Champion Comics #3 - pt. 1

We return to the adventures of The Champ. A wrinkle on the cliche of "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" is that the walking stick with the treasure hidden inside is missing (it turns up later in a secret compartment; a second compartment inside a secret compartment).

Here we see a shadow figure, which was a mobstertype introduced in Supplement V: Big Bang and will be returning in 2nd edition.

The Champ laid a trap for the missing assistant by pretending to already have the formula.

Pointing a gun and delaying still means that you have to roll for initiative to see who goes first, at least if your opponent is withing charging distance.

Chloroforming your opponent should be an automatic action if you already have an ally pinning him down. The Champ still gets a save vs. poison for each turn he is pinned, though. Looks like he rolled poorly on the first try.

This may be the first time a length of chain is used as a whip in comics.

I have serious reservations about this supporting post and how easily the champ broke it. Now, if it was not a supporting post, and just ornamental, then maybe I could see The Champ wrecking it as a door (or as a machine, as a penalty for being tied to it and lacking leverage). This has to be at least wrecked as a generator, which a fighter has no chance to do (even in 2nd edition) until at least 3rd level.

 

The Champ takes 1 point of damage from the fire, but it burns his bonds alright.

Again showing wrecking abilities, the Champ makes mincemeat out of that door, but that is something a 1st level fighter can do. By the end of this adventure, the Champ will likely be 2nd level.

He shows he is Lawful by going back in to save the bad guys.

At last, we have a clue that several of these orientals are thugs. In the past, I would have statted them as yellow peril hoodlums, but I'm thinking it's time to lose that mobstertype. I wanted them, initially, as a way to build something like the monk class into Hideouts & Hoodlums, but orientals in the Golden Age are rarely martial artists. Instead, they are usually wimpy hoodlums or bloodthirsty hoodlums.

You would think Katsu would have learned by now not to try firing a missile weapon while in melee range.

Katsu, incidentally, is an actual word, a word shouted out in Zen Buddhism. It's not an authentic Asian name, but it's closer to being one than the usual fare, like Fang Gow.

It's an interesting tactic to have reinforcements riding in the car behind you, in this case a "horde" of five "yellow men."

The Champ has been in a lot of fights so far in quick succession in this story, suggesting that he has an awful lot of hit points. At 1st level, he could have a maximum of 9.

In Neptina, we learn that the fish men have the ability to surgically remove human lungs and install gills. They must have high Intelligence (and be of Evil Alignment).

The fish men have a fog-making machine that they can use on the surface (it would, understandably, be pretty useless underwater).

It's not clear, but it seems to be implied that all fish men are male, and the mermaids are all the females, of the same species. Or did the fish men just capture human women and convert them into mermaids?

Fish men (and their merwomen) are telepathic, but they have the technology to block telepathy. Not only to block it, but apparently to make people forget they can read minds -- since Neptina doesn't seem the least but suspicious when she cannot read Brad's mind.

This is Penny Wright, Feature Writer. Penny wanted to find stories in South America to write about, but winds up getting kidnapped by an unnamed country's rebel leader. Santos is, curious, not a fighter but a robber -- a strange position for leadership.

Penny tries for a surprise attack but fails. She loses initiative and Santos delivers a grappling attack. Now Penny can't attack with her knife; she can only defend herself from the grappling attack and try to escape it or reverse it.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)