As I mentioned back in June, when the Phantom Stranger debuted in Showcase I had no idea he was an established character getting a second chance. If I’d read the issue at the time it came out, I’m not sure I’d have given him one.
Cool as I found that Neal Adams cover, I doubt I’d have liked Bill Draut’s interior art as a kid any better than I do now. And the story by Mike Friedrich — well, let me tell you about it.
We open with a group of kids hiding in a cave outside their town, afraid of a curse that’s supposed to strike. The Phantom Stranger appears and tells them a story about another curse, “The Three Signs of Evil.” An artist unintentionally angers a black magic cult but fortunately the Phantom Stranger’s there to stave off their attacks. It’s a reprint from the Stranger’s original series, though not identified as such. I’d have probably assumed Carmine Infantino’s art meant this was a kind of horror anthology with different creators involved, like House of Mystery.
The Stranger disappears but Dr. Thirteen, the legendary “ghost breaker” 
shows up with his wife. Well, as legendary as you can get after nine issues of Star-Spangled Comics 20 years earlier, though he did get the cover story for all of them (art by Leonard Starr)
Dr. Thirteen tells the kids there’s no such thing as ghosts or phantoms. To prove it he recounts his family history (scientists and visionaries constantly accused of heresy or witchcraft) and the (reprint) story of how his father trained him to complete skepticism.
The Stranger reappears, telling Terry Thirteen it’s good to see him again; Dr. Thirteen replies that they’ve never met and he’s not impressed by the Stranger’s spooky stunts. However as they’re both there to break the curse, Thirteen agrees to team up, though challenging the Phantom Stranger to avoid any more parlor tricks.
The curse is a flying monster that attacks the town every fifty years. This time out, it’s a tricked-out helicopter used to panic everyone while criminals loot the town. The Phantom Stranger appears inside the chopper and brings it down while Thirteen tackles the hoods below. The story wraps up quickly — the reprints used up most of the book — and as Dr. Thirteen declares he was right all along, he discovers the Stranger’s vanished. PO’d, he declares that the next time they meet, he’s going to unmask him as the cheap charlatan he is.
This obviously worked as the book went to series, with Bill Draut providing the cover for #1. The first few issues followed the same format: Thirteen and the Phantom Stranger wind up on the same case, Dr. Thirteen cusses out the Stranger and usually accuses him of being hand in glove with the bad guys. The Stranger recounts a story of Real Supernatural Stuff, Thirteen counts with a story of Fake Supernatural Stuff.
I presume Friedrich was shooting for some Marvel-style character conflict. The constant clashes annoyed me as a kid (I picked up an issue as one of my rare comics purchases before I began reading them again full-time) and they’re really forced. There’s no reason for Dr. Thirteen to be so hostile, let along accuse the stranger of being a villain. And as we know the Phantom Stranger’s a good guy and a genuine supernatural character, Dr. Thirteen looks like an idiot. He isn’t — his stories show he’s first-rate at breaking phony ghosts — and making him look like a fool weakens him as a character.
It would have made more sense to go softer, giving them more of a Scully/Mulder vibe when they squabble over whether they’re dealing with magic or not. Show Dr. Thirteen knows the Phantom Stranger is a good guy, but that makes Terry even more baffled why he fakes the spooky stuff. That would have worked better for me. In his later run on the book Len Wein offered an explanation for their antagonism — it’s maddening for a ghost-breaker to meet a ghost he can’t break — but it still wasn’t enough.
I’ll be back soon (I hope) for a look at the series that followed.
