Adventure Comics #438
April 1975
Cover art by: Jim Aparo
Story: The Spectre Haunts the Museum of Fear
Writer: Michael Fleischer
Pencils: Ernie Chan
Inks: Jim Aparo
Kind of weird to me to see Jim Aparo inking someone else's work. Still it looks great.
Anyway, some professor at a museum is abducting, stuffing, and displaying real people in exhibits for the museum. Jim Corrigan gets on the case when the body of a postal worker is found, and he has a most unusual knife near his body. Over the radio a bit later, Corrigan hears about a taxidermy supply store (I guess those exist) being robbed. He then remembers that is was a taxidermist's knife they found. AHA!
When he arrives on the scene of the robbery as the Spectre he inhabits the body of one the professor's lackeys. Once they arrive back at the museum the Spirit of Vengeance animates the gorillas in a display, and kills them all.
A decent story, but really short, since they other half of the book went to a Seven Soldiers of Victory story that was being serialized in the back. This was an interesting story in its own right. In that, according to the letters page, the story was written in the 40s and had been illustrated just recently.
Written, by Joe Samachson, the first chapter really does feel, um, dated. With the heroes being sent on their adventures by Willie the Wisher, who can wish them to do anything, at any place and/or time. This chapter was drawn by Dick Dillin.
The second chapter starred The Shining Knight and illustrated by Howard Chaykin. There was one panel in which the Shining Knight had your typical Chaykin face we all know now. The rest of the story is very much akin to what he was really doing at this time, as seen in his Sword of Sorcery work.
In the actual chapter, The Shining Knight is in a land if not truly in Arthurian times, then very similar to it. He ends up attacking the castle of the wizard of <ahem> Surlin. In the castle he fights the literal mirror image of himself. He gets captured, frees himself pretty quickly, and captures his twin and the evil wizard. Not bad really.
Replies
The Spectre was never in any real danger in any of his Adventure stories, which is why they replaced him with Aquaman.
The Shining Knight chapter was drawn by Chaykin to emulate Frank Frazetta who briefly drew the Knight in the late 40s.
Philip Portelli said:
He certainly wasn't. The interesting thing was to see the way he would get vengeance on that bad guys. Some of those were very inventive. I liked that a lot more than the handful of Aquaman stories I read.
Maybe, but it was also consistent with his own style at that time. It would be fun to find the rest of those chapters, I think I sense a hunt coming on. I have 3 conventions to go to in the next month and a half to look for them.
The SSV chapters have a nice eclectic mix, artist-wise with, IIRC, Mike Grell (Crimson Avenger), Lee Elias (Green Arrow), Ernie Chua (Star Spangled Kid), Jose Garcia-Lopez (Vigilante) and Dick Dillin (Conclusion).