Best Comics #2

An early comic (the earliest?) from Better Publications filled with comic strip reprints, this issue begins with The Adventures of the Red Mask, a pretty obvious Phantom rip-off, but with some telling differences. The biggest difference is that the Red Mask, in at least some panels, is colored to look like a native African (though here, on the throne, he's colored as a white man). Also, unlike the Phantom who consorts with the more civilized tribes of Africa, the Red Mask's kingdom is shown here to be a bunch of headhunters.

It's also interesting that the Red Mask's people want to go to a hideout and loot it for treasure, and RM is trying to get them not to.

The party is split -- something some players and game referees really hate, but happens in comic books routinely. Here, Colonel Trent is tired of having to hang out with unnamed supporting cast members; he wants back in on the action! So he slips off from the plot that was offered to him, and finds a labyrinthine cavern complex behind a door. And there are more doors within the cave complex. Very D&D-like!  A stranger in the dungeon -- I mean, cave complex even tries to warn him away from a trap, but Trent is really stubborn and goes through the door anyway.

I'm tempted to point out the lizard in the black abyss, not because it's anything more than dressing in the background, but because "Lizard in the Black Abyss" would be a great title for a story...

The throne-evator that descends with the pull of a cord seemed worth sharing. Also, cavern flooding as a random encounter is highly unusual and bears remembering.

Although we're lead to believe that Robert Fear has somehow seduced this woman into risking her life for him after one meeting, I'd like to think there's some unknown motivation at work here. Regardless, I have no intention of adding seduction game mechanics to Hideouts & Hoodlums and would treat this as simply a very friendly encounter reaction result.

Not that I believe Robert Fear is a hero, but if he were, he could indeed skirt the restrictions on Heroes not being able to use poison by having a Supporting Cast Member administer it...

We're likely to never see The Adventures of Nervy Nerts here again, though I once thought the same thing about Seaweed Sam. Nervy Nerts' adventurers are fantasies and not to be taken serious, but there are elements in them that could definitely play out in an adventure if played serious. An example right off the bat there is giant fish, which we've seen as long ago on this blog as the first Captain Easy story.

I believe this is one of the first, if not the first, traditional mermaid in comic books. The risque toplessness has probably kept most publishers away from them to this point and, perhaps curiously, most mermen we've seen in comic books to this point have looked more like aliens.

Ball games were 50 cents? Seems legit.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)