Revisiting 1999's Day of Judgment

The 2005 Countdown to Infinite Crisis-branded miniseries Day of Vengeance that we discussed the other day was preceded by the five-issue Day of Judgment event series back in 1999, which also centered on the threat of a rampaging Spectre...and the title of which Day of Vengeance was apparently meant to echo. 

I just re-read it. Unable to find a copy of the 2013 collection of it in the library, I was forced to pull the single issues from one of my long boxes; luckily it was fairly easy to find among my fairly disorganized collection. 

I found it a very pleasant reminder that DC's crossover events don't have to be about cosmic goings-on to rewrite, reboot or rejigger their continuity; that's just a choice the publisher seems to keep making. Over and over and over again.

This one was written by Geoff Johns, fairly early in his career in comics. By the time the first issue of Day of Judgment hit the stands, he was only a few issues into his Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. (the fourth issue of which was a Day of Judgment crossover) and he hadn't yet replaced James Robinson as David Goyer's JSA co-writer. (I guess DC is a little quicker to hand their iconic heroes over to a new writer if said writer was already working in Hollywood, as Johns was...?).

I am curious about just how much of the plot was conceived by Johns himself and what points editorial may have mandated, as one of the big things to occur in the series is that the dead Hal Jordan, a character Johns has long since demonstrated a love for, is rescued from Purgatory and becomes the new host of The Spectre. 

Although this didn't quite bring Hal back to life, it did put him back in circulation and allow for him to continue the redemption arc that DC had started with 1996's Final Night. Still, it would be Johns himself who would decouple Hal and The Spectre a few years later, in 2004's Green Lantern: Rebirth, so it doesn't seem like Hal-as-The Spectre was a concept that Johns loved or anything.

For this series, Johns was paired with artist Matt Smith, who had previously done a little work for DC, including issues of Sandman Mystery Theater, Starman and the short-lived 1996 reboot of Marv Wolfman's Night Force. The comics he drew just prior to Day of Judgment were Lobster Johnson and Abe Sapien back-ups in Mike Mignola's Hellboy: Box Full of Evil, which might help explain just how Mignola-esque the art in Day of Judgment looks. (I've tried to include a bit more art than I usually do in my reviews, as Smith isn't as popular an artist as many of those I write about here; do note that the colors might be slightly off).

Smith's figures are thick and somewhat squat, and the imagery simple yet bold. Working with inker Steve Mitchell and layout artist Chris Jones, Day of Judgment reads a lot like Mike Mignola drawing a script intended for Howard Porter. I would say it answers the question of what a DC crossover series drawn by Mignola might look like but, of course, we already got one of those in 1988's Cosmic Odyssey.

But artwork evocative of the Mike Mignola of the late '90s is pretty much perfect for comic set partially in Hell and is full of demons and devils, including Jack Kirby's Etrigan, The Demon and the by that point increasingly Hellboy-esque Blue Devil. 

The story, told across five weekly issues that kicked off with an over-sized 29-page #1, is fairly simple. The conflict imperils the Earth—and Hell and, to a certain degree, perhaps even Heaven itself—and facing it involves various configurations of superheroes to form ad hoc teams and perform different missions. 

It also moves the DC Universe story forward a bit—brining back Hal, giving The Spectre a new host, and seemingly priming a magic super-team book that never actually materialized at the time—and it provides a very easy way to tie any and all other DC books into it, and to do so without derailing them all that dramatically.

So, remember Asmodel? The rebel angel and leader of the Bull Host who planned to overthrow Heaven and invaded Earth in an attempt to get to Zauriel in the pages of 1997's JLA #7-8? We open with him in Hell, where he was consigned at the end of 1998's not-very-good miniseries JLA: Paradise Lost, written by a young up-and-comer named Mark Millar. 

After Neron gloats over him for a bit, Asmodel receives a visitor in the form of Etrigan, who has big plans for Asmodel. First, Etrigan frees him from his bonds, then he summons the then host-less Spectre (Jim Corrigan and The Spectre were split from one another in 1998's The Spectre #62), and then he performs a bit of magic he says he learned from Merlin, which bonds Asmodel to The Spectre, making the new host of The Spectre a bad guy!

The new Spectre, distinguished from the old one by being a solid green-ish blue in color rather than a white-skinned dude with bits of a green costume, wastes no time. First, he sucks up all the hellfire in Hell, literally making it a cold day in Hell. Second, he freezes Neron solid in a block of ice. And, third, he invades Earth, an army of demons behind him. 

