So, did the Justice Society travel back to 1945 and then stave off Ragnarok or nah...?

As we just saw the other day, 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society Special #1 temporarily wrote the Justice Society out of the DC Universe through a complicated chain of events stemming from Crisis on Infinite Earths, with the heroes travelling back in time to 1945 and then entering a rift in the sky to join an eternal battle to save the world. Adolf Hitler had used the Spear of Destiny to bring about Ragnarok, and the only way to keep the villains of Norse mythology from destroying the world was for the heroes to merge with the Asgardian gods and fight fire giant Surtur and company until the end of time. 

So that happened, right...?

Sure. At the time. But this being DC Comics, nothing is safe from a retcon.

In 1991's Sandman #26, the fifth chapter of the "Season of Mists" arc, writer Neil Gaiman* refers to the events of Last Days, shading them in such a way that honors that story but alters it in a way that freed up the Norse gods to appear in other stories, like his own.

The plot of "Season of Mists" is that Lucifer has decided to abandon Hell, and given dominion of it to Dream, the titular Sandman of this particular DC series of that name. As Dream tries to figure out what to do with it, various gods and other entities meet with him in his realm, each making their case for why they should get possession of Hell.

One such god is Odin. He tells Dream that the only thing that frightens him is Ragnarok, and that "These days, too much of my time is spent hatching schemes to circumvent the darkness of me and mine."

Here are the panels that refer to Last Days, although, with no asterisks or editorial boxes, a Sandman reader might not even know that that Gaiman and company's story was referring back to a then five-year old superhero comic: 

The art in those panels, by the way, is penciled by Kelley Jones and inked by George Pratt (And while I don't always mention the colorists or letterers, I will also note that here the art is colored by Daniel Vozzo and that Todd Klein is responsible for the letters, which play a bigger-than-usual part in the storytelling of Sandman).

If you don't want to squint to read Odin's words in those panels, I'll transcribe them here:

Some years ago, it occurred to me that it is easier to fight something one knows something about.

I created a world--a notional dimension--and in it, I fashioned a tiny Ragnarok.

In my world, the last battle is fought, day in, day out, forever. I have learned much from it.

One thing that surprised me, though, was when my little world gained further warriors--ones I had not created. 

I do not know how they got there, nor why they fight, these little mortal heroes.

Odin brings this up because one of those little mortal heroes is, of course, The Sandman Wesley Dodds, pictured along with a quite janky looking little Hawkman in the orb in Odin's hand. Odin says has that Dodds has some of Dream's essence, a fraction of his soul within him, and he will trade Dodds for Hell.

So, according to Sandman, the Ragnarok in which the Justice Society fights is not the true Ragnarok, but a little artificial version of it that Odin had created in an alternate dimension (or, perhaps, a pocket universe...?) in order to study the last battle. 

It is this version of Ragnarok that Hitler summoned, and the Justice Society entered, with neither the Fuhrer nor the heroes realizing the difference...and their actions were apparently beneath Odin's notice, at least until he checked in on his experiment. 

There are probably some theological issues raised here, given that the Justice Society took its actions in Last Days on the word of The Spectre, an aspect of God...the God with a capital "G", as opposed to a lower-case "g" god, like Odin. Wouldn't The Spectre know better than to be taken in by a pseudo-apocalypse generated by a lesser god...?

I don't know. I'm not sure if The Spectre was, in 1986 or 1991, yet thought to be an aspect of God, as opposed to simply being a powerful spirit working at the behest of God (or, in the parlance of earlier Spectre stories, The Voice).

The following year, 1992, DC published the four-issue miniseries Armageddon: Inferno, written by John Ostrander and drawn by a half-dozen different all-star artists. The plot involved an extradimensional entity trying to conquer the DC Universe by sending his servants to different time periods in order to build bodies for him to inhabit, and the then new character Waverider assembling teams of heroes from different time periods to stop them.

In the third issue, The Spectre tells Waverider he knows where they can get another batch of heroes, provided Waverider uses his powers over time to temporarily stop the Ragnarok cycle the Justice Society was then stuck in. 

During this issue, Ostrander has The Spectre retell the story of how the Justice Society ended up in Ragnarok (the page atop this post, pencilled by Luke McConnell is from that passage of the book), and this version differs quite sharply from what we read in Last Days. Here, Ostrander removes the time travel element and decouples the events of Last Days from Crisis on Infinite Earths entirely. 

In the Armageddon: Inferno version, during World War II Hitler had tried to use the spear "to link the fall of Germany with Ragnarok" but "he hadn't the sorcerous power or training to accomplish his intentions." Still, apparently after shooting himself, Hitler's blood flowed over the tip of the spear, and "his hate was great enough to imprint his desire on the spear, waiting for a sufficient influx of magic power to complete the spell."

That magic power wouldn't come until decades later, around the time of Last Days. Ostrander has a scene in which Kobra uses the spear to wound The Spectre, and then The Spectre stumbles into the cemetery where "The Justice Society had gathered to mourn some of its fallen comrades." (There's no mention of Earth-2's Robin or Huntress here.) 

And from there the Justice Society enters into Ragnarok to begin their never-ending battle; the confusing bits in the original story involving The Spectre's powers traveling through time and space to 1945 during the events of COIE and Doctor Fate taking the Justice Society back in time having been removed.

A few years later, Ostrander would also refer to the events of Last Days in 1994's The Spectre #20, the second chapter of the "Spear of Destiny" arc (While Tom Mandrake was the Spectre's regular artists, this particular issue was drawn by guest artist John Ridgway). In this chapter, entitled "Strange Friends", Professor Nicodemus Hazzard is interviewing the surviving members of the Justice Society, now all old men, about their history with the Spear of Destiny.

When he gets to Wesley Dodds, the former Sandman talks to him about his dreams. 

"I have...such strange dreams," Dodds says:

I dream of people...friends...who are no more...who never could have existed as I dream of them.

I dream of events, not as they occurred, but as they might have been. One dream occurs over and over again...

That dream involves what appears to be either the Justice Society and/or All-Star Squadron (Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick are pictured in one panel) rushing at Hitler, who holds the Spear of Destiny. One by one they are killed off, and The Spectre reaches towards Hitler, only to be felled by the spear, after which point "the sky cracks and fire rains down...it's the end of the world."

