Included on the Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is the first in a new series of standalone short-animated films featuring characters from DC’s vast archive. The first film is DC Showcase: The Spectre written by Steve Niles who, along with creating Simon Dark for DC Comics and re-imaging the Creeper, is one of a new wave of horror comics writers. The Spectre had originally been created in the 1940s by Jerry Siegel (co-creator of Superman) and Bernard Baily, but in this short Niles draws most heavily on the Michael Fleisher and Jim Aparo 1970s Spectre feature from Adventure Comics.

The director is Joaquim Dos Santos, a name from the original DCAU days, but the old Timm-style models are gone entirely. That look is replaced by a very Anime inspired styling that is freer in its staging and framing that the normal DC series/features. Additionally, the entire short is graded as if it was a 1970s cop movie with a slightly washed out look and the deliberate recreation of dirt on the film. From the very start you know you’re watching something that is different from what you may have expected.

The film opens with a Hollywood director getting blown up in his own home. Police Detective Jim Corrigan (Gary Cole) had once been romantically involved with the director’s beautiful blond daughter (Alyssa Milano). To the annoyance of his superior and colleagues Corrigan makes it his business to become involved with the investigation.

Unknown to anybody else Jim Corrigan is a dead man, a ghost who masquerades as a living-man whilst he investigates violent and heinous crimes. Then once he as ascertained who the guilty party is Corrigan’s ghost transforms into the nightmarish Spectre – a force of vengeance who murders the guilty in perverse and outlandish supernatural executions.

If you’ve read any Spectre comics you’ll know that he can be very inventive in the way he kills the guilty. Ethics aide – I’ve ranted on quite enough about heroes killing in my review of Cry For Justice - this is what the Spectre does and has always done. His executions in this short suitably live up to his reputation. One takes place in a Hollywood props house and makes full use of the horrors stored there. Another takes place out on the open road and owes a lot to Steve Spielberg’s 1975 film Duel. In both cases the Spectre is more of an animator and than a direct agent. It works well and care has been taken not to break the ambiance. In all, the 1970s pastiche works surprisingly well.

The look of the Spectre is very traditional, almost too traditional. Even handled as he is you can’t help but think the Spectre’s bright green cape looks a bit out of place in what is otherwise a horror film. Gary Cole’s Jim Corrigan is suitably hard-boiled, but I thought his Spectre was a little flat. Milano is okay as the girlfriend, but her screen time is so short that its impossible to judge.

This “short” is only two-thirds the length of a normal 22-minute TV cartoon and it was never going to have a great depth to it. However, it does manage to tell a full story and you don’t feel cheated by the length.

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