Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 5

We're back with The Invisible Man Known As Dr. Gade, which is admittedly a really unwieldy title and perhaps one reason why Gade literally disappeared from comics after this. 

While visible, Gade is no better at fighting than an ordinary person, which makes me wonder if he isn't a Magic-User with some brevet ranks at all, but should be statted as a 1st-level Mysteryman given a powerful mad science trophy item by his Editor. 

Gade also has a disintegrator - and not just any disintegrator, but an "old disintegrator" - like he'd invented it ages ago and then lost interest in it. Maybe it didn't work proper, because Gade has to throw his enemy into it and make it explode to kill the man.

I think I'm more turned off by heroes who kill now than I was a few years back, as I'm only giving that story a B+ now.

The next story is Zara of the Jungle, a Sheena clone (but with dark hair). It starts with Captain Jeff Graves, heading out into the jungle to try and stop the local tribes from fighting. He has a wandering encounter with a lion that he ... *sigh* kills with a single bullet. 

The native tribes are drawn...really weird. I've seen a lot of racist depictions of black people in these early comic books, but these guys look almost like aliens. 

Jeff is captured after falling into a concealed pit (even though it doesn't look even 5' deep). Zara rescues him, first by shooting the natives who are about to execute Jeff with her bow, and then by shooting the ropes off of Jeff -- which would be a near-impossible trick shot for anyone but maybe a Mysteryman using a stunt. So Zara is a Mysteryman instead of a jungle Explorer? 

Again more racism -- it is implied that Zara is able to stop the tribes from fighting just by the "white goddess" showing up on the battlefield. But I wonder, would they have stopped fighting if a pretty woman of any color had shown up? And if so, this speaks to the power of a having a high Charisma score.

The last story is Dakor the Magician. Dakor is unusual in that he has a personal secretary. He also needs to cross the Pacific by plane instead of magic. To rescue a British consul from Chinese bandits in Singapore (quite the international adventure!), Dakor disguises himself as Chinese, apparently using makeup instead of magic, and pretends to be a pistol peddler to win the bandits over (instead of just charming them). When a guard catches Dakor at the consul's cell, Dakor punches him out instead of using a spell. 

The spells don't start until page 4, at which point Dakor Polymorph Weapons (3 spears into cornstalks; I think I've talked about needing this spell before). He then creates magic scissors that cut the ropes binding him, which could be flavor text for a Knock spell? Then he casts Knock again for sure on the cell door, with the added wrinkle being that he can make the door swing open so hard that it hits a bandit enough to hurt him (a freebie from the Editor? An extra-strong Knock spell?). 

The biggest takeaway from here should be that Dakor can cast spells with his arms bound, proving that Hideouts & Hoodlums magic-users need to be flexible in what disrupts their spellcasting. The second biggest is that Dakor casts the same spells twice. I have long toyed with the notion of a mechanic that would give magic-users a chance to retain a cast spell...and it seems that Dakor has that, unless he just happened to memorize the same two spells twice. Actually, three times with Polymorph Weapons, as soon he's changing a thrown knife into a bird. 

I have serious issues with Dakor being able to cast a spell, while falling into a pit trap, to polymorph the spikes at the bottom into springs. Casting a spell in melee is one thing -- he could have started casting that Polymorph Weapons spell before the knife was thrown -- but he doesn't know about the pit until he's already falling, and it should only take 1 second to hit bottom in a pit that shallow, which is way too little time to cast a spell. The only other suggestion I have is that maybe one of these polymorph spells has a duration and he can change anything at will during the spell duration.

The last spell he casts makes a giant net, but ...man, that sure looks like a Web spell to me!

 

Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 4

Back to Blue Blaze! A sudden cave-in forces Blue Blaze to break out his higher level Raise powers and we observe blue flashes radiating from his body, flavor text any player can choose, but then has to be consistent with.

There's an odd plot hole where Blue Blaze learns the man who just walked out of the room was the bomber, but instead of just walking through the door and capturing him, BB ignores the man and speeds off to the next mine the bomber had threatened.

Second plot hole: Even though Blue Blaze's speedster has unlimited speed, Barko (a terrible name for a villain, by the way) somehow gets ahead of him on the way to the mine. Does Barko have a speedster with even more unlimited speed?

