This issue is a flashback to when The Batman was still in Paris (from 2-3 issues ago). Bruce runs into a faceless man and, because he didn't read Dick Tracy when he fought The Blank, is really shocked. I wonder if I should stat a mobster type called Faceless Men who have a Scare Good Guy power...?
To a modern reader, "Duc D'Orterre, Master of the Apaches" might need translation. The first half is French for "Duke of Orterre," while the second half is (obviously) English, and is referring to (according to Wikipedia) "a Parisian Belle Époque violent criminal underworld subculture of early 20th-century hooligans, night muggers, street gangs and other criminals," and not American Indians. Orterre is a fictional duchy in France and is closest to Orléans of real French duchy names.
Throwing a missile weapon, like a throwing dagger, through the open window of a taxi car can't be easy, so it's no wonder the Apache tossing at Karel misses. Karel would normally just have soft cover from the car door, but given the odd angle the dagger seems to have come from into the vehicle (almost from in front of the taxi!), I might give a steeper bonus of 2 or 3 points. Sometimes, facing really does matter in combat, but it has to be the Editor's call when circumstances would call for this.
Le Duc D'Orterre has a face-burning ray that can erase the features of your face, while still allowing you to see, breathe, and talk. It doesn't make much sense -- unless the ray only affects the ability of others to perceive your face.
Bruce Wayne steps out of a room and then The Batman steps back in to talk to Charles and Karel Maire. Because this is a comic book, there's still a chance that Charles and Karel don't immediately make the connection that Bruce Wayne is The Batman, but I would give them a save vs. plot at a +2 bonus to figure it out.
The Batman's plan for finding the Duke is to wander the Parisian sewers until he runs into a wandering encounter of two Apaches -- who I guess I would stat as bloodthirsty hoodlums, since I don't have stats for hooligans or muggers yet, and my version of the gangster is decidedly different from these knife-wielding cutthroats. Before the battle is over, a second wandering encounter check brings back up -- a third hoodlum and the Duke himself.
The Duke is armed with a light-emitting cane which somehow stuns The Batman.
The Duke's death trap for The Batman is a mechanical wheel that spins anyone strapped to its outer edge, with a chance each minute of slamming him into the stone wall of the cell for...let's say 1-8 damage? Enough slams and it could definitely kill someone.
The Batman simply snaps his bonds, as if he was a superhero, in this story. This happens often enough in stories that I allow heroes to escape bonds as a skill check, but I would only give them one check, without changing the circumstances somehow.
A trap door in the ceiling of the wheel-trap room leads to what appears to be a garden where flowers grow with human faces. The Batman sees them and uncharacteristically sits down with his face buried in his hands. It's a disturbing scene -- possibly the result of some hallucinogenic gas in the room that effectively stuns The Batman. If taken literally, though, then the Duke has somehow grafted human heads to flowers in a way that keeps them alive, and seeing them is a trap that causes temporary insanity.
Despite having entered the garden room from underneath it, The Batman is lead by a talking flower to a "glass door" (which doesn't look like glass at all) that leads back into the room he'd just left. The garden room must be a split-level room.
Charles, captured separately, tells The Batman that the Duke has fled to Champagne. Champagne is a province, the west side of which might have overlapped the historic duchy of Orleans, so that bit works out -- though with such a large geography to search, it's rather remarkable how quickly The Batman spots the Duke's fleeing automobile.
Gardner Fox's word of the day is tonneau. A tonneau is the cover used to protect the passenger seats in a convertible.
The next story is Spy. Bart Regan's stories always seem to presuppose that there was some intelligence agency in the US besides the FBI -- which made sense in that Steve Carson worked for the FBI, and Steve and Bart never crossed paths. In this story, we see Bart heading into to work and it clearly looks like the entrance to the Capital Building, not the Department of Justice building the FBI worked out of in Washington, DC.
Bart is walking up the front steps with another man when they are shot at in a drive-by shooting. Bart immediately assumes the other man was the target even though Bart surely has a great many enemies by now. It seems an odd sort of hunch, and I suspect it would either be a wild guess on the player's part, or the Editor was feeding extra information to the player to lead to that assumption.
The ambassador is from "Bolaria," which sounds like it should be Bolivia, but it's not; Bolaria and Luxor are two warring European nations. Luxor is Germany, so Bolaria is...France?
Bart takes the ambassador's place, thanks to an on-staff make-up artist (a SCM who would be even better than the heroes at disguises, so maybe a save vs. plot to see through it at a penalty?). He heads to Europe via a trans-Atlantic clipper plane. The plane is shot down by two fighter planes from Luxor, but are either disguised to look like pirate planes or Luxor's flag looks exactly like a pirate flag.
(Batman story read in Batman Archives vol. 1, Spy story read at readcomiconline.to.)
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