No, "Arrows of Doom" isn't a Fantastic Four adventure (though wouldn't
that be cool?). There
are British research foundations, but not one called British Research Foundation (that I've found). Bwana is used as a form of respectful address in parts of Africa, so it's a weird name for head hunters. Matadi is the chief sea port of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the capital of the Kongo Central province.
Larry does something you don't normally see in these short adventures -- collecting rumors about the scenario before he heads into it.
Though we're told that's a giant python, it doesn't look any larger than normal pythons, which can reach 15' in length.
The arrow in panel 2 is puzzling. Did it pass through his shirt before going up into his head?
You shouldn't be so surprised, Larry; poor Magu has already succeeded at three morale saves this adventure and his time was up. Speaking of Magu, that's apparently a real name you might find in countries like Tanzania (there's a Magu District in Tanzania).
But what is Larry holding over Magu's sleeping bag? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with what's being said in the panel.
Just as I'm thinking about congratulating the author for his research, I'm forced to deal with the trope of bad guys being willing to kill everyone but the hero, who gets captured instead. Or is there some subtle racism here, that it's only black guides getting killed? I think it's impossible to call here, because we can't see if the two men accompanying Ronald are black or not. Maybe Larry's guides were just unlucky.
It's really hard to take a villain like Debree seriously -- but what to make fun of first? Should I be making cheese jokes? Debris puns? Laugh at his outrageous mustache?
Igor is not, as you may have guessed, an African name, but I think we can forgive this, especially if Debree is the one who named the 'holy lodge.'
People who don't want to sound racist have always had a hard time figuring out how to describe people without sounding racist. Dark? Black? Granted, Larry is tied to a post that's about to be lit on fire, so he doesn't really have time to ask for the man's name...and yet, Larry does manage to fire off a pretty long speech instead...
Here's an interesting twist on the Western hero. Is it a modern hero or a 19th century hero? It's so hard to tell with the Mythic West, though a clue may be the posters on the walls advertising the menu, which seems more like a 1940 thing, as well as the price of 25 cents for bacon and beans.
I never would have thought of this -- and I'm not sure if it's really legit -- but maybe the next time I've playing in a game where I need to find out if someone's been out riding on his horse recently, I'll check the horse for sweat. Of course, this may not prove useful results on a hot day, or if the horse is sick...
It seems like everything has been wrapped up neatly -- unless the three robbers recant their confessions in front of the mob, or tell a new lie and implicate Jim. That is one mercurial mob. Maybe they don't care who they string up, they just want to hang somebody today! In a RPG like
Hideouts & Hoodlums, you can roll randomly for encounter reactions of every individual in the mob, group them into sets of five and roll for every set, or just roll once for the whole mob.
Wow. I did
not see that twist ending coming! The Headless Horseman's a horsewoman!
This is Harry Campbell's
Jon Linton (it's different from Dean Denton and John Law because it takes place in the future!). I like the building of suspense on this page with the running countdown. Harry always tries to add more realistic details to his stories than the typical comic book writer, which I appreciate, but without inches of latitude and longitude, those bombers are going to have an awful huge swath of Asia to search for the hidden city.