Blue Blaze's Raise power might still be active from earlier, allowing him to catch a heavy boulder. If the boulder missed him then he didn't need to lift it, but if it hit, I'm hesitant to let the Raise power thwart it...and yet...I have to admit that the Raise powers are currently of limited utility except when you need to lift something heavy, and that's seldom going to be important during combat. This warrants more thought.

Next Barko shoots out one of BB's car's tires and makes him swerve, but a skill check helps BB regain control. So how does Barko follow that? He sics two dogs on BB. BB chokes the dogs to death. Not cool, BB! 

Barko has a pair of ice guns that put BB in a block of ice. Hold Person with flavor text? BB is only faking so he can get taken to Barko's hideout, which is sound strategy, or would be if he didn't let Barko leave, just so he can chase him to the next mine. If he really wanted to stop the mine attack, he could have just knocked Barko out sooner. At the mine, BB punches out two thugs working for Barko first before taking out Barko, following the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules about taking out underlings before you go after the main bad guy (just like in the H&H play-by-post game I'm running now!). 

The next story is Taxi Taylor and His Wonder Car. It's your typical story of a mechanic who invents a car that can do anything, tries to gift it to the U.S. government, he gets laughed at, out of spite, he keeps the car without even showing them what it does, he becomes a taxi driver with the car that can do anything, until he just happens to overhear spies in his backseat one day. So what is "anything"? It can intercept radio messages, like most radios can. It can transform into a plane, though it isn't the first car-plane in comics. It can also transform into a sub - also not the first car-sub in comics. It can fire "contra-magnetic electric rays" that can neutralize magnetic mines, and now we're finally in new mad science territory. 

The German spies are called Swastikans, by the way - perhaps the most obvious stand-in for the word Nazi ever in a comic book. 

Oh, the wonder car has 6" steel plates all around it, so acetylene torches can't cut through it. That's a difficult game mechanic to rationalize because armor normally only makes something harder to hit, not more resistant to energy attacks. Perhaps this is special steel plating that confers fire resistance.

Taylor isn't reluctant to cut air hoses and kill underwater Nazis. 

Back to mad science, the wonder car can emit gas bubbles underwater that cause enormous suction, enough to pull a ship underwater. That is also hard to rationalize with game mechanics. Maybe some kind of wrecking things? 

The wonder car has a collapsible ladder that can project out of the top of the car. There is a belt and rope attached to a winch that will automatically reel back in in two minutes. There is a trampoline-like net that pops out of a hatch in the top of the car, and I don't even know how Taylor activated that before falling towards the car. The car also has two revolving chemical water jets for putting out fires. Taylor even has a fireman's hat in his car, just in case he has to put out fires. 

There is a nice trap in the spies' HQ. When the wall safe is touched, electricity causes one's hand to be stuck to it. Raising the stakes of the trap is that the building is on fire and a temperature-sensitive bomb (controlled by a thermometer) is rigged to go off nearby. Taylor takes maybe 2-7 damage from being pulled away from the electrified safe, but is still only lightly injured. 

Next up is The Invisible Man Known As Dr. Gade. When I first read this story a few years ago I graded it with an A. Will it hold up as well this time?

In his origin story, Gade is working in front of an open furnace in his lab when an assassin comes up behind him and pushes him in. Now I'm interested in giving assassins a backstab ability so they can increase their damage from behind, but then transfer those points of damage into pushing. 

Soaked in chemicals he was pushed into, and then set on fire, the strange reactions transform him into a ...magic-user? Because what he demonstrates when he comes out is is Invisibility and Resist Fire. Well, not normal Invisibility, because Gade is still invisible after punching and grappling, so it must be Improved Invisibility. 

Gade is not a live and let live kind of guy. Just for trying to kill him, Gade knocks the thug/assassin from earlier out a 40th floor window. As the two guys who hired the assassin wait to shoot Gade once he becomes visible, he forces one of them to shoot the other by moving the man's hand. That's not something the game mechanics of H&H is really set up for, and I'd be inclined to say that the Editor rolled to hit Gade, but rolled so badly that he accepted the player's suggestion that the bullet hit an unintended target. 

