Comic Review Justin Gray Dr Terrence Thirteen The Haunted Highwayman

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2013 DC Comics – Spoiler alerts Possibly the most boring name ever given to a comic book hero, and sadly, his adventures are not much better. Essentially Doctor 13 is a steampunk private detective in the American West, using Sherlock Holmes style deduction to debunk claims about the paranormal. He is summoned to deal with an apparent ghostly highwayman, who the reader has already seen wearing body armour and carrying a flame thrower rather than pistols. Thirteen leaps to deductions that are already easily deducible to he reader, that the villain is an intelligent human, not a ghost. He realizes that only an academic professor could access the equipment to make such weaponry. How 13 and his associates know where the villain will attack next to be sure they are on the scene is unstated. Thirteen is set alight by the flame-thrower but brushes the flames off without even looking concerned or explaining how he is fireproof. He then goes to the villain’s lair to take the miscreant on. In the fight they have, a gun goes off, killing the evil professor’s wheelchair bound wife. The Highwayman had been committing his crimes to raise money in hope of gaining her a cure. Thirteen states coldly that her death was not his fault. Despite his heavy handed tactic in arresting the Professor contributing to the poor woman’ death. The Professor is hanged cursing the Doctor, but Thirteen is not worried by the threat as it wold need supernatural elements to make it work. Doctor 13 is a contrived and lazy, even unlikable character, a fusion of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger character, and given absurdly easy mysteries to solve. He is also indifferent to the deaths of innocent bi-standers such as the killer’s wife and a negro killed by the flame thrower attack he himself survives. The writing is as humourless and robotic as the Doctor appears to be. (I don’t know if the hero is actually a robot or not). Arthur Chappell