Weird Comics #1 - pt. 2

We're still looking at the Sorceress of Zoom -- well, not too much of her on this page; this is still focused on Tom like this guy is the most important person in the world. I still don't get what the Sorceress sees in Tom, except that this is Tom's story, and I suppose if I met Tom in person maybe I'd be wowed by his 18 Charisma. 

This stranger interests me - I like the idea of the heroes having a magic-user benefactor, but one who is not acting out of altruism, but to use the heroes as pawns against the villain. It's also worth pointing out that this stranger only has to make eye contact to cast spells. Are his eyes his wand?

If I really wanted to apply science to this story, this would need to be a more powerful version of the Levitate spell that also protects the beneficiary from cold and lack of oxygen. That city is up really high! Better hope the spell duration doesn't end before you get up there, Tom!  

Spoilers: the Sorceress' spells require her concentration, including keeping the floating city in the sky (which makes you wonder how she ever sleeps...), so all Tom has to do is distract her and they all win.

So let's move on to Blast Bennett, because I think there's something interesting going on here despite these largely empty panels. Although Blast and his pal are interested in the meteor, neither is, understandably, interested in landing on it. Here's a little spoiler from the next page: the scenario requires them to land on the meteor. So what is a poor Editor to do if his players won't go where the adventure is waiting for them? You have four mysterious spaceships show up and push the location directly into the heroes' path, so they can't evade it!

The X-Men would sure like to have an anti-Magneto gun laying around! 

I was Googling "transverse valve" and the first hits were about rectums. I don't think I've ever stopped searching for something faster.

Let's talk briefly about "universe explorers," because that really seems like an all-encompassing job title. Unless they can access the multiverse in this future? 

The last caption we get just says "Later", with no indication how long it really took to build the gun. This is one of several reasons I've never been able to come up with inventing things rules for Hideouts & Hoodlums that satisfy me. Because, as easy as it is find examples of heroes kit-bashing things together, I seldom have any sense of time for how long it should take.

Now here's an interesting new mobster. I just wish it had a name! It's called "horrible monster" on the next page, so I'll probably have to go with that. Weird how this seemingly aquatic monster -- with its webbed hands and feet and sail, not wings, on its back - is on a waterless meteor, and it makes me think the space pirates either imprisoned it here, or planted it here expressly to kill Blast if he survived the crash. 

Although this page gives us a very poor sense of scale, the next page makes it clear the horrible monster is no more than 9' tall -- and strong -- as it clobbers Blast with one blow. The first panel on this page makes me think it can camouflage itself too, since Blast and Red don't notice it until it steps away from the wall. 

This page leaves the reader with way too many questions. Are they pirates or Canadian Mounties? Blast drops the monster on the pirate-Mounties? Is Blast super strong? Actually, they should all be near weightless on a meteor (there shouldn't be air either, but let's keep ignoring that), but if the monster is easy to pick up and drop because it's near-weightless, then it won't fall on anyone very hard either. And how does it happen to fall on all four of them at once? And how lucky are they that there were only four pirates on board when they confiscate the ship? And whatever happened to the other three pirate ships??

We're going to jump into the next story about Dr. Mortal, a character in the vein of Landor Maker of Monsters. The hero is Mr. Brent, who already knows something is amiss because Dr. Mortal, his girlfriend's father, has weird, malformed manservants with double thumbs. The scenario could go in several directions at the point where Mortal asks him to leave. Mr. Brent could have belligerently insisted he wasn't going anywhere until he got some answers. He could have decided Marlene wasn't worth this and started ghosting her. But I like this middle option he chose, of snooping around. At that point, it could have gone from roleplaying to exploration, with Mortal's house becoming a hideout.

However, this is just an 8-page story, so to move things along Mr. Brent just happens to see Dr. Mortal revealing all his nefariousness through the window.

Four mostly empty panels is really disappointing and tells me this was hastily made filler. 

I'm not sure what makes this guy a monster, other than having no hair, a super-long nose, and no memory of who he was until Mr. Brent, or Gary, does ...whatever it is he does here. Is he hypnotizing the monster to make him remember? 

That is one eloquent ex-monster there. 

What is up with how Dr. Mortal wants all his monsters in Speedos behind closed doors? 

Stray bullet, or intentional shot? If I was looking to make a fast escape, and I had, oh, let's say, consumed a potion of fire resistance recently, then filling the room with fire seems like a good way to safely cover my escape. 

