Whiz Comics #2(b) - pt. 2

Before I get back to the next feature, the discerning reader may be left wondering how this issue can be #2(b). That's because they printed two #3's, forgetting that they started numbering the series with #2! This is actually the first #3...but I'm calling it #2(b) because I can.

Next up is Ibis the Invincible! Again, this story proves problematic for H&H, or rather, we have to make allowance for Ibis' wand, the Ibistick, to have extra powers of its own besides holding Ibis' allotment of magic spells, and it can transfer magic-user abilities to anyone who holds it. The nameless thief who swipes the Ibistick is able to cast Wall of Stone and something that seems like an advanced version of the Dig spell, since it makes a chasm between him and Ibis -- although cast at a high-enough level, maybe there is no difference.

More difficult to explain is when the thief is using the Ibistick to make piles of gold for himself, as there's no spell for that -- or is there? Maybe the Ibistick interprets what you ask for into the closest equivalent spell. So it's casting Fool's Gold for him, or maybe creating illusionary gold with a Phantasmal Image spell.

Somehow, Ibis trips on a loose floorboard while charging up to tackle the thief. I'm guessing that's flavor text associated with a botched die roll, though if I was playing Ibis, I wouldn't be too happy if my Editor told me I tripped like a clumsy idiot just rushing into a room.

The Ibistick has another nice feature: it has decided that Ibis is its true owner, making it the first intelligent magic item in comic books (not a magic sword!). As such, any spell cast with the Ibistick at Ibis is turned back on the caster. The spell is Turn Flesh to Gold, a variant on Turn Flesh to Stone.

Meanwhile, Ibis' love Taia is trapped in an airtight glass case, but with enough air that she is little harmed during the long minutes Ibis is chasing the thief. Once he has the Ibistick he dissolves the glass. It is not clear why he didn't just break the glass with a rock.

Ibis is correct that the ancient city of Thebes is gone, though how he learned that when he had just recently awoke in this millennium. Ibis recreates the city of Thebes, which could be nothing short of a 9th level Wish spell.

I'm sure I've shared this opinion before in regards to Zatara, but comic book magic-users are usually ridiculously broken, and Ibis is strongly in that category. Sure, breaking out a 9th level spell to make Taia happy is deeply romantic and probably worthwhile to both of them, but after she is foolishly kidnapped by Arabs, Ibis polymorphs their plane into a falcon and then a horse -- all to do what he could have accomplished by simply following the plane in the first place. This new Chain Polymorph spell (for lack of a better name) is probably also 9th level.

Ibis has little to worry about from desert nomads, but he still wastes powerful polymorph spells on them, including a Mass Polymorph spell (also 9th level?) that turns a group of armed men ("Arab cut-throats" = bloodthirsty hoodlums?) into geese. Polymorphing a bullet into an apple is an unusual trick -- and there is more to it than transformation, because Ibis' spell is able to drain it most of its momentum. He casts the same spell soon thereafter, turning a dagger into a dove. This must be another new spell, Polymorph Missiles (5th level spell?), and perhaps it is not a one-shot spell but a duration spell that allows him to temporarily transform any missile weapons aimed at him into living things and steal them of their momentum until the spell ends.

In Lance O'Casey, we learn that Lance's home is on Maloana Island, which isn't a real island as far as I can tell -- but it does have a nice South Seas sound to it. Lance's boat is called the Brian Boru; I don't recall if we learned that last time or not.

Lance gets a visit from a plot hook character, a native who says he knows where to find giant pearls -- and then conveniently gets lost during a typhoon. At this point, out in the ocean and surrounded by islands, Lance could be at the beginning of a "sandbox"-type campaign, where he could explore the islands in any order he wants. And maybe it was meant to be that way, except that he finds the "giant pearls" island first try out of the box.

On the island, Lance encounters a "renegade half-breed." Golden Age comic books seemed to love making half-breeds villains, but we're going to rise above that and ignore it in Hideouts & Hoodlums. Instead, we're going to stat him as a pirate, because he looks like a pirate. Actually, with an eyepatch and skull and crossbones tattooed on his chest, he would look like a pretty fearsome villain had he been drawn better.

The story takes a surprise twist when, instead of rescuing slaves from the pirate-slaver, one of the slaves frees himself, captures the pirate, and tosses him to the sharks -- then Lance finally takes action and dives in to save the pirate! To save the pirate, he has to kill a shark and punch out the slave who justifiably wants this bad guy dead. This is not that rare in RPG scenarios, that you just don't know what is going to motivate your players, or at least it's not what you planned.  Unfortunately, what's really going on in the story is that Lance saved the half-breed because he was half-white, and he likes how the natives call him "white master" now.

Further disgusting me about this story, Lance is rewarded by the slaves with a giant pearl, despite the fact that he just sided against them. And it turns out that he didn't even want to keep the giant pearl, he just wanted to find one. I do not like Lance O'Casey...

From a telegram, we learn that Dan Dare is based out of Sea Castle, Florida, another of those places that sounds real but really isn't. This might also make Dan the first comic book hero based in Florida.

This month's adventure takes Dan to San Francisco, California. Dan wisely takes a plane to California, since it's such a long trip, and appears to have a small passenger plane of his own that he pilots on the trip. A truck tries to hit his taxi once he's in San Francisco, seemingly on purpose, but Dan simply notes the event and does nothing about it (once again, not that rare for RPG players to ignore your planned encounters and just keep moving!). 

Dan, being a renowned private eye, was summoned to investigate an extortion letter that's surprisingly easy to figure out, as the dumb hoodlums (should that be its own mobstertype?) left a fingerprint on the letter -- that amazingly wasn't obscured when Dan held the letter with his own bare hand.

The next day, Dan tours San Fransciso's "Barbary Coast" neighborhood, a red-light district that hadn't actually existed since the 1910s, but was still featured in popular culture into the 1970s.


The villain, at least, is memorable. Dynamite Davis was horribly disfigured in an explosion and now has gray skin, no hair, and no ears, and not much left of a nose. Yet he compensates by wearing nice suits and sitting in a throne in his underground hideout, just waiting for someone to accidentally find him. He even has his own Asian sidekick named Taxi.

Dan seemingly just happens to stumble across the barbershop over Davis' hideout by dumb luck. The solution of how he got there comes at the end and, while slightly more satisfying, is still suspect. Somehow, Dan recognized the paper the ransom letter was written on as the kind of paper used in barbershops (and even if that was a thing, who's to say Davis didn't just steal the paper from one?), and on just a hunch he suspected the chauffeur was in on it and trusted the chauffeur would drive him to a trap (which was true, the barber had a trapped chair on top of a pit trap, just in case something like this happened).

(Read at readcomiconline.to)