Fantastic Comics #4- pt. 1

Alex Blum's first work in comics were these early Samson stories, and they are pretty good stuff. It is believed that Will Eisner, Alex's boss, wrote these stories, but I suspect he had a hand in the layout of this story as well, as ingenious as some of it is. Follow along and decide for yourself!

First of all, check out the amazing detail work on that smashed robot! This is, perhaps, our best glimpse ever at how an artist in 1940 imagined the mechanical insides of a robot would look like.

Samson never actually wielded a flail in combat -- but wouldn't that have been cool too?

That's right -- Samson doesn't just wear a furry loincloth into combat, he wears only that while casually strolling around town too. I have a theory, though, that Samson's look is only meant to be symbolic; that he doesn't really appear like this in public, but is shown to us this way because this is how we see him, as the Hero.

Note the imaginative panel layout at the bottom, with the island superimposed over the map showing where it is. That is genius, and has Eisner's handiwork written all over it.

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Game mechanics-wise, Samson is buffed both with Raise Car and Different Physical Structure (to help him save vs. the deadly gas) on this page.

Narrators are usually prone to hyperbole, but this one was modest on page 1 when it said the robots were twice human size. On this page, the robot appears to be more like three times human size.  That makes them giant robots, and normally 15 Hit Dice. Even one is a tough encounter; bear that in mind as this story progresses.

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It's really hard to pin down a nationality for Rigo based on just the name, but we'll see shortly who "Rigo" really is...

"No man made weapon can harm my creation" could well be hyperbole, but we do see the robot is nigh-invulnerable, which means at least an Armor Class as low as 3.

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Dragor is who now? Oh wow, yeah, Dragor was the Hitler stand-in in Fantastic Comics #2! That's a cool little bit of continuity I almost missed!

I love this ingenious top panel!

Maximillian looks very Germanic to me, but Rigo is nearly a dead ringer for Stalin in that second panel. Since Samson has already bested Germany two issues ago, it makes sense he would tackle Russia this time around.

Don't miss the implications here -- Eisner and Blum just killed off Stalin.

We also see that giant robots can be voice-activated, and that they can be encountered in groups of up to -- 5,000??  5,000 15 HD robots? That's one messed up challenge level. I mean, maybe 3+ Heroes, all level 21+, could handle this, but I would never throw this against a single Hero of any level.

The first panel here needs to be seen as symbolic only; clearly that robot at the bottom is not so huge that it can literally reach over and crush a skyscraper in its hand as it walks past. The 2nd and 3rd panels, though, are probably meant to be literal, and are pretty grim and violent. These giant robots main attack forms are squeezing and stomping. I would not treat squeezing as a grappling attack, as there's clearly no way those women (or the natives we saw this happen to earlier) can reverse the hold and throw those robots on the ground.










If Rigo is Stalin and the robots come from Russia, then this gorge must be somewhere in the Ural Mountains? Samson is lucky to have found a place where he can strategically bottleneck the robots. I guess traffic was too heavy on the roads for the robot army?

Now, what is poison gas supposed to do to robots? Is Samson leaving this incredibly gullible old man in front of the robot army to get killed off, so he can't make any more deadly inventions?

Players should be rewarded for coming up with ways to use their wrecking things ability to do secondary damage. Here, it stops three robots. Only 4,997 more to go! The story doesn't tell us how Samson stops the rest, though I suspect they are programmed to try and go around rubble and simply keep falling off the cliff, one after the other.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)