting the hospital as Jim Corrigan. He has confirmed that Louis Snipe was one of the men responsible for his murder, and he has punished Snipe, yet the Spectre has ultimately failed in his larger puporse of finding within Snipe some answer to the mystery that is "evil."

Points of note: The artistic team of John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake do an excellent job of setting the tone in this premier issue; creating a dark, somber world in which everyone seems to struggle for a vestige of peace or happiness. The canvas is alive with very human, very believable turmoil: Amy mentions in her conversation with Corrigan that she would understand pain, hinting an understanding from experience; and Inspector Nate Kane is clearly carrying a torch for social worker Amy, but his tenderness for her seems muted or abbreviated (we will soon learn why in future issues). The young, doomed woman who dies by the blade of the serial killer is particularly touching in her need to impress, her fear that "Eddie" is disappointed in her appearance, etc. Every major player seems to be carrying a piece of darkness, an intimate struggle; not the least of which is, of course, Jim Corrigan. Ostrander keeps the dialogue simple and heartfelt, always hinting at worlds beneath; and Mandrake's art is heavy on shadows and urban structures and angles. Thus, the artists have framed the issue and series in terms of longing and pain.

No rest, no peace. Artist, Tom Mandrake, frames the character in torment.

My favorite scenes are when The Spectre becomes filled with wrath, losing - for long moments - any hint of human conscience or restraint. When he captures the four fleeing drug dealers, he doesn't just execute them - he tortures them to death; transforming each of the four into his own fingertips (where they wiggle frantically as legless torsos). He then injects via syringe some yellowish venom into his own arm (ala a drug addict), which sets his fingertips and hand on fire. We watch as the four "fingertips" burn alive, screaming in a kind of reddish holocaust that incinerates them all to bone. "With guns, with drugs, you deal death, and you feel nothing," The Spectre tells the squirming finger puppets. "It's time you learned how it feels."

Amazing also is the final confrontation between Louis Snipe and The Spectre.

The Spectre has entered Snipe's mind; or perhaps his soul or very being; and it is a world of madness, evil, and chaos. It is a very urban universe where evil rules, Gangsters are all dressed in three piece suites of purple and red; and all the buildings tilt like the walls in Caligari's closet.

Of Interest and Trivia: (1)The Siegal-Baily Hospital in which Corrigan finds Snipe is a tip of the cap to The Spectre's creators, writer Jerry Siegal (Of Superman fame) and artist Bernard Baily; and may be taken as a clear indication that Ostrander and Mandrake intend to honor the tradition of the Golden Age Spectre with their work on this '92 incarnation (which, as we shall see, they do). (2) Within this issue we see Inspector Kane first use the word "Balzac" as a term of exasperation or frustration (it's all Balzac to me!). It is an expression the policeman will use often over the run of the series. Honoré de Balzac (the writer) was known for his development of character, creating people that were very morally ambiguous, complicated, and challanging. When used as an expression by Inspector Kane, it roughly translates to "shit!" (3) The great cover by Tom Mandrake is glow-in-the-dark (a large skull face comes eerily to the fore when the lights are out).

Next issue: "Crimes of Passion"

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