Fantastic Comics #3 - pt. 3

We return to Golden Knight as he's rushing indoors to face an ogre, the final guardian before the Holy Grail - er, "Golden Chalice." Kara the Merlin-Wannabe gets the Chalice, but it seems like Sir Richard has the better end of this deal, getting paid with a magic cloak that protects him from all harm (permanent Invulnerability power? That sure beats a Ring of Protection +5).

Now I'm going to jump ahead into Yank Wilson's story. "Alien dive," referring to foreigners, is here synonymous with "underworld dive."

When you're in an underworld dive, and you overhear anything, no matter how innocent sounding, it just has to be a big clue to something.

It's unclear how many thugs are present, but it appears that Yank and X-16 are "greatly outnumbered" by only three of them.

Swimming while handcuffed is something you can become an expert in, apparently (so, it's an expert skill check).

I thought this was clever strategy: make a lot of noise about searching the villain's room, and then be waiting around back to see who sneaks out, and trying to get what safely away. Could be an easy way to pick up trophy items!

 Liquid dissolvent -- something that needs to be added to the starting equipment list?

Space Smith vs. the Leopard Women of Venus. Actually, they may be kidnapped Earth women and not indigenous to Venus at all. And the only thing "leopardy" about them are the spots on their uniforms. Their Belts of Transmitting keep them safe in the vacuum of space. The rifles mounted on their hats are concussive ray rifles, with zero kickback that would knock their hats off, apparently.

Most interesting are the giant saurians -- giant lizard-like creatures 10' long with long claws, short tails, the ability to fly through the vacuum without Belts of Transmitting, and a movement rate that must be at least 23,300 (escape velocity from Venus). 

Giant saurians can be found in groups of up to 10 in their cave lairs on Venus. They must be stupid and easily confused, since they allow a fog cloud to foil them when they can easily move faster than than the fog. 

As weak and ineffectual as these Venusian robots are, I might stat them as the tin robots from 1st edition. The narrator makes a point of calling them clumsy, but if the Belt of Transmitting lets them fly even a fraction of a giant saurian's speed, then the robots are lucky to even get an attack on them as they whiz past (it would seem that robots cannot wear Belts of Transmitting, only living beings).

This is Captain Kidd, and it's hard to tell what spells this witch doctor is casting. When he just got done casting on Kidd's porters seemed to have been a Death spell. What he casts on Bennet seems to be a Command spell (I never would have thought of "choke" to be such an effective use of it though!).

The Magic Glass seems to allow magic-users to cast a spell of higher level than they could normally cast, since the Death spell is usually beyond most casters.

But this is all speculative until we read the rest of the story -- next time!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)