Random Happenstance

The other day we saw a Superman/Batman comic, where Batman goes on and on about not believing in magic, despite having seen it personally about 900 times, and saying that to none other than Zatanna. The whole thing felt like Bats running a smear campaign on himself, to keep himself outta Zatanna's fishnets...seriously, the Spectre, Deadman, Dr. friggin' Fate; Batman's just being a stubborn jerk. Unless he trained under this guy, I suppose. From 1998, Vertigo Visions: Dr. Thirteen, "Do AI's Dream of Electric Sheep?" Written and inked by Matt Howarth, pencils by Michael Avon Oeming; cover by Cliff Nielsen. And, it is some nerve that the cover is "Doctor 13" while the indica is "Dr. Thirteen." Let's not optimize our search in any way, shape, or form...

We saw the good Doctor earlier this year in a Batman appearance, but this was one of a fistful of Vertigo one-shots with pretty decent creative teams trying to put that Vertigo spin on...charitably, also-rans and nobodys. Well, to 'actually' that, I suppose Tomahawk had been a big seller, maybe twenty or thirty years prior. The Phantom Stranger was probably the best known of the lot, and I'm not sure they drove as hard into the paint with him as they could; or as had been done with Swamp Thing or the Doom Patrol. Or, maybe you can't go nuts with the Phantom Stranger, because the mainstream DCU still used him here and there; but Dr. Terrence Thirteen you could probably break and throw away, who would say anything? Also, the Doctor is so unlikable; there would probably be a market for that. This issue opens with him and his long-suffering wife Marie on their way to counseling, because his unwavering commitment to "skeptical rationalism" made him a smug, condescending bastard 24 hours a day. His declaration "I am the sanest man alive!" would be tough to live with, you have to admit.

Meanwhile, a terminally ill, magic-obsessed programmer had created an A.I. version of himself; which was running faster than the real world and getting anxious to acquire more knowledge. The A.I, Desi, makes duplicates of itself to try and get past the local firewalls, but one is corrupted into "Izzy" and plots to conquer the outside world; while the programmer appears to have a conversation with a banshee he booked out as Elvis's ghost. (?) And after making a scene at a "haunted" art gallery that Marie had invested in, the next day Terrence tries to withdraw some cash, and finds Marie had closed him out, and she tells him she was leaving him. Predictably, Terrence is more upset that this would interfere with his quest for truth, but that attracts the attention of Desi, who wants him to stop Izzy. (Terrence also caught a bit of a beating, from mouthing off to some leather-types at the gallery.)

Since he had no interest in money, Terrence finds himself living in a terrible apartment; then sees an old colleague, Dr. Rintelb, pitching a book on skeptical rationalism on an infomercial--only $47 even, with a free brain-shaped ashtray! He storms the TV station the next day, and Rintelb is disturbed to see "a brilliant investigator" now an unshaven wreck, but brings him in on the current phenomenon: recently, numerous old TV shows were transferred from tape to digital. Except, there were strange crossovers, like Lucy and Ethel in "I Dream of Jeannie" or Mr. Ed on Baywatch. Furious, Terrence assumes it was a hoax, a plot against him and the truth, and storms out...as the building seems to distort around him. He ends up in Izzy's office: the rogue AI had taken over the network, and tomorrow the world, and it won't let Dr. Thirteen stop him! Particularly since Dr. Thirteen has no idea what he's on about, and couldn't care less. Still, Izzy had a series of "virtual reality hells" ready for him, which Terrence has trouble with, even though he was told it was VR right up front! Head in the game, man.

Desi tries to help Terrence, who is stuck in his earlier drive with Marie; and the A.I. starts to think he picked the wrong horse. An unlikable horse at that. Desi has to go back to the programmer for help, and he traps Izzy and frees Terrence. Terrence accepts the explanation of virtual realities and AI's as rational, but then lashes out at the programmer for his main job, at the Promethean Agency, which rented out ghosts and supernatural events, presumably created by technology, but exploiting people's belief in lies. And that's when the camera pulls back, showing Terrence in an asylum, delusional and violent; although Marie still loved him there, which might not have even been the case in his own mind. The Desi AI continues the programmer's work, trying to bring magic to the masses and replace technology, and now had Izzy's TV network to work through, after Izzy's download disk is placed on a space probe. Between the VR trips and Thirteen's delusions, I'm not sure how much of the comic was 'real,' although there did appear to still be a Desi, so...

Terrence Thirteen had appeared sporadically in the current DC continuity; but largely now because his daughter Traci was more of a hit. Also, and you see this a lot in old TV shows and such, but why is the default high moral ground "I wouldn't touch your filthy money" and not "you can't be trusted with cash, yoink!"