Wrath of the Spectre #4

Issue Details

Synopsis

This was the final issue which published for the first time three unused Spectre stories from Adventure Comics from 1975. The first story in this issue appears for the first time in print (“The Arson Fiend and...the Spectre”). The story opens with New York City Police Detective Lieutenant Jim Corrigan talking to a New York Fire Chief as fire department crews battle a tenement building fire. Corrigan wonders if Freddy “The Torch” Fisher set this fire. They spot a woman and baby on the seventh floor of the building. Corrigan moves to rescue her when the fire chief explains he doesn’t think the fire crews can rescue her. The Spectre provides a magic gang plank for the woman and baby to descend to safety. News magazine writer Earl Crawford witnesses the woman and baby’s descent to safety and believes it is the “force” of the ghost he has been researching. The Spectre follows a chain of souls who are rising skyward. He speaks with one of the souls who died in the tenement fire. The soul is sure that Freddy “The Torch” Fisher is the person who set the fire and caused his murder. The Spectre assures the soul he will avenge his death. Conducting his own investigation at New York City’s Hall of Records, Earl Crawford learns from deeds that slumlord Harrison Demarko owned each of several buildings recently destroyed by fire. Crawford is certain that each incident is a case of arson. Crawford guesses that Demarko wants to retire on the insurance money and speculates on the next building to burn. While staking out one of Demarko's buildings, Crawford spies a man in a trenchcoat who starts a small fire but is confronted by the Spectre. Spectre identifies the man as Freddy Fisher. Fisher draws a handgun and fires shots, but the bullets circle around and instead strike Fisher in the chest. Crawford records the photos of the Spectre and Fisher’s death. But the Newsbeat publisher believes that Crawford’s photos are doctored by double exposures to... The Spectre stories in this issue were written by Michael Fleisher for the Spectre's run in Adventure Comics in the 1970's. The Spectre was cancelled before Jim Aparo could draw the stories. When this mini-series began reprinting those Spectre stories Jim Aparo was given the go ahead to illustrate these scripts for this issue. Written in 1975, drawn in 1988 (supposedly; in an interview with Michael Fleisher in The Comics Journal #56, 1980, it is flatly stated that he wrote "two [Spectre scripts] that were never drawn," and this, which makes THREE, not only has a different letterer and a different inker from the other two--and two separate people having deadline trouble is highly unlikely under the alleged circumstances--but also a title that does not match those of the other twelve stories, which are done to a strict formula, specifically "[Something] and/of the Spectre").