Never mess with the Wrath of God
Considering the Title Character goes by The Spirit of Vengeance you can bet there's an endless well of Nightmare Fuel to be gained from him. Put it this way. In the Silver Age, his entire shtick was killing people without actually killing them.That's when he's just tethered to a human host. Check out these highlights
from the 1970s comics.- Everything he does is this. Even the Lighter and Softer Batman: The Brave and the Bold series has him turning a Mad Scientist into cheese, but leaving him very much alive and conscious (and then releasing the scientist's hundreds of trained rats to eat the scientist.)
- John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake loved combining this with Karmic Death during their '90s run on the character. Basically if you died horribly by fire or stabbing, you were getting off light with them.
- A horrific example of their presentation of the kinds of punishment the Spectre can dish out is when the Spectre decided to burn every person within the entire country of Vlatava alive because he realized both sides involved in its civil war were guilty. It's shown in vivid detail and is every bit as terrifying as it sounds.
- Azmodus. One of if not the most horrendous of the Spectre's rogue gallery who happens to be a former host of the Spectre. His debut featured some pretty graphic violence and death due to Azmodus' obsession with gaining power from despair by inducing mass suicide and manic slaughter.
- The Spectre's rampage to destroy magic during the Day of Vengeance arc is nothing less than horrific as it shows the Spectre annihilating countless mages, Curbstoming even the most powerful magicians and an amped-up Captain Marvel, and killing even the Wizard Shazam and Lord of Order Nabu himself while being an essentially unstoppable force of nature. It really rams home that without a host to keep it contained and no God pulling the leash, the Spectre is basically an Invincible Villain that no one but God could stop.
