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 #1 - pt. 3

In part 3, we finally get to our first mystic!

Dakor seems to have limited spells; he can't use magic to get onto Tom Denver's trans-Atlantic steamer, so he has to take the next one and arrives in Paris after Tom has already joined the Foreign Legion. Dakor, with no ability to magically persuade the Legion to give Tom up, joins the Legion to look for evidence against Tom. Tom makes it easy for him, openly admitting to have the dead man's cursed gem. To protect Tom, Dakor casts a Phantasmal Image of two lions, this being his first spell. Later, he uses this spell to make someone think their gun has turned into a snake so he drops it.

Dakor hypnotizes Tom later, but in Hideouts & Hoodlums hypnotism can be a skill and not just a spell. Hypnotism is not the same as mind control; Dakor can't make Tom stay and fight later when he turns chicken and deserts.

Dakor supposedly has "super-sensitive hearing," but you know how suspicious I am of those caption narrators, and indeed the panel showing a guard easily sneaking up on him from the side doesn't back up that claim.

The Tuareg people of the Sahara sure get shot at a lot in old comics; here, the Foreign Legion spends hours shooting at them. We're told the Tuareg are ferocious raiders, but we see no evidence of this. Maybe they were riding up to the fort to say hi? Anyway, the Tuareg capture Tom. Dakor follows invisibly. He polymorphs a sword into a dagger (an Alter Weapon spell?) to keep Tom from getting killed, then uses Poof! to move across the room when swordsmen rush him. It looks like he plans to use Rope Trick to escape, but the spell fails when a swordsman gets in the rope's way. Or, he cast Rope Trick just so the rope would lift the man into the air, which seems like a waste of a 2nd-level spell. Surprisingly, Dakor fails to rescue Tom -- a guard kills him! Something happens to the guard in the next panel, but it is so confusing I can't even tell what it is.

Later, Dakor reveals that he had earlier used telepathy (ESP/Detect Thoughts) to discover where Tom buried in the cursed gem, back in his cell. In a pretty insulting/bigoted second-to-last panel, the Tuareg allegedly tell Dakor that Allah would fear him. And to top it off, in the final panel Dakor casts a high-level Control Weather spell and creates a snowstorm. Surprise! He was actually powerful enough to stop this adventure way back before it ever left New York. Double surprise, there's actually one more page! In a sort of epilogue to this story, Dakor travels to China to return the cursed gem to a statue of "Kung," a deity worshiped by millions of Orientals, which is of course nonsense. In a final insult, Dakor fools the Chinese with ventriloquism from the statue, as if they were stupid natives.

In all, Dakor reveals enough magical firepower to need 11 brevet ranks to pull all this off.

The final feature is Dynamic Man, a feature with another android superhero, and one who's introduction is very Frankenstein-like (substitute Prof. Goettler for Dr. Frankenstein, and Dynamic Man is made from synthetic materials instead of human parts). In a twist, Goettler dies of a heart attack immediately, denying our hero a parent/supporting cast member/potential future enemy. Dynamic Man, we are told, has X-Ray Vision (a 3rd-level power), can Change Self (a 1st-level power, but he really uses it just to alter his clothes), and can fly because of his magnetic field (we aren't told how fast, but later he outpaces a train, putting him at Fly III, a 4th-level power!).

Dynamic Man soon takes the identity of Curt Cowan and applies for the FBI. The FBI, apparently not suspicious of his lack of a birth certificate or naturalization papers, takes him in, but he intends to work as Dynamic Man in secret while performing his field work.

The mobsters DM goes after are causing a drought by generating lightning -- which isn't how you would cause a drought -- and they do it to buy up some farmland cheap. Though, after building a mountain retreat and a giant electrical generator, you would think their profits would be a wash. DM has to lift a boulder blocking the entrance to their hideout with the Raise Car power. Then Nigh-Invulnerable Skin protects him from bullets. Then he uses magnetism to disarm two gunmen at once, and that's a little trickier; he may be using Gust of Wind to disarm them with a lot of flavor text covering up the wind part. He throws lightning bolts, but not to wreck the generators, not harm people, so this is actually Wreck at Range. 

