Doctor Terence Thirteen is a long-lasting DC character with several careers. This post is about the first one. Dr. 13’s first appearance was in Star Spangled Comics #122 (November 1951), where he jumped to being the cover feature. (Before Thirteen it was Tomahawk, but his unusual adventures ended when Terry showed up. The frontiersman who faced off against Frankenstein, King Kong, giants and tiny people, returned to his roots of ordinary frontier fare.) Terence Thirteen, the Ghost-Breaker, would only get nine stories before Star Spangled Comics came to an end at #130. (There was a tenth, but more later.)
What makes Dr. Thirteen so unusual back in 1951, was his campaign to prove the supernatural does not exist. Taking a lesson from his father, Thirteen embraces the family name curse and becomes a paranormalist who debunks cases that appear to be of an occult nature. While taking on the mantle of previous DC ghostbreakers like Dr. Occult or Johnny Peril, he is in fact, the opposite.
Another regular is Dr. Thirteen’s fiancee, and later, wife, Marie Leeds. This feisty blond is ready to help and does, by pulling Terry back to his father’s original principles, that the supernatural is fake and hard evidence will always prove this. This attitude among ghostbreakers is different for a Golden Age comic, but DC had already embraced most of the impending Comics Code rules. The debunking of the supernatural was common through their comics of the period, such as the early episodes of Joe Kubert’s “The Viking Prince”, where Scandinavian gods and curses prove ordinary enough.
The series was written throughout by one writer who is not known. The artist was also consistent, Leonard Starr. Starr was an old-timer from the days of Timely’s Human Torch and Sub-Mariner. He later drew for EC Comics. By the early 1950s, he was at DC. In 1957, he would move onto ACG and their War and Horror comics. His work on Dr. Thirteen is solid though his panels tend to be small and the layout cramped.
All artwork by Leonard Starr
“I Talked to the Dead!” (Star Spangled Comics #122, November 1951) is the origin story of Terence Thirteen. His father is the one who raised him to be skeptical of the supernatural. They agree on a list of questions that a ghost should answer five years after the father’s death. The ghost knows all the answers, speaking with a weird voice through the grandfather clock. It is Marie who shows Terry the recording device his father left behind. The object was not to fool Terence but to show him a logical answer can always be found if you look hard enough.
“The Dolls of Doom!” (Star Spangled Comics #123, December 1951) has famous actors and politicians dying after their wax images are destroyed. The culprit is the artisan who makes the dolls, Amos Montola. He runs a shop where he makes the unique figures. Thirteen sets a trap for the dollmaker. When he discovers actor Howard Dore has paid $10,000 for his figure (you can’t be too careful!), Terry convinces him he can get his money back. The actor goes to the shop with Thirteen and forces Montola to drive a pin into Dore’s doll. The actor pretends to have a heart attack. Montola confesses to engineering the discovery of the dolls after the deaths. The story may have been inspired by A. Merritt’s Burn, Witch, Burn that filmed as The Devil Doll (1936) with Lionel Barrymore.
“Suicide Tower!” (Star Spangled Comics #124, January 1952) begins when Terry and Marie go to see the famous edifice. No one is allowed to go to the top because everyone who goes there ends up jumping. A newspaper man tries and dies. Later a movie star sends her man up there and he dies too. Finally, Terence Thirteen climbs the tower himself. He reads all the wall paintings about human sacrifice then stands on the ledge. The shape of the river below begins to hypnotize him. The ledge tilts the dizzy man forward. Thirteen saves himself by burning his hand with his lighter and breaking the hypnotic spell.
“The Hermit’s Ghost-Dog!” (Star Spangled Comics #125, February 1952) has Terry and Marie taking a break from ghosts at her uncle’s cabin. Unfortunately, trouble follows Dr. Thirteen. A man is found clawed and bitten to death, but there are no tracks surrounding the corpse. The couple come across an old blind man, Bart Harley, who claims it is his dead dog, Dirk, taking revenge on the three hunters who killed him in a hunting accident. Once again, Thirteen sets a trap that gets him attacked by the ghost dog. Only it isn’t a ghost but a real dog. The culprit is hunter number three, Acker. Having discovered uranium in the woods, he planned to kill his partners for the fortune in mining rights. A. Conan Doyle’s famous The Hound of the Baskervilles lurks behind this one.
“The Phantom of Paris!” (Star Spangled Comics #126, March 1952) sees Terry and Marie to Paris and its famous opera house. An actress is slain for real during a scene of murder. The phantom appears over the audience to laugh. Terry begins to search for the fiend. Later another actor is killed during a fake sword fight. The police reveal it was fast-acting poison. Terry sets a trap and catches the villain, Ferandel the prompter. Turns out his lack of success at writing opera scripts broke his mind. (Remember that: you can’t trust writers!) The inspiration here is obvious, Gaston Le Roux’s The Phantom of the Opera or the many movie versions.
