Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 4

We're back for one more installment of perusing this issue of Mystery Men Comics and seeing what we can apply to the Hideouts & Hoodlums role-playing game (you could try and apply these observations to other RPGs -- but why would you?).

Anyway, we're still in the middle of Denny Scott and the Bengal Lancers' story. Our unnamed lady sees through Denny's disguise (save vs. plot on her part?) and outs him.

The rug trick might be one of the few exceptions to when I would allow a stunt to be used in a combat situation. He's essentially making two grappling attacks at once, but the only result he's going for is to knock them prone.

I'm not sure what game mechanic would account for "perceiving something wrong." I almost hate to make save vs. plot too big of a catch-all, and yet it works perfectly for situations like this when it's difficult for the Editor to make the call.

Now I'm going to talk about just how confusing this story was. The lady -- is she a femme fatale? A spy? On who's side? It seems like she was planted here to take down Khan's operation from the inside, but she takes no action until she can frame Denny to make it look like he took down Khan instead. For what purpose? Could she have known Denny was coming?

And -- as much as I personally loathe Heroes solving problems with guns...why does Denny sneak into Khan's audience chamber with guns if not to shoot him? Was the whole gun-selling ruse to get some kind of evidence against Khan? Or trick him into becoming an ally? Maybe the alliance is what our unnamed spy is trying to stop.

Part of the fun of these golden age stories is that they are often so incomplete, we have to read the story between the panels!

We're going to be talking about locations for much of the rest of this post. Secret Agent D-13 starts out with the destination of Scapa Flow. And, as much as that sounds like a medical condition, Scapa Flow is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay, and Hoy. This bridge would hold no great strategic value, but a student of WWI might know why this would have meaning for the Germans; Scapa Flow is where the remains of the German Navy was scuttled after WWI. 

I believe the UK Armed Forces uses "No. 3" instead of "3rd" to designate this squadron, if I'm correct and this refers to the No. 3 (Fighter) Squadron. It was first formed on 13 May 1912 as one of the first squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps – being the first to fly heavier than air aircraft.

This story has a really unusual ending. A British pilot and a German pilot both die in this story, on the same field, and are both labeled as heroes for their respective countries. D-13 waxes nostalgic about how he doesn't want to see Americans made into heroes in the same way. Bob Powell did the art on this; the writing is likely either Powell himself, or perhaps Will Eisner, who is known for deeper stories. Regardless, two years from now this would have been denounced as isolationist dogma

Again, we're looking at this story for the locations it names. The Paracel Islands are real; also known as Xisha Islands and Hoang Sa Archipelago, they are a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. 

This story is also prophetic; the Japanese invade the Philippines for real in December 1941. Clearly, it was common knowledge as early as the beginning of 1940 what countries Japan would target next if they expanded their conquests beyond China.

Lastly, we have an unusual morality tale from usual artist George Tuska and, again, likely Eisner as auteur. The backstory you've missed is that Zanzibar followed this mobster onto a cruise ship, and the mobster said he was going to turn himself in, but instead he blows up the boat. The mobster is one of the people who survives and winds up in this lifeboat, and that's when Zanzibar teleports onboard (or maybe even just the Poof! spell if he was actually nearby in the water).

The ghost ship is seemingly a random wandering encounter, unless Zanzibar somehow summoned it to test the passengers. I'm skeptical of the latter, since the others are innocents and only one person deserves what happens.

Three undead skeletons turn up. Easy XP! Not so...these guys are not only tougher to kill, but if they kill you, they turn you into an undead skeleton! Do I need to toughen up the stats on skeletons? Or...are the skeletons just the physical manifestation of a powerful curse spell? It seems only Zanzibar knows!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)