Scientist Bruce Dickson is on an expedition to conquer Mt. Kalapathia when he gets caught in a blizzard and is separated from the rest of his party. Seeking shelter in a glowing cave, Bruce muses to himself that maybe the cave contains a deposit of radium. However, the cave turns out to be a tunnel which leads to a secret valley. Bruce travels through the tunnel and, upon discovering this wondrous valley, passes out! Waking, he is confronted by the beings that live in this place. They tell him that all is fine with him now, since they have operated on him with "electronic rays" because he was "not perfect." This perfection is the ability to become thin and pliable. The citizens of the hidden land tell Bruce to concentrate, and he too will be able to become "thin."
The Council of Elders informs Bruce that he now must reside in the land of Kalahia and that he can never leave it. In very little time Bruce learns how to master the science of the Kalahians. Bruce tells the Council of Elders, with the aid Ollalla, the chief Elder’s daughter, that there is much evil in the outside world to be confronted. Bruce demonstrates this by taking one of the advanced "electronic television-telescopes" to peer upon an American city back in the United States, where the Elders can see for themselves that there is indeed much evil to be conquered.
Once convinced, the Elders allow Bruce and Ollalla to leave Kalahia in a "stratoplane," a perpetual motion machine, which is built from the metal duragen, which will last a 100 years! The pair wing their way back to the U.S.A. just in time to stop a crime spree against taxi drivers who are being extorted for money. Using his flexible powers as the Thin Man, Bruce defeats these evil doers, and he and Ollalla swear to stop all forms of evil wherever they find it! Sadly however, they would have only this one recorded adventure.
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Some people might think that the Thin Man is a second-rate version of the much more popular hero Plastic Man, but as Jess Nevins has pointed out, the Thin Man preceded Quality’s hero. The strip’s inspiration lies in Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Thin Man (1934). When the novel was adopted as a movie, audiences loved the banter between Charles (played by William Powell) and his wife and would-be partner Nora (played by Myrna Loy). A series of “Thin Man” movie sequels followed.
Like other Timely heroes, a lost race figures into his origin. Dickson is adopted into a race of thin men and receives his power from them. As a hero, he relies as much on the super-science of this lost race as he does on his special powers. And here another novel-turned-movie is the inspiration. James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933) tells of a party of travelers waylaid and taken to a Tibetan Utopia called Shangri-La. Conroy the novel’s hero falls in love with a woman from Shangri-La, just as Bruce Dickson does. And like the Thin Man he returns from the valley to the outer world (but only to return again). The novel had a wide vogue; Franklin Roosevelt even called his presidential retreat Shangri-La (now known as Camp David) and Lost Horizon along with the Shadow radio program made Tibet the “superhero capital of the world.”
Bruce Dickson’s powers were not the flamboyant stretching of Plastic Man, but more the power to become ribbon-thin. The Thin Man wouldn’t have afforded any artist the imaginative play that Jack Cole gave to Plas. Klaus Nordling gave the one-shot hero a certain charm that makes one wish that Timely had chronicled more of Bruce Dickson’s adventures.
Although he only appeared once in Mystic Comics the Thin Man was resurrected in 1976 as a member of the Liberty Legion and has appeared in the Invaders miniseries. Most recently, he was jailed by Captain America for killing Agent Axis who destroyed all of Kahlia.
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