Jim Corrigan
James Brendan "Jim" Corrigan is a fictional character that has appeared in numerous comic books published by DC Comics.
The first Corrigan initially appeared in More Fun Comics #52, a deceased cop acting as host to the cosmic entity the Spectre, and was created by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily.
The second Jim Corrigan was an African-American policeman who has no relation with the original character, first appeared in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #149. The character was created by John Albano and José Delbo. He later became a regular supporting character in Black Lightning beginning with #4.
The third Jim Corrigan appeared years later in issue #12 of Gotham Central, a series about the Gotham City Police Department. The character, created by Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, and Michael Lark although similar to the first Corrigan in being a police detective, again is not related to him and served as a red herring of who would become the new Spectre. This Corrigan is later revealed to be a corrupt, self-serving malefactor who murders his colleague Crispus Allen; Allen then becomes the host to the Spectre.
Jim Corrigan appeared in a live-action portrayal by Emmett J. Scanlan in the television series Constantine. Stephen Lobo also portrayed the character in the Arrowverse crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths. In animation, Roger Craig Smith provided the voice of Corrigan in the TV series, Batman: Caped Crusader.
Fictional character biography
''More Fun Comics'' and ''All-Star Comics''
Jim Corrigan began his career as the Spectre in the early 1940s. After being murdered by crime boss Gat Benson, Corrigan refuses to pass into the afterlife. In response, the archangel Michael bonds Corrigan to the Spectre, the embodiment of God's wrath, and returns him to Earth to battle crime and wrongdoing.As the Spectre, Jim Corrigan returns to the mortal plane as a partial human, where he proceeded to rain his vengeance on Benson and his accomplices. In the process however, Jim's fiancée, Clarice Winston, was mortally wounded. Using his newfound power, he was able to return Clarice to life, but later ended their relationship to spare her any further pain. He also broke off with his partner, and became more of a lone agent, trying to distance himself from his mortal ties, although he retained his job on the police force.
As the popularity of superhero comics began to decline in the mid-1940s, the Spectre suffered as a result. He was reduced to playing the role of "guardian angel" to a bumbling character called "Percival Popp, the Super Cop." Introduced in #74, December 1941, he was a would-be civilian sleuth who, in his words, latched onto Corrigan "of all the detectives on the force because it appeared to me that you are the most intelligent of the lot! You and I ought to be an unbeatable combination, sir!" In the following story, the Voice allowed the physical body of Jim Corrigan, still in cement at the bottom of the river, to be resurrected with the Ring of Life, which had helped the Spectre out of some jams in a few previous stories. The Ghostly Guardian found that he could emerge from Corrigan and maintain a separate existence. In More Fun #90, April 1943, Jim Corrigan per se was completely removed from the feature — he enlisted in the military for World War II service — and the Spectre's reduction to guardian angel status was complete; he even became invisible to everybody but Percy.
As the Spectre, Jim Corrigan ran with the JSA, but he was replaced in 1944, and afterwards Jim Corrigan and the Spectre disappeared from the DC Universe for more than 20 years.
''Spectre''
When the Spectre was revived in Showcase #60,, Jim Corrigan played an important part, as editor Julius Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox made significant use of the resurrection of Corrigan's body depicted back in More Fun Comics #75. While the Ghostly Guardian crossed from one mystical plane of existence to another fighting occult menaces, Corrigan, now a captain of Gateway City's police force, was fighting his own battles against a more mundane criminal element. However, Corrigan often got involved in the Spectre's conflicts. In that first story, another spirit, named Azmodus, possessed a small-time criminal, and while the two astral beings engaged in cosmic combat, the two mortal men slugged it out.In Showcase #64, September–October 1966, when the Spectre took possession of the body of a dying man, Ace Chance, to preserve its spark of life after his soul had departed, that spirit found the living but soulless Corrigan and entered him. With Chance's physical form hospitalized and on life-support, the Spectre found he could not re-enter Jim. Ace had no desire to give up this body and began romancing heiress Mona Marcy. After Chance was put back into his proper body, Corrigan wondered what he was going to do about Mona, who had no idea who she had really been dating. In fact, a year later the Spectre received his own comic, and in #2, Jim asks his astral alter ego for a little privacy, as he has a date with Mona.
While she was not mentioned again, things became more involved for Corrigan. This series established that prolonged separation from his corporeal body diminished the Spectre's energies, and more than once, Jim's will power could keep his spirit form from entering him. The latter instance found Corrigan pinned down by criminals he was after, and his demands for the Spectre's help resulted in the tired spirit acting harshly and hurting an innocent man in the vicinity. Shortly after this, the Spectre was chained to the Journal of Judgment, and Corrigan made no more appearances in this era.
