Miracle Comics #2 - pt. 3

I did promise, so here's Dash Dixon's villain, The Eyes, in person. As you can see, having light-up fake eyes is a cool look, but...if that's why he's called The Eyes...then what are Fingers' fingers like...?

It seems weird that Dash is following directions from a blindfolded man, but what you don't know from the previous page is that the man had been abducted by The Eyes' men before and, though blindfolded then, from counting the number of stops and turns he thinks he knows where their hideout is. 

Now, players in a similar situation can try this tactic, but it seems to me that it would be really easy to guess wrong how long it was between stops, unless you count the seconds and have a fantastic memory for numbers. For this, I would have them make an Intelligence check, possibly even with a -2 penalty, since it seems like the route was pretty complex.

Lastly, Dash is using the Multi-Attack power to get two grappling attacks at once.

While I still think Dash himself is ludicrous, there is a lot to like about this story. I like the detail of the entrance to the hideout being a ladder concealed in a fake boiler. I like the trapped, electrified door. How much damage should 3,000 volts do? I just read that 30 volts can kill you, but it's not an even progression where every 30 volts should do a point of damage. Electricity is weird (that's my term for it, not the scientific term) and there are a lot of factors that affect how much damage electricity does to you, and a high voltage is not necessarily going to do more harm than a low voltage. Also, 3,000 volts is the strength of a strong Taser, so I'm going to set the damage range low for this -- 1-8 points.

Something else to consider here: should an electrified door be harder to wreck? Yes, I would say it would move the category up to machine level.  

I also like how all the mobsters have nicknames to distinguish them -- Finger, Trusty, and Switch. Nicknames can instantly give us a sense of character, and also help us keep track of which one is which.

Far from the first cross-dressing villain. Hey, wait...how does Dash know Eyes' eyes are cameras? Did he see a clue in the hideout we missed? Did he use a Microscopic Vision or Super-Senses power to see it? Is he just guessing?

 

Next up is The Scorpion and, sadly, this feature does not live up to the promise of that first panel.

Often, when you have a character who's supposed to be a celebrity in a story, you give him a name that's similar to a real world celebrity in that field, but I can't find any famous crooners with a name like Bill Phelps. 

Also, what is so suspicious about a millionaire cashing $10,000 checks daily? For all this guy knows, he's working with donations to charities.

I thought Zenda seemed like a made-up name, but Ancestry.com tells me that there were about 20 Zenda families in the U.S. in the 1920s, the majority of them living in Wisconsin! 

"Gosh, I'm so scared of Gus Zenda, my hair just turned white!"

Rex Gray, The Scorpion's superpower is his ability to make fantastic logical leaps that just happen to be true. Not only is there something suspicious about a millionaire making out checks, not only does he reach the conclusion that Phelps is actually an imposter based on two overheard sentences, but he figures he'll be able to prove it...by listening to Phelps' records?

And how do you get to be "number one kidnapper"? Kidnappers always try to stay anonymous until they're caught.

It gets zanier. Rex is so convinced he's right that he's willing to bash an innocent butler over the head so hard it changes the color of his jacket. Then, for the first and possibly last time in comics, a hero makes a villain sing at gunpoint.

The name of the song is, of course "Old Folks at Home," but even by 1940 it was already commonly known as "Swanee River," even leading to a movie with that name that came out in '39. The last crooner to release an album featuring this song was Bing Crosby in 1935, but Phelps clearly bears no physical resemblance to Crosby and I'm willing to discard that theory now.

What? Where did this oscillograph come from? Rex's back pocket? This violates the unwritten rule of every Old School RPG I know -- your character has no items on him other than what is recorded on your character sheet.

I also find it laughable that the casually dressed and boyish-looking Rex is immediately recognized as The Scorpion. This guy is the terror of the underworld? Really?

 

Oh my gosh...before I let you go, I just have to rant about the amateurish artwork here. Not only is every panel background-less, not only is Rex himself clearly the one shooting the imposter and shouting "Take that you squealer" in the first panel, not only does the real Phelps look nothing like the fake Phelps, but no one on this page is dressed like Zenda was on the previous page. Has Rex captured a Zenda impersonator while the real Zenda got away? 