These events don't quite line up with those in Last Days, if that's what they are meant to be referring to (it's possible this scene is meant to reference something from All-Star Squadron though, given Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick's presence; also, The Sandman, Doctor Fate, The Atom and Hawkgirl are all wearing different costumes than what they wore in Last Days).

The point that Dodds seems to be making, however, is that his dreams allow him to see things that are no longer canonical/in continuity. 

A third page of his flashbacks definitely does refer to Last Days, though, and artist Ridgway even reproduces a panel from that comic (although his panel featuring Ragnarok is quite different in terms of designs). 

"We're now in a graveyard," Dodds says:

It's sometime after the war. Most of us are still alive. We gathered to honor those who had died.

Then The Spectre is there, stumbling towards us, and he's dying. 

And we wind up in some sort of limbo, fighting to stave off Ragnarok, fighting the same battle over and over again.

Except, of course, that last part really did happen. 

Of course, these stories referencing Last Days all date from the '90s. I would not be surprised to learn that stories later in that decade or the early 2000s, from the pages of JSA or Justice Society of America or any of their spin-offs, also referred back to Last Days of the Justice Society, but that's just too many comics for me to reread for so minor a matter. (If you remember any, though, do let me know). 

At any rate, it is now 2026, and we're on the other side of Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Flashpoint, Convergence and some big events I didn't read, like Geoff Johns' dumb-looking Superman vs. Watchmen series and Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

Where does the Justice Society fighting in Ragnarok stand now...? Well, the history of the JSoA was something I was particularly interested to see in the pages of the 2025 Mark Waid-written New History of the DC Universe, the purpose of which was to delineate what is currently in continuity and, well, I was disappointed. 

The Justice Society isn't really mentioned at all between the page featuring Infinity, Inc. (which immediately precedes Crisis on Infinite Earths in Waid's narrative) and the team's reformation as the JSA in what would have been the late '90s, our time. 

Did Last Days still happen in any way, shape or form? Did the Justice Society fight in Ragnarok? It's unclear from New History. There's a cryptic mention of the original JSoA's members having "subsequently undertook missions in secret, culminating in an adventure in another realm that extended their lifespans greatly," but that comes in a paragraph about their "disbanding under government pressure" (That is, during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings). 

That scene is set in the 1950s, though, and where they were between then and first Flash Jay Garrick and then the others reemerging around the time of the early days of the Justice League for regular team-ups is never touched upon. At any rate, that would seem far too early for the events of Last Days to have occurred, wouldn't it?

The timeline that followed Waid's story in New History, written by Dave Wielgosz based on he and Waid's research, similarly doesn't address the issue. In that, the Justice Society isn't mentioned at all between the founding of Infinity, Inc. and the events of Zero Hour. 

So, did Last Days of the Justice Society still happen? Did the Justice Society spend time fighting in Ragnarok (or a Ragnarok)...? I don't know, and it doesn't seem as if DC has an answer at this particular point. 

*Whose name always needs an asterisk now, I guess, as it feels wrong to mention him without also mentioning the credible allegations of horrible sexual misconduct that multiple women have made against him. 

The Justice Society vs. Hitler and The Spear of Destiny, post-Crisis: On 1988's Secret Origins #31

In 1988's Secret Origins #32, the creative team retold a previous comic story, keeping the plot basically intact, the only changes being those made to realign it with then-current, post-Crisis continuity and to use more modern storytelling techniques. Well, that, and the changes that are natural when different writers and artists tackle the same story, as their various styles inevitably affect the result. 

In that particular case, it was Keith Giffen, Peter David and Eric Shanower retelling the Justice League's origin story from the pages of 1962's Justice League of America #9. (I wrote about that story in this recent post.)

The previous issue, Secret Origins #31, did the same, only for the Justice Society's origin story. In this case, the creative team consisted of Roy Thomas, Michael Bair and Bob Downs, and they were retelling a story of much more recent vintage: Paul Levitz, Joe Staton and Bob Layton's "Untold Origin of The Justice Society" from 1977's DC Special #29 (The subject of the previous post).

As with the Secret Origins retelling of the Silver Age JLoA story, it's interesting, even fascinating to read the comics back-to-back, as doing so accentuates the stylistic decisions the creators make, including how to present the events, how to stage them, how to design the characters and otherwise tweak them. I was able to do so because DC Special #29 was collected in 2006's Justice Society Vol. 1, while Thomas and company's Secret Origins #31 was collected in 2017's Last Days of the Justice Society of America, both of which my local library system still have on their shelves. 

Now, Levitz's "Untold Origin" was published pre-Crisis, and was thus set on Earth-2, and included the Golden Age Superman and Golden Age Batman in the adventure alongside the eight original members of the Justice Society. Thomas' was post-Crisis and thus set on the then still new-ish Earth with its new history. 

The most immediately apparent change then is that Superman and Batman have been eliminated from the proceedings. Batman doesn't do a whole hell of a lot in the original story, and so Thomas doesn't replace him with anyone else; instead, rather than having The Flash, Green Lantern and Batman embark on a mission to Scotland to take out the advance men for a Nazi invasion of England, Thomas simply has the first two go.

As for Superman, he has less panel-time than the Dark Knight in Levitz's story but plays a bigger role overall. He shows up at the climax to destroy a Nazi bomber before it can drop its payload on Washington, D.C. and he then grabs a Valkyrie who has targeted President Franklin Roosevelt, at which point she disappears. It is also Superman who rejects the idea of the heroes forming some kind of battalion within the U.S. armed forces and comes up with the name "Justice Society of America."

Here, Thomas has Green Lantern using his ring to destroy the bomber. The bit with the Valkyrie menacing Roosevelt goes quite differently without Superman there, which we will get to in a moment. And as for the decision to form the Justice Society, here it is The Spectre who rejects Hawkman's proposal of a "super-battalion" ("battalion" is here spelled correctly, in contrast to the same scene from DC Special #29) and then comes up with the team's name. 

