Amazing-Man Comics #10 - pt. 2

Today we'll be looking at two features from this issue -- The Magician of Mars and Iron Skull.

When we saw Jane yesterday, she had just arrived at an airport on...Earth? Mars? Even after reading the whole story I'm not sure which it's supposed to be. I do see that she's hit with perhaps the weirdest weapon yet in comics, incoherent music strong enough to knock her unconscious (and that's something, because we know that Jane has some brevet ranks and extra hit points!).

What happens to make her hair stand up like that when she's startled? Is that a Martian thing?

Suddenly, Magician from Mars is a pole-vaulter! Or, judging from that crotch shot, maybe a pole dancer? Now, stunts are no longer the province of just mystery men -- In the still-unreleased AH&H Heroes Handbook I planned to reveal that other classes above 6th level get stunts too, just a lot more slowly. Anyway, what she does to get to the top of the building certainly looks like a mysteryman's stunt, but then it could also be a Leap I use with some flavor text added, or the Spider Climb spell with a lot of flavor text/reinterpretation!

I'm also going to point out this brief dogfight and the relevance of abstract combat to H&H combat. That "fatal hit" Jane makes is very clearly to the wing of the plane and would not be fatal under most circumstances, yet with abstract game mechanics, a combat could end after just such a hit, either from loss of hit points or a chance of random complication per hit.

There's that weird hair flip again!

I like how the entire building has nothing to do with the hideout, other than hiding the secret tunnel underneath it. So dungeon-y!

I hate to do this since it's such low-hanging fruit, but...man, this artwork is terrible! The proportions on figures are just terribly amateurish. Look at those midgets in the tunnel in panel 7 here, or in the top panel on the next page...

 I like how she calls him "sweetheart."

The explanation for "sound bombs" is right up there with the worst garbage science of the comic books we've gone over.

Jane uses Wreck at Range in that last panel. Note that she hasn't really cast anything like a traditional spell this entire adventure so far.

I'm not sure what to make of The Hood being able to go immaterial. If they had the concept of holograms back in 1940, I would have guessed he was only a hologram. Is he a magician too, like Jane? In that case, this could be some Etherealness spell, or maybe even a Gaseous Form spell.

As for her force ray, I think she means the Wall of Force spell here.

If Jane is a magician, why does she have a plane with bombs on it? Or did she steal the bombs from the hideout before it caved in?

And now it's off to the far-flung future of 1970! Hmm, which five countries would profit by the splitting up of the United States in 1970? If this was based on who owns the most U.S. debt, and would hence benefit from the largest payoffs if the U.S. defaulted -- well, I don't have numbers for 1970, but if it was based on today's numbers then these nations would be Luxembourg, Brazil, the UK, China, and Japan. Not your usual list of suspects!

Other 1940 authors might have underestimated inflation in the next 30 years, but Carl overestimated it. This $10 billion fee would have made Hawkins the richest man in the world, since oil magnate J. Paul Getty only had $6 billion in 1970.

I think it's interesting how Carl thought subways would be ancient history by 1970. I wonder what he thought we were going to replace them with.

As for the rest of this page...I really do not understand what the X-ray machine is for, or why the subway train is being supported by cables in a glass tube, or why the glass tubes are suspended so high above a cement floor. It's more like a subway museum in there.

Should a superhero be able to wreck spikes at the very moment of landing on them? On one hand, I would say no, wrecking things should not be an instantaneous action. On the other hand, doing it to save the other person falling with you is a perfect superhero action and should be encouraged. I guess, in the end, I might allow it, but insist that the superhero still takes damage from the spikes at the same time as wrecking them.

Is a 1 ft.-thick glass door still count as a door for wrecking things? At what point is a barrier thick enough that it counts as a wall and not a door? The average interior wall is about 5" wide. Let's round up to 6", though, and get to a half-foot. For every extra 6" of thickness, the wrecking things category can go up one. At least this works for doors, and maybe machines and generators. By the time we get to robots and cars, we might need some other metric, such as weight.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)