The first Shadow story takes place somewhere near the U.S.'s largest munitions works, which is interesting, because that would not likely be by New York City. I haven't been able to find out exactly what was the U.S.'s largest munitions works in 1940, but I know the Navy's biggest munitions works was out on Nebraska because, you know, putting that much explosives next to a major metropolis probably isn't a great idea...
Is the Shadow a fighter or mysteryman? Other than walking the ledge of a building, he does little that would count as stunts. He's also really ruthless, slaughtering all the enemy agents, including a woman.
The next story is Iron Munro, another future hero, this one set in 2093. It starts with Iron, being one of the last five survivors of a Ganymede colony, finally escaping Jupiter's gravity to get help from Earth. The science is okay...Ganymede is said to be −120 °F when it's really more like -343 °F. The escape velocity from Jupiter would have to be 2.4 times faster than Earth, but it's weird that anyone would set up a Ganymede colony while being unprepared for that. The author also thought Ganymede would have an atmosphere, when it doesn't. The 1,000 MPH winds would be closer to realistic for Jupiter, but tend to top off below 400 MPH.
Why are there no colonies between Earth and Ganymede?
Iron doesn't know that Earth's President died five years earlier, despite radio waves only taking 35 minutes to each Jupiter from Earth.
Iron is a superhero on Earth, using the Multi-Attack power to beat up the soldiers he first encounters on Earth. It also appears he can safely jump 50' down without injury, using the Leap I power.
Gold is still valuable in the future.
The current President becomes Iron's Supporting Cast Member, and follows him off-planet on adventure!
Iron's new spaceship is solar-powered. It can travel at almost one-fifth the speed of light. News to science: when an object strikes another object at that speed, they get shunted into another dimension. In this new dimension, the sun is blue. No idea how that makes sense...
Next up is that other stalwart of pulp fiction, Doc Savage! Doc Savage is in the delicate situation of having to put down an uprising of natives in an African colony...allegedly to keep the natives from being slaughtered, but it also looks like Doc is okay with maintaining the status quo of colonialism.
True to a Doc Savage story there are elements of mystery here; who put the handwritten note on the dead man's body? But because this story is much shorter than a Doc Savage novella, the answers come in one page (spoiler: it was the villain, Von Guyter, to lay a trap for Savage).
Doc escapes from being tied up thanks to a mini-flamethrower in his belt buckle -- which is a cool trophy item for Heroes, but one Doc has never needed in his stories, since he's easily escaped being tied up before. Doc also carries a vial of liquid explosive, good for pouring into rifles to wreck them, and if he pours it into fire it -- no, it doesn't explode (for some reason), it makes a smokescreen.
Carrie Cashin is a female detective with her own feature...but she's not a very good detective. She picks up a suspect's dropped gun with her own hand, obscuring any useful fingerprints. "Don't you know it's a penal offense to send threatening notes?" she asks, as if unaware that any law violation, even a misdemeanor, is a penal offense.
Pulp hero Nick Carter gets his own adventure, but the only thing remarkable about it is that the "hatchet men" Nick fights are refreshingly un-stereotyped, wearing ordinary suits and using knives as weapons.
The next feature is the unfortunately named Diamond Dick, and you would never in your life guess that Diamond Dick is a frontier scout character. The story takes place at Fort Advance, currently under the command of General Custer. Interestingly, I couldn't find evidence that Fort Advance was real, but a Fort Advance does figure into the dime novels of Buffalo Bill. Diamond uses a two-gun fighting style, highly unusual in 19th century stories. He makes a disarming shot with one gun, but only shoots the hat off the man's head with the other, seemingly verifying that holding two weapons doesn't give you a meaningful second attack in comic books (and in Hideouts & Hoodlums).
Dick escapes from Indians and finds the fort's horses the Indians are keeping; the story doesn't say how he finds them. It would make sense if he used his tracking skill, but it seems more likely that he just luckily stumbled across them while running away. The horses only have a single guard on them, a mistake bad guys often make in fiction.
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Jake Bigley, the evil trapper who sold the stolen horses to the Indians, leaps down on Dick from a tree to give himself both a height advantage bonus (+1) and a from behind bonus (+2) to his surprise attack. In the ensuing conflict, it appears that Dick is grappling to keep Jake's knife away, which is technically true because if Dick initiates a grappling attack, Jake can only grapple back. If Jake won initiative and attacked with his knife first, then Dick's grappling attempt might just be flavor text.
(Read at readcomiconline.to)
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