Over the last few years, I've occasionally stated in online discussions that Hugo Strange got the reboot treatment after COIE -- "reboot" meaning that all of his previous appearances were flushed down the toilet and forgotten by him, by Batman, and by any other characters who had participated in any of those old stories. Some of my fellow fans have disagreed with that assessment. Eventually I decided the matter deserved a really comprehensive explanation. I have been working on this timeline, off and on, for quite some time, with a lot of rereading of various stories along the way, in an attempt to explain just how I found myself forced to conclude, years ago, that Post-COIE Hugo Strange was a rebooted character who remembered none of the events from his Pre-COIE appearances!
Now I'm unleashing the results upon the world (long after I had previously estimated I would do so, but who's counting?). Be warned that most of this is summaries, with bits of commentary from yours truly, of many published stories, from 1940 on, which included Hugo Strange in a prominent role. If this subject doesn't sound absolutely fascinating to you, then your chances of being entertained as you read the rest of this piece are dubious. But don't say I didn't warn you right up front!
TIMELINE: THE SHIFTING CONTINUITY OF HUGO STRANGE
[Note: All dates are taken from whatever was printed on the cover of the comic book in question. That means that many of these stories were published a few months earlier than what I list.]
February, 1940. Detective Comics #36. Written by Bill Finger.
Batman has his first clash with the sinister criminal mastermind known as Professor Hugo Strange. Near as I can tell, in those days we were never told what subject Hugo had once taught as a professor. I've read this story, and the Professor comes across as a "Professor Moriarty type." His genius apparently lies in organizing and directing criminal activities. The most distinctive thing about this story is that the Professor is somehow generating incredibly thick fog to blanket the city and make it impossible for the cops to chase fleeing criminals after they have committed robberies. However, we discover by the end of the tale that the fog generator was built by a captive electrical engineer, so its use does not prove that the Professor himself is a brilliant engineer or chemist or any other type of scientist, for that matter!
Spring, 1940. Batman #1. Written by Bill Finger.
Hugo Strange demonstrates that he has found a way to turn men into gigantic monsters who will do his bidding. (To me, that sounds like biochemistry.) His master plan in this one is simply to have his monster men start terrifying people, making themselves loud and obvious menaces to draw the attention of the police, while Hugo and his more normal employees are quietly robbing banks the old-fashioned way!
December, 1940. Detective Comics #46. Written by Bill Finger.
The third and final "Golden Age appearance" of Professor Hugo Strange. In this one, his ambitions have grown considerably from the old goal of just taking over the Gotham rackets. Now he has invented a "fear dust" which does just what you'd expect something with that name to do. He's currently equipping hoodlums with spray guns so they can terrify cops and others during their robberies, but this is just the first step. At one point in the story, Hugo speaks of spraying his fear dust all over the country and then stepping into a new role as Dictator of America after none of the existing authorities retain the courage to resist him. It should come as no surprise to you to learn that Batman trounces the scoundrel long before he can put any such grandiose plan into effect. In fact, in another reminder of the old Holmes/Moriarty relationship, the two men finally clash on the edge of a cliff, and the Professor ends up taking the fall. Batman apparently believes the Professor is bound to have died from this fall, but I gather that no one in the Golden Age (neither in this story nor any other) ever claimed to have retrieved and identified the body!
(Note: This story was published several months before the debut of the Golden Age version of Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, who made fear-inducing chemicals his own specialty. I mention this in case you were wondering if Hugo had stolen the idea from Crane -- it is likelier to have happened the other way around, or else it was purely coincidental!)
The three stories I have just summarized were definitely "Golden Age," and thus presumably happened on Earth-2 of the old DC multiverse (even though it would be over 20 years after "Detective Comics #46" before anyone mentioned the names of "Earth-1" and "Earth-2"). At any rate, over a third of a century will pass before the name of Hugo Strange comes up again in a new story, but when it does, that story will be happening to the Bronze Age Batman of Earth-1, and thus it appears that these stories I've just listed are among the many Batman-related stories which happened much the same way at least twice to analogs of the same character concepts, first on Earth-2 and years later on Earth-1. You'll see what I mean in a moment!
August, 1977. Detective Comics #471. Written by Steve Englehart.