Although Gade is angry for being initially given his powers, apparently they were only temporary and wouldn't have lasted, so Gade had, between scenes, invented a ray that bathes him with the same energy and renews his powers. For some reason that's not clear to me, he can't turn visible easily on his own, but he's wearing some kind of a belt or harness with a button on it and when he presses it, the device...maybe dampens the energy field that render Gade invisible? 

Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 3

Let's resume with Dynamic Man, just as DM is surprised by a headblow that knocks him out for 1 whole hour. When he comes to, he's in one of those cliche deathtraps where the spiked walls are closing in on him. Rather than fretting, he simply wrecks his way through the ceiling and escapes. This is a problem I have in Hideouts & Hoodlums, where it is hard to stick superheroes in deathtraps if they can just wreck their way out, but I'm glad that the earliest superhero writers seemed to be grappling with this problem too.

It's important for mobsters to leave clues behind in their desk drawers. I'm amused that the ship they plan to sabotage is called the Batavia, as there's a town near here called that. It's odd, though, that Dr. Vee goes along personally to sabotage the Batavia, but stayed in his hideout when the train was to be sabotaged. Maybe Vee just doesn't like trains?

One punch from Dynamic Man sends Vee flying off the ship and, it appears, Vee goes sailing pretty far through the air. We're told he survived, but it's hard to imagine an old man being able to take that kind of punishment. To have punched him so far, DM must have been using the power Super Punch power, which means Dynamic Man has access to a 4th level power. 

Lastly, I think it's interesting that DM loses interest once the master criminal is defeated and lets the police mop up the lesser spies.

Space Rangers is set in the year 2300 and it's a future where just about everyone has spacecraft that you can crisscross the solar system in and space rangers dress like 1940 police officers. New elements have been discovered, and "plinium" ore is the "only substitute for radium" -- which is a really unusual thing to say. Has all of the radium in the solar system been used up by 2300? This is a pretty forward thinking sci fi strip if it's thinking about the depletion of natural resources already in 1940. 

Space rangers' ships can travel from Earth to Mercury in two days, and they need to find the space bandit Black Hawk. It's hard to take Black Hawk seriously since he wears pointed shoes and what looks like a bathrobe. 

The rangers, Bob and Nibbs, are overwhelmed by at least 11 bandits, probably more. For some reason, they don't have a weapon more hi-tech than wooden clubs among them (even for missile weapons all they have is wooden clubs!), but that's okay because Bob and Nibbs have lost their guns, somehow, between panels -- but we're reminded twice that they lost them! We're left to imagine what their handguns could do, but the weapons on board the spaceships can paralyze and disintegrate. 

And it's not just weapons that are low tech on Mercury; once they captured Bob and Nibbs, the two rangers are tied up with simple hemp rope. And they don't even tie good knots!

Moving on to the next feature, that's Blue Blaze, the super hi-tech zombie. When I saw this scenario was about sabotage at an anthracite mine I was expecting something hi-tech, but that's just a fancy word for hard coal. The hi-tech comes in Blue Blaze's new car, a "supercharged speedster capable of unlimited speed." Infinite is awful fast for a Movement rate, though comic book captions are notorious for hyperbole.

Reaching the mine super fast, almost like he's teleported there (hmm...), Blue Blaze searches the wreckage and his "superior knowledge of science" helps him identify bomb parts, which sounds like a successful Intelligence check to me.

(Read in Marvel Masterworks: Mystic Comics Vol. 1)

Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 2

Next up is Flexo the Rubber Man. This is like old home week for me, as both of these heroes (Mastermind Excello and Flexo) were played in my 1962 Marvel Super Heroes campaign I ran two years back. 

Flexo's inventors, Joel and Joshua, aren't ones to rest on their laurels; they're already hard at work reinventing those common comic book staples, the torpedo repeller and the new, more deadly explosive. And our enemies are up to the same tricks, because they have one of those dime-a-dozen rayguns that turn off electric motors. The 2nd edition basic book has no tables for specific trophies, but if it did, they would be weighted by frequency and these items would have some of the widest ranges on the table. 

Joel, captured by spies, is placed in a pretty lame deathtrap; he is tied to a tree with rope and left for wolves to eat. Wolves? Do these spies think they're in Siberia? The spies also don't think to check Joel's pockets, or they would have found the portable transmitter. Portable transmitters are also pretty common among comic book characters, but what makes Joel's different is that he taps on a button on his jacket, Morse code-style, and that transmits the message. 