King Bascom, the millionaire financier for this scheme, has super-science at his disposal like -- a two-way television! And a hose that sprays liquid "lantholum," a fictional element that is both insulating (blocks electricity-based powers) and corrosive (does damage to DM while also paralyzing him). He also has a deathtrap room that can be flooded with liquid nitrogen and the ceiling lowers to crush occupants because -- hey, he's rich, so why not? Turns out, Bascom is working for the "Richonians," which sounds like Russians a little when you say it out loud. Bascom sics a dozen hoodlums on DM, but he beats them all up. When Bascom tries to escape by plane, DM uses Wreck at Range to destroy it.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Mystic Comics #1 - pt. 2

When we last left Zephyr Jones and Corky on the surface of the sun Cygni 61 the Mad Astronomer had a machine that sprays his secret formula on Zephyr and Corky. He tells them that this will protect them from the heat on the surface of the star, and apparently the blinding light and the crushing gravitational pull as well). Our boys are so gullible, or so smitten with his daughter, that they immediately go outside to see if it worked. Instead of walking on super-heated plasma, this seems to be a rocky place, inhabited by dwarfs that live in caves.

They find that at least nine star-dwarfs had captured the astronomer and his daughter from their ship. Most of them chase after Zephyr and Corky. The dwarves have super-tough skin (like the power, because the heat of the sun has hardened them), but are vulnerable to fire extinguishers because...ah, let's stop pretending any of this makes sense! These aliens remind me of the game Awful Green Things from Outer Space, where you're supposed to try everything on your ship on the aliens, because only one random item will kill them.

To top it off, Zephyr and Corky go back below ground to save the prisoners from eight more dwarfs. They defeat the dwarfs by throwing rope around a group of them and then pulling the rope off the cliff the dwarfs are on. Not sure why none of the dwarfs think to grab onto the rope and pull Zephyr and Corky down first, or with them. If the star-dwarfs are just too dumb, then a fair Editor would make some kind of intelligence check for them (trying to roll under a low INT score) before letting them fight too cleverly. They are very primitive, fighting only with clubs and darts from blowguns.

We've seen Heroes start avalanches to bury or block adversaries before, but Zephyr takes the cake by knowing just where to throw a rock to start an avalanche. That would take some kind of expert skill level in geology, I would think, followed by a successful attack roll vs. a low Armor Class.

The next feature is the 3Xs. The three "Xs" are private detectives, all working anonymously (although they wear no masks to conceal their identities, so it should take too long for people to figure them out), but go by 1X, 2X, and 3X. Each has an area of specialization; 1X does the detective work (high Wisdom score), 2X is a "walking encyclopedia" (high Intelligence score), and 3X is the strong-arm (high Strength score). A later caption explains that 1X is in charge and the other two are his aides (Supporting Cast Members). The 3Xs are good scrapers, but not great, as 13 hoodlums break into 1X's home to retrieve the glove and the hoodlums only fail a morale save and leave after beating all three of our good guys almost to unconscious. None of them use weapons other than blackjack/saps, during this battle. Later, 2X has a disintegrating pistol, a trophy weapon that does extra damage.

A taxi driver tells the 3Xs that his taxi cannot go over 70 MPH.

The Green Terror is a mob responsible for a rash of brazenly public kidnappings, covering their escapes with a smokescreen of green smoke. A clue left behind at the scene of their latest kidnapping yields a clue that requires an expert skill check in botany to identify -- a lost glove on the scene was permeated with the pollen of a rare orchid. Because the orchid is imported, they use freight records to figure out that when the mob came into the country, and when it plans on leaving. Of course, there are some holes in that theory -- what if only one member of the mob worked with orchids? What if the mobsters were on the ship coming, but not on the next boat going? What if an unregistered grower has the same orchids in their greenhouse and they weren't imported at all?

Their leader is also known as The Green Terror. One of the earliest supervillains in comics, The Green Terror is a green-skinned African with the vampiric power to live forever so long as he keeps drinking human blood. However, he's a real pushover in a fight and folds after getting punched by 3X once.

Next up is "Deep Sea Demon," but if you want my impressions on that story you can read here, because this is a barely modified reprint of Fred Guardineer's "Devil of the Deep" from Funny Pages v. 2 #1.

Dakor the Magician is the next feature, and like some other magicians we've seen he's light on actual magic and more of a detective. We also see, like in the 3Xs story, that travel out of the country seems to be public information, as Dakor's assistant Williams is quickly able to learn that their prime suspect in a murder is leaving the country for France.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)