How to solve your own murder
89. The Spectre #5 by Doug Moench and Gene Colan
After bringing both the Spectre and Jim Corrigan back to life in the first issue of this series, writer Doug Moench has decided it's time to finally delve into just how Jim Corrigan came to be dead in the first place. He’s chosen a rather odd story to do it.
Wrapped in a very fine cover that has not a thing to do with its interiors, the issue opens with Jim Corrigan trying to pierce the fog in his own memory. He’s not having much luck but is pretty sure it’s related to a series of disappearances in the New York subways. He travels to one only to be threatened by a mugger with a knife, a man that the Spectre easily disarms.
He returns to his old apartment and while turning it over finds a clue, a note that reads, “Something is happening to me. The Call of Stygia.” He changes into some of his old clothes and returns to the office. Kim greets him and says Madame Xanadu wants to see him. But before they do, she pulls him into a back stairwell for a little bit of smooching.
We switch to a super-racist repairman in the subway tunnels. He encounters the image of his dead mother, but she changes into the supposed criminal type he fears. As the worker flees, the criminal turns into a red gas and pulls the life from him.
Madame Xanadu fills in that the “higher power” that Spectre serves also compelled her to secure Corrigan’s body after he died. Still, she knows little of the circumstances of his death. They came after the Spectre’s failure to stop the destruction of the infinite Earths. His failure left him banished and Corrigan without the defenses he’d possessed for decades. She does however know the name of the woman that might have killed him.
Gina.
Corrigan remembers the red breath released by Gina and how it was what killed him. (A very similar red mist as killed the worker earlier.) Gina had been the last case Corrigan worked on, a missing persons investigation of her lover’s disappearance. He ended up developing feelings for her but doesn’t know her ultimate fate. She was the one responsible for sealing him away in preparation for a return. Xanadu warns him her fate was likely not good.
He finds her home, only to see that it has sunk into a sinkhole in the ground. Kim and Corrigan end up tracing the red mist to its last whereabouts: the subway system. The Spectre leaves his body in search of the mist, but it instead finds Corrigan and Kim. Corrigan pushes Kim away before nearly getting clipped by a train running from the mist. As the book ends, Corrigan seems to be unconscious with the mist looming over him, the Spectre none the wiser.
The issue covers a lot of ground in its twenty-four pages, but it perhaps gives too much of the mystery away through the convenience of Xanadu. Colan’s art is good throughout although it feels like inker Steve Mitchell might be doing a little more heavy lifting for the finishes here. Ultimately the setup is only alright, as this series continues to take an intriguing concept and not quite land the delivery of it. It’s a shame as the pieces put in place by Moench and Colan are intriguing, and won’t ever be seen after the two years this series runs.
Next time, we head back to find out what’s the next mission for the boys from Belle Reve.