On the other hand...if it's a pistol with six bullets, and there's only four monsters, why not use the last two on Gary and Marlene and skip escaping altogether?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

 

Weird Comics #1 - pt. 1

It's been some time since we read the debut of a "brand new" comic book together, but here we are with the inaugural issue of Fox's Weird Comics, plus the first appearance of a version of Thor in comics -- unless the character named Thor in Top-Notch Comics was the real Thor, and I've still reached no decision there). 

Already we're getting an unusual take on Thor...apparently he waxes, runs around in shorts, a cape, and a hat, and lives in Valhalla instead of Asgard. Say...is that acknowledging that Ragnarok already happened, and Thor is dead? That actually makes this truer to mythology than the Lee/Kirby version started, if I'm right.

Although Thor appears to be shooting an energy bolt from his hand, I believe that's meant to represent the path of his hammer.

Another interesting development: Grant Farrell could have just been given Thor's hammer and his powers, but instead he's "transformed into Thor's being," which seems more complex, like how Don Blake and Thor were merged into one person? 

How does he recognize them as spies? Grant isn't a spy himself. Is this some kind of Thor sense? Or are the Editor and player meta-gaming, where the Editor just tells the player what everything is he encounters?

The spies' motivation here is pretty suspicious. Could they really find no one to pose as a tourist for them willingly? 

"Andurian" makes me think of Peruvian. Peru is the 2nd largest world producer of copper and silver, 8th largest world producer of gold, so that does sound like something international spies would want to get their hands on.

Riding on a lightning bolt is a curious way for Thor to get around, but the Marvel Thor seldom used his goat-drawn chariot either. It could be the Teleport through Focus power, since electricity is technically everywhere, or this could be flavor text for a slower Race the power; after all, he doesn't really need to be faster than Race the Plane to catch up to the spies.

Forcing a plane to land I could see as a freebie result with a Control Weather power. 

So, Plan A was to sneak spies into the country to look for the mines, but Plan B was to roll tanks into the country and crush everything but the mines. It seems like a lot of escalation is happening there and maybe there should have been a plan in between?

No one in Hideouts & Hoodlums should be able to smash five tanks at once. I think I would cap Mass Wrecking at three tanks. Five...that's just a lot of tanks.

Speaking of plans...it's hard to imagine what Grant was thinking to accomplish, changing back to normal and just waltzing up to the mines. Was he planning on asking how they planned to defend the mines? Was he trying to flush out any spies around the mines? Couldn't he have done both as Thor? The story hasn't told us yet that there's a time limit to how long Grant can be Thor, but if there was one that would explain why there needs to be scenes like this. 

It's also worth pointing out that the low ceilings in the mine are pretty realistic, more so than how spacious mines usually look in the movies.

I didn't show you page 9, but Grant stays in the same spot throughout, which begs the question -- where did that lightning come from? Can Grant summon lightning even when he doesn't appear to be Thor? Did the real Thor send it? 

  

Again, it's difficult to get a sense of Thor's plan. Carrying the spies back to their home country seems more like doing them a favor then deporting them...unless Thor wanted them to get shot by the anti-aircraft guns? He must have been expecting it, because he buffed himself with Invulnerability before taking off.

 

Lastly, Thor must have eight brevet ranks, going into this adventure. 

 

Moving on, we meet the Sorceress of Zoom in her magic floating -- and mobile! -- city. I wish we could see more clearly the monsters in panel 4. When it says she created them with her magic spell, I don't think we should consider this an ordinary magic spell, like Mobster Summoning, with a duration. Rather, I think we can hand wave this as flavor text explaining where the monsters came from.

 

 

 

The monster in panel 1 reminds me of Spider-Man's future foe, the Jackal. It also looks kinda goblin-like? Even more interesting is the monster in panel 2 -- I really wish I had a clearer picture of it. It looks like it has webbed feet, one glowing eye, attacks by strangulation, and is wearing a cape? I want to stat it, but I don't even know what to call it!

 

The floating city "speeds off into the distance"? How fast can a magic floating city move? Fast enough that planes can't catch up to it? 

 

If I thought the Thor story was confusing, the narrator here is of little help whatsoever. I don't understand why the Sorceress wants to take over the city by force, but then gets upset when one single boy is knocked out. 

 

Ohh...carefully looking at the page numbers, I see two pages are missing. Now I may never understand what spell "hundreds of us" were under, or how the mysterious figure knows to single out Tom to help him.

 

There's our goblin friend again. While before I thought the red dots on his undies were gems, now they just look like polka dots. 

 

Hmm. I didn't actually have anything game mechanics-related to say about that page. I think I just wanted the excuse to mention his undies. 

 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)