Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 4

We're back for one more installment of perusing this issue of Mystery Men Comics and seeing what we can apply to the Hideouts & Hoodlums role-playing game (you could try and apply these observations to other RPGs -- but why would you?).

Anyway, we're still in the middle of Denny Scott and the Bengal Lancers' story. Our unnamed lady sees through Denny's disguise (save vs. plot on her part?) and outs him.

The rug trick might be one of the few exceptions to when I would allow a stunt to be used in a combat situation. He's essentially making two grappling attacks at once, but the only result he's going for is to knock them prone.

I'm not sure what game mechanic would account for "perceiving something wrong." I almost hate to make save vs. plot too big of a catch-all, and yet it works perfectly for situations like this when it's difficult for the Editor to make the call.

Now I'm going to talk about just how confusing this story was. The lady -- is she a femme fatale? A spy? On who's side? It seems like she was planted here to take down Khan's operation from the inside, but she takes no action until she can frame Denny to make it look like he took down Khan instead. For what purpose? Could she have known Denny was coming?

And -- as much as I personally loathe Heroes solving problems with guns...why does Denny sneak into Khan's audience chamber with guns if not to shoot him? Was the whole gun-selling ruse to get some kind of evidence against Khan? Or trick him into becoming an ally? Maybe the alliance is what our unnamed spy is trying to stop.

Part of the fun of these golden age stories is that they are often so incomplete, we have to read the story between the panels!

We're going to be talking about locations for much of the rest of this post. Secret Agent D-13 starts out with the destination of Scapa Flow. And, as much as that sounds like a medical condition, Scapa Flow is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay, and Hoy. This bridge would hold no great strategic value, but a student of WWI might know why this would have meaning for the Germans; Scapa Flow is where the remains of the German Navy was scuttled after WWI. 

I believe the UK Armed Forces uses "No. 3" instead of "3rd" to designate this squadron, if I'm correct and this refers to the No. 3 (Fighter) Squadron. It was first formed on 13 May 1912 as one of the first squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps – being the first to fly heavier than air aircraft.

This story has a really unusual ending. A British pilot and a German pilot both die in this story, on the same field, and are both labeled as heroes for their respective countries. D-13 waxes nostalgic about how he doesn't want to see Americans made into heroes in the same way. Bob Powell did the art on this; the writing is likely either Powell himself, or perhaps Will Eisner, who is known for deeper stories. Regardless, two years from now this would have been denounced as isolationist dogma

Again, we're looking at this story for the locations it names. The Paracel Islands are real; also known as Xisha Islands and Hoang Sa Archipelago, they are a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. 

This story is also prophetic; the Japanese invade the Philippines for real in December 1941. Clearly, it was common knowledge as early as the beginning of 1940 what countries Japan would target next if they expanded their conquests beyond China.

Lastly, we have an unusual morality tale from usual artist George Tuska and, again, likely Eisner as auteur. The backstory you've missed is that Zanzibar followed this mobster onto a cruise ship, and the mobster said he was going to turn himself in, but instead he blows up the boat. The mobster is one of the people who survives and winds up in this lifeboat, and that's when Zanzibar teleports onboard (or maybe even just the Poof! spell if he was actually nearby in the water).

The ghost ship is seemingly a random wandering encounter, unless Zanzibar somehow summoned it to test the passengers. I'm skeptical of the latter, since the others are innocents and only one person deserves what happens.

Three undead skeletons turn up. Easy XP! Not so...these guys are not only tougher to kill, but if they kill you, they turn you into an undead skeleton! Do I need to toughen up the stats on skeletons? Or...are the skeletons just the physical manifestation of a powerful curse spell? It seems only Zanzibar knows!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

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 #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 #6 - pt. 3

This is Lt. Drake of the Naval Intelligence.  The grappling rules, as written, do not specify, but strongly imply, that both combatants have to be mobile and non-prone. In this case, I would give Drake a penalty of -4 to his attack roll and his opponent a +4 bonus to his save roll. With lucky rolls, Drake could still get this head lock.

The thug (there's that very common mobstertype again!) "sees Drake's shadow and wheels," meaning that Drake didn't manage to get a surprise action. The thug got to go first (this could have been the result of a dice roll-off, or the Editor making a common sense ruling that a missile weapon should go before an unarmed tackle).

The tackling attack -- a grappling attack, really -- caused a disarm (you automatically get that as a bonus when your opponent has a firearm).

Then Drake trades damage for pushing distance to get the thug knocked down the stairs. That's a sweet trade-off because he still gets some falling damage out of it, and it leaves the thug prone at the feet of the "black gang."

This is from Inspector Bancroft of Scotland Yard. We see the work of a sniper here, who are statted as assassins in 2nd edition.  The mobster entry will even mention how they always hit and kill non-Hero characters about to reveal crucial plot information.

I've never owned an umbrella made in 1940, so I can't say for certain, but I have this suspicion that there were no parts inside an umbrella sharp enough to cut rope. I'm also suspicious of how long the mobsters hung around before driving away, giving Bancroft so much time to get free and catch up to them. Still, an Editor who hadn't done a lot of planning on how to get the Hero from point A to point B might need to allow for this much leniency.

Speaking of leniency, it looks like either Bancroft got lucky on saves vs. science to keep from being thrown off the back of the car and vs. plot to keep from being spotted, or was given this as another freebie. Speaking of freebies -- that's exactly what the dropped bomb is, as there's no game mechanic for mobsters accidentally dropping trophy items while fleeing.

I'm amused by that ending. "I'll take care of the rest of your report. No reason to investigate me for reckless homicide. No reason at all!"

This is Secret Agent D-13. It's true, the British were not loved by the Egyptians, and understandably so; since the 1890s, Britain had been increasingly taking over the Egyptian government, cutting out self-representation of the ethnically indigenous population.

I'm much more skeptical of machine guns being able to be fired from camel-back. For one thing, the camels are just not going to like that, and I suspect the recoil from a machine gun might throw the camels off their feet.

This is Blue Beetle. I did eventually settle on what class to stat Blue Beetle as (for spoilers, see Supplement IV: Captains, Magicians, and Incredible Men), but this early in his career it was still hard to pin down what BB was, as it changed from issue to issue.  This page, with Blue Beetle playing along with being a ghost, makes me feel like he's using the Spook Bad Guys power, making him a superhero -- for at least this issue. 

This is Denny Scott and the Bengal Lancers. I've been wondering how I would stat a femme fatale differently from a vamp. This page makes me think that a Hero will always have to save vs. plot to go first against a femme fatale, even when you know she's a femme fatale.

This is Zanzibar.  It's weird how Zanzibar just happens to be there at the time of the crime, and it's unclear if this is just coincidence, or Zatara somehow mystically sensed this would happen. Perhaps he even just goes around town randomly casting Detect Evil on people and follows the ones he gets readings from...

At the bottom of the page, it seems Zanzibar has cast Poof!, although we don't see the poofing part. It also looks like, since Zanzibar is able to keep dodging around the room on the following page, that this could be our first evidence of the Blink spell being cast.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)