Thomas also explains a few things that didn't really make sense in Levitz's story. He explains why Green Lantern and The Flash aren't able to use their powers to escape their bonds after being captured by the Nazis during their mission ("Still dizzy--from the drugs Streicher gave us--couldn't use my ring before!" Green lantern says as Doctor Fate and Hourman arrive to rescue them). He explains why Fate doesn't immediately take down Hitler upon his arrival ("For all my power, I cannot attack Hitler while he holds The Spear of Destiny--", Fate tells the others). And he explains how it is that the Nazi long-range bomber seems to get all the way across the Atlantic and over D.C. so quickly; in the original story, Levitz seemed to suggest that the superheroes battled the Valkyries the entirety of the trip, whereas here that trip is almost instantaneous, with Green Lantern remarking that the journey was made supernaturally shorter ("Hitler's spear did it!" he cries. "That's the only answer!)

The biggest change comes at the end, which the creators add several pages to. Without Superman there to stop the Valkyrie who had targeted Roosevelt—who Thomas gives a name to, Gudra—she is free to continue her attack after zapping The Atom. In fact, she succeeds in killing Roosevelt.

The heroes mourn for a panel or two, with Fate saying that even his great power has never been able "to bring a man back from the far side of death", but The Spectre says he's going to try anyway. He disappears from the White House and journeys like a humanoid comet through bizarre backgrounds, finally declaring "I have pierced the veil!"

And The Spectre finds Roosevelt in a line of humans wearing pink-ish purple robes, "wandering toward a vision of blinding light," and The Spectre then announces, "I must speak with the one who decreed that JIM CORRIGAN should walk the world, an undead SPECTRE!"

Who, exactly, was that...? Thomas was equivocal here, as was the case at that point in The Spectre's history. This is, presumably, the mysterious entity referred to as "The Voice." Indeed, The Spectre is answered by a voice, communicating with him in big, bold, red, disembodied letters that emanate red rings.

This is, presumably, God himself, although Thomas, like creators before him, doesn't come out and say this exactly, as heavily as it is implied.

The Spectre and Voice argue a bit, and when the latter refuses to allow Roosevelt to return to life, The Spectre raises his hands against The Voice. The Spectre is powerless against The Voice, of course, but, noting The Spectre's tears, The Voice proceeds to show The Spectre the future, in which Roosevelt is destined to die soon anyway, after a few years of the world at war. Giving The Spectre the choice of whether it is worth resurrecting the president or not knowing all of this, The Spectre says that is still his wish, and so Roosevelt is restored to life, everyone but The Spectre a little confused as to what just happened.

The other changes to the story are more-or-less matters of style. Thomas is, perhaps unsurprisingly, much more wordy here than Levitz was, and he fills his narration and dialogue with references to real-world history, more closely tying the events of this superhero adventure to those of 1940. He also offers quite a bit more characterization, allowing us to see more of the heroes' thoughts and to hear them engaged in more revealing dialogue, seemingly noting the momentous nature of this story, as it involves the first meetings of the various heroes who would go on to spend so much of their careers together. 

Bair and Downs' art is much more realistic than that of Staton and Layton. I'm not sure which approach I prefer, but, if pressed, I think I would choose the latter team's, as it looks so much more "comic book-y." Bair and Downs' work is much more appropriate for this version of the story, though; certainly their Roosevelt, for example, looks more like the guy I've seen picture of than Staton and Layton's more cartoony take. 

Interestingly, the artists hew quite closely to one of the previous art team's designs, like that of the big green robot in the Nazi castle that Flash and Green Lantern battle (Here Thomas gives it a German name, the "mordmaschine--or, as you Americans would say-- --THE MURDER MACHINE!"), while doing their own thing with other elements, like the Valkyries, which here wear armor and winged helmets, looking more opera than Staton's more superheroic looking versions.

Bair also draws a lot of cooler magical effects when it comes to The Spectre and Fate, and I prefer the energy orbs the latter sends to scoop up Hawkman, The Atom and The Sandman to the energy tendrils that Staton drew in the earlier story. 

Oh, and speaking of Hawkman, Bair gives him the appropriate helmet here, the one with the weird screaming bird face, with the open beak and tongue obscuring his human face.

As for the Spear of Destiny, the reason I got interested in these stories in the first place...? 

Well, as noted, Thomas has Fate explain that he can't attack Hitler while he holds the spear and, on the following page, after Hitler inadvertently summons the Valkyries, Green Lantern seems to make a move toward Hitler, but the Fuhrer shouts "Keep back, Amerikanen!", and the tip of the spear glows with pink energy and Kirby dots, a barrier of fire appearing between Hitler and the heroes.

The exact nature of its effect on the superheroes isn't delineated here then, but it is at least clear that it protects Hitler from them while he's holding it. I suppose future stories will further explain how it kept the Justice Society off the frontlines, even though here we see Doctor Fate, at least, able to enter Berlin itself, with Hourman in tow.

The particular trade I found this story in, the aforementioned Last Days of the Justice Society of America, is also filled with the title comic, and stories from the pages of Secret Origins devoted to new tellings of the origins of Golden Age heroes The Sandman, The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, The Flash, Hawkman, Johnny Thunder, The Spectre, Hourman, Green Lantern, Doctor Mid-Nite, Doctor Fate and The Atom, all written by Thomas. We'll take a look at those stories in the near-ish future.

I don't really want to talk about 2003's JLA/The Spectre: Soul War, but I do want to talk about how Batman and Hal Jordan finally make up

I was such a fan of Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell's JLA that I continued to read the series long after their run concluded (I kept reading until the very end of the book, in fact) and to pick up most if not all of the JLA-branded spin-off one-shots and mini-series. Some of these were good, many of them were not. 

One that I had put in the "not" category was 2003's two-issue JLA/The Spectre: Soul War, which, in 2026, I remembered nothing about other than the fact that I didn't like it at the time and that it featured the Hal Jordan Spectre, not the Jim Corrigan one. 

In the spirit of revisiting later JLA stories from the remove of twenty-some years in addition to having read or re-read a bunch of Spectre comics lately, it seemed natural enough to give Soul War another try. 

