Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 5

Oh boy, it's Stardust...

These guys are called "crime wizards," but as cool as that name sounds for a mobstertype, their ambition of either controlling or destroying all the wealth in America makes them sound more like Republicans. 

We get two mad science devices on this page. One is a tornado generator that looks kind of like a tree for some reason, and the other is invisible vacuum tubes that descend out of the sky and suck people up, but that makes it look like they're just flying off into the sky.

I think that last panel is to be interpreted as a collage of events occurring at different times, rather than the tubes being able to stretch that far apart at the same time.

The top of the Empire State Building seems like an odd place to ask them to drop off the ransom. Were they going to use the invisible vacuum to suck up the money? 

Stardust uses the 4th level power Turn Gun on Bad Guy to reflect the death rays back. Or does it have to be a higher level version to account for the range and the multiple rays reflected? Yeah, probably 7th level. I'll call it Turn Death Rays.

Here Stardust uses a Control Weather spell (he would be statted as a Magic-User/Superhero, since his abilities are all over the place). Or...could it be Dispel Science? That would be an interesting power to develop. Whichever it is, it stuns a crowd of traced faces.

An interesting wrinkle here is that at least one of the criminal wizards actually is a magic-user! Since he only uses Enlarge Person on himself, he may only be 3rd level - which seems like a really light challenge for our 18+ level Stardust. Stardust counters with Reduce Person, and it makes sense that Stardust, being higher in level, would be able to reduce Wolf-Eye further than he could enlarge himself.

More interesting, I think, is the throwaway reference to a "magic gland" -- which seems like perfect comic book logic for how certain people are able to learn magic and others can't.

Lastly, Stardust is probably just using Teleport spells to get everyone back home.

Now here's Sub Saunders and we have two unusual rays here. The first is a Water Breathing ray, which could well be our first non-combat, non-disrupting electronics ray. The second is some kind of suction ray, which could be handled like high-level Telekinesis, but to pull down a full-sized submarine might mean it is equivalent to a Telekinesis spell cast by a 100th level caster. We can just keep the mechanics very specific - the ray only works on subs, or some other type of ship, and pulls them down x number of feet. It's okay to tie an item to a specific type of plot.

Now this is unusual - we have a new variant of mermen who are called amphibious men, but they appear to just be perfectly ordinary men except for their ability to breathe underwater (and their predilection for helmets -- ooo, could those be magical Helms of Underwater Action...?).

Hmm...so, on all those ships he sucked down to his ocean kingdom, not one had a map already on board? That seems mighty suspicious, and I wonder if Kelpa isn't just giving him an absurd story to see if he can get Sub to go along with it. 

I like the idea of a swordfish pit, as it's a welcome switch from the shark cliche.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #4 - pt. 6

Phew! It took a long time to finish analyzing this issue, but I just have a few pages left of Sub Saunders to go. I didn't want to ignore these pages, as I have thinks to say and some venting to do about them...

Pizga must be a wizard, since there is no scientific way to extract gold out of hydrogen and oxygen.

Similarly, there's really no reason why land-based clothing customs would extend underwater. Long dresses? Hats?

I've talked before about how giant clams, game mechanics-wise, are more like traps than mobstertypes.

The evaporation plant is a pretty elaborate piece of machinery. good for borrowing if you need a description for a mad science invention.

Tons of water, per coin? Has he ever thought about digging in the ground? Still, it's an unusual to find an environmental-themed morality tale in early comic books.

And kudos to Sub for being this ballsy!

"Sheer force of numbers," against Sub, is about seven guards.

Checking Sub's blood samples is the soundest science here.

Women always rescue Heroes, in these stories, even when it puts them in mortal danger.

How does Sub know they have a radio room?

So, on a page you missed, a bunch of submarines showed up with American soldiers. I wonder how they got in...did their hatches somehow dock with the front entrance to the hidden city?

I know we're supposed to be rooting for Sub at this point, but after seeing Pizga's people getting slaughtered, and Pizga thrown around like a bully's victim, I can't help but wonder if Sub doesn't just want the mermen's secrets for America...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #3 - pt. 4

It looks like I'm easily going to finish discussing Fantastic Comics #3 before the year ends, as I have only the Sub Saunders installment left to discuss.

Yesterday I had misinterpreted what was hanging from the mermen's faces because of the quality of these scans. Yeah, it would have been interesting if they were tentacles, but they just have beards of boring ol' hair, as you can clearly see in panel 4.

Speaking of clearly seeing, Poseida can be forgiven for getting a little excited when he sees Peg, as that is one skin-tight diving suit! Interestingly, only Saunders is wearing a skirt for modesty.

Poseida is wearing a chainmail gorget around his neck. It would offer no Armor Class improvement, but must be a fashion statement.

Sub is offered (ahem) a subload of treasure in exchange for just one member of his supporting cast. Now, a metagamer might look at this and think how Peg is "only" worth 100 XP per session she tags along on, while the treasure is worth enough XP to level up immediately. But Sub's player isn't a metagamer and he says no.

Now, working under the assumption that Peg is a SCM and Sub is being played solo...how does the Editor decide Peg's reaction? A reaction roll vs. Poseida, with a substantial penalty for him offering Sub half the fortune instead of her? A loyalty check for Sub? A 50-50 coin flip? (All of which would be legitimate choices for the Editor)

"Release the spider!" has got to be an unnerving thing to hear when you're about to fight something in an arena...

For a spider, that looks awful crab-like. Giant crab spider? It might also be the largest giant spider we've seen so far in a comic book.

I can't imagine what all that glassware has to do with the radio equipment. Likely this is just visual shorthand for looking hi-tech.

