Simply the Best: More Fun=Divine Retribution?

Beginning in 1936, More Fun Comics was the first publication of the company that would one day be known as DC Comics.  It was also the first comic book to publish original material rather than simply reprinting newspaper strips, featuring a variety of genres such as funny animals, westerns, espionage, and supernatural adventure all under one roof.

By 1939, the covers of the series shifted from cartoony, lighthearted scenes to more realistic depictions of danger and suspense...making the "More Fun" title seem increasingly irrelevant and ironic, reaching borderline absurd levels of irony with the introduction of The Spectre on the cover of issue #52 (1940). 

Created by Superman writer Jerry Siegel and artist Bernard Baily, the Spectre was the spirit of murdered cop Jim Corrigan, given nearly limitless power by The Voice (which everyone understood to be God) and sent back to Earth to eradicate evil. 

In other words, a scenario that wasn't exactly bursting with fun...much less "More Fun".

Despite the disconnect with the title, the Spectre's uniquely eerie and surreal adventures earned him a year's worth of covers, eventually ceding his marquee status to a new supernatural character named Dr. Fate.  Though most of the Spectre's fourteen cover appearances were pretty unremarkable, one of them (quite literally) towers over the rest.  More Fun Comics #54 (April, 1940) featured the terrifying tableau of a gigantic Spectre striding through a battlefield, making easy work of the enemy's toy-like soldiers and airplanes. 

The Ghostly Guardian's piercing stare seems to suggest a barely-restrained wrath and power...perhaps tapping into the resistance of 1940 America to project its power into Hitler's Europe (this cover being published before the U.S. officially entered World War II)...or (in hindsight) symbolizing the atomic might unleashed upon Japan five years later.

Or maybe the giant battlefield Spectre represents a deeper, darker wish that our wars could be instantly ended by a wrathful, god-like figure who would pluck our weapons and death machines from our hands like a parent punishing a disobedient, destructive child.

Whatever the image means to any given person, I think most can agree that it's one of the most powerful, arresting images to ever grace a comic book cover.  So powerful in fact, that I believe Alan Moore echoed the scene in his masterwork Watchmen(1986)...swapping the supernatural Spectre for a similarly omnipotent (though science-based) Doctor Manhattan.  The scene was also updated for the cover of The Spectre #19 (1994), a testament to the enduring and "looming" presence of the Spectre.

Comments

[Siskoid]

I'd never made the connection with Watchmen, but you're absolutely right!

[Mark Engblom]

I'm hoping the upcoming Watchmen movie has a "giant Doctor Manhattan" flashback. Done right, and at the right camera angle, it could be breathtaking.

[James Meeley]

Very nice commentary on the times of that cover image. Mark. I've always been of the mind that our entertainment tends to reflect the times they are in, not direct it. That cover would certainly seem to suggest as much.

On a side note, it would have made a great contributuon to my "Larger Than Life" cover theme at Cover-By-Cover last week, just as the 1994 Spectre cover could make a great one for this week's "Into The Fire" theme. Good stuff, as always.

[Mark Engblom]

Thanks, Jim...glad you liked the commentary. I try not to dig too deeply, but some covers of that era really DO suggest some interesting insights into the times. Every era's comic books are sort of a portal into the times they were published in, and it's interesting trying to get a glimpse the socio-political "ghosts" lurking within them (no pun intended for the Spectre cover).

[The Mad Monkey]

Dr. Manhattan was a replacement for Captain Atom and had nothing to do with The Spectre at all. In fact, all of the heroes in Watchmen were reconfigured Charlton characters. It's all well-documented all over the place.

[Mark Engblom]

If you read my post again, I never said the Spectre was the inspiration for the Dr. Manhattan character. I made the claim that that particular panel of Dr. Manhattan towering over the jungles of Viet Nam was inspired by the Spectre's similar pose. I was aware of the Captain Atom connection. There being zero panels of the Charlton Captain Atom grown to giant size zapping Viet Cong suggests the parallel lies elsewhere...such as the Spectre cover.