Fifty years ago, behind the latest in a series of striking, near-wordless covers by artist Jim Aparo, Adventure Comics #439 gave us the opening installment in the first continued story we’d yet seen appear in the comic’s current lead feature, the Spectre…

…not that you could tell from the story’s opening splash page that this was the first chapter of a two-parter… any more than you could have guessed that said two-parter would be the last Spectre story of the character’s Adventure run.

As we’ve noted in previous posts, Aparo was fond of slipping in little celebrity cameos and other in-jokes into his work; and so our story’s proper first panel features a special guest appearance by actor Peter Falk, in the role of Lt. Frank Columbo.

The “Symbiosis Liberation Army” is an obvious take-off on the real-life Symbionese Liberation Army, who would indeed have been familiar to anyone who’d “been reading the newspapers lately” — mostly for their February 4, 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst, her subsequent joining them for a bank robbery, and their eventual decimation via a shootout with police in Los Angeles on May 17 of that year.  Regular readers of this blog will recall that a similar nod to these events had been made in several recent issues of Marvel Comics’ Captain America, where a supervillain cadre called the Serpent Squad (who’d previously been in it just for the usual reasons, e.g., money and power) had taken a turn towards terrorism; Fleisher’s take here may be a bit more on the nose than CA writer Steve Englehart’s, but both writers have clearly drawn from the same well.

“And… and they’ve got Gwen!”  At this point, it probably behooves us to take a brief time-out to formally introduce Gwendolyn Sterling, who, despite having appeared in four of the eight Spectre Adventure yarns published prior to this one, hasn’t been featured in any of this blog’s previous three posts covering the series because… well, that’s just how things worked out, OK?

Gwen had first shown up in the Spectre’s second outing (Adventure #432), where she encountered Lt. Jim Corrigan under less than ideal circumstances: i.e., she’d just witnessed her father, a wealthy businessman, killed by an explosion in the family’s swimming pool.  Poor Gwen didn’t even have a chance to change out of her bikini before being questioned by the handsome young police detective; still, she seems not to have minded all that much, since before the end of their first meeting she was asking him to call her “Gwen”, rather than “Miss Sterling”.  And that wasn’t even the end of it…

This question has always struck me as kind of weird and inappropriate, seeing as how Gwen’s late father’s body probably hadn’t even made it all the way to the morgue, yet.  (Though I suppose you could argue that people process shock and grief in different ways, so maybe I should let it go.)  Anyway, Jim gently rebuffed the bereaved young woman — but, as you might expect, he met her again before very long, when one of her dad’s murderers attempted to kill her as well.  Naturally, Jim changed into the Spectre in the nick of time and saved the day (by turning the malefactor into a pile of sand, if you’re wondering) — but Miss Sterling had witnessed his macabre transformation, and so…

Michael Fleisher’s introduction of Gwen Sterling was clearly inspired by a similar character in the Spectre’s Golden Age strip: Clarice Winston, who was actually engaged to marry Jim Corrigan before he was murdered by the gangster “Gat” Benson, then resurrected by a mysterious heavenly “Voice” as the avenging Spectre (all of which went down in More Fun Comics #52 [Feb., 1940] and #53 [Mar., 1940]).  Jim called things off with Clarice without revealing his new, ghostly nature to her — and even though she hung around as a recurring supporting character for the next couple of years, never quite giving up on the possibility of she and Jim getting back together, to the best of my knowledge she never did become privy to his secret… unlike Gwen Sterling, obviously.

Bringing in Gwen as a “love interest” for his hero was clearly a good idea on Fleisher’s part, as it allowed him to introduce another level of dramatic possibility to the simple formula of “criminals commit heinous murder(s), Corrigan tracks them down, then Spectre executes them in a colorful fashion” that he’d established with his first Spectre story in Adventure #431.  What the writer failed to do, however, was to give the young woman any hint of a distinctive personality, or even any sense of a life outside of her perennial pining after the unattainable object of her affection.

In issue #433, we readers saw Gwen seek out a swami to help her bring Jim back to mortal life; the guy turned out to be not only a con man but also a murderer, and in the end Gwen had to be rescued by the Spectre.  Next, in #434, a mopey Gwen was befriended by a kindly-looking old man who was actually a maker of murderous store mannequins; he kidnapped Gwen to get at Corrigan, who was investigating him, and once again Gwen had to be rescued by the Spectre.  Most recently, in #437, Gwen was kidnapped again, this time in service of a criminal scientist’s scheme to send mind-controlled slaves wearing explosive devices to commit robberies; to rescue her on this occasion, Spec had to both stop Gwen from blowing herself up and free her from the scientist’s thrall.  (Naturally, all of these rescues also included killing the criminals involved.)

Through it all, Gwen displayed precisely two emotional settings — sadness (while fruitlessly pursuing Jim) and fear (while being menaced by a bad guy, or while watching her prospective boyfriend go about his vengeful business). In every scene in which she had dialogue, she always seemed to be on the verge of bursting into tears.  On the other hand, as delineated by Jim Aparo — and by Frank Thorne (in #434) and Ernie Chan (in #437) — Gwen Sterling was undeniably “fetching” (to borrow a word from #434’s rather pervy old mannequin maker); and the horny heterosexual teenage male that I was when I first read these comics was never inclined to make too big a fuss whenever she showed up.