The frog men already have an entry in the Mobster Manual (now, obviously, pushed back to 2019), but I may have to up the number encountered. They also seem to be really Lawful or really coordinated, with their ability to form up into ranks underwater so neatly.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #3 - pt. 4

As 2018 winds down, we find ourselves still in February 1940 and this month's Captain Kidd story. Here we see the need for a voodoo doll spell in Hideouts & Hoodlums (though Supplement III had introduced the voodoo doll as a magic item, a perhaps equally satisfying solution).

Here we have our first hideout that is all in one tree, and I dare say I've never seen a rope ladder quite like that before (the rope makes up only the rungs, connected to the inside of the tree).

When has Kidd seen black magic before? It seems a stretch that he so quickly identifies the glass as Negus' wand (even I missed that, treating it as a new magic item just yesterday).

Negus' last spell is Smoke Image, one of the new 3rd level spells that debuted in the 2nd edition basic book. It's not clear what his intent with it is other than to try and scare off Kidd, but that's not easy to do when Kidd's plane is packing bombs -- bombs are one of the big equalizers for the fighter class.

Again I find myself sharing Professor Fiend, a joke feature with sometimes valuable lessons learned. Here, I was amused by the notion that Fiend might accidentally fall into a mirror, but floored by the idea that he could escape by scratching off the quicksilver backing, so that it would no longer be a mirror. And then bursting out the back, which was made of a separate material, was thinking outside the box, if you will, as well.

And now we get to Stardust, where Stardust is -- no, that's not a VR headset, but a crime-detecting ray view plate. At a range of millions of miles, it can detect when large scale crimes are about to take place on Earth.

Everyone always thought Thanos was a Darkseid rip-off, but it turns out that his "there are too many people" schtick came from The Demon here.

Space is big. Just the Moon is over 2 million miles away, so technically Stardust could be as close as the Moon.

"Undersea pressure-disturber" sounds like the kind of understated name a scientist would actually give a tidal wave generator. It's unclear if the undersea pressure-disturber also creates heat waves through vibration, or the Demon is describing two mad science inventions to his pal Max. 

If you can look away from Stardust callously crushing the Demon's chest with one hand, take note of the first two panels and Stardust's arrival. Is he the glowing energy star transformed into physical matter? Or is the glowing energy star a flavor text manifestation of his power, and what he's really done is Teleport through Focus, with his focus being the shadow on the wall? I'm asking because I seriously can't tell. Either way, it's a high-level power.

Anti-gravity will become a power, and reverse ray practically is already (Turn Gun on Bad Guy, but this would be a somewhat broader application than originally intended).

Sky Writing may need to become a power; it can't just be hand-waved as flavor text if the communication is important to the scenario. It would be 1st-level, though -- easily Stardust's simplest power to date.

And, lastly, we're going to jump into Sub Saunders. Sub's enemy, King Poseida, is using a hydro-vision like a television. A hydro-vision, I'm guessing, projects onto a wall of water?

Those are some crazy-looking mermen. Are those tentacles hanging from their chins?

That's one big giant octopus! Maybe 9 HD?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #2 - pt. 5

Flick Falcon in the Fourth Dimension is one crazy acid trip of a comic strip. His fourth-dimensional machine allows him to travel between planets, like a really-long range teleporter.

I thought slave giants were only 30' tall last time, but this guy is crazy tall, unless those are really tiny mountains. Maybe 10,000' tall?

These are much shorter than dwarfs, and even midget men, we've seen before in comics. In fact, the only thing that's come close are gnomes.

Flip and his girlfriend, Adele, were both knocked out at the same time with sleeping drug, so this demonstrates that you should roll separately for random duration. This might be a magical mickey, since even dragging Adele across the ground long distance doesn't wake her up.

Yeah. I really didn't see this coming.

This is Mars; does that mean dancing girl here is a Red Martian?

On Mars, gnomes apparently live in cities. So thousands of gnomes might be encountered at a time there?

So this takes place in the 30th century -- just like the Legion of Superheroes! You can tell it's the future because submarines can fly and cities have lots of tall overpasses in them.

20,000 men? That seems like overkill, Sub. Note to all future Hideouts & Hoodlums players: if you ask for 20,000 men to help you in any of my scenarios, the answer is no.

Speaking of overkill, Sub shows up at Atlantis with his 20,000 men, and finds 3 frog-men guarding the entrance to the city. Between panels, Sub's lieutenant asks, "We've taken the city gate, sir. What would you like our other 19,997 men to do now?"

Then Sub says, "The gate wasn't the hard part. We have to still breach the citadel. It'll be well-defended too, by frog-men armed with hydro-ray guns."

"Hydro-ray guns? Doesn't that mean fire hoses?"

Seriously, I do like the exotic architecture on that citadel.

"See? Hydro-ray guns are serious weapons! They just killed 11 men in 1 shot!"

"Um...I hate to sound crass or anything, Captain Saunders, but we do still have 19,986 more men, and that's not even counting the three we left guarding the frog-men at the gate we could go back and get. If we lose 10-20 crossing the courtyard to the citadel doors, isn't that acceptable losses in warfare?  And we do have a legitimate reason for overthrowing Atlantis, right sir? It's not just because of that cleavage you keep staring at...?"

I was going to write in-character "Why don't we use the disintegrator on the parapets of the citadel and take out those ray guns, sir?" But I think the disintegrator is clearly shown to have no range here, making it a nice way to wreck things without superheroes, but with no ability of turning it into much of a weapon.

I am not giving frog-men good stats. Look how quickly they go down, just from being grappled!  I'm thinking 1-1 Hit Dice.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)