The series was written by J.M. DeMatteis, who had written Hal Jordan-as-The Spectre meeting with the JLA in 1999's JLA #35 as well as the entirety of the 2001-2003 fourth volume of The Spectre, the one starring Hal (In fact, Soul War was released the same month as Spectre #25, the third-to-last issue of the series; given that, I wonder if this mini-series was planned as a mini-series, or if the cancellation forced DeMatteis to repurpose a planned Spectre story arc here). 

Joining DeMatteis were pencil artist Darryl Banks and inker Paul Neary. 

This series came out in January and February 2003, the same month as JLA #75 and #76, just after the Joe Kelley, Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen team had completed their "Obsidian Age" epic. Therefore, a real stickler might have a hard time trying to orient the particular Justice League line-up that appears in DeMatteis' miniseries with the goings on in JLA. 

That's because the team here consists of the one from Mark Waid's run, the Big Seven plus Plastic Man, although Aquaman had been MIA for a while by that point. 

Complicating things further, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner is drawn wearing his new, terrible, Jim Lee-designed costume seen on the cover of 2002's Green Lantern #151 (the one with the dog collar) in Soul War. He had started wearing in the pages of JLA by the ramp up to "Obsidian Age", but that was a good year since Aquaman had been on the team, having been "killed" during the "Our Worlds At War" event (Actually, he was shunted into the prehistoric past; "Obsidian Age" was partially about a rescue mission to find him, although he wouldn't rejoin the team again until somewhere around 2004 arc "Syndicate Rules"). 

Wait, I guess I'm that sort of stickler, huh?

Anyway, enough set-up. I don't really want to discuss the series at great length, or at least not in great detail, because I still don't like it...although it's not a terribly objectionable comic in any particular way, and we've certainly gotten many, many far worse Justice League comics since its release. 

It's just very much of a piece with DeMatteis' Spectre, and indulges in quite a bit of sometimes heady, psuedo-scientific New Age-y concepts, a sharp 180 from the more simple, black-and-white Spectre of volume three (A likely result of Hal and DeMatteis trying to turn the Spectre from the Spirit of Vengeance to the Spirit of Redemption). I

t's also awfully wordy, the first page of each issue making me blanche and, inevitably, wait a few days between reading issue #1 and #2.

It's also not much of a Justice League story. Of the eight Leaguers, most of them are more-or-less irrelevant to the proceedings (This is in sharp contrast to DeMatteis' own JLA #35). The Flash, Aquaman and Wonder Woman get a few lines apiece, but hardly do much that demands their presence in the story at all (There is a panel or so in which Wonder Woman's lasso of truth play a role, I suppose, and one instance where Aquaman uses his telepathy to give J'onn's a boost). For the most part, they could be replaced by pretty much any other DC character, as they are there just to make this seem more like a JLA story than it might were they not.

Additionally, Plastic Man is fairly superfluous. He appears in many panels and gets a lot of lines—more than the three heroes I just mentioned—but he is mostly limited to dumb jokes, jokes which aren't really funny or insightful enough to truly serve as comedy relief, and jokes which all of the other characters more-or-less ignore, as if they aren't even aware he's around. (There is a short sequence in the second issue where, Hal's narration tells us, Plas is best suited to combat in the "imaginal" realm of the mind that has become the setting, as he is used to immediately, effortlessly transforming himself, and thus, better than any of the heroes understands "the fine line between mind and manifestation"; this was a good eight months or so before Kelley would make a similar point about Plas' imaginative, almost instinctive transformations making him perfectly-suited to a shape-changing battle with a Martian at the climax of the "Trial By Fire" arc in JLA).

Otherwise, DeMatteis really could have just used Superman, Batman, Kyle and maybe Martian Manhunter here and the story wouldn't change much, aside from maybe being a bit shorter and tighter. This is, really, the story of how Batman finally came to accept Hal Jordan as a hero again after the events of "Emerald Twilight" and Zero Hour and nearly a decade of being a relentless critic of the Justice Leaguer-turned murderous supervillain-turned Spirit of Vengeance Redemption.

That's the bit I want to focus on here.

But first, let me briefly summarize the story that DeMatteis embeds Batman's finally coming around within.

Earth is being invaded by alien giant monsters, and the Justice League is trying to fight them off. The twist here is that the alien invaders aren't from outer space, but rather from deep within the minds of humanity, somehow manifesting from within the consciousness of the population and, at times, taking god-like shapes pulled from the collective unconscious. They also have a rather unfortunate name: The Trans.

The Spectre is joining the League in their fight, in the most literal way possible. He meditates for a few pages on the nature of Superman's character and then, as The Trans are dissolving The Man of Steel, he steps in and fuses with him, becoming a giant Spectre/Superman hybrid that blasts the Trans monster away with eyebeams.

He then moves on to Batman and the sequence repeats. A two-page spread shows the process also occurs with Aquaman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman...sort of. In the case of Diana, Hal doesn't directly fuse with her, and seems to either empower a bunch of Amazon warriors, or perhaps divide into several green-cloaked Amazons...? The art, which is usually strong and clear, can't explain exactly what's happening here like DeMatteis' Hal narration can. It makes me curious if the writer or DC were somehow reluctant to have Hal-as-Spectre take on a female form, if only for a panel here...

In a meeting around the table in the Watchtower, Batman suggests all nine of them "merge with the Spectre--creating an amalgam being capable of defeating these trans-creatures." (I wonder if DeMatteis would have used that particular word were it not for the DC/Marvel crossover event, and instead went with "hybrid" or "composite" or "gestalt"...? At any rate, it was a safe bet that superhero readers were by this point quite familiar with the word "amalgam"...)

The resultant amalgam being is pretty dumb-looking, calling to mind Marvel Comics' and Combos' Combo Man. 

Though that's good for a few pages, Martian Manhunter finally realizes the Trans can't be beat on the physical plane. A little investigation into memories of a world the invaders have conquered later, The Spectre instructs Superman and Flash to build a device with eight beds at super-speed, and then The Spectre will temporarily kinds sorta kill the League, allowing them to fight the Trans on their true turf, "the realm of pure consciousness."

"Physical force is useless in this...soul-war we're fighting," J'onn says, saying the title of the comic book out loud.

