ADVENTURE COMICS #433 ART by JIM APARO - THE SWAMI AND...THE SPECTRE!

Superbly spooky original artwork for "Weird" Adventure Comics #433 page 12 (DC - May/ June, 1974) by the legendary talent, Jim Aparo (pencils, inks and letters). This is the climatic (cover) scene for the terrifying tale entitled, "The Swami and...the Spectre," wherein the awesome Astral Avenger of Evil finally engages the wicked deceiver, Swami Seelal in his inner spiritual sanctum while he is conducting another bogus seance. Believing that he has rid himself of the meddling Police Detective James Corrigan, the Swami is confronted with the bone-chilling visage of the wrathful Spectre in his own crystal ball by thinking, "Hun?! I-Inside m-my c-crystal ball -- I-It's s-some king of F-Face!" Reading the Swami's horrified thoughts, the Spectre responds, "It is My Face, Evil Swami! The Wrathful Face of...THE SPECTRE!" as the Avenging Angel of Death explodes forth from the crystal ball. In his typical dramatically ironic fashion, the Spectre executes his divine retribution upon the Swami by turning him into glass - the very substance of his crystal ball, which the Swami used to deceive and extort filthy lucre from his rich, yet badly deluded female followers.

This intriguing story has been told and retold at least three times; for the first one, we must go all the way back to More Fun Comics #54 (DC, 1940), which as brought to us by the hero's co-creators, writer Jerry Siegel (who, along with artist Joe Shuster, created Superman in Action Comics #1 – DC/ June, 1938) and artist Bernard Baily. Herein the Spectre exposed a charlatan spiritualist calling himself, Swami Rhani Set. And for all you mythology buffs, you may recall that Set was the Egyptian god of evil, storms, disorder, violence and chaos, thus, writer Siegel aligns this evil Swami with an ancient god of corruption and wickedness. Rhani Set was extorting money from Mrs. Winston, who was Clarice Winston's mother, the beloved betrothed of our hero, Jim Corrigan. And thus, she falls under the divine protection of the Spectre. After being exposed by the Spectre as a fraud who was defrauding her mother with the fake spirit of her dead uncle, Rhani Set turned his anger toward Clarice and so the Spectre does away with him and his assistant. This original early Golden-Age tale was adapted by writer Roy Thomas and artist Michael T. Gilbert in Secret Origins #15 (DC, 1987) for the story, "The Secret Origin of the Spectre."

"The Swami and...The Spectre" (DC, 1974), is an excellent retelling of this classic tale, in which writer Fleisher pits the awesome Astral Avenger against the "Great" Swami Seelal, as the Swami moves to execute his evil schemes and violent vengeance against Jim Corrigan and his new love interest, the lovely, but quite naïve Gwendolyn Sterling. Of course, this evil Swami has no idea who he is dealing with until it is FAR TOO LATE! Adventure Comics #433 was the third installment of the famed Fleisher/ Aparo Spectre series collaboration and the very first time that the apropos subtitle, "Weird" was placed on the cover (done until issue #437), just above the super cool and large Adventure Comics (Golden-Age like) logo.