And now that we’re all familiar with Gwen Sterling, and what she means to Jim Corrigan, we can return to our story… let’s see, where were we?  Oh, right — Gwen Sterling had just been kidnapped…

As discussed in our Captain America #180 post, the real-world Symbionese Liberation Army had utilized a nine-headed serpent as their graphic emblem. Marvel already had a “Serpent Crown” lying around to serve as a reasonable analogue in their Serpent Squad story; but, as we see here, Jim Aparo has designed his own three-headed version for the banner of DC’s SLA.

Fleisher is obviously having some fun here with the terrorists’ “revolutionary” dialogue.  But, I have to tell you — while the guy opening the bag in the above sequence is clearly referencing the “White House Plumbers”‘ break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, I have no idea what he was about to say just before being so rudely interrupted by the Spectre.  I’ve never seen or heard of that incident being called anything but a break-in or burglary, and can’t imagine what other word even the most avid Richard Nixon defender would have used.  Just sayin’.

I suppose that this moment has already been spoiled somewhat by the story’s opening splash page, but the reprise is still pretty freaky, IMHO.

See what I mean about Gwen?  Honestly, all of her scenes read like that.

It’s great that the Voice has finally reconsidered the impossibility of the task it set for Jim Corrigan way back in More Fun Comics #52 (or in the Earth-One equivalent of the Spectre’s origin story, if you subscribe to that particular theory of this strip’s continuity).  But shouldn’t such an all-powerful and all-knowing entity as they seem to be have enough sense to tell Jim that his prayer has been answered in the affirmative?  Sure, everyone enjoys a nice surprise, but considering what our protagonist does for a living, this seems more than a little short-sighted.  Anyway, setting that concern aside, Jim Aparo’s visualization of the Voice’s “domain of golden clouds and radiant light” is (if you’ll pardon the expression) damned impressive.

Jim immediately races to the scene, and, of course, he pays no attention to his captain’s injunction to “be careful!”  But, honestly, why should he, when he assumes bullets will pass right through him?

As the ambulance rushes an unconscious Jim to the hospital, we’re informed that he’s got three bullets in him, and has lost a lot of blood…

We can take this scene as a subtle callback to Jim and Gwen’s first meeting back in Adventure #432, if we like.  Or, we can take it as an excuse for letting Aparo draw Gwen in a bikini again.  Hey, maybe it’s both!

Thirty-three years earlier, in More Fun #75’s “Jim Corrigan Lives Again!”, the Voice had permitted the Spectre to resurrect his long-dead body, allowing Jim Corrigan to resume a more-or-less normal human life; I say “more-or-less” because, while Jim was now a living, breathing man again, he also continued to serve as the “host body” for the Ghostly Guardian, whose mission on Earth remained ongoing).  While this development was simply a change in the status quo of the Spectre’s series, rather than its finale, it could still be considered a happy ending of sorts for Lt. Jim Corrigan (sure, he subsequently got saddled with an unwanted “comical” sidekick — Percival Popp, the Super-Cop — but he also got to start dating Clarice Winston again).  By contrast, the next issue of Adventure Comics, #440, will be the last Spectre story, at least for now… but it doesn’t look like we’re heading towards a happy ending for anyone, does it?  Naturally, only time will tell, so I hope to see you all back here in April for the conclusion.

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In the meantime, backing up the lead Spectre story in our current issue of Adventure, we have another installment of a serial featuring the Seven Soldiers of Victory.  As you’ll recall from December’s post about Adventure #438, Joe Samachson’s script for this multi-chapter story had been written back in the 1940s, but had never been illustrated or published due to the Soldiers’ home base, Leading Comics, changing to a funny-animal format with its 15th issue.  Now completed, the long-lost “Land of Magic” had kicked off last issue with a chapter featuring all Seven Soldiers together, pencilled by current Justice League of America artist Dick Dillin; it had then segued into an episode solo-starring the Shining Knight, drawn by Howard Chaykin.  Now, as the story continues, the spotlight falls on another two of our Soldiers..

The illustrator of this chapter, Lee Elias, might not have ever drawn Green Arrow and Speedy back during the Golden Age heyday of the Seven Soldiers of Victory; however, the veteran artist had drawn the heroic pair in GA’s solo strip for an extended period in the Silver Age (1958-1964, to be more specific).  Still active in the profession, Elias was a logical and obvious choice for this assignment.

The argument centers on the First Quarter Moon’s having missed his big moment to shine in the night sky due to the Sun’s having eclipsed him.  The Sun protests that it’s not his fault, it’s those darned astronomers: “[They] figured out it was time for an eclipse, and I gotta do what they say, don’t I?”  The Full Moon is willing to let First Quarter take his place for one night to remedy the situation, but Father Time says it would be against the rules.  Alas, that doesn’t go down very well…

Green Arrow’s hunch pays off, as the turned-over hourglass immediately causes time to start running backwards, so that the ropes binding GA and Speedy untie themselves.  But Father Time quickly catches on, and calls on the constellations to come down out of the sky to quash our heroes…

And that’s all for this installment, which may have had zero dramatic tension, but still might have given you a smile or two… if you met it on its own terms of storybook whimsy, that is.