Bruce Wayne discovers he needs expert medical treatment for radioactive wounds suffered in a previous adventure, so he checks into an expensive, very discreet private clinic called Graytowers. Unfortunately, it turns out the so-called physician running the place is actually Hugo Strange (heavily disguised at first). After Bruce has changed into Batman and then has discovered the true identity of the mastermind, subsequent dialogue between the two men (along with attached footnotes) informs us that this Batman (the Earth-1 version, natch!) vividly remembers the events of those Golden Age stories in which he clashed with Hugo Strange. He even remembers Hugo's charming habit of turning men into gigantic, monstrous slaves (and as you might guess, Hugo is using that schtick all over again now).
As I said, it appears that the early Hugo Strange stories presumably happened in much the same way (but presumably a few decades apart) in both Earth-1 and Earth-2's history. (The same concept of "duplicated origins and past clashes" was already understood to apply to the origin stories of Joker, Two-Face, and various other people in Bat-continuity, by the way.)
On the final page of this story, Batman is rendered unconscious by a snakebite and then awakens to discover that, during his nap, Hugo Strange has yanked off the cowl to discover that Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, whom he now has at his mercy!
September, 1977. Detective Comics #472. Written by Steve Englehart.
Keeping Bruce confined and heavily sedated, Hugo Strange amuses himself by wearing a mask and changing his voice to create what is evidently a brilliant impersonation of Bruce Wayne. He shows up at Bruce's office each day and begins looting the Wayne financial empire. Then he decides to sell Batman's secret identity to the highest bidder -- but please don't ask me why he needs to bother when he already has all of Bruce Wayne's material assets at his fingertips! At any rate, Hugo puts out feelers through an underworld grapevine to get well-heeled interested parties to show up at a certain time and place to discuss an auction.
The three invitees who attend the first late-night meeting are Boss Thorne, The Penguin, and The Joker. Hugo announces the rules of the game -- chiefly, that he expects each serious bidder to pay ten thousand dollars in cold cash right now in order to stay in the running (and they all comply!) -- then he assures them the serious bidding for Batman's secret identity will start tomorrow at midnight.
Hugo's faith in three cold-blooded villains' willingness to slavishly abide by his rules and patiently wait until tomorrow night for an "honest" auction is truly remarkable. (You also might call it "breathtakingly naive," but that still qualifies as "truly remarkable!") After this meeting breaks up, we learn that Boss Thorne has men waiting nearby and they ambush Hugo on the street outside, shooting down his gigantic bodyguards with trank darts and then dragging Hugo Strange off to a nice quiet basement where they pound on him, over and over, trying to persuade him to share Batman's secret with Boss Thorne for free. Hugo stubbornly refuses to talk, and finally the thugs announce he's died under their fists.
(Note: At the start of the next issue, they have already stuffed his body into a weighted barrel and they toss it into the river as we watch. I won't bother giving that its own listing, though. Mainly because we didn't even see the body; we were merely told it was inside the barrel!)
March-April, 1978. Detective Comics #476. Written by Steve Englehart.
In the last few issues, since that barrel got tossed into the river, Boss Thorne has occasionally thought he saw and heard the ghostly figure of Hugo Strange menacing him. On at least one such occasion, there were a couple of other people in the vicinity who didn't seem to see or hear anything out of the ordinary!
Now Thorne is driving down a highway alone when he suddenly thinks he sees Hugo's ghost out in front of the car, and then it seems to come through the windshield at Thorne (without actually damaging the windshield, you understand) and grabs him by the throat. This scene ends at that point, but later on we see Batman get the news that Boss Thorne has been found, apparently gone loony, raving about how he killed Hugo Strange and then the ghost came back to persecute him, et cetera.
So "Detective Comics #472" was the last we saw of Hugo alive, and #476 is the last we see of Hugo as a ghost, at least for the next four years or so. (This long gap may have something to do with the fact that Steve Englehart's run on 'Tec ended with this story. If he had stuck around for a few more years, who knows what sort of follow-up he might have provided?)
January, 1982. The Brave and the Bold #182. Written by Alan Brennert.
