Daring Mystery Comics #3 - pt. 2

The Phantom Reporter story, for Timely Comics, was a strong one, with an interesting character, and well-told, in the sense that there are no glaring plot holes I saw. I'm no longer surprised that David Liss, when given an opportunity to write a forgotten character for Marvel's 70th anniversary issues, chose the Phantom Reporter.

Trojak the Tiger Man is up next. I'm not a fan of these stories, being almost uniformly cheap Tarzan rip-offs and just overflowing with racism. In this story, we learn Trojak has trained himself to go days at a time without sleep, the special thing about this being that Trojak doesn't have access to coffee. I'm not sure how to handle this in game mechanics terms, but I think I need to because Trojak is staying up for days staking out a dangerous area and wandering encounters could kill him easily if he falls asleep. Constitution checks seem like they would work here, though there needs to be either diminishing returns from those successful checks (the first one lasts for 24 hours, the next lasts for 20 hours, and so on), or a penalty to each successive check, to reflect that it gets harder the longer he stays up.

Okay, a few pages in this story gets cool. How often have Tarzan or Sheena gone up against prehistoric animals? Well...we're told that it's a prehistoric animal, but it really just looks like a poorly drawn Indian rhinoceros. Still, a very tough fight for a low-level explorer and his tiger companion! The rhino has Super-Tough Skin that can break knives (as the power does), and while I don't normally plan on giving rhinos superpowers, I suppose it couldn't hurt in individual cases. And...I'm going to say the way Trojak and his underlings defeat the animal is legit, pulling a tree over on top of it. A tree that size could weigh a ton. Let's say that's...6d6 damage? 

Not content to stop there, the story then goes on to have Trojak fight Nazis who abducted Edith (his Jane analog). This is one of those early stories that doesn't shy away from calling Nazis Nazis, instead of some concealing pseudonym. We get treated to an interesting overhead shot of the Nazi camp, which is very neatly arranged with everything in perfect rows! There are 14 tanks (possibly of 2-3 distinct types), 8 canons, 1 anti-aircraft gun, 4 planes (presumedly fighter planes), 6 things I can only presume are meant to be cars, 39 small tents, 6 large tents, 2 buildings, and 3 trees! We even get a map showing us where this camp falls on the Belgian Congo River. 

Basically, there is no chance Trojak should be able to get with 1,000 feet of this place without being dead. So, naturally, Trojak manages to sneak into the camp after only defeating two sentries. We also get our first indication that Trojak is actually a superhero, or might be an explorer/superhero, as he is able to wreck a barred window with "the strength of ten men." Even after an alarm is raised, only four more guards show up right away to attack Trojak with bayonets. Amazingly, Trojak thinks he can take them and everyone else who shows up (admittedly, the way the Editor is rolling randomly for reinforcements, maybe he's not wrong), but stops because Edith begs him to surrender, emasculating our hero. Actually, once he's captured, he figures he can watch the Nazis work their guns until he understands how to do it himself. And he does, throttling a guard who comes to feed him (which is weird, because we already know he can just bust out the barred window) and then escaping into the camp. Before he leaves with Edith, he mans an anti air-craft gun and aims it over the river so it drops shells onto the submarines docked there. We're informed that Trojak can work a cannon that "requires many normal men to operate," presumedly because he's buffing himself with a power, maybe Raise Car to make himself stronger. Again, only four Nazi guards converge on them before they escape the camp because of their "dulled Nazi minds" -- so, they're basically Trump voters.

Next up is Marvex the Super-Robot. It's interesting how common the concept of robots was back then, but no one really understood how one would work. Marvex is able to think because of the "delicate mechanism" in his brain, without specifying that as a computer. Marvex is created by two fifth-dimensional men who do it because they're bored and they want it to capture some Earth humans. Marvex is "born" with a conscience and won't do it, so he mops up (by then) six fifth dimensional men around him - with a seventh 5D guy. Which is weird because comic books tell us that people from higher dimensions are more powerful than us, sometimes vastly more powerful. And yet, maybe in their own dimension, they are just normal people?

Blowing up their lab tears an interdimensional hole that blows Marvex to Earth, where he immediately...tows an old man's car. Raise Car power? The man must be pretty wealthy because he tips Marvex $20 for it, which in 1940 lets him buy an entire suit in town to help conceal his appearance. When he hears a woman nearby scream for help he leaps up at least five stories, which can just be the Leap I power. The Feather Landing power lets him drop from that window to the ground without harming him or the two people he carries with him out of the burning room.

When a car full of spies speeds past and shoot at them, Marvex uses Nigh-Invulnerable Skin to block the others from harm and then Race the Train to catch up to the car. After learning where the spies took the secret plans (that is what the woman was hollering about), Marvex flies up to a 13th floor instead of leaping (Fly I, most likely). There is also an instance of wrecking things where Marvex wrecks a car, though since it's just the top of the car, maybe we can downgrade that one rank to robots. From the evidence, it seems like Marvex has used five 1st-level powers, but higher level powers could have duplicated some of them. As an android, he always get a free power anyway. And since we've only seen him use one 2nd-level power for sure, it's possible he's only 4th level, with only three brevet ranks.    

