Popular Comics #47 - pt. 1

Thinking this was their answer to Superman, Martan the Marvel Man is now the lead feature in Popular Comics.  Here we find them still joyriding around Earth before their first big scenario, and we see their ship has a cruising speed of 12,000 MPH, or Mach 15.

There is interesting moral philosophizing going on here, reminiscent of a future Silver Surfer.

Given how powerful Martan and Vana's tech is, let's not kid ourselves -- this protective forcefield is probably as powerful as the Wall of Force 5th level spell.

There is something here at the beginning about Martan's commands making the soldiers stop, and this is because non-Hero characters can recognize the level of a Hero and respect that authority.

Or maybe they're just surprised at how well Martan wears a skirt.

How a superhero wrecks things has always been flavor text for the player to decide. In this case, instead of wrecking with his bare hands, Martan can shoot a ray that melts things into the ground.

That Martan can melt/wreck tanks means that he functions as at least a 4th level superhero, and probably several levels higher because of how easily he wrecks the tank.

Also it's worth noting that the soldiers are obviously drawn to be Japanese, meaning the unnamed war Martan is stopping is the Japanese invasion of China.

This is from Shark Egan. I had to look this up, as I didn't think acetylene torches would work underwater, but sure enough they do!

This is Captain Tornado, still dealing with giant ants. There are at least a dozen giant ants here.

There are at least 21 giant white ants here, but there's no reason yet to assign white ants different game mechanics from red ants, or even different Alignments.

Jane has every reason to be smarting after that landslide. Wearing shorts, I can't imagine how she's not bruised all over her legs. But that's realism; in comic book terms, sliding does no damage like falling does.

The giant ants are shown to be intelligent. At this point, there is no reason not to stat them as ant men.

This is Between Two Fires, and it's an unusual scenario because the boys are actively resisting getting involved in the combat going on around them. They are able to for almost three whole pages, when the Editor has to chuck a grenade at them and leave them no alternative but to act. In that way the scenario is already a failure, if their goal was really to avoid fighting for the whole session.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)