Amazing Man Comics #5 - pt. 2

Our first clue that the Iron Skull is a superhero is these bullets bouncing off of him. It could be the Nigh-Invulnerable Skin power in play, though at this point he could just be a guy in armor.

This is the best clue yet that Iron Skull is a superhero, as he seems to be wrecking these robots too easily to just be punching them for normal damage.

Here's an interesting question -- are mech spiders a new mobster type, or just robots whose appearance is flavor text?

We know the mech spiders are tougher than a beat cop can handle. Those huge robots fall very quickly to Iron Skull, faster than we can really get a feel for how tough they are, or would be against normal foes.

The caption makes it seems like Iron Skull has a high-tech device concealed on his person that lets him shoot out an electronic wrecking ray -- but I wonder if this isn't just flavor text for the power Wreck at Range? Either that, I have to write up something with the ungainly name of a "compact annod comptod machine."

This "fact" is from an "educational" filler called Stranger than Fiction.  And, while I'm highly dubious about this thing about lions and spiders, maybe it could be one of those things that is at least true in a comic book world...

This is an interesting page layout, with the first panel serving like the opening teaser of a movie before the credits roll. It's more innovative than I would have expected from Gustavson, who still has trouble at this point with basic figure work.

But that's not what I'm sharing this for. What I wanted to call your attention to is the last panel, and the expectation of the expedition lasting three months. That's pretty long for a single scenario, unless it features a lot of traveling. And even then, you'd best be sure your players are okay with spending a lot of their play time on travel and not on hero-stuff.

There's a fair amount of racism inherent in this page, about how you can't give Africans liquor because they can't hold it and makes them start wars with each other. There are two things worth noting here, though.

One is about tracking across water. It's easy to forget about how telling wet footprints would be, so if the tracks were recent, I would give no penalty to the roll to track across water.

The other point is about combining mobster types, as I've recently brought up.  Here we see what drunken natives would look like, as a combination of drunken hoodlums and natives. And, while I could lump all human archetypes into one "Man" entry, with only modifiers for each sub-type (i.e., +1 HD for thug, drunk breath weapon if drunken, better tracking if a native), I don't think I want my mobster section to look like that. So I'll let Editors work on combining mobster types on their own.

We don't know how Minimidget and Ritty were shrunk, but we can gather clues from the lab that it involved electricity and chemicals. Note that the effects are much more dramatic than the spell Reduce Person (which will be in 2nd ed.).

We can also infer from this that people shrunk in this fashion retain little of their mass and strength, or they wouldn't need poison weapons.

I hesitate to even share this page because it's just so awful what happens to that poor cat, but it does illustrate that poisoned weapons can be used more than once and retain their poison.

Also, if it wasn't already clear, Minimidget is not a Hero. So this is not an exception to my "Heroes can't use poison" rule (which is now codified in 2nd. ed., if I never wrote it before).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Funnies #9

It's taken me almost half a year now, but we're finally one year before the debut of Superman now.

First rule of being a secret operative: don't tell people you're a secret operative, Dan!

Here's how you do it, Dan. G-Man Jim here will show you how to wear a secret camera in your jacket. And looking for clues on people's clothing (2 in 6 chance to find one, for humans).

I suppose I could say I shared this page for a playing tip, to always remember that the Editor can have people overhear your players plotting whenever they do it in public. But, really, I'm just sharing this page because he's Captain Easy, so it's awesome.

This is an interesting escape, for what Easy doesn't need to pull it off.  He doesn't need a climb skill; since he reaches the rooftop off-panel, we could easily assume he used a ladder. He doesn't wreck things or bend bars to open the window -- he hands her a saw and makes her do it!

I include Tailspin Tommy here because of that great closing shot of the Sargasso Sea. What a hideout crawl that would be, moving from ship to ship, separated both by centuries and only a few feet...

This page is a handy companion to the article on famous jewels I wrote for The Trophy Case no. 9.

This page of Og Son of Fire is fascinating. First we see the cavemen fighting a snow leopard (leopards were last discussed here). We see a caveman skinning a giant sloth (both cavemen and giant sloths were statted in Book II: Mobsters and Trophies) -- and the last encounter looks an awful lot like my gibbon men!  As I mentioned back here, the gibbon men were a cheat, intended to fill a niche in the game without any evidence of their existence, but it's nice to finally see them on the page!

Don Dixon is in a humdinger of a deathtrap -- he and all his friends are tied to a huge stone that will swung down into an active volcano. Other than waiting for the volcano to erupt and make your superstitious executioners afraid, how would you escape?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)