That's the end of the first issue. The second begins with our heroes in the new setting, where each of them is immediately seduced by potential paradises of their minds' own making. We get glimpses of some of these, but not what it is that makes Batman...or, at least, his consciousness or soul or whatever, which is here shaped just like Batman, smile and cry at the same time ("What Batman saw...what he created out of his buried wounds and longings...is not for me to share," Hal narrates). 

Batman is able to shake these fantasies off, though. There are many, many pages of battle in this mental plane, but the Trans eventually takes everyone out of the fight...except for Batman, who argues with them by fighting them, and eventually seems to win, punching them out. (This is very much a Batman-is-the-best kind of story).

When the Trans are seemingly defeated, The Spectre finds that the machinery keeping the League in suspended animation has been sabotaged by a human agent of the Trans (a TV psychic introduced in the first four pages of the series) and, to bring them all back to life, he has to sacrifice his "existence"; this means the League awakens while Hal is drifting in a "non-place" towards complete oblivion.

The heroes won't let this occur to Hal, though, and J'onn suggests that since humanity's belief in the League helped them defeat the Trans (somehow, I can't claim that I picked up everything DeMatteis was laying down here), perhaps their belief in Hal can now save him. 

So with the TV psychic, an actual medium who was able to channel The Trans, they all sit around the meeting table and hold hands, a ring-generated crystal ball that Kyle created to be "a focal point for our collective unconscious" in the middle of the table.

Here Banks' imagery is evocative of Mike Sekowsky's iconic cover of 1963's Justice League of America #21, depicting the original Justice League seeming to conjure the Justice Society in a seance around a crystal ball. (Which was certainly no accident).

The plan seems to be working for a few panels, but then stops, and when Aquaman demands of the psychic to explain why, she sadly says there was a "weak link among you....one mind, one heart that didn't believe."

Wonder Woman and J'onn look immediately to Batman, who Banks draws standing up, his hands flat on the table, shadow completely obscuring his face, even the white triangles of his eyes.

Batman explains:

I can't give--what I don't have. 

The Hal I knew and respected--the Hal I called friend...died--a long time ago. 

Let him stay dead. 

Just as J'onn begins to argue that the fate awaiting Hal is now far worse than death, Batman screams in pain, as something Hal had implanted in his brain and called a "parting gift" earlier in the story is activated. Batman begins to rationalize what he's seeing, but a voice tells him that the pain is the result of his own resistance, and that his heart knows what he's seeing is true.

The voice is that of his mother, and his parents appear before him (Although Banks draws Thomas Wayne clean-shaven, so maybe it's not them...or maybe there are no mustaches in Heaven, I don't know).

Martha Wayne explains that the vision Batman saw of them in "imaginal space" earlier, that deepest desire that Hal said in narration he couldn't share with the readers on Batman's behalf, was a trick, which is why Batman was able to see through it and save the League from their own individual false paradises, but that this vision really was real, The Spectre answering Batman's "deepest prayers."

Rising from the floor after the episode, Batman demands everyone circle around the table, join hands and try again, and this time he shouts into empty space at The Spectre. I'll quote it at length here:

If we can't reach him--it's because Hal is still clinging to his guilt and shame!

It's because he believes he DESERVES an eternity of non-existence! Well, I don't Jordan! I don't!

Listen to me, Hal--I was wrong about you!

You were the best, the brightest, among us! And when you fell--it...rattled me--and it made me wonder:

If a man as good and decent as you could go wrong...what hope was there for the rest of us?

But I see now--that one of the reasons you were reborn as The Spectre--was to give all of us hope! I see now--that you're more of a hero than ever!

And it works. Hal reappears, and Batman takes his old friend's hand, saying he meant every word of what he said, and ending with "Welcome home."

It's not the last word of the comic. The Flash says "Whaddya know? Bats is smiling! Almost." And Hal's narration concludes with "And 'Almost'... ...is good enough for me." 

But it might as well be. For all the weird-ass gobbledygook on the mental plane or within "the imaginal" or wherever this soul war was fought, this is the real development of the story, DeMatteis—and DC—finally resolving the enmity between Batman and Hal that has defined their relationship for about a decade, from the end of Hal's life to his afterlife. 

Re-reading this scene today, I'm curious if Geoff Johns had read this series or not. Most obviously, Johns' 2004 Green Lantern: Rebirth included a big, blunt, clumsy retcon that more or less excused the atrocities Hal committed as Parallax (the whole possessed by a space god thing) and, if I recall correctly, he even added a twist in explaining why it was The Spectre had bonded with Hal. 

In the process, Johns retroactively changed, or perhaps a better term would be that he overwrote, the work of previous writers of Hal Jordan going back years, including that of Ron Marz, Dan Jurgens and others. Because Johns kept writing Hal and Green Lantern books for so long though, and did so much work on the mythology (mythology I suspect was cut short by the New 52 reboot that he himself had kinda sorta initiated with Flashpoint), I think it ultimately worked, proving a clever way to thread the needle of Hal's journey from hero to villain to hero again make sense, for all of Marz's Hal stories to remain canonical but to let the character off the hook for his heel turn. 

But I wonder how it might have affected DeMatteis' work on the character as The Spectre. (As I've said before, I didn't read most of that series, and the issues I did I did mostly because Norm Breyfogle had drawn them). 

At the very least, Soul War doesn't seem to have factored into Johns' take on Hal Jordan, as Johns went right back to writing Batman as being highly suspicious, even hostile toward Hal. 

Of course, Soul War, like a lot of those JLA spin-offs I kept compulsively buying, has never actually been collected into trade which, I've increasingly begun to think, could be an indication of whether or not DC considers a story canonical, or, at least, how important the publisher might regard a story. 

I suppose that may change at some point, it's not hard to imagine DeMatteis' Spectre getting its own omnibus for example, but for now at least, this is a story only available to those who were reading DC Comics in 2003...and those, I suppose, who can find it in back issue bins or on Amazon. 

*********************

 I wanted to share two particular images from this story with you before I go. 