We get some follow-up information on the Earth-2 Hugo Strange, whose only previous appearances had been the first three stories summarized on this timeline. Basically: He somehow survived the fall at the end of his last appearance, but was crippled and deformed by the massive damage his body suffered. For the next 40 years or so, the Batman and Robin of Earth-2 (along with anyone else who cared) had heard nothing more from Hugo and assumed he was long dead. At the end of this story, he dies for real -- by his own hand, having decided he has nothing left to live for. That makes just four stories, to the best of my knowledge, which ever featured the "original" version of Hugo Strange. Remember, though, that his three "Golden Age" stories apparently had also happened, in much the same way, to the Earth-1 versions of Batman and Hugo Strange, many years later -- but without the Earth-1 Hugo having suffered any lasting injuries from a nasty fall. (Note: The Earth-1 Batman is involved in this tale, and mentions in passing that the Hugo Strange of his Earth has been dead for over a year.)
April, 1982. Detective Comics #513. Written by Gerry Conway.
Boss Thorne seems to be sitting on top of the world. He has already been back in the center of Gotham politics (unbeknownst to the public) for awhile at this point. After being released from a sanitarium, he started working behind the scenes as a puppet master, and used some dirty tricks to get a man named Hamilton Hill elected as Gotham's new mayor. Thorne basically owns Hill, body and soul; he is obviously confident that Mayor Hill will do anything Thorne pleases. (One example is firing Commissioner Gordon and replacing him with a man named Pauling who just happens to be another of Thorne's stooges.) For our purposes, the most important thing about this issue is that Thorne suddenly looks at a drinking glass in his hand and thinks he sees a miniature image of Hugo Strange's face staring back at him and saying some mocking words.
This sort of thing will happen again and again to Thorne over the next several months as a running subplot. (Well, "several months" from the viewpoint of anyone in the real world who was buying the issues as they came out. It probably happened faster from Rupert Thorne's point of view.)
December, 1982. Batman #354. Written by Gerry Conway.
In a previous issue of "Detective Comics," Boss Thorne made an astute decision. He hired Terrence Thirteen (also known as "Doctor Thirteen, the ghostbreaker") to investigate the way Thorne's been haunted recently by visions of Hugo Strange. Now Thirteen is ready to deliver a report. Just before this issue began, he examined Graytowers (reportedly abandoned and uninhabited since the days of the Englehart stories) and found sophisticated machinery set up to project a ghostly hologram of Hugo Strange, while simultaneously activating a tape player with a spooky, threatening message which mentions Thorne by name. If you open the door to a certain lab inside the building, and step inside, the ghostly manifestation begins fifteen seconds later. Whoever set this up was obviously "playing the odds" by assuming the most likely person to come poking around in Graytowers in the near future would be Boss Thorne, if he ever worked up the nerve.
While explaining all this to Thorne, Doctor Thirteen conjectures (correctly, I'm sure) that a thorough examination of Thorne's office and townhouse would turn up other such devices concealed in useful places; all part of an elaborate special-effects campaign geared to drive Thorne out of his mind (or convince him he had gone out of his mind, which would amount to much the same thing?).
However, Doctor Thirteen has not found evidence pointing at any particular person as the unseen mastermind for this scheme, so naturally he asks if Thorne has any enemies who'd like to see him sent back to a sanitarium. Thorne leaps to the conclusion that Hill and Pauling (his pet mayor and his pet police commissioner, remember?) must be getting too big for their britches. Tired of being his minions; anxious to shake him off and then run the city as they see fit. Later in this story Thorne confronts those two, gun in hand, ranting about what he thinks they've been doing to double-cross him. Both men seem very confused by his accusations. Eventually Thorne shoots Pauling dead at the same time that a cop shoots Thorne. Boss Thorne's injury is nonfatal, as it turns out -- presumably he'll end up in a sanitarium all over again, but I don't think he ever gets any further appearances in the Pre-COIE, Earth-1 continuity, so who knows? Hamilton Hill, however, panics and drops to the floor just in time to dodge the gunfire; he will continue running things at City Hall for many, many issues after this -- no longer under the thumb of Boss Thorne or anyone else, but still corrupt!
On the final page of this story, we see a limo parked not far from the scene of the shooting. Then we find that sitting in the back seat, looking very much alive, is . . . Professor Hugo Strange, laughing his head off! Evidently he has now managed to drive Boss Thorne into a mental breakdown, twice in a row! (Hugo is obviously one of those sadistic villains who really know how to hold a grudge. Not for him anything so quick and merciful as simply shooting Thorne dead and calling it square.)