When Josh gets the message, he takes the hi-tech approach of using Flexo to get him there and the low-tech approach of tying himself to Flexo's back with rope. I hope you're really good at knots, Josh! The comic book doesn't really explain how Flexo flies, but in the RPG campaign I ran that Flexo was played in, we came up with the idea that he shoots gas out his butt for propulsion. 

Josh reaches Joel just as 4 or 5 wolves arrive and, even though the wolves have shown nothing but curiosity about Joel so far, Flexo is made to viciously attack the wolves.

Flexo lifts their plane over his head (its head?). I think a 4-seat, single prop plane weighs about 1.5 tons, which is almost to the point where the power Raise Car tops out. Then they follow the repeller because it's magnetic and their compass in the plane points towards it because...you know, magnetism has no range to it.

As they charge into the spies' hideout, the marching order is unusual in that Josh and Joel go in first, with Flexo trailing behind. You'd think the human beings would want to use him for cover. Unless Flexo just moves really slowly on foot? 

The entrance is trapped with dynamite and all three of them are buried beneath "a mass of rock and heavy timbers" (without specifying how much a mass weighs). The entrance is trapped with dynamite and all three of them are buried beneath "a mass of rock and heavy timbers" (without specifying how much a mass weighs). The panel is pretty dramatic, with it looking like the timbers are exploding towards them instead of just falling. I would rate that as at least 3-18 points of damage. It makes sense that Flexo is not harmed by it if he buffed himself with a strong defensive power, but what's really surprising is that Josh and Joel only have scratches. I had considered them noncombatant supporting cast members - but are they actually mid-level scientists with a fair amount of hit points?

Although Josh and Joel normally control Flexo with a remote, it seems it can respond to voice commands too. The really interesting thing about Flexo is that bullets don't just bounce off of him like you'd expect from a rubber robot; instead, Flexo reseals after being punctured, like self-sealing tires. Only, as far as I can tell, self-sealing tires weren't a thing until 2006, so this seems to have anticipated the technology.

Flexo's "machine gun blows" must be the Flurry of Blows power. What's harder to describe with game mechanics is when the spies' car bounces off of Flexo, as there's not really a good power for that. Bounce Back Blows, maybe, if you let it work on vehicles and not just living attackers. Bounce Back Blows is powerful, so Flexo has a lot of brevet ranks. At this point, Flexo should still be just a first-level superhero. 

Moving on, the next adventure features Dynamic Man, and it starts with a curious mystery. Saboteurs are planning to blow up a bridge to crash a train. Dynamic Man is riding, in costume, on the top of the train. Is that because he knows the train is in danger, or is it just coincidence? Like Mastermind Excello, Dynamic Man has Clairvoyance and can see the bomb being placed, but Clairvoyance only has so much range, so he shouldn't have known about this until the train was close. 

Dynamic Man can fly fast enough to catch up to a speeding car, which is difficult to do with Fly II, and might require Fly III if the car had enough of a head start. He is buffed, possibly with Imperviousness, or relying on Nigh-Invulnerable Skin and a little luck, before going in so he doesn't have to worry about the bullets bouncing off of him. He picks up the men with ease, suggesting he has Raise Car activated, and appears to be beating the men against the ground like clubs, doing clubbing damage to them (which would be 1-6 points only -- unless he is also buffed with one of the Get Tough powers). The one surprise is that Dynamic Man seems to have a power that works just like rayguns that shut off engines, though you might be able to duplicate that effect with Wreck at Range, if the Editor allowed you to use it on just the engine and not the whole car. 

The bad guys' car has a special add-on; a radio transmitter in the back seat so their boss can listen in on everything...

(Read in Marvel Masterworks: Mystic Comics vol. 1.)

  

Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 1

Happy New Year! Let's kick things off with a return to Timely Comics!

This issue starts with the debut of Mastermind Excello. Mastermind Excello is Earl Everett's code name with Naval Intelligence. Everett is an interesting choice of surname, since Bill Everett would be a known name in the small world of comic book publishing already. 

