Top-Notch Comics #4 - pt. 1

We're going to jump straight into the first feature of this issue, The Wizard, because there's some interesting issues here. The scenario here is that Germans (called Bundonians here) are planning to launch an invasion of Texas from Mexico. But the Wizard seems to have caught onto their plan late because he's arriving in Texas and the bad guys' base is already there. Further, it only takes him two hours to fly there. The Wizard is based out of Washington, D.C. and a non-stop flight to San Antonio, Texas normally takes 3 1/2 hours. So either the Wizard is not in Washington, D.C. at the start of this scenario or his plane travels almost twice as fast as a normal plane (certainly unusual given that it appears to only be a standard mono-prop plane). 

Also note how the subplot involving the fiancee with hurt feelings is resolved in one panel and a caption. Compare to a post-1961 comic book, where this soap opera material might stretch over pages.

This diagram reminds me of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Even with specs to admire, I still don't know what a VB-Ray does. Maybe it stands for Very Brutal? It can definitely melt/wreck through walls. 

Hypnotizing one-on-one is a skill any Hero can attempt, but hypnotizing a whole room full of people seems more like a power or spell. Although, from panel 4, it appears the general's staff is just this one soldier next to him. 

There are sound tactics here; hypnotism may only last so long, or the enemy might get wise to the deception, so he' right to make their arsenal his next target. 

I, admittedly, have no Air Force experience, but it seems to me that the bombers are dive bombing, not circling. I was skeptical of this until I looked it up, but dive bombing is a thing because angling down towards the target actually helps aim the bombs with greater accuracy. I would have thought dropping them straight down would be better, but this is why no one asks me to plan bombing missions.

  

Here we have another diagram that looks cool but doesn't really tell us how it works. Luckily this one is a very familiar one, the cliche of a ray that kills engines. 

A nice twist is that the bad guys have a ray gun too. A dissolving raygun? The caption said it sprayed corrosive liquid, but that seems unlikely that a squirt gun would be that accurate while traveling at airplane speeds.

This top row is all kinds of interesting to me. The acid has drained his strength, but has done no visible damage to him or even to his clothes. Is that possible? Only with H&H's abstract damage mechanic (and, to be fair, the mechanic of the game H&H is based on). When he's saying all his strength is gone, what the Wizard probably means is that he's down to his last few hit points already.

I'm not sure why we need to see the inside of a flask to get how it works. It's kinda neat that it shows us how the gasses get mixed inside it, but by pulling back to the curtain to show us the "science" it reveals two made-up gas names, riaton and oxothygen. I think we were better off with the ray guns that look technical but reveal nothing of how they work. 

I have never encountered this use of "I'm all in!" before, which seems here to mean "I'm completely spent!" rather than "Yeah, let's do this!"

It's nice that even the narrator in the caption of panel 6 realized how hard it is to believe that the plane just happens to come down at his fiancee's house. That should tell you there's something wrong with your story when even your own fictional narrator doesn't believe it. 

"Eggscape"? That's a German accent?

"Phial" is an unusual word you don't see every day. And invisible gas is equally rare in a comic book. 

Ho.Mg4? Holmium Magnesium? Seems like that would be extremely dangerous, even if that was a real isotope. 

Heroes always manage to pull out a last bit of strength when needed, as if their weaknesses were just flavor text.

Here's a rare cutaway view of a hideout. Although the map only shows three soldiers on the ground floor and one guard on the upper floor, it seems that there are four men on the ground floor after all. Or one of them withstood the Wizard's surprise attack. Or the guard from upstairs came down. Or maybe a guard from outside joined in. It's important that the players never learn exactly what they're up against no matter how well they prepare.

I have a pocket transmitter too these days, but my pockets sure aren't big enough to hold the transmitter we see in panel 3. Although the Wizard's main power is called his photographic mind, it seems more like omniscience how he senses everything. That's a power I'm not keen on being in Hideouts & Hoodlums, though I suppose I could bump it up to a 7th level power so I don't have to worry about it for awhile. 

I'm also uncomfortable with the near limitless range of the Wizard's Message power; this has to be a higher level version (Greater Messaging?) of how I envision the power working. 

I don't see how a contra-gravity flask would let him run super-fast through the air, but maybe he's buffed with both Fly and Race the Plane to get that speed?

Hey Wizard, are you seriously leaving your fiancee tied up? 

In case you weren't sure from the above that the Wizard was a superhero, we get a perfect example of him using wrecking things here -- superhero-level wrecking things (any Hero can snap rope on a good roll). 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)