Note: At this moment, Batman and his friends still have no idea of what's really been going on where Boss Thorne's latest mental breakdown is concerned. They are aware that Thorne has been babbling something about the ghost of Hugo Strange, and about Pauling and Hill secretly being out to get him, and so forth -- standard paranoid stuff, you know? -- but they seem to think it only proves that Rupert Thorne was just plain nuts.
Now I'm unleashing the results upon the world (long after I had previously estimated I would do so, but who's counting?). Be warned that most of this is summaries, with bits of commentary from yours truly, of many published stories, from 1940 on, which included Hugo Strange in a prominent role. If this subject doesn't sound absolutely fascinating to you, then your chances of being entertained as you read the rest of this piece are dubious. But don't say I didn't warn you right up front!
TIMELINE: THE SHIFTING CONTINUITY OF HUGO STRANGE
[Note: All dates are taken from whatever was printed on the cover of the comic book in question. That means that many of these stories were published a few months earlier than what I list.]
February, 1940. Detective Comics #36. Written by Bill Finger.
Batman has his first clash with the sinister criminal mastermind known as Professor Hugo Strange. Near as I can tell, in those days we were never told what subject Hugo had once taught as a professor. I've read this story, and the Professor comes across as a "Professor Moriarty type." His genius apparently lies in organizing and directing criminal activities. The most distinctive thing about this story is that the Professor is somehow generating incredibly thick fog to blanket the city and make it impossible for the cops to chase fleeing criminals after they have committed robberies. However, we discover by the end of the tale that the fog generator was built by a captive electrical engineer, so its use does not prove that the Professor himself is a brilliant engineer or chemist or any other type of scientist, for that matter!
Spring, 1940. Batman #1. Written by Bill Finger.
Hugo Strange demonstrates that he has found a way to turn men into gigantic monsters who will do his bidding. (To me, that sounds like biochemistry.) His master plan in this one is simply to have his monster men start terrifying people, making themselves loud and obvious menaces to draw the attention of the police, while Hugo and his more normal employees are quietly robbing banks the old-fashioned way!
December, 1940. Detective Comics #46. Written by Bill Finger.
The third and final "Golden Age appearance" of Professor Hugo Strange. In this one, his ambitions have grown considerably from the old goal of just taking over the Gotham rackets. Now he has invented a "fear dust" which does just what you'd expect something with that name to do. He's currently equipping hoodlums with spray guns so they can terrify cops and others during their robberies, but this is just the first step. At one point in the story, Hugo speaks of spraying his fear dust all over the country and then stepping into a new role as Dictator of America after none of the existing authorities retain the courage to resist him. It should come as no surprise to you to learn that Batman trounces the scoundrel long before he can put any such grandiose plan into effect. In fact, in another reminder of the old Holmes/Moriarty relationship, the two men finally clash on the edge of a cliff, and the Professor ends up taking the fall. Batman apparently believes the Professor is bound to have died from this fall, but I gather that no one in the Golden Age (neither in this story nor any other) ever claimed to have retrieved and identified the body!
(Note: This story was published several months before the debut of the Golden Age version of Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, who made fear-inducing chemicals his own specialty. I mention this in case you were wondering if Hugo had stolen the idea from Crane -- it is likelier to have happened the other way around, or else it was purely coincidental!)
The three stories I have just summarized were definitely "Golden Age," and thus presumably happened on Earth-2 of the old DC multiverse (even though it would be over 20 years after "Detective Comics #46" before anyone mentioned the names of "Earth-1" and "Earth-2"). At any rate, over a third of a century will pass before the name of Hugo Strange comes up again in a new story, but when it does, that story will be happening to the Bronze Age Batman of Earth-1, and thus it appears that these stories I've just listed are among the many Batman-related stories which happened much the same way at least twice to analogs of the same character concepts, first on Earth-2 and years later on Earth-1. You'll see what I mean in a moment!
August, 1977. Detective Comics #471. Written by Steve Englehart.
Bruce Wayne discovers he needs expert medical treatment for radioactive wounds suffered in a previous adventure, so he checks into an expensive, very discreet private clinic called Graytowers. Unfortunately, it turns out the so-called physician running the place is actually Hugo Strange (heavily disguised at first). After Bruce has changed into Batman and then has discovered the true identity of the mastermind, subsequent dialogue between the two men (along with attached footnotes) informs us that this Batman (the Earth-1 version, natch!) vividly remembers the events of those Golden Age stories in which he clashed with Hugo Strange. He even remembers Hugo's charming habit of turning men into gigantic, monstrous slaves (and as you might guess, Hugo is using that schtick all over again now).
