Wrath of the Spectre #3

Issue Details

Synopsis

This issue presents four reprinted stories which originally appeared in four different issues of Adventure Comics. The first story in this issue originally appeared in Adventure Comics issues 437 (“The Human Bombs and the Spectre”  1975). The story opens with New York City Police Detective Lieutenant Jim Corrigan dropping by a Manhattan television show room. While pondering the purchase of a new TV, Corrigan hears a report that Gwen Sterling was kidnapped. He returns to the police station asks his captain for permission to leave the homicide division temporarily so that he can hunt for Gwen. The captain grants Corrigan's request. At an abandoned bauxite mill in upstate New York, the kidnappers deliver Gwen to a mad scientist. The kidnappers ask for their money for kidnapping Gwen, the last person on the scientist's list; instead, the mad scientist directs their attention to a stroboscopic hyno-wheel. He hypnotizes them and orders them to jump into a water tank where barricuda feed on the henchmen. The mad scientist then hypnotizes the seven people he kidnapped and orders them to carry bombs to banks and jewelry stores for robberies. The first kidnapping victim, Mr. Vanderhaven, is unable to take money away from the bank, so he pushes the bomb’s button and destroys himself and the people who tried to stop him. After the first demonstration of the bomb’s effectiveness, the six other kidnapped and hypnotized victims are able to obtain money and jewelry without resistance from the employees. After a few days, a hypnotized Gwen arrives at Tiffany’s Jewelry Store and demands jewels. The police have established a telephone hotline by this time whenever a human bomb attempts to rob a business, so Corrigan is able to drive quickly to the robbery scene before Gwen leaves. He realizes Gwen is in a trance, so he lets her take his car.  Then, as the Spectre, he follows her to the mad scientist’s hideout. Inside the abandoned mine, the Spectre emerges from the... Includes a discussion of the negative reactions to these Spectre stories, including the revelation from Paul Levitz that at the time it was mostly from in-house professionals. Wrap-around cover