The Buccaneer's new story begins with an odd premise. A man adrift is rescued, but goes berserk and kills a crewman. Then the man gets amnesia from the head blow and wants to help everyone follow the treasure map hidden in his wooden leg. The problem is...did everyone get amnesia about the dead crewman, or are they really that greedy for the treasure?
Later, the Buccaneer uses a whip to disarm a knife from a man's hand. And this is the last we see of The Buccaneer (who strangely looks just like Tex Thompson), as he retires so we can get the Spectre's debut next month!
"Kit" Strong is a "manhunter" (Private detective? Plainclothes detective?) working a kidnapping case when he finds bits of coal on the floor where the abduction took place. He smartly asks the father if they use coal in the house, and they don't. Just as smartly of the mobsters, they have the maid working as their inside mole and she tips them off that Kit is on the case. It is only dumb luck, or a freebie from the Editor, that allows Kit to accidentally hear the maid calling them.
Kit is waylaid by the kidnappers on the road and they try to force his car off a cliff. Last month I talked about the game mechanics of cars pushing cars, but timing it so it happens right at the cliff seems like it would take more luck than skill. I would, as Editor, perhaps pick a number between 2 and 5, roll a die, and if it comes up as that number or 1 away from it, then the timing is just right to go over the bridge (like a modification of the initiative rules). It's a risky maneuver, as the Editor fails the die roll and the mobsters go over the cliff themselves.
The mine where the rest of the kidnappers are using as a hideout is located in the "Larksville Mountains." It turns out that there really is such a thing as Larksville Mountain, in Pennsylvania. We don't know where Kit is based, but he needs a plane to reach the mountain quickly.
Lieutenant Bob Neal of Sub 662 tangles with spies this issue. Despite the adventure still taking place around Honolulu, the spies are Germans. The main spy is a femme fatale (a new mobstertype in the Mobster Manual, distinct from vamps). She is skilled at disguises, but her main tactic fails her. Had she not had hired thugs try to rough up Bob and his men first, Bob would not have been suspicious later when she tricks Bob and Dr. McDonald (the scientist who invented all the trophy items from last issue) into leaving a party. Later, Bob has to resort to throwing ink in her face to stop her because he must need a save vs. plot to strike a femme fatale (I'll need to make sure that's in their description).
After digging up gold from the underwater volcano, Bob jokes that they have enough gold to pay off the national debt. At the beginning of 1940, the national debt was somewhere around $41.5 billion.
Ah, Flying Fox... DC, I get that you were trying to meld the mysteryman genre with the aviator genre, like Dell had with The Masked Pilot, but Flying Fox just never works for me. Here, someone sends Rex Darrell on a mission to investigate a missing aviator. What does Rex do for a living again? Rex/Flying Fox arrives at the man's house in time to see an assassination, but he can't stop the mobster from getting away because he has to land his plane first.
This is really the frustrating thing about the aviator genre, in terms of putting a new class together for them in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums - half the time they are on the ground, and have no special abilities when not in a plane.
At least there's an interesting angle to this scenario in that the stakes are unusually high; the killings are to gain control of the shares of an island where the missing aviator found an old pirate fortress and $5 million in buried treasure. There still seems to be a big plot hole here -- why is ownership of the property so important, when they could just steal the treasure and leave the island with it?
(Read at fullcomic.pro)
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