We're back and this is still "The Gold of Gartok," an incredibly poorly drawn comic book feature, but one with some interesting concepts in it, as we discussed last time.
Here, we see another example of early superheroes having no problems with killing, as the Tulpa picks up a guard and casually chucks him down a well to die.
Why would grey eyes be forbidden?
Lama Tsang has some variant of the Message spell that can reach someone in their dreams -- though, since this was cast between two non-Hero characters, this sort of detail can be hand-waved as flavor text.
Note the use of hourglasses to synchronize, when watches are not available.
I don't have anything game mechanic-related to say here, but -- what a master negotiator Shia is. He's staring down the barrel of a sub-machine gun pointed at him, and he
still manages to convince the good guy to bribe him to surrender! And not just with loose coinage, but an entire bag of gold. It makes me think about if I ever wanted to play a campaign where all money transactions were handled by trading bags of gold,
ala the Talisman board game. It would certainly take the place of nuanced price lists for equipment; it would be more like 1 bag of gold = all your starting equipment.
Huh. I guess I thought of something game mechanic-y to talk about after all...
I love how comic book villains think. "Our bullets are bouncing right off him -- let's try our fists instead!" Though, to be fair, it's possible that the mobsters are trying to overbear and pin the Tulpa -- we really can't tell anything for sure from this terrible art -- and maybe they think he is invulnerable, but not super-strong.
I would call Wolfgang's bluff, Bart. If being buried under an avalanche of bags of gold didn't set off that vial, it's probably not nitroglycerine he's holding.
Now we're jumping right into the next feature,
Blond Garth... you know, to distinguish him from all the other Garths in the South Seas. It's your typical white savior racist fare, but transported from Africa to the South Seas. I share this page to illustrate that you can expect your enemies to have concealed weapons hidden anywhere -- even in their loincloths. "Is that a dagger you've got in your pocket, Blond Garth...? Oh...I guess it
was a dagger..."
In case you're wondering, he's going to shove the shell into the shark's mouth and make it choke; a pretty risky gamble and one I'm having trouble coping with game mechanically. I guess...he has to roll to hit, then make a save vs. plot to make the opportunity for the choking to happen, which forces a save vs. science for the shark to resist choking. Game mechanically, you'd think he would have been better off just punching the shark, but I agree this makes for a more suspenseful page than that.
This is a ...honestly, I can't tell with this issue when I'm looking at filler or if I'm looking at a feature. This is called
Ruggey and it is, mercifully, the last feature in this book. It seems to be someone's riff on Will Eisner's
Archie O'Toole, about a simple man who becomes a king. I share this page because, well, it's still early in 1940, and making fun of Hitler is not a full-time occupation in the funny pages yet. This one is pretty subtle, but promising you peace while stealing your sandwich seems like a "ha ha, that's Hitler for you" kind of joke that would sit well with me if I didn't have future knowledge that he was also committing genocide on the side.
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