Adventure Comics #47 - pt. 2

Moving on to Jerry Siegel's Federal Men...so often, it's senators or generals being bumped off in comic books that it's novel when a government employee with a distinctly different job title is going to be killed. This one is particularly novel, because the position of "Commissioner of National Functions" seems entirely fictional. Even the "Eastern Exposition" is fake, which is weird because it almost surely refers to the New York World's Fair, and DC has already had plenty of stories referring to the New York World's Fair by name.

The plot is a little strange; Steve Carson is knocked out and left in a house with a dying man. Normally, in a story, this is to frame someone for the murder, but the story never goes there.

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Another wrinkle is that the murderer isn't a spy, but an anarchist (which have been statted for the game since Supplement I).

At one point, Steve appears to get two completely different actions, taking a warning shot to alert the commissioner and then attacking the murderer/anarchist before the m/a gets to act. Normally, if the bad guy knows you're there, you don't get a surprise attack. I believe, even though the m/a clearly knows Steve is there, Steve still gets a surprise action because the warning shot is so unexpected. Then Steve wins initiative on his first turn of regular combat.

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Socko Strong is in Hollywood starring in a boxing movie. The director is Solly Lloyd and the rival star is Monte Swift, neither of which sounds familiar and are likely not stand-ins for any particular real life people. Monte is able to bribe someone on set to put Socko in danger for just $100. Later, Solly throws a party at his castle -- that's right, he's one of those eccentric rich people who have medieval castles built for them in the U.S., and he's even had deathtraps built into it, purely for his own amusement. Monte traps Socko in a pit with a locked cover that he can fill up with water.

Captain Desmo's enemy, Vasili Gerke, has taken a precaution that few game referees use because in most uses it would seem anticlimactic, but he has guards stationed outside his hideout, tasked with shooting at anyone escaping. One exit has a single sniper watching it, while another exit has a machine gun nest stationed over it.

Having escaped via swimming, and his sidekick Gabby having taken on too much water, Desmo has to perform artificial respiration, which in 1940 still means tipping someone face down and holding them by the ribs.

Desmo uses some unusual dialogue, once saying "We're one rifle to the good," which is either poorly written dialogue or maybe an archaic way of saying "We're one rifle better off than we were." He also uses the phrase "bite the dust," being the first time I've encountered this in a comic book.

Desmo can be a jerk, blaming the two guards that he knocks off a cliff to their deaths for "getting so close to the edge."

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Does using a gun grant a bonus to a wrecking things roll? Perhaps it should, to justify why Heroes would go the trouble when the noise can so clearly alert the entire hideout (as it does in this story).

Steve Conrad is back after a long break. Steve Conrad's adventure is a bit risque, with him trying to rescue a woman who is grabbed off the street and dragged into a brothel. How do Steve and his sidekick Chang know it's a brothel from outside...? Steve, like a player who's being too cautious for his Editor's plot hooks to work, backs down when the brothel's side entrance is guarded by six yellow peril hoodlums. Only when he reads later in the paper that the girl is the police commissioner's daughter is he shamed into investigating further.

Maybe it's understandable that Steve chickened out earlier; when he comes back, he is bonked over the head and captured immediately. The Editor scales down the scenario to make it less challenging, but goes too far; after Chang rescues Steve, they find all the bad guys are on opium highs and easily tied up.


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