Daring Mystery Comics #1 - pt. 1

Timely's second anthology title begins with Simon and Kirby's Fiery Mask. Jack Castle (itself a pretty good hero name) is a physician, not a police forensics mortician, but is still called on by Police Captain Benson to examine a strange corpse. Perhaps Jack is from a small town with too small a police department to have its own mortician. Although that's not likely either, since there are high-rises at least nine stories high in his town.

Suddenly, a green light comes from nowhere, animates the corpse into a talking zombie, and paralyzes Castle. Only Benson makes his saving throw and shoots the zombie, killing it in one shot (but it can still monolog before it expires).

And so begins Jack's scenario -- he's given a list of places where bums and tramps like this zombie were last seen and told to check them out for clues (the police must be too busy).  His list of stops include a gambling den and a bar -- good locations for adventures, but Simon and Kirby have something bigger in mind, so those leads turn up nothing.

Luckily, Jack thinks to check for high electricity usage in the waterfront area, where all the missing people were from. He's guessed correctly that the green light came from a raygun and one that was run from conventional electrical power. It's a handy method of tracking down mad scientists, and not the last time we'll see it used in comics. What is extra ballsy on Jack's part is that, when someone answers the door at the hideout, he pretends to be from the power company and asks to come in to read the meter. A good Editor should at least give him a save vs. plot to see if the man opening the door falls for such a clever ploy.

That the doorman happens to be a zombie seems a delightful touch, recalling to my mind the balrog butler in Tegel Manor.

We get told, rather than see, a lot of details about the hideout Jack is led into. The ramshackle house on the surface is perfectly ordinary, but through a secret door in the kitchen is a set of stairs -- no, not a set, a "winding maze of stairs" suggesting that the stairs branch off in all directions at various landings. One of our first multi-level hideouts! The deeper levels are cave-like, with rows of zombies waiting in upright coffins. Some rooms are truly cavernous, with space enough for giant vultures to fly around. Giant vulture stats debuted in Supplement I: National, but these buzzards are much larger and probably at least 4 Hit Dice.

As if sometimes the case in comics, these zombies are the result of scientific experiments. There is at least one woman present who hasn't been changed yet because she needs more "treatments" (and gives Jack an opportunity to earn xp for rescues!).

Somehow, Jack leaps to the conclusion that the master criminal behind this uses hypnosis. Maybe he's trying to disbelieve all this as an illusion?  Hideouts & Hoodlums needs clear-cut rules for disbelieving illusions (probably tucked into the description of one or more illusion spells).

The Master seems to be a giant free-willed zombie, appearing to be about 14' tall. That might put him at 10 Hit Dice.  The Master may also be a mind reader, because he seems to immediately know who Jack is. Curiously, the Master's monolog makes it seem like he's always been this height instead of it being the result of some experiment of his. Perhaps he's Marvel's first mutant?

Up to this point, this has all been origin story for Jack, with him earning XP as a Fighter. When The Master's raygun explodes, it transforms Jack into a Superhero. His costume seems to just be having a ripped shirt.  He punches out The Master with one blow, suggesting he has enough brevet ranks to already have the Super Punch power. His ability to melt chains with a touch is just wrecking things with flavor text added. He uses a Leap power, but it isn't clear which level of Leap he's using (it could be as simple as Leap I).  Blowing away the giant vultures with his breath...that seems like it must be the power Gust of Wind, but the Editor has either added some extra kick to it or has created a higher-level version of that power (Greater Gust of Wind?).

The next feature in this issue is John Steele, Soldier of Fortune. It opens in the heat of battle – though where and between which warring nations we don’t yet know!  John rushes into a building for cover and finds an enemy soldier about to shoot a woman, so he disarms the soldier with a disarming shot from his gun, then drops it so he can punch the guy a few times. The last punch serves as a pushing attack instead, sending his opponent reeling across the room. But he must have split his damage between pushing distance and real damage, because the hit still knocks his foe out.

Rescuing the woman turns out to have been a good deal, because she was a plot hook character – with a secret mission (which she promptly tells John Steele all about).

To complete the mission, John has to get this unnamed lady across enemy lines. To accomplish that, John comes up with the bold plan of stealing a tank. Luckily, John manages to gain surprise on the tank crew of a passing tank. Also luckily, it’s a small WWI-era tank, so it’s too small to have a rear-facing machine gun mounted on it anyway. They get pretty far in the tank, but a grenade takes it out. Now…I’m wondering if explosive weapons should have a wrecking things chance?

John has grenades of his own, but it isn’t clear if he started with them or found them in the tank and took them as trophy weapons.

That a motorcycle with a passenger seat just happens to drive past just as John needs fresh transportation for them both seems too coincidental for a random encounter. And, indeed, it seems the encounter was planned to lure John and the female agent into a trap. Players could be forgiven, though, for thinking this was a lazy giveaway from an Editor who just wanted to keep his story moving.

Suddenly finding himself in a trench with enemy soldiers again, John passes the chance to shoot with a gun in favor of fisticuffs. Why? Since the soldiers don’t have drawn weapons either, John gets two attacks with his fists, doubling his chance of hitting. He also knows how easy it is to disarm shooters in H&H.

(Issue read at Marvel Unlimited.)