When Excello meditates, his mind conjures images of nearby evil, like he was casting a Detect Evil spell, only the Editor was allowing additional information here, including a visualization of the evil act (planning sabotage), as if Excello was scrying with a crystal ball. I think that's too much information from a 1st-level spell. Of course, it's also possible that Excello has a miniature crystal ball in his pocket and we just aren't privy to that information yet...

Excello allows himself to be captured, confident he will be taken to the spies' boss. Why he doesn't instead assume they will knock him out and just toss him overboard is puzzling, unless he was also casting an ESP spell?

The spies are Sovernians. The monocle on one of the spies is usually artist shorthand for them being Germans, but the naming conventions are odd; the spy chief's name is Kadash, which is a Jewish name. Sovernia sounds a little bit like Slovenia...so these are Jewish spies from Slovenia? 

While imprisoned on the Jewish Slovenians' battleship, Excello uses Clairaudience to overhear the chief plotting. To this point, Excello has seemed to clearly be a Magic-User -- but then he wrecks his way out of the chains binding him! In the next panel, Excello's wrecking ability is explained away by "Secret Chemical SF 44," which he has vials of concealed on his person. But are these trophy items, or flavor text explaining his wrecking ability?

"...machine guns are no match for Excello's triple propeller pistol." Really? Because it looks like an ordinary six-shooter. It doesn't seem possible that it can shoot three bullets at once through a single barrel. Does it shoot three times as fast as a pistol? That still doesn't seem as fast as a machine gun. Of course, that's thinking in terms of real world physics...in Hideouts & Hoodlums, your rate of fire is determined by your level. So a machine gun isn't super effective in the hands of a 1st-level spy, but still gets four attacks per turn. If a triple propeller pistol works like an automatic, then Excello can outshoot it if he is level 5 or higher -- and we already know he is if he can cast Clairaudience. H&H works again!    

I'm going to have to go with my earlier theory about the pocket crystal ball, because Kadash's plane should be well out of spell range when Excello reads where Kadash's HQ in New York is. It's on the 80th floor so, naturally, instead of taking the elevator or stairs, Excello dons "vacu-pads" on his hands and knees and climbs all 80 stories on the outside of the building, in broad daylight, because that's surely not going to draw attention. Or is it broad daylight? The sky is colored orange for some reason, so that makes it hard to pin down a time of day. 

After easily defeating Kadash and his men with just his fists, Excello disguises himself as Kadash using a disguise kit that we even get to see the contents of (which includes several fake mustaches of different styles). As a magic-user, this could have been explained away as a Change Self spell, but since we can see the kit I'm going to agree he used mundane means and saved the spell slot for something more useful. 

He also has a seaplane now because he took one from the spies and now uses it to get around. He heads to find Kadash's boss in Reedsville, New Jersey. An interesting choice of states -- Pennsylvania has the largest Reedsville, and West Virginia and Ohio also have their own Reedsvilles, but placing this in New Jersey makes the town fictional.  

The boss's boss's plot is kinda complicated. His spies have planted explosives all across the country. Instead of setting them off one at a time, they are all rigged to be set off remotely from one master switch in Reedsville -- a set-up that required taking over a powerhouse with "super turbines" to power the master switch. It might not take a mastermind to notice something that suspicious. 

The jig is up and we know Excello is a superhero as well when he picks up a turbine and throws it at guards. It's hard to guess how much that turbine weighs, especially since it looks more like a boiler than a turbine...but I should think the Raise Car power would handle it. Excello combines that with Improvise Missile Weapon I to take out three guards, and then shoots the rest. Excello must have a license to kill.

Until now, Excello hasn't seemed too overpowered, but one vial of his secret chemical and blow up the entire powerhouse, which seems a tad powerful. Even if just a one-shot item, he's just wrecked things like a superhero of at least level 6.

Excello also has a pocket transmitter he can use to contact Naval intelligence and have them, on his orders, fire a coastal defense gun at any target he names, plus calling cards with an American flag on them and the catchphrase "America first, last and always" (and without the Oxford comma, no less!). 

From this story, I would say Excello is a magic-user/superhero with four brevet ranks in magic-user and one brevet rank in superhero.

(Read from Marvel Masterworks: Mystic Comics vol. 1)