Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 3

Whew, today's post is going to be a little difficult for a modern audience to get through, and I'll be sharing your discomfort as I rant about a whole lot of racism in these stories.

We're picking up with Chen Chang, the story of a villainous mongol, so already we're in dangerous racism territory.

How big, I wonder, was Hong Kong's white settlement in 1940? Hong Kong was a huge city of 1,640,000 people in 1941. Today, the percentage of whites is 0.8%. If the same held true then, that would mean 13,120 people. Half of that means, well, that would be one huge theatre! The Auditorium Theater in Chicago can only seat 3,875.

That is a horrible plot! If that disobedient servant wasn't so afraid of Chen, maybe he would mention how throwing the bomb into the audience would be a lot simpler than swinging over the audience and dropping it.

This page is pretty painful to read for several reasons. There is the derision and then fear of Mongols, just for being Mongols, that they encounter even before they start strangling people. But perhaps more disturbing is the child in the audience yelling "Him him, Mama! I'm Scared! Hit him!" Have beatings taught this boy that violence is the solution to everything...?

Well, it didn't take a fortune-teller to predict that swinging out over the audience with a bomb was going to end disastrously for either one or both parties involved. What I don't get is how the bomb fails to go off. Does it have a lit fuse that is snuffed by his sleeve?

Note how Richard has nothing to do with saving all these people, only dumb luck does. When a scenario goes horribly wrong, it's up to the Editor to decide if everyone (in the game) has to live with the consequences or not.

Coolie is a very weird term to be using here. For one it's just plain racist, but more importantly, it was typically used to describe unskilled laborers from China in America, and it seems dubious that it would have been used for them in their own homeland.

Moving on, though not escaping from racism, we find Lt. Drake lounging around Hawaii undercover. We see some natives and...well, those better be swimsuits they are wearing, because Hawaiians were definitely wearing modern clothing in 1940.

Drake knocked out that guy with the rifle quickly and recognized him as Japanese. Investigating, he finds some unconscious natives by opium pipes (the old racist trope that non-whites are easily talked into getting drunk or high) and finally the Japanese guy's boat.

Now, all Drake has to do here is explain that this isn't his boat and they're on the same side, but instead he decides he's going to teach them what happens to people who speak with poor diction! Drake gets in some unlucky dice rolls, though, because the two natives make short work of him.

Now how is...Drake was just tossed into the water from the shore on the previous page. The current should be taking him back in towards the shore, not further out to see. Yet here Drake is underwater, surrounded by sharks already. And five sharks at that...that's a lot.

I do like the detail of following a telephone line to the hideout. That's a good way to find concealed hideouts in the modern age!

I've never seen a Hero take advantage of a thatched roof by going through the roof before! That's a "thinking outside the box" style of play I like to see at the table.

I suspect Drake is able to hold them off with just 12 bullets for a whole hour because the agents outside keep failing morale checks.

I'm not a Denny Scott fan, but I thought I should talk about the locations mentioned on these pages. The mountain range mentioned here could be the Karakoram, or possibly the Hindu Kush range. It is unlikely the Himalayas, as the northwest is the one direction north of India where the Himalayas can be found least.

According to an old Encyclopedia Brittanica, there used to be a Kutom in India; it seems to be renamed today, but I haven't been able to track down what it is now.

Kafir, however, is not a real place; "kafir: being an Islamic word for infidels.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 2

Today we're looking at Cynde's behind in a bathing suit -- I mean, Rex Dexter of Mars!

Okay, I get why Rex is stripped down to his skivvies, because that's what you do to your prisoners to make sure they don't have hidden weapons or utility belts full of lockpicks on them, but Cynde is feeling unusually confident, or just hoping to catch some rays while saving Rex.

Actually, I further get that Dick Briefer could have been inspired by Burroughs' John Carter novels, wherein everyone on Mars feels more comfortable naked.

All that said, a deathtrap where you are just hung out in the sun and the bad guys wait for you to dry up and die - well, those are real patient bad guys! That's at least three days for Rex to have come up with an escape plan.

So, Reyni gave her a freeze-ray gun...that worked? Does that mean Reyni gave Rex one that didn't work, like as a prank? Or does Cynde (as a typical 1940-era woman, even in the future) think it's surprising anyone would give her a working gun?

Really unsure how that lever reverses the ozone layer depletion back on Earth so quickly, but it's good to know buildings aren't blowing up from the heat anymore.

"Surprised, Rex darling?"

