Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 3

Whew, today's post is going to be a little difficult for a modern audience to get through, and I'll be sharing your discomfort as I rant about a whole lot of racism in these stories.

We're picking up with Chen Chang, the story of a villainous mongol, so already we're in dangerous racism territory.

How big, I wonder, was Hong Kong's white settlement in 1940? Hong Kong was a huge city of 1,640,000 people in 1941. Today, the percentage of whites is 0.8%. If the same held true then, that would mean 13,120 people. Half of that means, well, that would be one huge theatre! The Auditorium Theater in Chicago can only seat 3,875.

That is a horrible plot! If that disobedient servant wasn't so afraid of Chen, maybe he would mention how throwing the bomb into the audience would be a lot simpler than swinging over the audience and dropping it.

This page is pretty painful to read for several reasons. There is the derision and then fear of Mongols, just for being Mongols, that they encounter even before they start strangling people. But perhaps more disturbing is the child in the audience yelling "Him him, Mama! I'm Scared! Hit him!" Have beatings taught this boy that violence is the solution to everything...?

Well, it didn't take a fortune-teller to predict that swinging out over the audience with a bomb was going to end disastrously for either one or both parties involved. What I don't get is how the bomb fails to go off. Does it have a lit fuse that is snuffed by his sleeve?

Note how Richard has nothing to do with saving all these people, only dumb luck does. When a scenario goes horribly wrong, it's up to the Editor to decide if everyone (in the game) has to live with the consequences or not.

Coolie is a very weird term to be using here. For one it's just plain racist, but more importantly, it was typically used to describe unskilled laborers from China in America, and it seems dubious that it would have been used for them in their own homeland.

Moving on, though not escaping from racism, we find Lt. Drake lounging around Hawaii undercover. We see some natives and...well, those better be swimsuits they are wearing, because Hawaiians were definitely wearing modern clothing in 1940.

Drake knocked out that guy with the rifle quickly and recognized him as Japanese. Investigating, he finds some unconscious natives by opium pipes (the old racist trope that non-whites are easily talked into getting drunk or high) and finally the Japanese guy's boat.

Now, all Drake has to do here is explain that this isn't his boat and they're on the same side, but instead he decides he's going to teach them what happens to people who speak with poor diction! Drake gets in some unlucky dice rolls, though, because the two natives make short work of him.

Now how is...Drake was just tossed into the water from the shore on the previous page. The current should be taking him back in towards the shore, not further out to see. Yet here Drake is underwater, surrounded by sharks already. And five sharks at that...that's a lot.

I do like the detail of following a telephone line to the hideout. That's a good way to find concealed hideouts in the modern age!

I've never seen a Hero take advantage of a thatched roof by going through the roof before! That's a "thinking outside the box" style of play I like to see at the table.

I suspect Drake is able to hold them off with just 12 bullets for a whole hour because the agents outside keep failing morale checks.

I'm not a Denny Scott fan, but I thought I should talk about the locations mentioned on these pages. The mountain range mentioned here could be the Karakoram, or possibly the Hindu Kush range. It is unlikely the Himalayas, as the northwest is the one direction north of India where the Himalayas can be found least.

According to an old Encyclopedia Brittanica, there used to be a Kutom in India; it seems to be renamed today, but I haven't been able to track down what it is now.

Kafir, however, is not a real place; "kafir: being an Islamic word for infidels.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)