Bronze Age
The next time Jim Corrigan was seen was in the brief Spectre series in Adventure Comics #431-440. Here, writer Michael Fleisher, ably abetted by atmospheric art from Jim Aparo, took the Spectre back to his earliest days. As in the first two years in More Fun Comics, the hero and his civilian identity were simply two guises of the same entity. Nevertheless, Corrigan's "life" did get interesting. Now a lieutenant in New York City, Jim was investigating the murder of wealthy businessman Adrian Sterling and met the victim's daughter Gwen. Despite his assertions that romance was out of the question for him, she fell in love with Corrigan. In saving her life from her father's murderer, he had to reveal his true nature. Gwen fell under the influence of a medium, told him about Corrigan's situation, and asked him if he could restore the detective to life. Unfortunately, he was a con artist that the department, and Corrigan in particular, were investigating, and he took advantage of what he presumed was the woman's mental illness to trap and kill Corrigan. As he was already dead, the plan backfired horribly.Not long later, a reporter named Earl Crawford noticed the number of gruesome finishes that many local criminals had been meeting recently and suspected a connection. By lying to his editor as to just what he had in mind, he arranged an assignment to ride around with a police criminal investigator and, of all people, Lt. Jim Corrigan was the lucky cop. Crawford soon saw the Spectre in action for himself. Despite being a ghost, Corrigan returned Gwen's feelings and pleaded into the night in his dark apartment for a reprieve. Without telling him, the Voice granted the request and he awoke the next morning a mortal man. Corrigan did not realize this until he was shot in the line of duty a few hours later. Once out of the hospital, he proposed to Gwen, who promptly accepted. However, Corrigan was again murdered by criminals and again sent back to Earth by the Voice as the Spectre. He took vengeance upon his killers, then appeared to Gwen to give her the news.
A direct follow-up to this run appeared a few years later as a three-issue story arc in the Doctor Thirteen series that Paul Kupperberg was writing in Ghosts #97-99. Here, the Spectre was still slaughtering particularly brutal criminals and Earl Crawford was still looking for a way to stop the supernatural entity that he knew was responsible, but now Dr. Thirteen was trying to prove he was something normal. Even though Earl and Terry came up with the idea that Jim Corrigan was somehow connected to the killings, his appearances here were brief and perfunctory.
Another sequel to the Adventure run was published seven years later. A deluxe format miniseries, Wrath of the Spectre, reprinted the original 10 stories in its first three issues, and in its fourth presented, newly drawn by Jim Aparo and various inkers, three stories that had been written by Michael Fleisher in 1975 but left on the proverbial shelf when the series was replaced with Aquaman. Here, Earl Crawford is charged with murdering a criminal that was actually eliminated by the Spectre, but found not guilty by reason of insanity, and committed to an asylum. Corrigan demonstrates compassion, first by having a disguised Gwen Sterling visit and comfort him, then by using the powers of the Spectre to clear him.
Jim Corrigan also appeared in each of the Spectre's three The Brave and the Bold team-ups with Batman during this era, one of which included fighting against the evil sorcerer Wa'arzen, 180 and 199 ). One other instance is worth noting: in the revived All Star Comics, Jim Corrigan, this time an Inspector with the Gotham City P.D., was seen in issue #70.
''Spectre'' (vol. 2)
Among the many changes made to DC Comics' characters during the later half of the 1980s, the Spectre was largely depowered. First, in the conclusion to Alan Moore's Swamp Thing storyline "American Gothic", the Spectre was defeated by evil incarnate as it advances to destroy Heaven. Finally, the Spectre, in Last Days of the Justice Society of America, failed to resolve the situation and is punished by God for his failure. Under the authorship of Doug Moench, he became nearly a generic mystical figure, with Corrigan joining an occult detective agency.This was largely notable because now, Jim Corrigan and the Spectre became two separate entities. Corrigan still served as a host to the Spectre, but the Spectre could move on his own separately for a whole day, afterwards needing to return to Corrigan's body to replenish his energy. This allowed for Corrigan to actually team up with the Spectre, in essence splitting the 'workload' in two, since one could handle research and the other could get the job done. It also allowed for Corrigan to become a full-fledged detective again.
Nonetheless, if the two were separated for too long, it would spell disaster for both, and therefore Madame Xanadu, who was not only instrumental in returning the Spectre to Earth but also held her place of operations in the same building as Corrigan's agency, introduced a guardian for Corrigan. The attractive young woman Kim Liang became not only Jim's secretary, but also a caretaker, herself a separated piece of Xanadu's soul. The importance of Xanadu in these actions later set the stage for her role in Corrigan's life when John Ostrander set up a new Spectre title.