The Spectre/Percival Popp-Pierce Rice-1943

Wow. Just...wow. Remember the Spectre, that sometimes vicious spirit who enacts cruel and ironic vengeance on evildoers at the behest of God himself? Well...this ain't him. That's the way the character started and that's the way the character was revived in the sixties. In between, however, you had Percival Popp the Super Cop with his pet Spectre. In this story, we see that Jim Corrigan, Spec's host body, goes into the army, leaving our wisecracking (?!) ghostly hero an invisible (and much shorter than normal for some reason) sidekick to the hapless Popp for the duration. In essence the strip begins aping the JOHNNY THUNDER series now with the once-feared giant Spectre as the powerful but silly Thunderbolt. I guess they felt there was an opening as that series had, in fact, been essentially turned over to Peachy Pet (and would soon enough give way to Black Canary). GCD says this is Pierce Rice ghosting for regular artist Bernard Baily. Script may or may not be by the series creator Jerry Siegel.