DC immediately followed up its reintroduction of the Spectre with a second adventure, in Showcase # 61 (Mar.-Apr., 1966).   As with all the Golden-Age revivals of 1965, the golden talents of Julius Schwartz, Gardner Fox, and Murphy Anderson – who, among the fans, were rapidly becoming known as the architects of the Silver-Age Earth-Two – were brought to bear.

Unlike the previous Golden-Age efforts, this second Spectre tale directly followed on the events which saw the Ghostly Guardian’s return after a twenty-year absence.  “Beyond the Sinister Barrier” opens with three vignettes of individuals in peril.  A Mongolian bandit dying of thirst in the Gobi Desert.  A French spelunker trapped by a cave-in.  A big-game huntress in Africa, about to be trampled by a rampaging bull elephant.  In each case, the victim’s doom is inescapable.  And in each case, a mysterious disembodied voice promises salvation – in exchange for the doomed one’s shadow.   In desperation, all three agree to the barter, and as their shadows vanish, the bandit receives water, the caver finds his path to the surface instantly cleared, and the huntress shoots the elephant with bullets magically inserted into her empty rifle.

There is a fourth instance.  In  Gateway City, a window-washer’s safety belt breaks forty stories up.  As he plunges to certain death, the mysterious voice offers the same trade:  his shadow for his life.  The man agrees and instantly finds himself floating to the ground.  Bystander Jim Corrigan, captain of detectives, witnesses the spectacle in amazement.  Then, his ghostly persona within him points out that the man no longer casts a shadow.

Realising that a supernatural force is at work, the Spectre leaves Jim’s body and  trails the window-washer.  As the Ghostly Guardian hovers invisibly overhead, suddenly he is drawn inside the man’s body, where the detached shadow lies in wait.  The sinister shade hurls the Spectre out of the physical universe.

It’s a great opening hook.  Five pages in, and already a fistful of mystery and danger has been thrown at the reader.  It’s the best part of the book.

The Spectre is propelled into a universe of psycho-matter, the very substance which comprises his own form.  He finds himself in the land of Dis, where he is immediately besieged by horrible, misshapen demons.  Since their bodies are composed of the same psycho-matter, they can hurt the Spectre.  And that’s the good news.  At the same time, the spirit of Jim Corrigan is struck by an onslaught of pure evil.  Weakened and nauseated, the Spectre is overwhelmed by the attacking horrors.

In a last-ditch move, Spec expands his body, growing until he becomes so nebulous that that claws and fangs of the demons pass harmlessly between the atoms of his body.  He continues to grow, until “his psycho-matter body is hundreds – thousands – of millions of light years large!”  At this super-giant size, the Ghostly Guardian can get his bearings on the physical universe and he returns to Earth.

Fortunately ghosts don’t have to breathe, because before Spec would have been able to catch his breath, his Heavenly boss, a.k.a. the Voice, arrives to fill him in.  The land of Dis is ruled by Shathan the Eternal, who seeks to pierce the barrier separating the psycho-universe from the physical one and conquer Earth.  But He expects his earthbound agent to do his own homework, and suggests that Spec use his power to control time to pick up on the details.

The Discarnate Detective merges with the time stream and flows back to the beginning of the physical universe, when the immense primal atom, which contains all the matter which will become the universe, explodes.  The Spectre observes the Big Bang, as the scattered physical matter is flung outward, to eventually become the stars and the planets from which life will spring.  He learns that, in a Newton’s Third Law sort of way, a nether universe of psycho-matter is created at the same time.

This is where writer Gardner Fox gets all metaphysical on us.  The life that comes to thrive on the psycho-matter world of Dis is steeped in evil, and evil becomes the foundation of its religion.  The worship of evil by the demons of Dis gives corporeal form to Shathan the Eternal.  As there is an abundance of good in the physical universe, Shathan is the physical embodiment of the abundant wickedness of the nether universe.

Here, Fox delves into the nature of Good and Evil, something which he had toyed with in his initial Spectre offering.  Rather than being a weakness in man, a failure to achieve good, Fox presented Evil as a parallel-yet-opposing force.  As Good flowed toward mankind from the mercy and justice of God, Evil flourished by taking from its followers, in the worship of the demons of Dis.  Artist Murphy Anderson underscored the imagery of Lucifer by depicting Shathan as a bloated, degenerate image of the Devil.  Scarlet hued, thick waisted, with toad-like features set off with fangs, horns, and pointy ears.  Even the name “Shathan” was a phœnetic echo of “Satan”.

