Target Comics #3 - pt. 1

Welcome back to Target Comics! As you can see, Manowar, the White Streak, is in Chicago, planning to clean up the meat packing industry. Chicago's big three meat packers were Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Nelson Morris -- which one does Leighton represent, I wonder?

We also see Manowar activating his X-Ray Vision power.

As crazy as I think Manowar is for ignoring the fact that he's literally witnessed Leighton committing murder and going after more evidence from the inspector, I just saw this same thing happen in an episode of Superman & Lois last night, where Superman could stop Morgan Edge's scheme any time he wants by simply abducting Morgan and locking him away in a cave somewhere. But this is a trope of the genre, and so Manowar has to save vs. plot to go after Leighton directly. 

There is no game mechanic involved in a grappling match that would be a fumble, or other explanation for causing the car crash. This could be Editor's fiat. This could also be prompted by the player, who suggests, "You know, with all this tussling around in the car, does that make us crash?" And the Editor says, "Gee, I don't know, and either gives Manowar a save vs. plot, or perhaps a save vs. science for the driver to determine if his player was right or not.

Wha? No, I am not creating a new power called Create Ladder Out of Electrons. This is flavor text for the Levitate power, and I'm sticking to that story!

I've seen the need for a Messaging power before, as we see in panel 4. 

Manowar's earlier X-Ray Vision power is still active, even though this would seem to be a lot of turns later. 

Slipping on a greasy floor may seem silly by modern superhero standards, but it is just the sort of embarrassing thing that can happen in any RPG scenario where random dice rolls determine results.

A player would need to be a really good sport to put up with that headblow from a burning falling timber. 

It's a nice twist that Leighton shows no interest in monologing, or even putting Manowar in a deathtrap and then leaving the room. 

Unlike magic-users, superheroes don't need their hands free to activate their powers (normally; this could make a good weakness for alien superheroes) and here he uses Wreck at Range on that gun. 

Explaining how he electrocutes the door with an already established power is trickier. I'm thinking we might need a new power like Shocking Touch, that a hero can do hand-to-hand like Shocking Grasp or project it onto a nearby conductive surface. 1-6 points of damage +1 per level at a max range of 10' per level?

At first it seems like, to me, that Manowar is using Hold Person, but this is a more dangerous version of that where you can move, but take damage for doing so. But would that be a higher level or lower level version of Hold Person? On one hand it has an extra effect, but on the other hand you can simply choose to take the damage and escape the other effect. Aw, I'm going to split the difference and leave Minefield as a 2nd level power (and maybe set the damage at 2-8 points?). 

This is the second time in the same story Manowar is knocked out cold by a head blow. What terrible luck!

 

Hmm...I wanted to explain away that electricity ladder as flavor text for a power we already have, like Levitate. And it does look like levitation, until he goes sideways over the street. It doesn't look like Fly, but that is the only power that really fits, unless we accept this as a new power. Something like Create Normal Item? There is an AD&D spell like that, Minor Creation, but it's a surprisingly high-level one, 4th level. Even if we nudge it down to 3rd level, that's pretty high for Manowar, though a lot of our characters need to be explained with brevet ranks. 

One could argue that, if superheroes in their third issues can do these things, that maybe every superhero should be able to do these things, but it is important that some superheroes can't be able to do these things -- the "if everyone is special, then no one is" argument from The Incredibles.

 

We're going to jump into Bill Everett's Bull's-Eye Bill in progress. This page jumped out at me because of the "Bottles don't mean nothing" comment, and not just because it's a grammatically poor double negative. What it could mean, game mechanics-wise, is that the bottle hit, but didn't "hit" to the point where it did damage, or it could mean that it only did 1 point of damage, and Bill has so many hit points that he can confidently not worry about it. 

I also think it's interesting that Bill isn't the one who wins the quick draw contest, but the sheriff, who just conveniently appears in that moment. It's like the Editor saw where the dice were falling, was afraid Bill was going to get killed in this turn, and intervened on his behalf.

Here Bill, by virtue of being a played character, and possibly because of his level title, is able to tell the sheriff what to do. The sheriff, for his part, is perfectly fine with locking the bad guys up, not for disorderly conduct or anything like that, but for being strangers. In the Mythic West, it's important to know someone!

That "trip" into the ravine just reeks of plot convenience. I would normally never require a saving throw to stay on a trail unless it was extremely narrow.

Huh? Okay, it wasn't a plot convenience at all; the fall was just to fill panels. I seem to recall a recent Amazing Man story by Everett had a similar thing where a giant ball of ice was blocking his way for no other reason than to slow the pace of the story down. Of course, in a RPG, random setbacks occur all the time, but you're not as used to seeing them in stories, especially ones with such tight page counts as golden age stories. 

I can't decide if that is a caricature depiction of a black man or as realistic as Bill could draw him; his art can be quite stylized sometimes, and I want to give him the benefit of a doubt. Also, I'm quite familiar with the "girl pretends to be kidnapped to get the western hero's attention" story because I had re-published an old Centaur story very similar to this in Funny Picture Stories. Order your copy today!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)