"I'll say -- how did he install this shattering-ray on my ship without my knowing it, or noticing it on the way here? And why are you just telling me about it now? We could have blown up their lab before I went in there, got captured, and stripped down to my civvies!"

Shattering-rays, obviously use the wrecking things mechanic.

Anyway, we're going to jump into the Green Mask story in progress. Now, don't cry over spilled milk. I'm not; I'm wondering instead if milk operators protective associations were real things. Well, there was a Wisconsin Dairy Protective Association at least as late as the 1920s, so as much as this sounds like a shake-down racket, it seems to have been a legitimate thing.

I'm also wondering what Green Mask was doing in the district attorney's closet, and how long he was hiding in there.

Is part of that picture missing? Because that doesn't look like a hand to me. I suspect "Black Hand" might be a stand-in for "Brownshirts," particularly since it is said to be a foreign organization.

Even though Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson," it was already a catchphrase before 1940 and possibly even before its first known instance in print, back in 1909.

Putin's government still uses this same scheme today.

That cop is all bluster; Green Mask just stands there, daring him to arrest him, and the cop does nothing but stand there and watch him climb out the window.

What would be on the ledge for GM to hook his wire to? Does he visit the district attorney's closet so often that he's had time to screw a hook into the ledge?

Is a convertible really a good idea for being out for a drive when you're wearing a mask?

That said, I like how the hideout requires passes, and the skull is an interesting decoration for the business table. I wonder if it has any function, like a microphone connected to a dictaphone hidden inside. 

J.J. Ratfield was the head of the protective association -- so it was a shake-down racket after all!

Look at that panel 6 -- how is GM even keeping his foot on the gas while leaning out the far side of the car, let alone control the wheel? How embarrassing it would have been had he crashed into an oncoming car or ramped over the sidewalk while trying to do his cool move.

The note, I'll grant, is pretty clever. By offering himself as bait, it gives the police more incentive to come to this midnight rendezvous. He just has to hope they are more interested in catching him than they seemed at the window.

The Green Mask gets a surprise attack, though it looks like two surprise attacks here. I'm not comfortable with allowing a grappling attack and a punch on a separate opponent in the same turn in Hideouts & Hoodlums. I don't know what advantage the leap gives him either.

Having the drivers help out in the fight was a lucky break to make it go faster. Their cooperativeness could have been determined by an encounter reaction roll, even though GM didn't ask them to help him.

That's a really good ruse, so long as Ratfield falls for it. I would give him a save vs. plot to see if he's suspicious, unless GM uses a skill check for voice mimicry to sound like one of the hoodlums out on the road.

I'm not showing you the next page, but all you're missing is that GM puts the receiver to a dictaphone to record the confession.

We have just enough time left to peek in on the next story of Chen Chang. It seems pretty bold to kill the watchman outside the theatre, even if it is nighttime. But what I have a problem with is two men at the same time falling for the fake door over the 75' drop. One man, maybe, but...were they both going through the door at the same time? Is there more to the trap, like someone comes up behind them and pushes?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Mystery Men Comics #7 - pt. 3

We're back with Chen Chang and here Richard Kendall teaches us what a replacer is. Or at least he would be if my father wasn't an expert on trains. One look and he explained to me those are called derailers. But, yes...other than the name mistake, those are real things.

This is Lt. Drake of the Naval Intelligence, with examples of the dangers of shooting into a melee (uh-oh, shot your friend in the back!) and surprise rolls coming up in the Hero's favor (vs. guards, a mobstertype that is easily caught off-guard or easily overpowered in almost all instances).

Keeping someone submerged, as Drake does to the poor guard, is handled as a grappling roll; whoever has advantage forces the other one under. Three turns under in a row and it's save vs. science or drown each turn.

This is likely the first and last instance of a dead fish being used as a throwing weapon in a comic book.

This is Denny Scott of the Bengal Lancers. Torture never works on Heroes because they don't have to save vs. plot to resist giving out information like non-Hero characters would have to.

Putting your slaves to work along a river doesn't seem to be a good idea, especially in a comic book universe where water always acts as hard cover.

Moving on quickly, this page is from D-13, Secret Agent. Being dizzy and weak seem like complications from being low in hit points, but when it comes time to aim a gun steady enough to shoot through the heart, these "complications" don't seem to have any game mechanic effect on him and turn out to be merely flavor test.

This is from Captain Savage, Sea Rover and is an extremely rare example of a Hero succeeding by simply giving up and doing exactly what the bad guys tell him to do.

