Prize Comics #2 - pt. 5

   

This close to the end of the issue, I probably would have been forgiven for skipping the last story, but tucked away at the back of the issue is the only good feature in this issue, so of course we're going to look at Storm Curtis of the United States Coast Guard!

The date on the newspaper clipping tells us this adventure started back on December 26, 1939. There have been at least two real S.S. Lincolns, the first was sunk in WWI and the second was built in 1944 during the next war, but there was likely no real S.S. Lincoln at the time of this story.

Just to make sure we remember our terms, Q-ships, also known as Q-boats, decoy vessels, special service ships, or mystery ships, were heavily armed merchant ships with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. 

A trawler is a vessel that trawls, and trawling is a method of fishing that involves pulling a fishing net through the water behind one or more boats.

The reference to a tramp refers to a boat or ship engaged in the tramp trade, which is one that does not have a fixed schedule or published ports of call.

I think this page is really remarkable. When I read it, on the following pages I kept waiting for the trick to be revealed, the trick of how Storm planned to survive that shot in panel 6. A bulletproof vest, most likely, I thought. Only, there was no trick. He really just stood there, face-to-face, with the bad guy, without any protection from harm, because he should.

He does win in the end, though there's more shooting ahead, and a bit of unnecessary sexism in the finale...so I think we're going to end this while we're ahead.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Prize Comics #1 - pt. 5

I haven't tackled a five-parter in a long time, but I had a lot to say about this issue.

We're going to pick up not long after where I left off with K the Unknown and we will, as usual, discuss it in terms of RPG game mechanics. As anyone who's ever read a previous post knows, I wrote the RPG Hideouts & Hoodlums and feel it does a spectacular job of  emulating the early history of comic books -- which I prove post after post on this blog.

And yet...K, getting stunned on the first hit by a thrown paperweight just doesn't match up with the hit point model of incremental defeat that H&H uses. It seems more like every hit has a random chance of delivering a stun. And, as I think about it, I see this all the time against bad guys and animals; only Heroes are usually incrementally defeated. And it does give me pause.

This page also highlights the importance of checking every mobster you defeat for disguises.

I'll give K this, the finale is worthy of a James Bond movie, with the hero and villain struggling upright on a speeding bobsled -- in fact, it predates the bobsled chase in On Her Majesty's Secret Service by 23 years!

I would think that two men grappling on a moving bobsled would wind up getting thrown off almost immediately, but in-game would be fine with giving each a save vs. science each turn to stay put, with a penalty to their save on the hairpin curve.

If Buck Brady of the F.B.I. seems science fictional, it's because of the absence of 1,000-dollar bills out there today. The U.S. government stopped making the bills by 1946, and finally recalled them all in 1969, so I've never seen one in my life.

I decided to share this page to talk about players choosing the direction of the scenario, because I read this I couldn't help but think, if this was a game I was playing, I would have had Buck follow the car rather than search her room. Now, if I was the Editor instead, I could leave a clue in the room telling the player where the old lady was going, and hopefully the player will get the hint that it's important to go to that location...

In this case, the Editor seems to have decided to move the planned encounter back to the hotel room. On one hand, it makes the villain seem smarter, guessing Buck was coming, but on the other hand it makes the Editor seem like he's unfairly using his knowledge of the player's actions against them. A way around that might be to let the player attempt to save vs. plot to find the hotel room abandoned.

Here is the oddly-already-a-cliche of the man dressed as an old woman, but with the switcheroo that the Hero then uses the same disguise.

I'm impressed by the daring involved in piloting your boat into a police boat just to get their attention. A mean Editor could well give you a chance of sinking the police boat, and then where will you be?

The final story we're going to look at is Storm Curtis of the U.S. Coast Guard. I'm showing you this page for two reasons: one, it's more fun playing a character with interests other than crime-fighting 24/7. Give your Hero a hobby, either one you already know about, or one you're willing to research.

And two, check out that grappling hook gun! This is much closer to what a real grapple gun looks like than what Batman has carried since the 1980s, though I'm not convinced grapple guns were that small and handheld in 1940; there could still be some artistic license at play here.

Paper and pencils are good things to find on a defeated mobster, as are cigarettes.

Note the use of "espy" in panel 2, a word I don't think was even in common usage then!

Those are really convenient clues to find in someone's pocket!

Personally, I find the chief spy encounter anticlimactic, but it's certainly surprising and good to pull on your players once.

I think it's amusing how Curtis sort of bumbled into this whole spy ring, like a player getting a lot of railroading help from his Editor.

Comics.org doesn't say who the artist is here, but I suspect Dick Briefer. What do you think?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)