Last up is Captain Strong of the Foreign Legion. In Algeria, Strong is up against ...pirates? That's weird because these guys would normally be called nomads or bandits in anyone else's stories. While trying to set up an outpost to guard against the "pirates," the legionnaires are attacked by a "horde" of them, but we don't see more than ten of them. I really don't like how these stories act like it's okay to mow down Arabs with machine guns, but after that the tactics are sound. Strong knocks out one Arab, dresses as him, and then rides his horse back with the others as soon as they flee, and in this way he finds out where they were heading. In the Arab camp, Strong uses a combatant as a body shield, something we haven't seen in a comic in awhile. 

After escaping back to the legion's fort, Strong sets a trap for the "pirates" straight out of The Fellowship of the Ring; when the "pirates" show up and find the legionnaires all asleep, it's actually just empty clothes (though there must be some stuffing in them), ala The Prancing Pony. 

(Read at readcomiconline.to)   

Daring Mystery Comics #2 - pt. 2

We resume with discussing Trojak the Tiger Man, though the page I'm reading now is about the unnamed woman who has turned good from Trojak's presence and has decided to leave her companions to make her way back through the jungle alone. En route, she encounters a random encounter, a lion. Trojak rescues her by grappling the lion to death. I've commented before on how murderous the early golden age heroes were, but it's also worth pointing out that morale checks never seem to come into play; fights are always to the death with animals.

Trojak learns English from the woman in about a week.

There is no game mechanic for Trojak's "strange premonition that something is wrong." Rather, in game play it is more likely a case of the Editor doing a little unsubtle prodding. "So, what do you now? Maybe head back to the village and check up on it...?"

Trojak's tactic of grappling the chieftain and holding him hostage is a sound one.

Instead of summoning animals himself, like by some special cry, Trojak tells his pet tiger to go get help. How the tiger communicated with the lions and elephants who show up with him is unclear.

K-4 and His Sky Devils is the aviation feature in this issue. It is a step above many other aviation features in naming the planes it depicts; we see British Hawkers and American Grummans. Not only that, but we even get K-4's number of kills in war -- 11 in WWI (where he rose to the rank of lieutenant), 33 in the Spanish Civil War, and "dozens" in the "China-Japan conflict." If we award him 100 XP per battle, and assume dozens = 36, that's 8,000 XP, which happens to be exactly enough to make K-4 a lieutenant by the XP chart for fighters.

In an unusual twist, K-4 is only using his plane for transportation for most of this story; as the bulk of it involves him going undercover, masquerading as a German SS officer. K-4 has to get to Kurtzburg, Germany, which is not a real place but probably represents Kutzberg, which is. When K-4 is ID'ed as a spy, he snatches up as many grenades as he can carry from an armory and blows up his way out of an enemy base. Interestingly, of all the strips, this is the one that most seems to have been prepared for serial publication in a newspaper and was reformatted to the comic book page (with frequent recap narrations intact).

Mr. E is a mysteryman. When a rich man with a threatening note tosses it in his fireplace, Mr. E has to win initiative to get to the note before it's consumed by the fire. Of course, being a mysteryman, and not in combat yet, Mr. E can burn a stunt to win initiative. The stakes are high; this is a rare adventure where the bad guys want $1 million.

Mr. E is run off the road on his way back from the old man's mansion and -- here's the really interesting part -- it's an arch-enemy, The Vampire. Apparently, his nemesis has just been trailing him in his own car, waiting for a chance to get even. They have enough of a history that Mr. E recognizes him by voice. The notion of starting your hero with a nemesis baked into your backstory is an intriguing one. Hypothetically, a human Hero could make his nemesis his free supporting cast member, so every time the Editor uses him, the Hero automatically gets an extra 100 XP.


(Comic read at fullcomic.pro)

Daring Mystery Comics #2 - pt. 1

It's been some time since we last checked in on the fledgling company of Timely Comics.

It starts with Zephyr Jones and His Rocket Ship, firmly in the science fiction genre. Zephyr and his friend Corky are heading to Mars in a privately built rocket ship. Zephyr is right about how far it is to Mars, but either his calculations for travel time are off or mine are, because at the 300,000 MPH speed he claims he's going I think it would take five days to reach Mars instead of one. That speed is, incidentally, eight times faster than the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth up to the present day.

