Spoilers for Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Crisis on Infinite Earths ahead!
One of the lamest costumes in the DC Universe belongs to one of its best characters: The Spectre! And in Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Crisis on Infinite Earths, the demon Surtur calls the Specter out for fashion choices. The one-shot, written by Steve Orlando with art by Mike Perkins and colors by Andy Troy, is in stores now.
The Spectre is one of DC’s oldest characters, first appearing in More Fun Comics in 1940, making him just two years younger than Superman. Interestingly enough, one of Superman’s co-creators, Jerry Siegel, also co-created the Spectre. The Spectre is traditionally police detective James Corrigan, murdered by gangsters and sent back to Earth as the living embodiment of God’s wrath, though there have other been other Spectres over the years, most notably Hal Jordan. The Spectre is a long-standing member of both the Justice Society of America and the All-Star Squadron, and usually shows up in company-wide crossovers, usually as one of the “big guns”—that is, when he shows up, things are about to get intense.
And the Spectre of the Dark Multiverse is no exception to that rule. When Surtur, a Norse demon who brings about Ragnarok, attacks Earth, the Justice League quickly falls and it’s up to the All-Star Squadron to stop him. Surtur walks through the Squadron as easily as he did the League, slaughtering members wholesale. The Spectre enters the battlefield in his usual grand style, only for Surtur to insult him, calling him “a tired ghost in boy’s boots,” referring to the Spectre’s rather ridiculous get up consisting of a green cloak, green shorts and green boots with his bare chest showing. Surtur is unimpressed by the Spectre and quickly dispatches him, biting the Spectre’s head off.
Despite being one of DC’s most powerful characters —he is the living embodiment of God’s wrath after all— his costume is pretty plain. Some of the other versions of the character have tweaked the look a little: when Hal Jordan was the Spectre, his outfit was a mashup of the Spectre’s and Green Lantern’s. After Jordan vacated the role, Gotham City Police Detective Crispus Allen took the mantle with a look harkening back to the original. Yet Corrigan has been the Spectre more than anyone else, and the look remains unchanged.
On the whole, this book is not very kind to the character. Not only does his sense of fashion get called into question, but his head gets bitten ckean off as well; his entire sequence is over in a page. But Surtur was right—the Spectre’s outfit leaves something to be desired.
