Science Comics #2 - pt. 1

Now we come back around to Fox Comics and what was surely their weakest anthology, Science Comics. One look at the Eagle and his comical get-up that makes his antecedent, Black Condor, look positively conservative in comparison should tell you all you need to know about what I think about Science Comics. That said, we can always glean something useful from even the worst of comic stories.

Like on this page, we have a television able to view distant images without any camera in that location. It seems like a lot of heroes and villains have invented these, as impossible as they are (at least until we have Star Trek-level technology), and yet...what if there was a mysterious seller of these items, targeting specific recipients? A time traveler, perhaps? What starts out as just bad science could wind up being an intriguing plot hook!

Don't forget to roll for wandering encounter checks, even if just traveling between points A and B. No need to get them to B too quickly (unless you really don't want that scenario to run more than one session).

It shouldn't be hard to spot what the pilot does wrong here. Had he simply left his cockpit shut, the Eagle would have been powerless to do anything but stand on his wing. The pilot could have gone into a roll, to smack the Eagle with the wing. Or tried to slow down and turn so that the propellers come back and tear him apart.

Sometimes a player is just going to do something really stupid, like dive-bomb the bad guys in clear daylight from a great distance. Then, as Editor of the game, it's up to you to decide -- do you let his hero suffer the consequences and have the mobsters be armed? Or do you let him off easy and say not one of them has a weapon?

Nice bold font on that title!

The unnamed fort where the gold is kept is almost surely Fort Knox.

Now we go from a hero who doesn't wear enough clothing to one who wears too much.

This is also the most elaborate "flavor text" to go along with searching for secret doors I've ever seen. I like behind that giant block is just a little recessed space with an exposed lock.

That's a really long tunnel; I believe the closest stone quarry to Fort Knox is 41 miles away (where Quarry Road is). This is why authors like to use fictitious sites in their stories, so guys like me can't look this stuff up and fact check them.

Traveling on a beam of light is some funky science, but something that is fast becoming a trope in the superhero genre (Steel Sterling rides electromagnetism as well through the air). The important thing is that your flavor text for explaining how your powers work doesn't have to make a lot of sense.

There seems to be a plot inconsistency between pages; in the last page we learned that the gold was being broken into nuggets to conceal in with the quarried stone, but on this page the gold is still in ingot form.

This strikes me as really weird, that a Hero would find out where the villains' hideout is, but then send the authorities to handle the villains instead. I could see, if the player was meta-gaming, and thought the hideout was going to be too tough for him alone to handle, that he would recruit some federal men to come with him. But to then not come with them...?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Science Comics #1 - pt. 1

This is an exciting day for me; in the past, I have been reading comic books where I was familiar with at least one character from every issue, but now we finally reach Fox's Science Comics, I title I have never sampled before, with forgotten heroes I've never read and, in some cases, never even seen pictures of before!

But, I think I will ultimately wind up feeling disappointed instead of feeling like I've found hidden gems. Because we're starting with the Eagle, a character whose artificial wings make him look more like a hummingbird than an eagle.

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Game mechanics: The Eagle's player will not need to keep a running tally of how much anti-gravitation fluid he has left, as I suspect this is just flavor text explaining how his flight powers work.

As I showed an example of a Supporting Cast Member being used well yesterday (emergency evacuation from a hideout), today we have another good use of one, as a plot hook collector/dispenser.

Here is a clear example of a wandering encounter; something uncommon in normally tightly plotted eight-page adventures. I can't even say that's an example of a drunken hoodlum in the car; the situation as a whole, more so than the occupant, is what the Hero can choose to deal with.

Here the Eagle makes an unusual choice. He could have tried just following the car from the air -- unless his flight power is so slow that he cannot keep up with a car in city traffic. Instead, he decides to target just one mobster and force information out of him. Now, perhaps he chooses this method just to get a feel for the opposition first. If the hoodlum blows his morale save immediately, chances are the Eagle is going to be facing some very low Hit Die mobsters. This could be especially important in a "sandbox" campaign setting where the hideouts of various challenge levels are all preset and the players won't know which are which.

I included this page, not to ridicule it (though it may be deserving), but to discuss old school maps and the scale of hideouts. Bear in mind that, to keep the aesthetic of old school D&D maps, many rooms in the hideout are going to be 20' x 20' at the smallest, and many 30' x 30' or even 40' x 40'. These larger rooms give you a lot more leeway to stage encounters in -- as you see here -- even though the room dimensions are not realistic.

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And now we move on already to the second feature, Electro! This superhero is tied with Timely Comics' robot Electro, who also debuts this same month, and waayy before the Spider-Man villain. 

Here we quickly get his origin story -- Jim Andrews is electrocuted, but instead of killing him he gets superpowers. Right off the bat, he's lifting heavy machinery that looks heavier than a car -- Raise Elephant power?

And he can do the Light spell too, unless we make a power for that.

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Here we find an interesting rationale for why superheroes wear distinctive uniforms -- because they can't live as normal humans anymore, they don't want to dress like them. Doesn't explain why so many maintain secret identities, though.










Of all the fake names for Germany I've seen, Moronia is still my favorite, but Gerlandia might be my second favorite.

Although you don't often hear about FDR's children, Franklin Roosevelt did have a then-33-year-old daughter, Anna. He also had four sons, so it's more than a bit sexist to ignore them and go after the one daughter.

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Here Electro is shown how he flies by riding on electric beams -- not that it makes any sense, but hey, you can explain your powers anyway you want as long as you filled one of your power slots with it.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)