Comics.org tells me the artist for this story is unknown. I wouldn't take credit for it either...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)
 

 
 

Miracle Comics #1 - pt. 3

Although the science was a little whacked in Sky Wizard, I still enjoyed the lead feature in this issue. But the rest of it...the rest of it is a train wreck, the kind of train wreck that's hard to look away from. So naturally I'm going to wind up posting most of it!

What? The narrator is helping Dash Dixon? Okay, maybe that's not as weird as it seems -- in game terms, it would be like the referee is coaching the player on what to do, which happens a lot, particularly when you're trying to teach a new player the game.

This is the first we're learning of Dash's bellhop uniform being metal. That means the pockets on his coat have hinges? This too is not too unusual, if the "metal suit" is just flavor text for Dash activating his Nigh-Invulnerable Skin power.

No, what really bugs me is that last panel. Why are they laughing and smiling about how they don't often use their biggest size of coffins? Are they kidding around about executing children? What kind of sick country is this?

Really? Wooden wheels? How medieval does this artist think Europe is?

80' is really high for a castle curtain wall, but Dash has to give it his "all", when just a few pages earlier he was able to jump up to a flying plane?

I actually like the last two panels. They not only give a good sense of motion between, but locking the mob inside the first room is a sound tactic.

"Stop! Metal Bellhop Diaper Man is on your heels!"

"When I count three, run for the orangu!"

Not only does that sound like a messed-up game plan ("Let's run towards the big ferocious animal we want to kill him!"), but why call it an orangutan if you don't even have room to put the whole word in your word balloon? Just call it an ape (and, frankly, it barely even looks like a gorilla, let alone an orangutan)!

No one is forcing you to kill the dumb animal, Dash! Don't do it!

Of course he kills it. Sigh.

The false chimney that serves as a secret roof entrance, now that intrigues me. But wouldn't it have made more sense to drop the poisonous gas into the false chimney, where there would be no room to escape it?

When did the doctor give him "anti-gas capsules?" Is this flavor text to go along with him making his saving throw vs. poison?

On a similar note, does Dash really have "high-explosive capsules," or is that just flavor text for how his wrecking things works?

This is the next feature, The Scorpion. Ooo, sounds like we're going to get a dose of pulp noir, right? No...the Scorpion is the curly-haired guy who gets captured on page 2 by gangsters. Gangsters who know exactly where he lives, and write him threatening notes, written the same way they talk..

The gangsters wanted to bring the Scorpion and his butler along so they could witness them stealing an armored car, before trying to kill them. When the Scorpion wouldn't even have known about their plans had they not brought them.

So, the plan was to roll the car down a steep hill so that the Scorpion and Judd would crash and die at the bottom, but the car veers off the wrong side of the hill and goes into a pond. Rather than letting the car take the force of the impact with the water, they decide to jump out and take their chances with landing in the water on their own, along with the risk of the car landing on them when they all hit the water. And then somehow the car bursts into flames -- on contact with the water. Uh-huh. It's so hard to even wrap my head around this so I can assign game mechanics to it.

Or -- is the Scorpion secretly a genius? Has he outwitted the deathtrap by changing the conditions of it, so that it is not a deathtrap anymore, but merely a trap, and hence doesn't cause lethal damage (at least in H&H terms)?  Yes, that must be it.

...Nope, don't look at me. I cannot explain away that goofy first panel. I guess they're meant to be jumping over the police officers' heads? But even with a running start, how are they clearing six feet -- vertically? Or do they have a levitate spell we weren't told about?

Stealing police motorbikes is handy because you never know what you'll find on them. In this case, it was a pouch full of tear gas bombs. I suppose I will have to work out how many tear gas bombs can fit in a pouch now. A quick Google search tells me that military pouches would not have more than 2-3 grenades in it, so that seems logical.

And lastly, this is Blanda the Jungle Queen. It says a lot about your expectations when "bland" is right there in the title.

The map is not a good trace, but I suspect that coastline is from the Gabon territory of French Equatorial Africa.

(Scans from Comic Book Plus.)