First, when The Spectre joins the League around their meeting table in the first issue, he is fairly giant, towering above them all.  Batman sasses him—"Do you think you could possibly come down to our level--or are you just too far above us?"—and Hal apologizes, shrinking and changing from his Spectre form into that of Hal Jordan.

Notably, here Hal is still looking more middle-aged than his peers, and he's wearing that dumb bomber jacket that I hate. 

My hatred of it is perhaps irrational, and might just tie to the fact that I dislike Hal Jordan as a character but, I don't know. It just seems to give off this Baby Boomer, divorced dad, mid-life crisis vibe to me. Maybe that's not fair—Hal is, or was, literally a pilot after all—but rather than looking cool, it's always struck me as lame but trying too hard to look cool. 

I've long associated the jacket with Geoff Johns—I think he had Hal start wearing his dad's jacket after his dad died in a plane crash?—so I was kind of surprised to see it here. Was DeMatteis (and/or Banks, I suppose) the first to put Hal in such a jacket? Was it present throughout that volume of The Spectre? Or was Hal wearing it back when he was still Green Lantern the first time?

I don't know. But I still think it looks lame. 

My favorite image from the whole adventure is also from the first issue. When The Spectre imports the League into his own psyche, where they investigate Hal's memory of an alien world that has already fallen to the Trans, they are attacked.

Hal is being taken by the Trans, and Batman leaps to his rescue, at one point reaching up to grab the giant Spectre by the cape and shake him awake.

I don't know, I just like that image of a tiny little Batman shaking a giant by the lapels...

************************

Is this my last post on The Spectre for a while...? Maybe! I confess that while writing this, I read a synopsis of the first issues of DeMatteis' Spectre, which featured guest-appearances by Batman, Superman and Zauriel, and now I'm curious to revisit those. Reading JLA #35 and the interactions between Hal-as-The-Spectre and Zauriel did make me curious about their relationship.

 I think I have them in a longbox somewhere...

On 1999's JLA #35

I can't remember being annoyed by September of 1999's JLA #35 being the work of a guest-team, bumping writer Grant Morrison and artists Howard Porter or John Dell and forestalling Morrison's ongoing Justice League story for a month.

Maybe that was because, at that point, we JLA readers had been acclimated to issues from guest creators. 

For example, January's #27 was from guest-creators Mark Millar and Mark Pajarillo (that was the JLA and the reserves vs. Amazon done-in-one, a sort of spotlight on The Atom). That was followed by Morrison, Porter and Dell's four-part "Crisis Times Five" (the JLA/JSA/Captain Marvel story arc). And then we got two more issues from fill-in teams, with Mark Waid, Devin Grayson, Pajarillo and Walden Wong handling JLA # 32 (in which the team investigates the "No Man's Land" situation in Gotham) and the same creative team (minus Grayson) also handling JLA #33 (in which the team investigates a faux Bruce Wayne). The "regular" team was back for #34 (in which Green Lantern gets swept up in a prison riot at Belle Reeve), but it was beginning to look like we were getting at least one fill-in issue between each complete story by Morrison and company. 

It might also have been because that September's Day of Judgment event felt so much like a JLA story that I felt like I was getting more JLA that month, not less. (Batman, Superman, Green Lantern and Zauriel played big-ish roles in the main Day of Judgment series, while Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman also appeared).

Looking back now though, JLA #35 looks like a rather unwelcome interruption of Morrison and company's Justice League epic. In issue #34, "The Ant and the Avalanche", New Gods tell the League the long-foreshadowed apocalyptic threat is finally arriving, and the cliffhanger ending reveals that Lex Luthor, the villain of 1997-1998's "Rock of Ages" arc, has now aligned himself with Prometheus, the villain who single-handedly took on and took down the newer, bigger Justice League in 1998's JLA #16 and #17. 

What could these two be up to, and who else might be on the "new Injustice Gang" Prometheus mentions...? How might it tie into the prophesied threat? Readers in 1999 had to wait not one but two months, not getting a resolution to that cliffhanger the following month, but instead a story by J.M. DeMatteis and Pajarillo about Hal Jordan, a character who had never appeared in this particular title, and how he was dealing with being the new host of The Spectre. (The side-quest nature of this story is particularly apparent when encountered in a collection of JLA today;I re-read it in a library-borrowed, 2000 collection entitled JLA: World War III, where it is sandwiched between the aforementioned "The Ant and the Avalanche" and the five-part "World War III" arc, the latter of which was both the climax and the finale of Morrison's run). 

According to comics.org, DeMatteis and Pajarillo's JLA #35 was released on September 29, 1999, the very same Wednesday that Day of Judgment #5 and Day of Judgment Secret Files and Origins were released. So, depending on which order one read them in that week, this is either the first or second appearance of Hal Jordan as The Spectre following the events of the main Day of Judgment series (And though the cover of this issue brands it as a Day of Judgment tie-in, it is, according to a footnote, set after the events of the series, so, like the Secret Files and Origins special, this too is a sort of epilogue). 

The story, entitled "The Guilty", opens with a two-page sequence in which "the camera" seems to be zooming in from a longshot of a city street from far above, down to a troubled man in a yellow shirt and blue pants in front of a toy store, all the other people passing by depicted only as silhouettes. Green narration boxes make it clear that the words in them are supposed to be the thoughts of Hal Jordan, and that he is, apparently, the man in the yellow shirt.

I wouldn't have recognized him, honestly. He looks far younger than he did in Day of Judgment, his build is thinner, and colorist Pat Garrahy gives him a very light brown hair, far lighter than he usually has. Honestly, he looks more like Ralph Dibny than Hal Jordan. Given the events of the story, though, this could be either Pajarillo and Garrahy rendering him a bit off-model, or it could be intentional.

Anyway, as the suffering Jordan narrates about how he can't stop being flooded with darkness and evil, he finally cries out in anguish, assuming the form of The Spectre, a white-skinned giant wearing not just the customary green hooded cape and gloves, but also a green mask evocative of Jordan's old Green Lantern uniform (As is hinted at on Porter's cover at the top of the post, the design for the new Hal Jordan-as-The Spectre hybridizes Hal's Green Lantern outfit with The Spectre's get-up).

