IDENTITY: Jaime SanchezBASE OF OPERATIONS: Florida Coast
FIRST APPEARANCE:
GREEN LANTERN 2nd series # 120
(September, 1979)
"Double Danger, Certain Death!"
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
Male human
Height: approx. 6'
Hair: black with beard and mustache
KNOWN RELATIVES: none
HISTORY:
In 1513, famed explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida, seeking the fabled "Fountain of Youth". He and his lieutenant, Jaime Sanchez, argued regarding their quest. Sanchez and two others went off in a different direction than de Leon. After two days travel, the explorers found a stream that glowed like gold, but Sanchez had little time to enjoy it. He was hit over the head by his companions, stuffed in a coffin and buried alive.
His two attackers never knew Sanchez had succeeded where de Leon had failed. They were killed by Indians watching from nearby. Sanchez had found the fountain of youth. This would be more a curse than blessing for the conquistador. For almost five hundred years, Sanchez' world was the inside of a coffin.
In the late twentieth century, the terrible winds of Hurricane Arachne uprooted a tree, and unearthed the buried explorer. His "return from the dead" frightened a local man, Juan Pinto, causing him to run into the path of an oncoming truck. He named the dead man "El Espectro," Spanish for "the ghost." The driver of the truck lost control, but its driver saved Pinto from injury. The truck driver was Hal Jordan, Green Lantern.
El Espectro later had a violent exchange with Green Arrow and Black Canary, dropping his helmet before he left the fight. Kari Limbo, a psychic, touched the helmet to learn El Espectro's origin.
The five hundred year old man had absorbed the gold from the water, rendering the power ring ineffectual against him. He possessed great strength, his sword had also absorbed gold making it a deadly weapon against the emerald gladiator. A tidal wave from the hurricane allowed El Espectro the opportunity to escape.
[GL2 # 120]
The conquistador found his way to the local airport, and hijacked a jet belonging to Carol Ferris. He wished to return to Spain to offer the flying machine to the Queen. Their trip was cut short when they flew into a U.S. Navy fleet on maneuvers.
Ferris and her hijacker were rescued by helicopter and brought on board the USS Rutherford. El Espectro mistook the sailors for English officers and attacked. Green Arrow and Green Lantern arrived just as the conquistador's sword cut into a helicopter's fuel tank, igniting the aviation fuel. The fire was quickly extinguished by Green Lantern, but his enemy had taken advantage of the situation.
El Espectro took Green Arrow as a hostage, believing Green Lantern was also immortal. The emerald crusader dropped his power ring to prove himself weaponless, but controlled the ring from a distance. When the conquistador raised his sword to strike Green Lantern the deck gave way, plunging them to the hanger deck below. Jordan hit El Espectro with a hard blow to the head, knocking him out.
[GL2 # 121]
The current activities of the Spanish Conquistador are yet unknown.
CREATIVE TEAM:
KNOWN APPEARANCES:
'mouse note -
Though El Espectro wasn't much in the way of a villain, he did appear in the first Green Lantern issue I ever bought.
Titled "The Steel Vengeance!" GL # 121 had a Dick Giordano cover, featuring GL falling out of a plane, the power ring just out of his grasp. Green Arrow was hanging out the plane's door yelling, "Fly, Lantern-- Fly or you'll fall to your death!" GL's response was "I can't-- I've lost the Power Ring!" I left this part out in the history, but it was an even better scene in the issue. Ollie jumped out of the plane, shooting the ring to GL on an arrow.
At the ripe old age of eleven, I thought it was incredibly cool that Green Lantern *and* Green Arrow co-starred in the same comic.