(These demons, by the way, are mostly generic in appearance, with horns and batwings. We'll later learn Hell is more or less emptied out, with devils, demons and even the dead rising all over the Earth. This, then, is what gives the heroes something to do in their own books that tie-in to the crossover: Fight the legions of Hell or any specific underworld threat that particular book's writer might want to use).

The Spectre, Etrigan and their demon horde make their beachhead in New York City. Meanwhile, Martian Manhunter J'onn J'onnz calls out the JLA and their reserves, members of other super-teams show up to rumble (Damage and Argent from the Titans, the just-formed JSA) and Zatanna spends an issue gathering a group of magical characters that will introduce themselves as "The Sentinels of Magic" on the last page of the first issue.

The Sentinels manage to drain much of The Spectre's energy and temporarily trap it in Madame Xanadu's crystal ball, giving the assembled heroes time to split up and take on a couple of different missions to save the day.

The JLA's resident angel Zauriel leads Sentinel Alan Scott, Wonder Woman, Mister Miracle and Supergirl to Heaven, teleported there by Raven (whose demonic nature forces her to flee immediately). Their job is to bring Jim Corrigan back to Earth in order to reclaim The Spectre, but, after some 50 years of avenging the murdered dead and finally knowing peace, he no longer wants the gig. The angel Michael instead directs the heroes to Purgatory where, as you probably know, they'll find Hal Jordan among a small group of fallen heroes, heroes who, Zauriel explains, are all there "due to their own mistakes, their own shortcomings." (There are a few panels outside the gates of Heaven where Alan meets a handful of dead members of the Justice Society, but no one seems to think to ask if, say, the original Mister Terrific or Hourman might want to come back to Earth and be the new host of The Spectre). 

Meanwhile, Zatanna, Superman, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Firestorm, The Atom, Faust and Deadman-in-Enchantress' body go to Hell, where they hope to rekindle the flames, drawing back the army of demons (Interestingly, Kyle and Firestorm just there a few years ago, in the pages of Underworld Unleashed, but no one mentions this). 

And, finally, Batman sends Captain Marvel, Starfire and S.T.R.I.P.E. into space, in order to recover The Spear of Destiny, the only known weapon that can hurt The Spectre (The last Spectre, the one bonded with Corrigan, had deposited the dangerous artifact there, out of the reach of most of humanity, during Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre run).

Despite unexpected events—which, in Hell, means the resurrection of Blue Devil and the murder of Enchantress—the three missions are more or less successful.

At the climax, The Spectre is wounded, and both Neron and the dead Hal Jordan, having changed his form so that he's wearing his old Green Lantern costume rather than the Parallax get-up he wore in Purgatory, enter into The Spectre's body, where they wrestle with Asmodel over control of the Spectre-Force. 

That, which is described as a parasite and, as drawn by Smith, appears as a green-cloaked skeleton whose ribs stab into Asmodel, listens to the three as they each make their appeal for why they should be the new host. Halfway through his pitch, Jordan breaks down in tears, confessing his crimes. 

"I don't deserve power," he says. "I deserve punishment."

At this, The Spectre seems to perk up. "You believe you deserve punishment?" it says. "THEN FACE YOUR PENANCE!" 

And so Asmodel and Neron are both ejected from The Spectre's towering form, each of them prone and bound, while The Spectre has taken on a new shape to accommodate its new host, an interestingly hybridized costume mixing elements of The Spectre's with that of Hal's Green Lantern costume, including a domino mask under the hood and a blazing ring of green fire on his chest where the GL Corps symbol used to be. 

In the last few pages of the series, everything is set more or less right. Corrigan's soul briefly returns to Earth to bless Jordan's new mission, which Jordan indicates will not be about vengeance, Corrigan saying that The Presence (that is, God) approves of Hal Jordan-as-The Spectre. The Sentinels of Magic, which now seems to include Blue Devil and the new Doctor Fate Hector Hall, again announce their name and mission, and return to their daily lives. Asmodel is not returned to Hell, but taken to Heaven, where he is the sole inmate in The Silver City's first prison. And Neron returns to Hell, where he is punished for this whole fuck-up, demoted from an infernal Prince down to a rhyming demon, which, apparently, is why Etrigan kicked this mad plot off in the fist place: He just wanted to mess with Neron. 

(Having spent so much time with DC's devils and demons of late, I was interested to see that, in this short passage, a human-sized Neron is shackled in front of a huge, skeletal demon on a throne, one with enormous horns and batwings. This character is never named but is presumably meant to be DC's answer to "The Devil" or "Satan", although, to my knowledge, DC never really had a direct analogue to the devil/Satan before, just Lucifer and a sort of court of sub-devils...?).