Suddenly, the JLA's resident angel Zauriel swoops down to look Hal in the eye, his flaming sword already drawn:

Is there a problem?

Your howl of grief across the ethers--drew me here through the sheer force of your thought. 

It slowly dawns on Hal that he knows Zauriel—they met in Purgatory in Day of Judgment, and, prior to that, a time-travelling Jordan from the past met Zauriel in the 1998 "Emerald Knights" arc Green Lantern, but I'll be damned if I can remember if Past Hal kept his memories of this adventure in his future, or if they were power-ringed away before he got sent back, so as not to screw with the timeline (As far as I know, "Emerald Knights" is also the first time Hal Jordan actually met Plastic Man, too, but I may be wrong on that; do correct me if I am). 

Hal's dialogue, presented in green-tinted dialogue bubbles with lines suggesting fire, meant to imply The Spectre's spookier-than-human voice, makes it quite clear he's struggling with being bonded to The Spectre-Force. The new Spectre and Zauriel go back and forth a bit about the latter having forsaken Heaven for life on Earth, with The Spectre seemingly intent on punishing Zauriel for doing so.

Then a bunch of Leaguer's appear, Superman saying "That'll be enough, Hal--" to presage their dramatic appearance. Assembled here are Superman, Martian Manhunter, Batman, Green Lantern and Plastic Man. Together with Zauriel, they would make up the half-dozen Leaguers who are featured in this story.

It's an interesting mix, as Superman, Batman and J'onn have known Hal about as long as anyone and served on Leagues with him before. Zauriel is there for obvious plot purposes, standing as he does between Earth and the divine realm that birthed The Spectre. Green Lantern Kyle Rayner has a complicated history with Hal, having had to repeatedly fight him while also trying to live up to his legacy ("Emerald Knights" is one of the relatively few times Kyle and Hal shared a story where they weren't fighting, actually). And as for Plastic Man, well, his particular past is salient for one scene DeMatteis writes later.

Among the other eight Leaguers, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and then-Flash Wally West might seem conspicuously absent, given Aquaman co-founded the League and served on it for years with Hal, while Wally and Wondy were his colleagues on Justice Leagues during the multi-Leagues "International" era between the end of the Giffen/DeMatteis era and the start of JLA. (Remember, in post-Crisis, pre-Infinite Crisis continuity, Wonder Woman wasn't a founding Leaguer, nor even in Man's World throughout the entirety of the Satellite Era). 

During a brief argument with Superman, the still-giant Spectre returns to a human form, and then tumbles out of the sky, eliciting a fun panel in which J'onn, Kyle and Plas all shout "I'll get him!", but Superman beat them all to the catch, thanks to his super-speed. 

To their shock, they don't recognize the man in Supeman's arms at all. "If Hal Jordan is the new Spectre--" Plas starts, before Batman finishes his sentence, "Then WHO is THIS?"

Taking the unrecognizable Hal back to the Watchtower, the narration makes it clear that not only do none of them recognize him as Hal Jordan, but he appears completely differently in the eyes of each of them (Pajarillo helpfully draws six completely different-looking men the same yellow shirt in a series of panels; one of them, the one Plas sees, is a Black man). 

Zauriel interrupts the questioning, takes a good hard look at the man he sees, and then explains:

Our inability to recognize him-- is part of the ordained plan for The Spectre's mission on Earth. 

Jordan is dead...The world believes him dead...and though he's been given the semblance of a human form, no one-- --not even those who knew him best-- will recognize him now.

Though Zauriel somehow seems to fix that for his fellow Leaguers, he stresses that this is just temporary, and that "For reasons known only to The Presence," Zauriel's name for God, once Hal leaves the Watchtower, the Leaguers will only remember him as The Spectre, not as Hal Jordan-as-The Spectre. 

I didn't like this development when I initially read this comic. Not only did it seem to violate one of the established "rules" of The Spectre that I had previously read about—everyone seemed to recognize the dead Jim Corrigan as Jim Corrigan when he was The Spectre—it seemed counter-productive. What, after all, was the point of making the long-lived DC character Hal Jordan the new Spectre if DC was only going to obscure that identity from everyone in the DCU anyway? Would stories of Hal Jordan possessing The Spectre's god-like powers in the modern DCU be all that interesting if only the writers writing his adventures and the readers reading them knew who he actually was?

It seems like DeMatteis must have changed his mind about it too...if this aspect was his idea, and not an editorial edict. About a year and a half after this issue was published, DC would launch a new volume of The Spectre, with DeMatteis writing it. (I wonder now if DC and DeMatteis knew the latter would be writing the series at this point or not.) But by 2003's JLA/Spectre: Soul War two-part mini-series, the League all knew that Hal was The Spectre again. 

Hal resumes his Spectre form, and there's a bit of debate among the assembled men. Superman tells Hal he's a good man, while Batman argues, "As far as I'm concerned, Jordan stopped being a "good man" when he turned on the guardians. When he killed-- and kept on killing."

Hal again discusses how his new, supernatural senses are overwhelming him:

If only you could see--what I see! What this...thing I share consciousness with makes me see: The demons! The guilt!

Humanity's shame and sorrow! It's festering jealousy--and murderous rage!

After Plastic Man interrupts him—"Let me get this straight: Before you were dead--now you're the all-powerful Spectre--and you're kvetching about it?"—we get to the heart of the comic.

"All men--no matter how pure they may appear--are guilty!" Hal says, spreading his cape like a matador. "Every soul on Earth is a potential target of The Spectre's divine wrath!"

Superman scoffs, saying he doesn't, he can't subscribe to such a philosophy, at which point Hal-as-The Spectre starts using his powers to illustrate his points, giving Pajarillo lots of intense imagery to work with. He shows them the time Superman executed the Phantom Zone criminals, the instance in which he actually took a life—there's no asterisk or footnote, but I believe this happened during John Byrnes run, right?—and how guilty Superman felt about it.