“The Supernatural Alibi!” (Star Spangled Comics #127, April 1952) starts with a demonstration of how Dr. Thirteen debunks fake mediums. (In this he is like Harry Houdini.) Some mobsters grab him after the show. They take him to a secret hideout cave where the ghost will come to kill one of them. This is the ghost of Ed Salmon, a former mob boss who is lying in a hospital on an iron lung. The ghost appears, shooting one man to death. Shots at the ghost have no effect. Terry goes to the hospital to see Salmon. The man brags of the killings. The last mobster is shot the next night. Terry finds the man as he is dying. He shoots Thirteen by mistake. But nothing happens. The mobster’s bullets are blanks. With some examination Thirteen discovers the ladder that leads from the hospital room to a tunnel and a dummy of Salmon to put in the lung when he sneaks out. Ed Salmon dies of a heart attack, making Thirteen wonder about divine justice.
“The Girl Who Lived 5000 Years!” (Star Spangled Comics #128, May 1952) has a friend of Thirteen’s, Reed, commit suicide. Like three other young men he went to the Lamson Mansion to see Tateeka, the exotic woman who lived in Babylon five thousand years ago. The men paid a thousand dollars to date her for one night. Her beauty drove Reed to kill himself too. Terry pays the high fee to date Tateeka, which makes Marie a little jealous. Thirteen is so in love with Tateeka he goes to see her the night before he should. She complains of a run in her stocking. That night Terry calls Marie and asks her to help him. He goes for the date but Marie barges in, demanding her fiance back. Terry grabs Tateeka and tries to flee with her back through time. All this is a set-up to reveal the real game with Hendricks and Tateeka fleecing the young men then killing them. Tateeka has drugs in her gloves with which to drive Terry to killing himself. But Thirteen is ready for her. He has worn nose plugs. Terry reveals he knew it was all a con when Tateeka complained about the run in her stocking. Something only a modern woman would do.
“The Human Orchids!” (Star Spangled Comics #129, June 1952) has Senor Garitza, super-horticulturist, growing “exotic…and sometimes sinister…forms of plant life!” Terry goes with his friend, Wendell Drew, for a private auction. Garitza sells the seeds to his human orchid for $50,000. Later a thief breaks into the house but doesn’t steal the plant. Drew builds a special greenhouse for the plant and it grows to resemble a man. Marie faints when she sees it. While they tend to her, someone steals the plant. Terry sneaks back to Garitza’s place to find the nursery where the baby plants are making sounds, then the full grown plants. He quickly discovers they are fake. Garitza tries to kill him with his night crawler vine and ends up being eaten by his octopus cactus. Thirteen explains how the break-in wasn’t for theft but to plant the actor who would pretend to be a human orchid. It should be no surprise that this is my favorite one. Love those plant monsters!
“The Haunted Town!” (Star Spangled Comics #130, July 1952) begins with the town of Clayville crippled by superstition. They bring in Terry to get rid of the town’s curse. He learns the history of Clayville. A man who was hanged had to walk up thirteen steps to gallows. He cursed the town that day. The next day after Thirteen’s arrival, an actor who was to appear on the 13th is found dead. Terry offers to take his place. As he steps on to the stage he is almost hurt by a trap door. A local wax museum was closed when a thirteenth statue was added. Terry investigates that then finds a clue. A note states that the thirteenth book on the thirteen shelf with reveal the murderer — but whoever reads that book will die. Thirteen volunteers to go. When he goes to the shelf, it falls on him. He escapes in time to reveal the culprit. Thirteen had set up the book trick, covering the 13th book with glowing paint. The villain who snuck in earlier would have his hands glow. It is Hawley, the bank manager. He murdered his partner and all the thirteen gimmicks were to keep the hidden body secret. All the thirteens in this tale are enough to give you Triskaidekaphobia.
The House of Mystery Mystery
Buried at the end of The House of Mystery #7 (October 1952) is a story called “The Riddle of the Split Siamese Twins!”. Again, writer is not known but art is by Leonard Starr. This is a salvaged Thirteen story intended for Star Spangled Comics #131 (which never appeared). Terry and Marie go the circus to see the Belindas’ final performance as high wire stars. They are to be separated by surgery the next day. Even after the operation, what one brother feels, like being burnt by a cigar, the other does too.
The Belindas begin a strange new career, as the Robber Monster. Peppi commands Paul to do robberies through a mental link. Because a man can’t be arrested for willing a crime, Peppi is in the clear. Terry refuses to believe the set-up is supernatural. Working on some words Peppi said in a trance, Terry figures out that Paul will strike at the circus next. He does, trying to kill a man. When the two men are examined, they find no surgery scars. The brothers never were conjoined twins. The crimes were timed perfectly so they appeared to happen by mental link.
Later Careers
Terence Thirteen wasn’t finished with the cancelling of Star Spangled Comics #130 or The House of Mystery #7. He returned as a side character seventeen years later with The Phantom Stranger in Showcase #80 (February 1969) and after in The Phantom Stranger reboot (beginning May-June 1969). Later he would have his own stretch in Ghosts #95-99, 101-102 (1971). After he appeared in Batman, and on and on…. But more about those tales later!