As I said, it appears that the early Hugo Strange stories presumably happened in much the same way (but presumably a few decades apart) in both Earth-1 and Earth-2's history. (The same concept of "duplicated origins and past clashes" was already understood to apply to the origin stories of Joker, Two-Face, and various other people in Bat-continuity, by the way.)
On the final page of this story, Batman is rendered unconscious by a snakebite and then awakens to discover that, during his nap, Hugo Strange has yanked off the cowl to discover that Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, whom he now has at his mercy!
September, 1977. Detective Comics #472. Written by Steve Englehart.
Keeping Bruce confined and heavily sedated, Hugo Strange amuses himself by wearing a mask and changing his voice to create what is evidently a brilliant impersonation of Bruce Wayne. He shows up at Bruce's office each day and begins looting the Wayne financial empire. Then he decides to sell Batman's secret identity to the highest bidder -- but please don't ask me why he needs to bother when he already has all of Bruce Wayne's material assets at his fingertips! At any rate, Hugo puts out feelers through an underworld grapevine to get well-heeled interested parties to show up at a certain time and place to discuss an auction.
The three invitees who attend the first late-night meeting are Boss Thorne, The Penguin, and The Joker. Hugo announces the rules of the game -- chiefly, that he expects each serious bidder to pay ten thousand dollars in cold cash right now in order to stay in the running (and they all comply!) -- then he assures them the serious bidding for Batman's secret identity will start tomorrow at midnight.
Hugo's faith in three cold-blooded villains' willingness to slavishly abide by his rules and patiently wait until tomorrow night for an "honest" auction is truly remarkable. (You also might call it "breathtakingly naive," but that still qualifies as "truly remarkable!") After this meeting breaks up, we learn that Boss Thorne has men waiting nearby and they ambush Hugo on the street outside, shooting down his gigantic bodyguards with trank darts and then dragging Hugo Strange off to a nice quiet basement where they pound on him, over and over, trying to persuade him to share Batman's secret with Boss Thorne for free. Hugo stubbornly refuses to talk, and finally the thugs announce he's died under their fists.
(Note: At the start of the next issue, they have already stuffed his body into a weighted barrel and they toss it into the river as we watch. I won't bother giving that its own listing, though. Mainly because we didn't even see the body; we were merely told it was inside the barrel!)
March-April, 1978. Detective Comics #476. Written by Steve Englehart.
In the last few issues, since that barrel got tossed into the river, Boss Thorne has occasionally thought he saw and heard the ghostly figure of Hugo Strange menacing him. On at least one such occasion, there were a couple of other people in the vicinity who didn't seem to see or hear anything out of the ordinary!
Now Thorne is driving down a highway alone when he suddenly thinks he sees Hugo's ghost out in front of the car, and then it seems to come through the windshield at Thorne (without actually damaging the windshield, you understand) and grabs him by the throat. This scene ends at that point, but later on we see Batman get the news that Boss Thorne has been found, apparently gone loony, raving about how he killed Hugo Strange and then the ghost came back to persecute him, et cetera.
So "Detective Comics #472" was the last we saw of Hugo alive, and #476 is the last we see of Hugo as a ghost, at least for the next four years or so. (This long gap may have something to do with the fact that Steve Englehart's run on 'Tec ended with this story. If he had stuck around for a few more years, who knows what sort of follow-up he might have provided?)
January, 1982. The Brave and the Bold #182. Written by Alan Brennert.
We get some follow-up information on the Earth-2 Hugo Strange, whose only previous appearances had been the first three stories summarized on this timeline. Basically: He somehow survived the fall at the end of his last appearance, but was crippled and deformed by the massive damage his body suffered. For the next 40 years or so, the Batman and Robin of Earth-2 (along with anyone else who cared) had heard nothing more from Hugo and assumed he was long dead. At the end of this story, he dies for real -- by his own hand, having decided he has nothing left to live for. That makes just four stories, to the best of my knowledge, which ever featured the "original" version of Hugo Strange. Remember, though, that his three "Golden Age" stories apparently had also happened, in much the same way, to the Earth-1 versions of Batman and Hugo Strange, many years later -- but without the Earth-1 Hugo having suffered any lasting injuries from a nasty fall. (Note: The Earth-1 Batman is involved in this tale, and mentions in passing that the Hugo Strange of his Earth has been dead for over a year.)