In addition to its various tie-in issues in ongoing series—of which there were 14 issues, plus a Batman: Judgment Day special—DC also published a Day of Judgment Secret Files and Origins special. The Secret Files and Origins specials were fairly common in the late '90s, and contained a full-length comic book story, the "Secret Files" pages that paired a pin-up like image of a character or team with stats and short paragraphs of prose about the character (essentially an abbreviated, '90s answer to a Who's Who entry), plus some shorter features.

In this case, the features were mostly epilogues. 

The main story was written by Scott Beatty and drawn by Hitman's John McCrea (I remember it being a great pleasure to see him draw so many different super-characters here originally, and it was just as much of a pleasure to revisit it in 2025; we'll take a closer look at this story in a few days). In it, the new Spectre secretly, magically gathers the Sentinels of Magic in a field around the Spear of Destiny, explaining at the end to The Phantom Stranger that he had essentially convened them as a sort of jury to judge him, while handing them a weapon with which they could take him down if they so decided. 

There were also a couple of short, two-page stories: One by Mark Millar and Yanick Paquette in which Madame Xanadu does a tarot reading for Blue Devil, another by Millar and Phil Winslade following Zatanna over the course of a date and one by Geoff Johns and a Jason Orfalas following Faust—the son of Justice League bad guy Felix Faust, the "white sheep" of his family introduced in the 1993-1995 Outsiders series—and what his actions in Hell mean for June Moon. 

This was obviously pretty early in both Johns' and Millar's comics careers, but still, reading the issue in 2025, it's strange to think of these future superstars basically taking any writing job they could get like this.

Some other thoughts...

•As mentioned above, Zatanna puts together another ad hoc super-team of magic-based characters in the series, and they are repeatedly referred to by the name "Sentinels of Magic." 

The first issue ends with a splash depicting her with The Phantom Stranger, Deadman, Ragman, Doctor Occult, Sentinel, Raven, Madame Xanadu and Faust and declaring, "You might call us-- --The Sentinels of Magic!", those last words in a big, colorful, almost logo-like font. 

The scene repeats itself on the first page of the second issue, with captions naming the members of the roll call. 

Near the end of the fifth issue, the team—now missing Raven and The Stranger, but with Blue Devil and the newest Doctor Fate added to their line-up—all pose in one panel, while Zatanna tells the other superheroes, "The Sentinels of Magic will be on center stage whenever you need us." 

And in Secret Files special, the Sentinels star in the main story, wherein they all put their hands together like a sport team before a big game, and Alan declares them "Sentinels of Magic!" ("Oh well...guess it beats 'Justice League Europe'," Blue Devil says in the next panel). That's the image above, drawn by McCrea.

And, finally, the team gets a two-page "secret file" entry following the story.

I now find myself curious if DC was perhaps planning a Sentinels of Magic series following Day of Judgment and, if they were, why they ultimately decided against it. As I said in the post about this crossover's kinda sorta sequel Day of Vengeance the other day, DC seemed to have been flirting with a magical super-team since at least 1995's (excellent) Underworld Unleashed one-shot special Abyss—Hell's Sentinel #1. 

That was the first time I had personally encountered such a grouping, anyway. (That one, like this one, included Sentinel Alan Scott, presenting him as something of a bridge between the world of superheroes and the supernatural.) Looking back, though, Alan Moore and company's 1986 Swamp Thing #50 gathered together many of DC's magical characters for an assault on Hell and a sort of seance, and, in writer Neil Gaiman's 1990 mini-series The Books of Magic, new character Timothy Hunter is introduced to DC's various magical characters by what John Constantine jokingly refers to as "The Trenchcoat Brigade," a quartet of magic characters who got a Vertigo mini-series under that name in 1999.

While the Sentinels of Magic never got a book of their own, Day of Vengeance introduced the Shadowpact (whose number included the Sentinels' Blue Devil and Ragman), and that team would go on to star in a 25-issue ongoing series. And then the magical super-team concept reemerged in 2011 in the Justice League Dark, which lasted 72 issues across two volumes. 

•I kind of love how catty Zauriel is throughout the series regarding the belief systems of other superheroes, especially considering that theirs are just as concretely real as his, as has been repeatedly demonstrated throughout DC history. 

When Wonder Woman volunteers to go with Zauriel's team, for example, she notes, "I've been to Olympus...I've some experience with the divine." 

"Hmph," Zauriel says, "I'd hardly call Olympus divine..." 

