The story opens with a man standing on a bridge above a train track, sadly regarding a framed headshot of a smiling woman, signed "Love Always, Paula." He lets it drop onto a train below, and is then interrupted by a couple of little kids, one of them holding a gun that looks comically huge in his little hands.
"Okay, fool-- Give us all your monies if you wanta live!" the boy says, and the man responds. "But what if I don't care if I live?"
Enter Jim Corrigan, from out of nowhere, with harsh words for the kid. The frightened child fires several shots into Corrigan's chest, to no effect (He is, of course, already dead, and has been so for decades). Corrigan's voice changes to a spookier one, rendered by letterer Todd Klein in a jagged dialogue balloon tinted green at the edges, and the font of the lettering gets similarly rough and jagged. Corrigan then transforms into The Spectre, and the children flee in panic.
Once they're alone, The Spectre tells Michael Holt, for of course that's who this man is, that he was drawn there by his thoughts: "Self murder is still murder. And murder is the province of The Spectre."
Holt explains his thoughts, revealing a bit about his background, vague though it is at this point:
My wife is dead. Car accident tore her out of my life with no warning. All the things I've done with my life--the money I've made, the achievements in sports and science-- --They're nothing without her. I don't know why I should live.
The Spectre shifts back to his Corrigan form and begins to tell Holt of his old friend Terry Sloane, a man who similarly had money and brains, but found himself bored...and was once a victim to kids who tried to rob him, seeking to imitate the heroes of their day, the gangsters of the 1940s.
Sloane's response was to demonstrate to kids that gangsters aren't anyone to look up to or imitate, and he did so by making himself into something far cooler: A superhero, who regularly took down gangsters and revealed them to be the losers they were.
Here artist Mandrake devotes a half a page to the Golden Age Mister Terrific, smiling broadly as he beats up a trio of armed gangster types, a couple of kids in the background cheering him on.
The Spectre then goes on to tell the story of Mister Terrific's last adventure, somewhat based on 1979's Justice League of America #171-172, by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin, although one need not have any familiarity with those comics to follow this, which obviously needed to be altered to fit into the post-Crisis continuity, anyway (Here, for example, the characters share a single Earth rather than hailing from two parallel ones, and a problematic character like The Huntress is absent, though Power Girl is still there).
During The Spectre's story, Mister Terrific is murdered aboard the JLA satellite, apparently by The Flash Jay Garrick...who was actually possessed by a villain named The Spirit King. In the aftermath, as the JSA pursued the villain to Earth, Garrick went looking for The Spectre, and the two heroes catch up with the villain in Doctor Fate's tower in Salem, where The Spirit King has now taken control of Fate and defeated and captured the other heroes (Green Lantern Alan Scott, Hawkman and Power Girl, if you're interested).
When The Spectre and Flash arrive, they find themselves in a trap set by The Spirit King, who, being a ghost, is untouchable by either The Flash or Spectre ("You have no power over me, Spectre!" the villain gloats. "Your authority ends at the grave! And I have stepped beyond it!").
It gets worse. The Spirit King has apparently made a deal with the demon Shaitan, acting as a portal for the evil entity to cross over onto Earth. And then the corpse of Mister Terrific joins the battle, shambling towards The Flash. So there's the zombie that Corben's cover seems to promise. (It's unclear to me just how it is that Sloane's corpse became quite so skeletal and desiccated in the short time since he had apparently died, but whatever, Mandrake draws a great zombie).
Ultimately the day is saved when the ghost of Mister Terrific appears, and, being a ghost, is able to lay his hands—and, more importantly, his fists—on his fellow ghost The Spirit King. He punches him into the portal Shaitan was attempting to come through, which The Spectre seals, saving the JSA and, perhaps, the whole world.
After a few words with his teammates, the ghost of Mister Terrific fades away, leaving the glowing words of his slogan, "Fair Play" hanging in the air.
The story told, Holt wonders why exactly The Spectre told it to him.
