Popular Comics #46 - pt. 1

We rejoin Toby here, and Toby and Oomog are not having fun on a tropical aisle. The appearance of the natives is clearly being played for laughs, but the fact that they're willing to drug their visitors with fruit that makes you doze off to sleep (unless you make a save vs. poison) makes exploring this island a dangerous adventure.

This is all world-building for Martan the Marvel Man. The year is 5000 on the planet Antaclea -- but that's by their calendar, not ours. The people of Antaclea look like Earthlings, but it seems like that's just a coincidence, given the extreme distance between worlds. Antaclea is more advanced than Earth and looks down on Earth, but at least Earth isn't bad like Mars -- those nasty Martians were at war with Antaclea in 3900 AD and wiped out 90% of the Antacleans. Only now has Antaclea rebuilt and is a restored utopia. Antaclea isn't unprotected any longer; those electric guns can wreck like an 11th level superhero with a range of the 40,000 miles, and I presume the flame rayguns are for shorter range, in case some gets past the electrical barrage. The problem with a "utopia" founded on guns, though...guns have a nasty habit of going off accidentally, and I bet a lot of people have been incinerated by planetary defenses just for not displaying their IPASS badges fast enough.

If the Martians did that to Antaclea, in a completely different

solar system, I do wonder how Earth endured. Perhaps Earth was seen as too primitive to bother with?

I'm already having problems with this story philosophically, but now the science starts getting super-shaky too. Antaclea has no oceans? Antaclea is 45 times the size of Earth? Jupiter is only 11 times the size of Earth, which makes Antaclea impossibly large for a non-gaseous planet. And what are "light miles" If the author means miles traveled at the speed of light, then Antaclea is closer than the moon and travel to Earth is near-instantaneous. If he means light years, then Antaclea is almost as far as the Andromeda Galaxy.

Economics-wise, we see that technology seems available to everyone, with interplanetary spacecraft being as common as cars.

There comes a point where the flavor text is so beyond simply wrecking something that you must be dealing with disintegration (save or be destroyed). In 1st edition, item saving throws were still a thing. In 2nd edition, if I really wanted to avoid using the wrecking things mechanic, I might let the pilot roll.

But what's all this nonsense, Martan? Are you saying that Earth would have a stronger gravity, despite being 1/45th Antaclea's size? Are you pulling Vana's leg?

Ah, the ultra-rare jungle-dwelling lions....I'm starting to wonder if this is some alternate Earth...

I like how their rayguns can be set to specific points of damage, with "x003" apparently being the setting for 1 point of damage. The question is, how high do those settings go? And is x999 really 333 points of damage?

At a higher setting, the raygun can even create fire -- a Wall of Fire, to be exact.

Evidence that the "number of appearing" for natives needs to be set pretty high.

This might look like a continuation of the same story, since this is by the same art team, but this is the Hurricane Kids. Here, we see how adventurous going fishing is off a time-lost prehistoric island and that they have to shoot at sharks (they must think they have a lot of bullets to spare) to protect their lunch.

I like the detail of the mud flow from the river, and how the inland river is concealed; the kids have to use their skills (i.e., concealed door check) to spot the river ingress.

That last panel gives us an understandably poor sense of scale, since a 20-ton sauropod tended to be 50' long, tip to tail, and would be hard to squeeze in a panel with the kids' boat.

Like I found with statting other dinosaurs, animals weighing in the range of tons don't stat easily when size and mass figure into Hit Dice. I would have to give this mommy 9 20-sided Hit Dice, which means those kids had better get out of there fast!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)