When they reach Heaven's gate, Mister Miracle refers to himself as "a New God". You can see Zauriel's reply above. "A new god?" he says, "Unlikely, Mr. Miracle." (He does have a smile on his face while saying this, though.) 

•Whether or not it's a good idea to give Hal Jordan, a guy who had, in addition to murdering a bunch of his Green Lantern Corps colleagues later went on to unmake all of time and space, (temporarily) killing uncountable billions in the process, almost unparalleled, god-like powers seems to be an issue that is rather under-discussed in this series.

Alan Scott is Hal's cheerleader throughout, noting that he is the only person other than Jim Corrigan he knows with the willpower to control The Spectre. (Alan doesn't mention that he had fought Hal repeatedly since his heel turn, including in 1994's Guy Gardner: Warrior arc "Emerald Fallout" arc and Zero Hour, nor that the only reason so many of Alan's old JSoA colleagues were in Heaven to greet him at all is because Hal's henchman Extant killed them during Zero Hour.) 

Batman is a skeptic. Most of the other heroes don't even get to voice an opinion on the matter, let alone discuss it (Johns does have Wonder Woman put her hand on Alan's shoulder in Purgatory and ask him if it's "wise" to try to give Hal control of The Spectre's powers, given that Hal "couldn't even control himself".)

I've got to say, I'm with Batman here. Interestingly, while Batman's take seems the more reasonable of the two in this book, over the years of writing Hal, Johns would continue to present Batman as doubting Hal, but, gradually, it seems like Johns would present Batman as too cynical and judgmental about Hal. 

In the penultimate issue, we get as close to an argument between heroes regarding this course of action that we get in this series (above). 

I have to admit, I found sarcastic Batman pretty funny in that exchange. 

•Reviewing the list of tie-in issues, I see that I had bought and read eight of the 15 that DC published. These were all books I was already reading regularly—Anarky, Aquaman, Hourman, JLA, Martian Manhunter, Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Titans and Young Justice—plus Supergirl, which I only bought because the cover so prominently featured Zauriel, a favorite character of mine.

My memories of most of these comics are pretty dim at this point, which probably doesn't speak well of their quality. I do remember the Anarky issue pretty well, as it was an extremely unlikely team-up with The Haunted Tank (and I'm pretty sure it was my first exposure to that weird concept, as I don't think I had yet read Gath Ennis's 1994 "Haunted Glory" arc of The Demon at that point). And the Hourman issue was basically a Snapper Carr solo story, in which he teaches a stray demon about free will. And the Martian Manhunter issue pit the hero against undead versions of past Leaguers who had died in the line of duty. 

•As for the big change that this event story wrought within the DC Universe, making Hal Jordan the new host of The Spectre? Well, that state of affairs lasted almost exactly five years, which seems a respectable amount of time. At the very least, DC seems to have given Hal-as-The Spectre a healthy chance of succeeding, before reverting Hal back to his pre-"Emerald Twilight" status quo as a Green Lantern, relying on a retcon to excuse his fall from grace and heel turn. 

DC launched a new volume of The Spectre starring the Hal Jordan version of the character in 2001, and it ran 27 issues before being cancelled in 2003 (For context, the three previous Spectre ongoings had lasted 10 issues, 31 issues and 62 issues). That series was written by J.M. DeMatteis and drawn first by Ryan Sook and then by Norm Breyfogle (with a handful of fill-in artists coming and doing during both artists' runs). I appreciated what DeMatteis was trying to do with the character and concept, particularly the effort to have Hal trying to remake The Spectre into a Spirit of Redemption instead of a Spirit of Vengeance, but I didn't much care for the series. Of course, I mostly only read the Breyfogle issues, and those only because I was a fan of Norm Breyfogle's. 

This Spectre also shared a DeMatteis-written mini-series with the JLA, 2003's not very good JLA/The Spectre: Soul War (I'll write about that in the near-ish future), and he had some notable appearances during big doings in the DCU, like playing a key role in the resurrection of Oliver Queen in the pages of the 2001 Green Arrow series and cameoing in JLA/Avengers (Hal would get much more time in that mini-series as Green Lantern though, able to appear as part of some time-travelling shenanigans). (Oh, and he also appeared in one scene in 2004's Identity Crisis, telling Green Arrow that he was "working on" being brough back to life...)

I'm sure there were others.

Anyway, Hal's career as The Spectre ended in the aforementioned 2004 Green Lantern: Rebirth mini-series, restoring Hal Jordan to his original form and, seven years later, The Spectre would return to his original form too, character development and ongoing narrative be damned, with the New 52's Spectre once again bonded to Jim Corrigan.