POST From The PAST: The 'SECOND' SPECTRE...

Images copyright relevant and respective owners

The SPECTRE, as you're surely all aware, was created by JERRY SIEGEL and BERNARD BAILEY in 1940 for MORE FUN COMICS #52.  (Fun?  The adventures of a dead guy?  Yeah, I can't stop laughing.)  Tough policeman JIM CORRIGAN is murdered by some hoodlums, but his spirit wreaks vengeance on his killers in a grisly, supernatural fashion.  An entity known as 'The Voice' (whom the reader presumes to be GOD, though is never specifically identified as such) then charges him with the task of eliminating all evil on Earth.  That's basically all you need to know about him, if you didn't know it already.

 

However, did you know there was another Spectre, a British one, who appeared in a comic called SMASH! back in the 1960s?  If you're American, the chances are you didn't.  JIM JORDAN was a newspaper reporter for the DAILY GLOBE, who had apparently been killed whilst in pursuit of a story.  However, he survived, and, operating from a secret hideout under his memorial statue in an old cemetery (similar to WILL EISNER's The SPIRIT), he fought crime using a variety of gadgets and a bulletproof vest which helped foster the illusion that "At Night Stalks... The Spectre!"

The strip started in Smash! #144 and lasted for nineteen weekly issues, ending in #162 when the comic jettisoned its MARVEL reprints (in 1969) and was relaunched as a more 'traditional' periodical for boys in much the same mould as VALIANT, a comic which had been on the go since 1962.

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(Something I've never understood is why Americans usually spell the word as 'specter', but, in the case of the DC COMICS character, use the British spelling.  Can anyone enlighten me?)

POST From The PAST: PRESENTING A PERSONAL PERUSAL Of A 'POWER PACK' PUBLICATION...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS, except The MISSING LINK

One of my very favourite comics from the past is one that regular readers of this humble blog will likely have noticed me mention before - FANTASTIC.  This worthy weekly was published by ODHAMS PRESS, the debut issue being cover-dated February 18th, 1967.  At the time of its release, I was too busy lusting over the womanly charms of SUSAN STORM in the pages of WHAM! to pay much heed to the arrival of this new mag, but my mother bought me a later issue from a newsagent's kiosk on our way home from the shops one afternoon.

The issue in question was #7 (cover-dated April 1st) - and from there on I was hooked!  How could I not be, with simply stunning stories like THOR - "The THUNDER GOD And The THUG!", X-MEN - "TRAPPED: ONE X-MAN!", IRON MAN - "Versus KALA, QUEEN Of The NETHERWORLD!", alongside the superb adventures of The MISSING LINK for good measure?  I soon acquired the earlier issues, and it wasn't too long before I became a POWER COMICS junkie, buying all five weekly publications regularly.  (Wham!, SMASH!, POW!, Fantastic, and TERRIFIC.)

Fantastic had 40 pages per issue, but not even that could accommodate the above tales in their entirety, so only the first halves of the Thor and X-Men stories were presented, the remainder of these particular adventures being completed the following week.  The three featured classic LEE/KIRBY/HECK MARVEL epics were printed in black and white, but that - and the fact that some characters' names were changed from their American originals - didn't seem to spoil the readers' enjoyment one whit.

For example, the nubile BLACK WIDOW's name of NATASHA was altered to NATASIA (though I think that both are pronounced the same way) and The RED GHOST's moniker was changed (for reasons that later became obvious to me) to The APE MASTER.  I can still remember my astonishment in a shop (CORSON'S) one day at seeing this same FF story in COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS #6 after I had already read it in WHAM! and being bewildered at the altered appellation of the baddie.  How was it possible, I wondered?

Nowadays, of course, I can see that the amended lettering in the British reprints is readily discernible, though it wasn't quite so apparent to me back when I was a lickle kidlet.  (Okay, I was 8 - but that's still 'lickle' in my book.)  Anyway, I have very fond memories of Fantastic #7, so I thought I'd kindly share a few pages with you here.  Remember, if you enjoy them half as much as me, then I'll have enjoyed them twice as much as you.  (Profound, or what?)  Doh!