Jumbo Comics #10

It finally happened!  Jumbo Comics is now in color!

Sheena benefits from color, but the lion benefits from a narrator describing his actions as if it had human-level intelligence. It's a tradition going back at least as far as Tarzan to ascribe animals with names, motives, and cognitive thought. But is that fair to your players? It's up to each Editor to decide how smart animals and mobsters are in their games; Hideouts & Hoodlums 2nd edition will not be including an Intelligence stat for mobster types.

That's a weird muzzle on that cat, but I suspect that's supposed to be a leopard. Leopards are statted as cougars in H&H.

This leopard's hide, incidentally, becomes the swimsuit-like outfit that Sheena wears for the rest of her run (it must be machine washable).

This is Stuart Taylor in Weird Stories of the Supernatural, and if that long title doesn't sound familiar, this was The Diary of Dr. Hayward. Dr. Hayward had long since become supporting cast to Stuart in the title. Unresolved is their imprisonment by Ali Pasha, who was forcing Stuart to test his time travel machine for him; now all the good guys seem to be free to time travel on their own without worries.

Here, they are 20,000 years in the past, where they are running afoul of ape-men. Ape-men will be statted in 2nd ed. Here we see ape-men can be good archers.

A tyrannosaurus rex? Really? That looks more like a diplodicus to me. But my real issue is the tiger-man. I already have ape-men and ant-men -- do I need a different entry for every animal-headed man variant that comes along? Or do I need to drag out the beast-man from 1st ed. (found only in one issue of The Trophy Case and pretty much abandoned after that) and fold all of these into that?

It's pretty cool how the tiger-men can control tigers like that. They also seem to prefer human queens. Or are there no female tiger-men? This could get weird...

Still, I like the detail here, of this prehistoric setting. Not sure if tiger-men will survive to the present day, but maybe I'll find out as the story progresses.

I think these are the first bolas I've seen in comics! I may have to include them in the 2nd ed. rules now, alongside lariats.

Hawk of the Seas has now been shortened to The Hawk. Here we get a map and a really good sense of place. But is that any surprise, coming from the Eisner shop?

ZX-5 is looking particularly good in an Eisner-like way this month. Here we have a lonely castle in the middle of a really big lake. We also can see some of the layout of the castle, and how big and empty the rooms are.

More trouble with distinguishing nobles from spies. And are female spies also vamps?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)