Batman cuts in, and then The Spectre turns on him, noting how many people have suffered due to Batman's arrogance, and that there's a small part of Batman that wants to kill his enemies, one he may eventually act on—should The Spectre attack Batman now, or wait until he's crossed that line? (Batman's refusal to ever kill, even the likes of The Joker, makes him maybe a poor example to subject to The Spectre's scrutiny; I wonder if it might have been better for DeMatteis to use the harsher, more violent Huntress, or perhaps warrior characters like Wonder Woman or Aquaman, although, to be honest, I don't recall if any of those three had actually killed anyone by this point; I feel like Peter David had depicted Aquaman killing at least one alien invader earlier in his run, but I'm no longer positive.)

Hal goes on to accuse Kyle of fearing being corrupted by his power and lashes out at Zauriel when he again mentions The Presence.

It is at this point, Plastic Man joins the conversation, transforming into an easy chair and sweeping Hal off his feet with a "Siddown a minute!"

As a Plastic Man fan, I should note that DeMatteis does a pretty fine job of the character in a sequence of less than a half-dozen panels. While Morrison had an even-handed, nuanced approach to Plastic Man as a true hero despite his jokes, in general, most of the other writers to handle the JLA during Morrison's run just played Plas as a source of usually lame jokes, his shape-shifting abilities employed to contort him into visual punchlines. 

(For one example of Morrison's take on Plastic Man from the very collection I am reading this issue in, in the first chapter of "World War III", Zauriel said that Heaven has decided Earth will surely end during this particular threat, and that the angels are already planning the architecture of a new universe. Plastic Man's head turns into that of a chicken, and notes that if Heaven has given up, maybe he and Zauriel should as well, to which Zauriel responds, "I haven't given up...and neither will you when it comes to it, Plastic Man." He's right! They both play their parts in saving Earth and the universe from the new Injustice Gang and Mageddon.)

Plastic Man explains that he too had been in the position Hal has been in, a bad guy who was seemingly killed and then got super-powers (Although there's an obvious difference in scale, here; Eel O'Brien, as his surname is spelled here, was a rather cartoonish gangster pulling robberies and heists, while Hal was an honest-to-God cosmic supervillain with a considerable body count who, at one point, unraveled all of time in space in order to recreate it in his own image). 

"Believe me, when the fates offered me a second chance--I took it!" Plas says. "But did I mope and moan about it? Nuh-uh! I decided to have fun with it! If I was gonna live my life over, it was gonna be--YOWCH!"

Pajarillo's art is a little confusing here—I'm sure the script couldn't have been all that clear, given what's going on—but Hal interrupts Plastic Man by ripping open the back of his head, where he finds Eel hiding:

You hide behind a mask of arrogance and flippancy--

--but there is another face that lies behind that vapid grin! A man who preyed on the weaknesses of others! An all too common criminal--

--named "Eel" O'Brien!

Again, pretty sure it's spelled "O'Brian," but whatever. The Spectre's beat is evil, sin and vengeance, not spelling.

Here we get a glimpse into Plas' mind, wherein he reveals that he faces "the darkness" of his soul constantly, that he knows every rotten thing he's ever done and been face-to-face with his own guilt, but that he likes his "mask of frivolity." And, when he finally meets his maker, as Hal phrases it? "I'll take my chances that he's just a tetch more forgiving than you are!" Plas says.

Hal seems to really lose his shit at this, at which point J'onn loses his, screaming "Enough!" in big, bold red letters "both verbally and telepathically".

Using his powers, J'onn transports all seven of them to a scary-looking plane of fire and stalagmites and weird architecture. 

"Back in Hell?" Kyle asks; he and Superman having just been there in Day of Judgment. "After a fashion," Zauriel replies. He seems to be the only one who knows where J'onn has taken them—mentally, if not physically—although Batman figures it out a moment before Hal does, and before DeMatteis and Pajarillo reveal it to us.

After a four-page fight through a bewildering hellscape, they meet an extremely ordinary-looking middle-aged man and his wife, sitting in easy chairs and listening to a radio show in a cramped cave. An aggressive Hal confronts the man and is shocked to see that "the scared light" shines within him. 

Who is this guy, and where are they?

The place was The Joker's mind, and that guy was the light of God within The Joker.

Here's J'onn's explanation of what they all just saw:

Do you see, Hal? Even there--in the most corrupted of human souls--

--lies a spark, however small, seeking hope, seeking love-- and yes--

--redemption.

...

Perhaps you've been projecting your own guilt, for your own transgressions--real and imagined--onto everyone else.

You're not seeing us, Hal. You're seeing yourself reflected back at you--through the prism of the Spectre's wrath. 

...

I learned, long ago, not to underestimate the human race... and their capacity to rise above their limitations. 

Too bad about that "ordained plan" that means everyone will be unable to recognize Hal Jordan now that he's The Spectre, or else maybe Martian Manhunter could have continued to counsel him in his new career, and his efforts to wrestle the Spirit of Vengeance into a Spirit of Redemption. 

On the last page, The Spectre grows giant again, and he floats through the ceiling out into space, saying that the men he's leaving are "still the best friends-- --I ever had." Presumably he was speaking just of J'onn, Superman and Batman, as he, like, just met Zauriel and Plastic Man, and his relationship with Kyle seems...well, "friends" doesn't seem like the right word at this point in their personal history, does it?

As for the League though, they've already forgotten him, as Kyle gets the last word among them. "Sure hope we helped him--," he says, "--whoever he was."

The last image in the book is of Hal-as-The Spectre, impossibly gigantic and semi-transparent, seeming to hold the Earth itself in his hands, as he ends his narration with something I don't think we see regularly in super-comics: A prayer.

"Lord.. ...let me be worthy," he thinks. 

After this issue, the League goes on to face Mageddon in "World War III" in the pages of JLA, after which writer Mark Waid would take the reins from Morrison (and Zauriel would fade into very occasional guest-star status). Waid would, in one of his handful of arcs, get into Plas' head in a way similar to what DeMatteis did here, with the hero lamenting his life of crime and facing the temptation to steal again once Plastic Man and Eel O'Brian are split into two separate people. 

While I wasn't particularly annoyed by this book back in 1999, I don't think I appreciated its virtues, either. I don't know that it's necessarily the best Hal Jordan story or anything, but in just 22 pages, it does manage to fit interesting portrayals of Zauriel, Plastic Man and Martian Manhunter. 

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.