Nope, I'm calling you wrong on this one, comics.org. I know the art is credited to George Tuska, but there's no way that was inked by Tuska. A better artist, likely Bob Powell, inked over him on this one.

Anyway, Conjure Sand Storm seems like a pretty narrowly useful spell -- unless you plan on running a desert-based campaign. More likely this is Control Weather on display. You really do get a sense for how deadly Control Weather would be in the desert, though, as you can suffocate almost an entire caravan with it.

Melosh's next spell is Insatiable Thirst, a spell that wouldn't find its way into D&D until the 2nd edition book, Tome of Magic.

Melosh also has Polymorph Other and Protection from Normal Missiles in his spell arsenal. Pretty powerful for a guy who doesn't even own pants!

How Zanzibar casts Dispel Magic in his leopard form is unclear. Or the water has magical properties?

Having burnt through his higher level spells, Melosh is left with only Charm Person.

Zanzibar claims to have just won a "duel of wits", but it seems like what he did was cast Insatiable Thirst back on Melosh, then maybe used an Phantasmal Image spell to conceal the water hole. Then Z uses Dispel Magic on Audrey.

And in the end he gets to claim Melosh's Flying Carpet as a trophy! (Say...was Melosh wearing the carpet as a robe the whole time??)

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Mystery Men Comics #7 - pt. 2

We're moving on through Mystery Men Comics and have reached the Rex Dexter of Mars feature now. There are some interesting predictions here, including automation replacing the workforce (coming true in the 21st century), a "people mover" (ala Disneyland), vitamins replacing food (never going to happen), and slide projectors in history class (occurred by mid-20th century).

That "high-powered machine" does look fairly realistic for a rocket car.

A truth ray gun is handheld, has a short range, but requires a save vs. science or the victim is compelled to tell the truth. The fatal ray gun is unseen, but the effect is save or die.

Moving right along, this is from Green Mask (what started out as the lead feature). The idea presented here intrigues me, that mobstertypes can be further broken down by geography-linked specialization -- so that a St. Louis hoodlum would be a kidnapper, but a Chicago hoodlum wouldn't be a kidnapper because their specialty is bumping off the competition. I think it's too late to restructure the hoodlum entries to fit this concept, but it could work for an individual campaign.

I'm also intrigued by this, where the bad guys use the Hero's own stool pigeon to invite him to meet with them. Everything I've written to date about supporting cast members is from the player's perspective, but the Editor can have villains using or manipulating those same SCMs too. 

Note just that last panel -- it's very rare for us to see a knife-wielder disarmed by an attack, while the gunman manages to hold onto his weapon. This points to the randomness of disarming attacks and that gun disarming should not be automatic, despite how often it happens in other instances I've cited here.

$50 million might just be the biggest jackpot any bad guys have talked about going after to date.

These same bad guys are stupid enough to discuss their secret plan without checking to see if Green Mask really left first, or if he might be listening in.

I just spoke the other day about complications in vehicular combat. I need to compile a lot more of them; here is the best/worst case scenario (depending on your point of view -- the direct hit, which automatically (?) destroys the vehicle.

This is an unusually racist installment, even for Chen Chang, but long-time readers know I'm a sucker for this Munson Paddock artwork. There have been some efforts to portray the Chinese-Japanese conflict of WWII in the early comic books to this point, but none that portrayed the savagery of the fighting with the intensity that Munson manages here. Bear in mind how rare 3-panel pages were in comic books of this time; the creators of this story really wanted to highlight how terrible the war over there was by making it impossible to ignore on this page.

But the rest of the story focuses on Richard Kendall's efforts to save these school teachers from Chen's clutches. Just out of sheer malice he tortures them in a spiked-descending-ceiling trap, and then instead of tying them to railroad tracks, ties them to the front of two trains and plans to smash them into each other. That is EVIL!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Mystery Men Comics #6 - pt. 2

Let's take a closer look at the blobs with faces we met last time in Rex Dexter of Mars.  Rex calls them protoplasmen. They are intelligent, or at least of average intelligence, and attack by engulfing and suffocating, rather than acid damage.

Slimes, oozes, and jellies traditionally have one weakness that can be exploited to kill them easier. Here, protoplasmen have to be within 3' of the ground or die. It's unclear if this is the only thing that will harm them, or simply the best way to harm them.  Since Rex might be doing grappling damage to the protoplasman, then perhaps all attack forms do damage when the being is 3'+ above the ground.

500 is a very specific number, and probably the on the high end of any no. appearing range I give to nomads.