Suggesting the eternal war between God and the Devil, Fox describes Shathan’s attempts to spread his malignant wickedness beyond the sinister barrier and into the physical world, using Earth as his principal battleground.  Unable to pass to the physical universe himself, Shathan cast his representatives across the Earth, in the forms of witchcraft, graven images, heathen idols, and false prophets.

“But,” writes Fox, as the observations of the Spectre, “the forces of good were not asleep!  Great men rose up to lead the way of goodness . . . Moses . . . Peter . . . Buddha . . . Mohammed.  Slowly those powers of good pushed back the evil!  Had they not – Good would not have been believed in – and so would have ceased to exist!”

Ultimately, Shathan would create a deputy, Azmodeus, and send him to Earth to destroy good, just as God had ordered the Spectre to eliminate all evil.  As related in the previous story, the presence of both Azmodeus and the Ghostly Guardian on Earth rendered them mutually inert.  When Azmodeus was released by the death of his human host, he was able to enact part of his mission before being defeated by the Spectre.  Azmodeus had managed to weaken the barrier between the universes just enough to permit Shathan to manifest his power directly on our world.

By taking the shadows of willing donors, Shathan is able to infect them with evil.  As the shadowless number grows, their worship of the Ultimate Evil will give Shathan enough strength to penetrate the barrier and materialise on Earth.  Cleverly, Shathan distracts the Spectre by menacing Jim Corrigan with a series of dangers.  Occupied with protecting his human host, the Discarnate Detective is too late to prevent Shathan’s arrival.  In an epic conflict, the Spectre squares off against  the Evil One, with the very cosmos as their battleground.  It makes the Spectre’s earlier struggle against Azmodeus look like a water-balloon fight, as the very fabric of all existence shudders.

Ultimately, the Spectre realises that Shathan’s sole weakness is his unfamiliarity with the physical universe, and that is the key to the Evil One’s destruction.

The agent of God triumphing over the Ultimate Evil!  What were they going to do for an encore?

For one thing, Schwartz and Fox included the Spectre in that summer’s Justice League/Justice Society team-up.  As many of my fellow Captain Comics Legionnaires know, the two-part “Crisis Between Earth-One and Earth-Two”, from JLA # 46-7 (Aug. and Sep., 1966), is my favourite pairing of the two Justice teams.  Fox crafted a tale truly worthy of the word “Crisis”, by presenting three simultaneous menaces – each capable of giving the super-heroes a rough time of it – hitting the twin Earths at the same time.

For most of the adventure, the Spectre is separated from his JSA buddies, as the lone defender against one of the threats, the Anti-Matter Man.  The rest of the heroes are unaware of the Ghostly Guardian’s battle with the being from the anti-matter universe until the last chapter.  This gives the Spectre the opportunity to fulfil a vital rôle in the story without having his limitless might overwhelm the lesser-powered JLA/JSA members.

Still, the same bugaboo that confronted Jerry Siegel when he created the Spectre back in the 1940 was, again, becoming obvious:  how do you come up with credible threats for a character who was able to defeat the Devil himself?  One whom, to all intents, is omnipotent?  That’s always been the root of my basic dislike of magic-based heroes.  They have no limitations.  Superman could be killed by green kryptonite and lost his powers under a red sun.  Those were rules.  Thor reverted to Don Blake if his hammer was out of his grasp for more than a minute.  That was a rule.  Most super-powered heroes had some limits or a fatal weakness.  They had to; otherwise, every story would be over by page two.  You knew they would find away around their weaknesses, of course.  The fun – and the drama – was in seeing how they did it.

But magic-based heroes never seemed to have those kind of problems, and certainly not the Spectre.  He could do anything every other super-hero could do – and everything they couldn’t do.  And has been said, “When anything can happen, you stop caring about what happens.”

Despite this thematic flaw, DC evidently believed that the Spectre would prove to be its break-out Earth-Two revival.  In a move unprecedented in the pairings of Doctor Fate/Hourman and Starman/Black Canary, the Discarnate Detective was awarded a third Showcase try-out.  Perhaps not coїncidentally, it was in this story that the readers discovered that the Spectre had a weak spot, after all.

