This story predates the founding of the real San Francisco National Bank by 22 years.
Dale likely arrives in California at the San Francisco International Airport, which in a year will become a Coast Guard base and Army Air Corps training and staging base. The story isn't clear if Red Corker's men just happen to be at the airport or if they on lookout duty watching for G-Men to arrive. It seems unlikely the gang can spare lookouts for every unlikely occurrence, since the gang doesn't appear to be very big.
Dale isn't very good at noticing his car is being followed; he must have failed his skill check to spot things.
Other than having a keen eye, I would think research beforehand must explain how Dale immediately recognizes Red's lieutenant. This would either have occurred in-game, with the Editor giving the player specific information, or the player could, in the moment, ask for an Intelligence check or a save vs. plot (but not both!) to determine if he had any foreknowledge of what Red's lieutenants looked like.
Red's scheme is to kidnap the child of a San Francisco oil magnate. The most famous San Francisco oil magnate was J. Paul Getty.
The rescue scene is peculiar, to say the least. Dale comes riding in on an airplane wing, scoops up the kidnapped girl between his legs while holding onto the wing with his hands, then climbed back onto the wing, held the girl with one arm, drew his gun with the other, and shot Red while holding the wing with his leg. There's a lot of unlikely things in there. A Dex check to cling to the wing (or a stunt), an attack roll "to hit" the girl (at a low AC, given the speed of the plane), and then another Dex check for all the balancing he does. And why does he shoot Red? It's his job to arrest Red and Red can't do anything at this point to harm the girl anymore.
Next up is Breeze Barton in the Miracle City. It takes place in 1945 "and the world is at war" -- which was sadly accurate. Less accurate is the Japanese invasion of South Africa. When Breeze sees it, his first thought is to report this to London, which is weird because that's 5,600 miles away and there must be dozens of places he could check in closer. It's just an excuse to get him flying north over the Sahara Desert. That's how he finds a mirage of a city that turns out to not be a mirage, but an actual city - a super-scientific city where they already have anti-gravity transportation. People have lived there for over 30,000 years -- the same people in some cases, because the city exists in a pocket dimension where time doesn't pass like normal. Time does pass, even though we're told otherwise -- the sun rises and sets and events are not occurring simultaneously. It's aging that doesn't happen.
More interestingly, the city can only be entered through a "spot" where the electrons flow just one way, so you can't leave. There is at least one neanderthal in the city and at least one dinosaur outside the city; the neanderthal makes some sense but the dinosaur doesn't on a lot of levels. It pushes the existence of this "one-way electron flow spot" way into the distant past, the dinosaur looks extremely unrealistic (even by how much they knew in 1940), more like a dragon, and if it is really that dangerous you'd think it would have been put down long before now. The weapon that puts it down is a tripod-mounted "heatwave" gun.
Even the dinosaur is quickly eclipsed by my biggest problem with the story, that Breeze solves how to reverse the electrons with magnetism in less than a day, while the best scientist in the city hadn't thought of that in 12,000 years. It hadn't even occurred to the rival city in this pocket dimension, this one occupied by the demon people, an interesting-looking nonhuman race. They are furry, with spiky manes on their heads, pointy ears, hooved feet, they can fly, but with a single sail on their backs instead of wings. They have their own super-technology; they can make a cloud appear around someone's head that sucks thoughts out of your head through the astral plane. Both cities have heat-wave guns...but yeah, magnetism is beyond them.
There's a further interesting detail about the culture of the demon people. They keep slaves, but the slaves are other demon people...on first inspection, but the slaves don't have sails on their backs.
In the Purple Mask, Frederick Swabert refers to the Panic of 1907. I had to look this up, but the Panic of 1907 – also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis – was a financial crisis that took place in the United States over a three-week period starting in mid-October, when the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50% from its peak the previous year. Swabert is being threatened to reveal the location of a secret vault he doesn't know the location of, but Purple Mask (Dennis Burton) swipes a book with all of the floorplans to Fred's house in it, like starting a hideout crawl with the whole map in your hand. Since the house has secret doors, this is extra handy.
The bad guys have a trap for Fred, his phone is rigged to spray poison gas in his face. Purple Mask somehow guesses this -- an impossible hunch -- and shoots the phone. The phone turns out to be a big clue that wouldn't exist today; because the bad guys have their own phone in the same house, so all PM has to do is follow the physical phone line and he locates the rooms they are hiding out in.
Purple Mask has no compunction against shooting any mobsters holding guns, but if they attack him with fists he switches to the same.
Somehow a stray bullet hits the secret button that opens a secret door, which is a freebie from the Editor because there's no way that should have happened. The secret room behind the door is where the treasure is and it's an interesting room; the money is in a big box on an island in the middle of a pool of acid with a narrow drawbridge leading to it. The drawbridge can be controlled with controls on the island.
Another discrepancy in the story: Purple Mask somehow knows there is a secret trapdoor under the island, but he didn't seem to know anything about this room from the maps earlier.
The next adventure is the Phantom Reporter. Typical of these stories, they don't tell us where it takes place. We do get the name of his newspaper, though, and that's interesting because it's the Daily Express, and that is a well-known London newspaper. Is this a UK hero? Even the fact that the crimes occurred in the "East Side" fits, because the East End of London was infamous for poverty and crime. My theory only breaks down when the bad guys start talking in New York accents, and then the reference to Park Avenue clinches it; this is New York City. Oh well.
We're told the Phantom Reporter, in his regular identity, inherited $50 million from his father. Since Henry Ford had $200 billion in 1940, that doesn't even put him close to richest guy in town.
I don't know what's going on with his mask. It seems to be glowing? Or maybe it's just artistic license to make him look more dramatic, as there's really no reason for it to be glowing.
(Read at readcomiconline.to)
Funny thing-the Purple Mask was preceded by the Laughing Mask-in the same company and the same comic series, with the exact same profession and Secret ID...I don't think that the change was acknowledged in-story, but I wonder why the creators traded such an iconic look and name for such a bland one? was the baroque golden Comedy Mask to hard to illustrate?
ReplyDeleteOr he broke the first mask by sitting on it and had to find a replacement?
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