April, 1982. Detective Comics #513. Written by Gerry Conway.
Boss Thorne seems to be sitting on top of the world. He has already been back in the center of Gotham politics (unbeknownst to the public) for awhile at this point. After being released from a sanitarium, he started working behind the scenes as a puppet master, and used some dirty tricks to get a man named Hamilton Hill elected as Gotham's new mayor. Thorne basically owns Hill, body and soul; he is obviously confident that Mayor Hill will do anything Thorne pleases. (One example is firing Commissioner Gordon and replacing him with a man named Pauling who just happens to be another of Thorne's stooges.) For our purposes, the most important thing about this issue is that Thorne suddenly looks at a drinking glass in his hand and thinks he sees a miniature image of Hugo Strange's face staring back at him and saying some mocking words.
This sort of thing will happen again and again to Thorne over the next several months as a running subplot. (Well, "several months" from the viewpoint of anyone in the real world who was buying the issues as they came out. It probably happened faster from Rupert Thorne's point of view.)
December, 1982. Batman #354. Written by Gerry Conway.
In a previous issue of "Detective Comics," Boss Thorne made an astute decision. He hired Terrence Thirteen (also known as "Doctor Thirteen, the ghostbreaker") to investigate the way Thorne's been haunted recently by visions of Hugo Strange. Now Thirteen is ready to deliver a report. Just before this issue began, he examined Graytowers (reportedly abandoned and uninhabited since the days of the Englehart stories) and found sophisticated machinery set up to project a ghostly hologram of Hugo Strange, while simultaneously activating a tape player with a spooky, threatening message which mentions Thorne by name. If you open the door to a certain lab inside the building, and step inside, the ghostly manifestation begins fifteen seconds later. Whoever set this up was obviously "playing the odds" by assuming the most likely person to come poking around in Graytowers in the near future would be Boss Thorne, if he ever worked up the nerve.
While explaining all this to Thorne, Doctor Thirteen conjectures (correctly, I'm sure) that a thorough examination of Thorne's office and townhouse would turn up other such devices concealed in useful places; all part of an elaborate special-effects campaign geared to drive Thorne out of his mind (or convince him he had gone out of his mind, which would amount to much the same thing?).
However, Doctor Thirteen has not found evidence pointing at any particular person as the unseen mastermind for this scheme, so naturally he asks if Thorne has any enemies who'd like to see him sent back to a sanitarium. Thorne leaps to the conclusion that Hill and Pauling (his pet mayor and his pet police commissioner, remember?) must be getting too big for their britches. Tired of being his minions; anxious to shake him off and then run the city as they see fit. Later in this story Thorne confronts those two, gun in hand, ranting about what he thinks they've been doing to double-cross him. Both men seem very confused by his accusations. Eventually Thorne shoots Pauling dead at the same time that a cop shoots Thorne. Boss Thorne's injury is nonfatal, as it turns out -- presumably he'll end up in a sanitarium all over again, but I don't think he ever gets any further appearances in the Pre-COIE, Earth-1 continuity, so who knows? Hamilton Hill, however, panics and drops to the floor just in time to dodge the gunfire; he will continue running things at City Hall for many, many issues after this -- no longer under the thumb of Boss Thorne or anyone else, but still corrupt!
On the final page of this story, we see a limo parked not far from the scene of the shooting. Then we find that sitting in the back seat, looking very much alive, is . . . Professor Hugo Strange, laughing his head off! Evidently he has now managed to drive Boss Thorne into a mental breakdown, twice in a row! (Hugo is obviously one of those sadistic villains who really know how to hold a grudge. Not for him anything so quick and merciful as simply shooting Thorne dead and calling it square.)
Note: At this moment, Batman and his friends still have no idea of what's really been going on where Boss Thorne's latest mental breakdown is concerned. They are aware that Thorne has been babbling something about the ghost of Hugo Strange, and about Pauling and Hill secretly being out to get him, and so forth -- standard paranoid stuff, you know? -- but they seem to think it only proves that Rupert Thorne was just plain nuts.