The Spectre answers, with a bit of a speech that would prove transformative for Michael Holt and, indirectly, the future JSA and the DC Universe as a whole. He switches back to Corrigan mid-way through, which is why the language shifts accordingly:
A void exists and needs to be filled.
No one can ever be replaced. Not your wife, not Terry Sloane, but their passing leaves a void that needs to be filled.
You feel the void your wife has left...Mr. Terrific filled a purpose and that purpose isn't filled by Superman or Batman or even The Spectre.
He worked at the street level. He reached kids that might have otherwise gone bad. Replaced "gangsta" role models with one that stressed "Fair Play."
There is a need to for that kinda hero today, get me? Maybe, if you fill a void that's out there, you can ease the one that's inside you.
You game?
Indeed, Holt is.
The scene shifts to a basketball court, where the kids who tried to rob Holt in the opening scene are reporting back to some obviously older (and far taller) young men, who are belittling their failure to bring back any money, and threatening them with a beating.
And then Holt shows up, now wearing a big pair of sunglasses and a leather jacket with the words "Fair Play" emblazoned on the back, the logo mirroring the one that the original Mister Terrific wore on his torso. He sure threw that costume together pretty quickly!
He confidently introduces himself with a seemingly new too-cool-for-school personality: "You can just call me Mr. Terrific--cause that's what I am." He's also carrying a basketball. After he easily beats up the two armed bad guys ("I'm not afraid to die, so I'm not afraid of you!" he says to one, who points a gun at the back of his head), he shoots the basketball from afar, and of course he makes the shot, complete with a "SWISH!" sound effect.
Then The Spectre arrives, sweeping up the older kids in his cloak and promising to punish them now for murders they may commit in the future, at which point Holt gets in his face, saying he'll take responsibility for them, and citing "Fair Play" to the Spectre.
The Spectre concedes the point and flies away, thinking to himself about how the confrontation was a ruse, that the kids "needed to see their hero seemingly strong enough to face down even The Spectre...it will build your reputation and burnish a legend."
It's a pretty great comic, as are most issues of Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre series, and, if you can find it in a back issue bin or if you read it online from Kindle, it's a pretty good starting point for getting into the book (Like too much of that volume of The Spectre, it's never been collected).
Leaning towards horror and constantly dabbling with moral quandaries, this series was one of handful from the '90s that seemed to straddle the DC Universe and the sort of content from the Vertigo imprint, although this issue felt a little special in just how full of superheroes it was, the colorful, muscular figures rendered in Mandrake's spooky, sketchy style.
Now, of course, the issue is best known for introducing the new Mister Terrific, who would, a few years later, join the new JSA team and become a DCU mainstay, even headlining his own short-lived solo title in 2011 as part of DC's "New 52" initiative.
As you can see in the images above, the character bears relatively little resemblance to the more familiar version from the 1999-2006 JSA series, though. Obviously, that's visual, as he would adopt the distinctive black T-shaped mask, the black, white and red costume and the hovering robot "T-Spheres" later, as his background in science and athletics would be fleshed out to the point where we learn he was an Olympic athlete and genius-level intellect (one of the smartest people in the world, actually). Oh and, perhaps oddly given that he was introduced in an issue of The Spectre where the embodiment of the Wrath of God told him a story about ghosts, zombies and demons, we would eventually learn that he is an atheist.
He also seems to have drifted pretty far from the initial point of inspiration, that of being a street-level hero focused on being a role model for young people and steering them away from the potential appeal of a life of crime. Of course, that was likely a side-effect of being on the JSA, a team book in which the threats were naturally bigger, more global and less grounded than street crime, as they had to be significant enough to require the attention of a large team of very powerful characters including the android Hourman from the 853rd Century and a Dr. Fate.
