(Jackpot Comics 003, 1941)
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We meet Ford for the first time as he is knifing his fellow archaeologist Baker to death in an ancient Egyptian tomb, in order to be the sole possessor of the fabled Black Book of Sorcery which they have just found.
Two points about Ford right off the bat: 1. he is only ever called Ford. No first name, even! This is what I get for grumbling internally about how boring William Scott's name was. 2. He looks like the Devil. This makes sense in the context of a Mr Justice comic, as artist Sam Cooper was never shy about tying one's morality to their appearance, but in-universe, is it a reflection of the corruption of his soul or was he always that one archaeologist who looked like Satan?
Having secured the Black Book of Sorcery, Ford is now subject to critiques of how he uses it. His first effort involves raising the mummies that are housed in the temple from the dead in order to murder the remaining six archaeologists in the expedition and thus cover up his crime. I would call this a rash act, but then again I would probably try stealing the book before committing murder in the first place. I suppose Ford and I are just different people.
Next, he covers up the mummy murders by collapsing the entire temple on top of the bodies. This is a pretty wild stunt for an archaeologist of all people to pull, and on top of that it's not even a great way to conceal some bodies, as rubble is famously clearable. It's also a waste of a number of perfectly good mummies, mummies who might have been some help in cleaning up a crime scene.
Having made his way back to the unnamed city that both he and Mr Justice call home, Ford attempts to profit off of his new mastery of the necromantic arts by raising deceased millionaire's son John Grant from the dead to hit up his parents for a loan. Ethical considerations aside, this kind of thing isn't the worst way to make some dough via dark magic: you could emotionally blackmail the parents with the thought of their child being condemned to a miserable half-dead existence, or maybe use privileged family information to commit some sort of financial fraud or very precise burglary, for example.
Ford just sends Grant to bust down the front door and demand cash, which is a total bust as Grant's parents are left feeling more existentially horrified than inclined to pay out. Honestly, if smash-and-grab stuff like this is all that you're going to use necromancy for you might as well stick with the squad of beefcake mummies rather than raising up bespoke dead guys for every job.
This is the point that Mr Justice gets involved in the story, by the way. You can't do dark majick inside the borders of [CITY NAME NOT FOUND] and hope to escape his gaze.
For his final trick, Ford summons the very off-model spirit of Nero, "the most horrible tyrant the world has ever known" as a counter to Mr Justice. Nero in turn proposes a sort of ghost road trip to the Edge of Infinity to access the Immunity Vacuum and become immortal in a way that is distinct from the immortality already enjoyed by the souls of the dead in the Mr Justice cosmology.
Perhaps the Immunity Vacuum confers a version of immortality that prevents one's soul from being beaten up by another ghost and thrown into the "depths of eternal nothingness," never to emerge, and if it is it's too bad for Ford and Nero that the latter's chariot isn't faster because that's exactly what Mr Justice does to them.
Unsurprisingly, this kills Ford's body, which makes it simplicity itself for Mr Justice to collect the Black Book of Sorcery and use the convenient self-destruct spell that it holds to render it blank.
Categorized in: Accessories (Book of Magic), Day Jobs (Archaeologists), Supercrime (Necromancy)
