MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 965: DR THORNE

(Fantastic Comics 014, 1941)

We open on a mysterious figure using backwards-talk magic to raise hundreds of spirits from their graves and shunt them into the Fourth Dimension. To what end? We shall learn that soon!

Flip Falcon, expert in all things fourth dimensional. is contacted by Dr Thorne of the Institute of Science asking for help with this problem. You might have noticed that Dr Thorne is also the name of Minor Super Villain 965, and that is because they are the same guy. This is a trap, and Flip should be able to see that because while the border between the Third Dimension and the Fourth has proven to be quite permeable over the course of his comic adventures the idea that the missing bodies have travelled interdimensionally should not occur to any but the perpetrator. 

Please also note that despite Dr Thorne's minions being consistently described as ghost of spirits, their bodies are also dug up as part of his little necromantic ritual. Perhaps Thorne did so so that there would be evidence to point at in order to draw Flip in?

Flip investigates and finds that the ghosts are indeed hanging around in the Fourth Dimension. He also finds (and is taken prisoner by) Dr Thorne, who knows that anyone hoping to engage in Fourth Dimensional villainy needs to take care of Flip Falcon first.

Flip is transported to Thorne's lab in his Castle of Misery (great name) where his dimensional energy-charged body is used as a battery to fill up the ghosts with extra ghost-energy that kills humans on contact. We can only speculate as to why Thorne is mass-murdering humans in this manner - perhaps its no more complicated than the classic necromancer's desire to create more ghostly minions.

For all that he has been a capable villain so far, Dr Thorne is in no way OSHA compliant, and he is electrocuted seemingly the instant a light tap from Flip causes him to sprawl over his instrument panel. Flip risks his life by touching the machinery long enough to turn it off, causing the ghosts on Earth to fall down "dead," and all that's left is the cleanup. That is, if these spirits were in fact housed in all of those missing bodies and those bodies are now littering the city streets. If they were indeed purely spiritual entities we might have a situation in which there are just incorporeal bodies everywhere and nothing can be done about it. Horrifying claim to fame for this poor city!