Rocket Comics #2 - pt. 2

We're still on the Phantom Ranger and so are all the bad guys. We have a Lion King-like deathtrap here, where the hero is put in the path of a stampede. Will Demon reach him in time and get him out?

What a shock, he made it! There's an interesting thing about panel 2, where dragging him across the ground loosened the ropes. Did he take damage, and the damage wrecked the ropes? How much damage should it take to wreck something? I can't imagine being dragged doing more than 3 points of damage, so 3 points of damage = chance of wrecking at the doors category?

Now we're jumping into Red Roberts, the Electro Man, where a random traffic accident leads to a startling discovery. But, in between, Red uses what appears to be the spell Poof! to emerge from his car, and takes down the two sailors with what appear to be four Magic Missiles. It is unclear, from both this page and the next, if Red's electricity rendered them unconscious or killed them, or if Red even cared either way. 

Anyway, it's interesting to think of a hi-tech superhero being statted as a magic-user, but I think it fits because so many of the standard superhero tropes are missing, as well as his abilities being better statted with known spells than powers.

Now this one is curious. Red appears to be using Teleport through Focus, the power that heroes like the Flame use to move quickly. For the Flame, it's to anywhere there's fire, where as here it's to anywhere there's electricity (which is basically everywhere). 

But there seems to be something else going on here too. There is no reason for Red to have intentionally chosen this particular room in this particular building; he just seems to show up at random right where a plot hook character is waiting for him. 

So, if you're not actively trying to get to a Point B, but just anywhere from Point A, should that even count as a use of your power, or is that just flavor text? Because if he just kept randomly walking in any direction, eventually he could have wound up somewhere else the Editor could have placed this encounter.

I'm going to take this first panel as more evidence of Magic Missile spells being cast. Normally it is dangerous to cast missiles into a melee situation, but if he is using the auto-hit method of the MM spell, he doesn't have to worry about hitting this girl. 

Wrecking the guns seems like a superhero mechanic again, but I've already included a wrecking spell into the game for situations just like this, when a character who otherwise appears to be a magic-user is able to wreck things.

I like it when bad guys have names that make it obvious they are bad guys. This guy in the brown suit is Stumpy Jake, which isn't particularly nefarious-sounding, but his colleagues that you don't see pictured here are Blackie Skull and Bones Wilson. This naming convention also extends to boats, so if you ever come across the S.S. Ghost, you just know it's going to have bad guys on it. 

I'm not sure, but I think we once read a story with opium stuffed in fish before. I can't verify this, but it's likely from a pulp fiction story that both comic book authors stole from.

To keep from embarrassing Red, I spared him from showing you the page where he's knocked unconscious by a net-full of fish landing on his head. 

That alone isn't actually all that unusual for a comic book hero -- but what is really unusual is being drugged with opium afterwards. In a Hideouts & Hoodlums scenario, this could solve the problem of superheroes being able to wreck themselves out of deathtraps too quickly, but here Red seems to instantly recover from the opium as soon as he regains consciousness. 

The story also tosses away all sympathy we had for the Chinese prisoners when they willingly agree to torture Red for the bad guys. 

I kind of like how this story completely skips over the hitting that happens between panels 1 and 2. 

I'm less inclined to accept this use of teleport as flavor text, since it is not only an intentional destination, but bypasses the rest of the hideout around Scarface's ...living room, I'm guessing. My question is, how does Red navigate the wires? Does he have some kind of instinctive telelocation power - and does that need to be its own power? - or is he somehow able to eavesdrop on phone operators and navigate the system that way...?

When your master criminal jumps out a window to his death - that's a really botched morale check.

 

And what is up with those last panels, where the dialogue takes place in captions? That's just weird and confusing to read.

Lastly, we're going to take a peek at the next story, about the villainous Steel Shark (it's one of those features named after the recurring villain). 

I don't know what it was about television at the time, but it seems like most every comic book writer wanted to come up with their own name for it. Televisions already were a thing by 1940, though they had not caught on to widespread use yet. Did these writers think the word "television" wasn't going to catch on either?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)