When the ship veers off course, it lands on a "lost planet" -- as if there could be an unnoticed planet between Earth and Mars. Actually, since the theory is floated later that this "planet" broke off of Earth ages ago, it's more factually a moon -- just one much smaller and in a far wider orbit. The moon is called Sunev (yes, Venus backwards, har har), and it not only has normal gravity and a breathable atmosphere, but it is inhabited by human-like aliens with feathery wings who call themselves the Birdmen and speak English. The birdmen live in a 19th century-like monarchy, but gunpowder was never discovered and the only science they are advanced in is chemistry. They have discovered an elixir that expands lifespan, so that the birdmen can live 300-400 years (there is no explanation given for how they have solved the overpopulation problem that would cause). There is a separate race/culture on the Sunev called (I'm not kidding either) the Parrotmen.  The Parrotmen are more muscular and brutish-looking, preferring to go shirtless in combat and fight with maces.

Zephyr and Corky, perhaps having not expected a safe journey into space, came armed with two automatic pistols and a Tommy gun, make short work of the parrotmen with their maces. After stopping the Parrotman uprising, Zephyr and Corky return to Earth before heading to Mars, which makes sense -- they would need all new calculations to change their trajectory from Senuv, and likely the Birdmen are not advanced enough mathematically to help them.

The Phantom Bullet, Scourge of the Underworld, is next.  Nearly washed-up and cynical newspaper reporter Allen Lewis works for the Daily Bulletin, a name just too generic to be able to trace to a particular real city.

Despite the fact that at least five people have examined a crime scene before him, Allen is the first person to find a bird feather clutched in the dead man's hand -- proof that it always pays to examine the scene of the crime for clues, no matter how much later. A police officer at the scene also gives him a freebie, telling him what might have been a randomly rolled rumor, that hand prints have been found at the scene of three crimes that seemed to belong to a seven-fingered person. 

Players often pay little or no attention to the private lives of their characters when not adventuring; seldom is that more on display than when Allen's player calls his boss an idiot and tells him to write the story himself, before running off to do hero work.

The first indication that Allen may be a mysteryman comes pages later, when Allen makes a spectacular -- though still far from superhuman -- leap between rooftops. But Allen is still 1st level -- indeed, still in his origin story -- and is handily beaten in his first turn of combat when ambushed by "birdmen" (see a theme developing between stories...?).

Amazingly, Allen still has his job the next day and gets assigned to talk to an inventor, who just randomly decides to hand off his "invention" to Allen -- a gun that shoots ice bullets. This is what Allen needs to complete his origin story; armed with the gun, wearing make-up on his face instead of a mask, and wearing a bright-colored shirt and red cape -- because, you know, he'll need to sneak around and stuff -- he sets out to stop more murders. Off-panel, the Phantom Bullet uses his skills to move silently and climb walls to get around the police cordoning off a threatened man's home.

This time Allen shoots and kills one of the bad guys when they show up again, but there is no sign that the man has feathers; he just seems to be an ordinary black man. We also learn the plot finally -- the bad guys are killing rich men who refuse to hand over $500,000 to help fund a new government. The other two make off with the money and Allen has to move on to the next would-be victim.

This time, the man doesn't refuse and the money is picked up by a bum Allen recognizes. Cornering the bum, Allen recovers the undelivered money and finds out where it was supposed to go, the address being a local cemetery. Now, it would be great if this was the bad guys' hideout -- a nice, atmospheric location. But the cemetery is empty. Allen goes back to the bum and re-examines the envelope with the address on it; the correct address is in invisible ink and the first address was a phony clue.

The real hideout is an African explorer's house, or more precisely the caverns under the house (the Phantom Bullet finds the caverns off-panel). *sigh* ... in a decidedly racist twist, the "bird men" turn out to be half-black men/half-ape mutants wearing feathered headdresses as if they were American Indians. This resembles the beast men race we talked about adding to Hideouts & Hoodlums a long time ago, but I think I would just stat them as ape men. There are not two more of them, but five more of them, and they're dumb enough that PB can trick them into following him back upstairs to a window and then all jumping out after him like lemmings. PB had swung himself up to the top of the window ledge, and then comes down to shoot the evil explorer, ending the story (and saving a kidnapped young woman who just happened to be in the caverns).
 
Next up is Trojak the Tiger Man, a Tarzan clone. Normally, Tarzan clones have to be raised by animals to speak to animals, but Trojak was raised by an African tribe of humans and just happens to know how to talk to animals anyway. He also gets a tiger for a starting companion. His tiger, Balu (showing this feature steals from The Jungle Book as well as Tarzan), is shot, but is only lightly injured by it.

Trojak himself is shown to be able to bend a gun barrel, which is either a really lucky roll for a non-superhero at wrecking things, or maybe Trojak is a multi-class fighter/superhero. Further, subtle evidence of Trojak being a superhero might be the strange case of the unnamed woman in the white hunting party Trojak encounters and follows. At first, the woman is fine with her companions and their quest for gold, but over the course of days of observing Trojak following them, she starts to show disgust with her fellow travelers and an admiration for Trojak that can only be explained as sexual attraction -- or maybe use of the power, Turn Good.

(read at fullcomic.pro)