“The Ghost of Ace Chance” appeared in Showcase # 64 (Sep.-Oct., 1966), drafted, of course, under the capable hands of Fox and Anderson.  Immediately, we are introduced to the eponymous Chance, a fast and loose roué who has borrowed ten thousand dollars from mobster Booth Cody.  Ace visits the gaming tables on board a gambling ship with the intention of parlaying the ten grand into a stake large enough to make a play for Mona Marcy, the world’s wealthiest woman.  By his own evaluation, “handsome, smart, and loaded with charm,” Ace figures it’s a sure thing to win her hand in marriage and spend the rest of his life in luxury, sponging off of Mona’s millions.

Ace’s plans hit a snag when he loses the entire ten grand at the roulette table.  That becomes the least of his worries when, unable to repay Booth Cody, the mobster sends a couple of his goons to kill the dissolute gambler.  The henchmen waylay Chance on the waterfront.  By happenstance, Captain Corrigan is checking out a tip near the piers and hears Ace’s cries for help.  He is too far away, though, to prevent the hoods from dropping Ace into a pool of liquid gas held on a tanker ship.

As Corrigan arrives, Chance enters the final stage of death.  His ghost is released from his dying body and rises toward “the mystic realm”.  The detective makes quick work of the two thugs, and as he handcuffs them, the Spectre emerges.  Spec senses a spark of life remaining in Ace Chance, but when he passes through the tanker hold, he discovers that Chance’s spirit form has already departed.  In an attempt to keep the man alive, the Spectre enters his body.

This strengthens Chance just enough to draw his own spirit back.  But when the ghost of Ace Chance tries to reënter his body, he is unable to do so because the Spectre already inhabits it.  Unable to sustain himself without a host, Chance’s astral form begins to dissipate.  In desperation, he seeks a host, and discovers Jim Corrigan on the pier, securing his prisoners.  Finding that Corrigan has no inner spirit to block him, the ghost of Chance enters Jim.

Once inside Corrigan, the gambler’s ghost psychically neutralises Jim’s mind and takes control of the detective’s body.  He drives off in Jim’s car.

Freeing the body of Ace Chance from the tank of liquefied gas, the Spectre is unaware of what has happened to his human self.  He turns the two hoodlums over to the police and rushes Ace’s body to the hospital.  Before he can do anything to locate his own human host, the Ghostly Guardian is forced to handle several natural disasters and thwart the robbery which Captain Corrigan had been tipped to.  To the Spectre’s surprise, these efforts nearly exhaust his usually limitless power.

Spec finally locates Corrigan, who has returned to police headquarters – to resign!  Startled at the news, the Spectre tries to merge with Jim, in order to renew his powers, and finds that he cannot do so.  Another spirit form, he realises, has occupied Jim’s body.

Denied the ability to recuperate in his host body, the weakened Spectre circles the Earth, temporarily recharging his powers by syphoning off the positive energy given off by good deeds.  He visits hospitals, Peace Corps camps, and religious services.  But it takes days, and in that time, Jim Corrigan, controlled by Ace’s ghost, conducts a successful whirlwind courtship of Mona Marcy.

The Spectre, his powers restored by the good energy he has absorbed, returns just as “Corrigan” arrives at Mona’s mansion to pop the question.  Spec has enough juice now to yank the ghost of Ace Chance out of Jim’s body.  The battle is on!  The two spirits go at each other with spell and curse.  In a struggle that ranges around the world and into outer space, the ghost of Ace Chance proves to be a cunning, underhanded combatant.  He constantly ambushes the Spectre with feats of black magic.   

Nevertheless, the Ghostly Guardian has more experience at wielding that kind of power.  Despite a devious, last-minute trick by his foe, Spec forces the ghostly Ace back into his own body, where it will remain until the day Chance actually dies.

“The Ghost of Ace Chance” lacks the grandeur of the “Heaven Against Hell” subtext of the first two Spectre Showcases and the philosophical examinations of Good and Evil.  It is a more straightforward tale, and in a way, a more entertaining one.  For the first time, in the Silver Age anyway, we realise that the Spectre does have a vulnerability – his human form of Jim Corrigan!

Jim is more than just a place for the Spectre to put up his green-slippered feet when he isn’t out vanquishing evil.  His human self is a source of revitalization, and this story suggests, for the first time, that without being able to rest within Jim, the Spectre’s powers will diminish.  It is also evident that the human Corrigan, without his spirit self’s presence, has no special protection against mystic forces.  Thinking readers began to ponder over the nature of the relationship between Jim Corrigan and the Ghostly Guardian.

The matter would be explored further.  It would take over a year, but the Spectre became the first Earth-Two revival to receive its own title.  Yet, Spectre fans, in due time, would be reminded of the truth behind the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it.”  We’ll find out why next time you drop in.