Doctor Thirteen
54 years ago - Terry Thirteen is born.
36 years ago - 18-year-old Terry goes to college to study psychology.
34 years ago - 20-year-old Terry begins taking jobs debunking paranormal occurrences.
32 years ago - 22-year-old Terry gets his bachelors in psychology.
30 years ago - 24-year-old Terry gets his masters in psychology.
27 years ago - 27-year-old Terry gets his doctorate in parapsychology, He opens Doctor 13 Investigations, becoming a world leader in paranormal research.
24 years ago - 30-year-old Terry begins to confront paranormal occurrences that can't be explained.
21 years ago - 33-year-old Terry meets Meihui Lan, a full-blooded Homo Magi from Tibet. He begins pursuing magic worldwide to document and research it with her help.
15 years ago - 39-year-old Terry loses his wife Mei when she participates in the 4th Shadowpact and is immolated. Terry closes his investigative practice, focusing on his research.
12 years ago - 41-year-old Terry helps fellow investigator Ralph Dibney explore the history of the ancient ginko fruit.
5 years ago - 49-year-old Terry forbids his daughter Traci Thirteen from using her spellcraft to help people.
2 years ago - 52-year-old Terry discovers that Traci Thirteen disobeyed him. They have a falling out, and Traci leaves home, staying with Ralph & Sue Dibney for a while before getting her own place in Metropolis,
1 years ago - 53-year-old Terry is convinced to allow his daughter Traci Thirteen to use her powers to help people by Superman after she helps save him from Metallo.
There are a few characters in the pantheon of DC characters that loosely fill this particular character archetype; a trenchcoat wearing, magic wielding every man. The look of the archetype shifted from era to era, ultimately arriving in it's evolved form as John Constantine. While earlier characters like Doctor Occult & Mister E certainly have at least a bit of their own thing going on, it's not really necessary to include them all.
Obviously, Dr. Thirteen is an exception. He stands out because he's the absolute opposite of these other non-costumed mystics, because he's very specifically built as a professional skeptic. Originally, he was actually an antagonist of the Phantom Stranger, a professional debunker of Ghosts that was obsessed with proving that the Stranger was a fraud, which is a weird position for a character to be in when we, the readers, know unequivocally that he's NOT a fraud. Nonetheless, the character was popular enough to endure and eventually become the father to a very cool new character, Traci 13. To get our character to make a little more sense contextually we've tied his wife Meihui into the tapestery of the Shadowpact, and then shifted his career from debunking magic (kind of pointless once you watch it kill your wife) to cataloging it scientifically. |