Mystery Men Comics #6 - pt. 1

I'm pretty sure this information was all made-up in this poor man's Believe It Or Not -- but I'll be darned if these wouldn't make good plot hooks anyway...

This is The Green Mask, and it shows that even cultists tended to be handled with a racist/bigoted air in comics; the cultists are called both cultists and Hindus. And then there's that obvious anagram of Taj Mahal -- ugh...

We do see The Green Mask using a fence as one-time Supporting Cast.

Mind you, the idea of a "skull crown which gives its holder control of a vast robber tribe" seems like a potent trophy item.

Are they cultists, Hindus, robbers, or thieves? Make up your mind, story!  The cult leader is a trickster. The current entry for cultist in the Mobster Manual states that cult leaders are high priests, but that might need updating.

One of the earliest assassins in comics, or is a thug?  Now we have the original meaning of the word thug being conflated with all these other words. The assassin is overcome quickly, so don't really see what he can do -- though surprise attacks seem to be an important part of it.

I wonder, if this was a RP scenario, if the chase scene back to Carmella's home would have to be acted out...

And, speaking of badly obvious anagrams, we have El Rakif, for the word fakir.

That looks more like a spike than a knife to me, but I suppose it hurts a lot either way, and is just as terrifying. Game mechanically, I suppose the victim would get a save vs. science each turn to take half-damage from falling on the knife/spike, and the torturers don't have to worry about rolling to attack.

It's unclear if the paralyzer gun works like the Hold Person spell and affects multiple targets at once, or if he's firing multiple times and burning five charges. I like to think it's a weapon with charges, which explains why he uses it so sparingly.

Um, no...for one thing, a meteorite could not strike the Earth at such an oblique angle that it would shave the planet smooth like that; it would always produce a messy impact crater. And, really, if that map is even remotely accurate about the size of the impact site, we're talking extinction-level event here. Rex Dexter of Mars must be taking place in a post-Gamma World campaign setting.

Wow. I haven't seen anything that racist in a comic book in a while. Thank goodness it came out of a character's mouth and not the narrator!

Statting these creatures shouldn't be too hard; we have lots of slimes, oozes, jellies, and puddings to base them off of.

50 million miles from Earth means that Rex and Cinde were almost to Mars, but had to turn around and come back.

It seems odd that spaceports would be on Earth instead of in orbit. I wonder when the first off-Earth spaceport was dreamed up; I was not able to research this one.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)