Prize Comics #2 - pt. 1

Oh boy. We're visiting with Power Nelson again in his Buck Rogers-esque "future" of 1982 and, boy, the racism practically jumps off the page and pokes you in the eye. 

The "bonk heads" attack sees a lot of action in the early comic books, which makes it frustrating that it's hard to model with the Hideouts & Hoodlums combat rules. This could be the Multi-Attack power for superheroes, or it could be grappling one opponent and then using the first one as a clubbing weapon against the other in the following turn. 

This might be the first time we've seen a gun backfire against its holder. This is even harder to model in the rules and is likely just a freebie to the player. 

These stratosphere freighters look awfully un-flightworthy to me. What keeps them from rolling in flight? 

It's hard to say how terrific a leap that is. It seems that Nelson is higher than the skyscrapers, so this could be Leap II. The steel plates on top of the plane probably wreck as if a generator, though this could be "futuristic" steel and wreck one level higher.

It was tough to say what the raygun did, but we get some clues here about them being heat rays. If it is, that means Nelson is buffed with the Fire Resistance power here.

Ugh...Prince Ugi can't be very good at piloting if his fighter can't outmaneuver a freighter. Nelson might be out-piloting him in skill checks despite rolling at a penalty, or maybe he is high enough in level to have a stunt (higher-level superheroes will get those in the Advanced H&H Heroes Handbook, if I ever get it done).

The result of the wrecking things seems plausible, given its a heat ray.

The first three panels are good here, with Nelson improvising a weapon and coupling it with a buffing power (Extend Missile Range -- but at which level? We can't tell the distance from these panels) to solve the problem. 

The rest of the page is crazy. A planetoid/giant meteor just happens to show up out of nowhere for the fighter to crash into? That should be like a 1 in 1,000 chance on a wandering encounter chart, at best.

More crazily, the planetoid comes into our atmosphere -- and then leaves, like some kind of boomerang meteor.

Take a careful look at these first two panels. Although it's attached to something (a recharger on his belt maybe?) by wires, Nelson is using a pocket sending-receiving set -- a cellphone. 

Again, the rest of the page is crazy, or let's say deeply flawed, at least. If the gun is designed to fire a message to Mars, but it would atomize Nelson, what would the message be made out of...?

Okay, I can't let this page go without ranting. 

Oh, you won't be blown to bits because you...can breathe? In what way does that make sense? Are empty lungs his Achilles' heel? 

And what is he packing his robot-repair kit in? The atomizing-proof shell the message for Mars was going to be shot in? 

And what kind of space-gun is fired by pulling a lanyard? Is it a gun or a convention-goer?

Yeah, I've had enough of that. We're going to jump into the next feature, Ted O'Neil the Barnstormer. Here we see that a low-level aviator might have to take dangerous jobs for only $100.

Whoa -- I knew we had a tight southern border for people coming north over it, but I wonder if we ever really had a time when we would shoot down American planes trying to fly into Mexico? 

(Scans courtesy of ComicBookPlus.)