I'm not how Kendall became in charge of marshaling an army for the British. Wouldn't that make him a general?  I'm pretty sure Richard Kendall is still only a private detective...

Proof that even with a tank you have to roll to attack (vehicular combat is not area-effecting).

This page touches on several game mechanics. First, it suggests that damage inflicted should have a chance of knocking an opponent prone; something the rules don't currently do. I've talked about making knockdown a combat condition that can be caused instead of damage, but this knockdown seems incidental to the explosion.

And then there's Richard "aiding his wounded soldiers."  What is he doing for them, exactly? Administering aid seems to be more about intent than specific actions, and this is already reflected in the H&H rules.

And that beheading scene -- yikes!

Man...I usually like these Richard Kendall/Chen Chang stories, but I have no idea what is happening at the end of this page.  Atrofistic (not a real thing, by the way) makes you lose motor control -- okay, that part makes sense...but it also makes you so rubbery that you can bounce? 

This seems like it could be historically true, but I can find no evidence that Americans were "ordered" to return home in 1939-1940.  Many Americans did return home, but American neutrality was recognized and events like this, thankfully, didn't happen.

That is some terrible camouflage for a ship at sea...

And you thought casting fireballs was dangerous!  The splash damage on that bomb going off has a really high radius; whenever I think I've set the blast radius for explosive weapons far enough, something like this comes along and makes me think we should have even higher blast radii.

When a Hero turns down a reward for patriotic reasons, does that make it a good deed worth 100 XP instead?  Or should this be a "patriotic exception", where the XP value of the good deed is equal to the $ value of the reward turned down?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Mystery Men Comics #5 - pt. 2

Billy Bounce The Kid Detective is not a superhero, so when he exhibits superpowers here, it must be from the potion he drank and not simply flavor text for how he got his powers.

Billy wrecks the door as a door -- the fact that it is made of steel does not make it harder to wreck (though if there were two or more qualifiers -- like it was solid steel and extra-thick, then I might bump it up to the machines category). The fact that Billy is able to walk right through it means that he rolled really, really well for wrecking and this is reflected in the flavor text.

Having the strength of 50 men would let Billy lift 5,000-10,000 lbs. -- but it's telling that he determines this measure not by lifting things (relegated to temporary use Raise powers in H&H), but by his capacity for wrecking things.

The duration of the potion would have lasted longer in rest or exploration turns, but when Billy moves to combat turns switch to short combat turns (1 minute in 1st edition and 30 seconds in 2nd edition), which burns through turn-based durations quickly. It also affords for more dramatic scenes like this, when powers fade out in mid-combat.

Minya Konka is a real place, and gives us a better idea of where in China Richard Kendall fights Chen Chang.

The drug Chen Chang gives to the tigers seems an awful lot of like a Potion of Animal Control/Friendship.

If the villain recites the address to where he'll be hiding in front of witnesses, he's either trying to lure someone into a trap or he's really stupid.

Richard has a fickle Editor here, penalizing him one moment for not watching how River Lily opened the secret door she escaped through, and then gifting him with an easy escape from the tiger and a lucky run-in with Chen Chang. The Editor might have been justified about the secret door, for Richard was clearly distracted and should probably not get to automatically notice things under these circumstances.

If Richard's player asked for a save vs. plot to make the wardrobe fall on top of the tiger, then the Editor was just tossing in a bonus freebie for it shattering the window.

It seems unlikely in this instance that Chen Chang is a wandering encounter, as hardly any time has passed since the last encounter. It's more like they were getting close to the end of their playing session, so the Editor forced a showdown.

Unbelievably, Richard falls for a perspective trick and runs into a wall ala Wile E. Coyote. I can't believe that anyone would do that in a serious adventure story, unless there was actually some kind of illusion spell masking the wall.

This is the first story to use a race around the world as its plot. The first aerial circumnavigation of the globe was in 1924 and, true to this story, the route does require stops in Alaska, Russia, and London. Bear in mind that, though it's possible to make the trip in 23 days with today's planes, the first trip took over five months. So, for a 1939 campaign, the race might be the whole campaign.

The narrator calls these robbers, but by their weapon choice (knives), I wonder if they wouldn't be better statted as bandits...?

I'm not sure I get this -- because Wing was behind, he missed the polar head winds? But if the winds had slowed Basil down, then Wing would have caught up to him and been caught in the same winds...unless Wing had time to go around the winds? More likely, Wing pulled ahead thanks to one or more skill checks, and this was some of the flavor text that explained it.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)