After his introduction in The Spectre #54, the new Mister Terrific next appeared in 1998's The Spectre #62, the last issue of the series. In this issue, Corrigan/The Spectre buries Corrigan's bones and holds a funeral for himself, one attended by characters from throughout the series, and throughout the DC Universe (and, in a few cases, just beyond, like Swamp Thing). At the end, the green cloak of The Spectre floats up into the sky, leaving the naked Corrigan on Earth...at least until a bright light from the sky envelopes him and he disappears.
Mister Terrific's role is quite small. He arrives wearing the same simple costume Mandrake gave his in his first appearance, although at this point he seems to have added gloves with a yellow "T" on them.
"Who are you? Black Lighting?" one attendee asks him when he walks up.
Later, when Corrigan's surviving JSA allies—Jay Garrick, Alan Scott, Ted Knight and Ted Grant—arrive, Wildcat puts his hands on his hips and asks Holt, "So--yer the new Mr. Terrific, eh?"
"You got a problem with that?" Hold replies.
Wildcat punches him on the arm: "Nope. Glad to see it. Just do th' name justice, okay? Terry was a friend o' mine."
This new Mister Terrific would, obviously, end up spending a lot of time with Wildcat, Garrick and Scott in the future.
His next appearance was in the pages of 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1. He doesn't appear in any of the special issue's comics stories—he wasn't initially a member of the team, which was being written at the outset by James Robinson and David Goyer, and pencilled by Steven Sadowski. Instead, he appears in one of the profile pages, which, in these specials, would feature an illustration of the character and a few paragraphs of text about the character in question, functioning a little like the old Who's Who pages.
Here, he's drawn by an artist credited as "Grey" and inked by Vince Russel. This is the first published appearance of what would become his standard and best-known costume, the one he'd wear throughout the pages of JSA and the series that followed it, Justice Society of America (And the one that appears in the new Superman movie). The image also shows the first appearance of the "T-Spheres."
Though Grey is the first person to draw it, I'm not sure if they get credit for the design or not; in fact, I'm not sure who designed it (Do let me know if you know).
The profile on this page, written by Holt's co-creator John Ostrander, fleshes out his past accomplishments, noting that he was "an Olympic decathlon gold medal winner" and that he "created his own cyberwear company which he ultimately sold to the Waynetech Corporation."
It also notes that he "fights in the inner-city for the minds and hearts of the kids there." "The modern Mr. Terrific fights the new 'gangstas' with skill, intelligence, and by just being so damn cool," Ostrander writes. (Interestingly, Ostrander refers to Holt's late wife as "Angela," although we saw the name "Paula" written on her picture in his first appearance).
As for the JSA title proper, Mister Terrific first appears in the fifth issue, written by Robinson and Goyer and penciled by guest artist Derec Aucoin, where he meets Sandy Hawkins and the android Hourman at Tylerco. It's revealed there that he acts as a consultant for Tylerco, and in return they fund a youth center Holt had started. He is, by this point, wearing the costume from Secret Files & Origins.
He then shows up in issue #11, at which point Geoff Johns has replaced Robinson and Goyer's co-writer, and this issue features breakdowns and inks by Michael Bair and pencils and inks by someone credited simply as "Buzz."
Here Mister Terrific has his T-Spheres for the first time in a story and he talks about his ability to be completely "invisible" to security technology, which made it easy enough for him to break into the Kobra base that the JSA was in the process of infiltrating when they met him.
"We'll have time for intros and initiation parties later," Hawkins tells him and, from this point on, Mister Terrific will be a member of the JSA.
In his initial appearance in the pages of Ostrander and Mandrakes Spectre, both The Spirit King and the original Mister Terrific talk about coming into their own only once they had died, something that Corrigan seems to meditate on a bit, wondering if he too only really started to make a positive impact on the world once he had died.
Although Jay Garrick assures Terry Sloane's ghost that he was always a valuable member of the team when he was alive, it would seem that Sloane really did have the biggest impact on the DC Universe and the DC comics line after he died: As the inspiration for his far more prominent namesake.
