When DC Comics brought back Green Lantern Hal Jordan as the Spectre--in their first attempt to appease pissed off comic book fans (this attempt came before the Internet's popularity had reached the point fans could dictate comic company policy--a power they've since lost, not realizing for all the Internet rumblings, the dollars were the real way to vote)--they got J.M. DeMatteis to write the series. However, before The Spectre series started, the Hal Jordan Spectre appeared in a Legends of the DC Universe story, Destroyer of Worlds, which gave readers a preview maybe. I don't know. I can't remember. I made up most of the previous paragraph. Sort of.
J.M. DeMatteis does some things really well and some things all right and he's usually interesting. When he's on, he's on though and Destroyer of Worlds certainly starts on the right path. DeMatteis goes first person with Hal Jordan deliberating with himself over his place in the universe. He's an agent of God now (the Spectre is the Wrath of Vengeance or something along those lines--the Spirit of Vengeance, sorry). DeMatteis does really well with this issue, because he's writing an impossible character, something so unbelievable, he can do anything. DeMatteis never goes wild, instead just getting some interesting things going. However, in the second issue, he switches narrators and keeps the new narrator for the rest of the story.
The second three issues are fine, but more about the bad guy than the Spectre or Hal Jordan. It reads a lot like DeMatteis's Dr. Fate limited series from the late 1980s, which--coincidentally--led immediately into his Dr. Fate ongoing series, just like Destroyer of Worlds leads into The Spectre series. For a little bit, DeMatteis plays with the idea of narrators and their relationships with the reader, but that aspect falls away, getting replaced with a silly story about a CIA psychic bringing about the end of the world. The Spectre meanwhile is... off doing something. Having hallucinations. Michael Zulli's art is kind of nice, though it's best when he's drawing nasty Spectre monsters (the Spectre has all these gruesome ways of killing sinners). Otherwise, he's just drawing short, muscle-bound guys and it gets boring.
Had I been reading this story back in 2001, I'm not sure if I would have read the resultant series. It's fine, but it's not particularly interesting after the first issue. I probably would have given the next series a cautious look, because DeMatteis might have done something interesting. It seems like he was getting ready to do it in Destroyer, but then forgot....
Not recommended