Zip Comics #3 - pt. 5

More Captain Valor today, with Mort Meskin showing off his skill with crowd scenes, though hampered by some really racist depictions and sometimes sketchy details. I bring this to your attention, though, for panel 1, so we can talk about the two ways to set up a fight scene. Version 1 is that it occurs in "real time," with the crew arriving onto the deck in waves as they can reach it. Version 2 is that you set the scene with all the fighters already in the scene and then start the clock again. 

And we're jumping out of Captain Valor already into the next story, Mr. Satan. Holy cow, this scene is gory. There's actual blood everywhere! These bad guys are brutal...but the point of sharing here is the second to last panel, where Mr. Satan runs out, grabs the girl, and escapes unseen. But unseen by how many? We only see that one guy, but there must be a lot of other killers around. Is it fair to say this can be explained away as a surprise turn, a moving silently skill check, or maybe both to reflect the difficulty of no one happening to see him?  
 

The panels seem to be in the wrong order here...Mr. Satan should probably try to get that woman to safety first, instead of leaving her alone in a tunnel and going out to look for clues. 

What else can we gather from this page? Superhero costumes, despite appearing to have no pockets, must have room for matches or a lighter on them somewhere, or Mr. S would never have got that giant fire lit so fast. 

Also, we learn that rocks used as improvised weapons don't have to be very big.

That seems, at first, to be a clever twist about the sheriff, and having them both wind up on the tracks makes it seem extra surprising when the big reveal happens, but...why did it happen? Is he showing off his confidence in his men, that they would not betray him by tying him up for real? Is the deception part of trying to get Mr. Satan to reveal when the payrolls are "going to ride," and if so, why not try to trick him into telling while still on the tracks? Or he could have revealed himself as leader sooner, never been tied down, and still used the threat of the train to coerce Mr S into giving up the info? But on the other hand, if the robbers don't know when the payroll is coming, why are they so sure a train is coming soon? 

And if Mr. Satan knew the national guard was coming, why go back early to scout with the sheriff without them?

If it wasn't already obvious, Mr. Satan would be statted as a mysteryman. His "spectacular leap" and snatching Doris out of the car and jumping out in time both qualify as mysteryman stunts.

Now we're going to jump into the next story with Zambini the Miracle Man, and this is a prime example of everything wrong with the magician genre: if your magic-user is so powerful that Satan himself has to plot against him while he's on vacation so his guard is down -- then your magic-user is too powerful.

As if to illustrate this, Satan causes a tidal wave to threaten Zambini's ship and, instead of simply calming the waters, Zambini freezes "the oceans." Way to alter Earth's climate there, Zam! 

More interesting are these devil men...let's see if I need to stat them! Hmm...I guess not -- they get mass polymorphed into penguins on the very next page before they can do anything!

Mass Polymorph is, of course, going to be a Hideouts & Hoodlums spell. I think I've determined before it would have to be a ninth level spell, even though it gets cast an awful lot in comic books.

Sure, Zambini could have just cast Resist Fire on himself instead of conjuring asbestos...although, perhaps he did cast Resist Fire and this is how it manifested? Previously, we've seen Zatara cast a healing spell that made a first aid kit appear. The conceit here is that magic takes whatever form is most familiar to the caster. 

Really, Zambini? You're traveling into Dante's Inferno and your only concern is how long the trip is taking you?

And is he really trapped in a net, or just relaxing on a hammock?  

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa - take a close look at that Cage of Flesh. The bars are made up of human forearms, each grasping the next one in the row. That is crazy grizzly -- but also just the thing to impress veteran D&D players, accustomed to dungeons full of grizzly things. That it seems to contain an anti-magic field is just icing on the cake.

Who's the fool, Satan? You just told them to push the flammable cage into fire. 

The "docile" rabbits tracks with how polymorph works (or at least the spells of 4th level and above; H&H has lower level polymorph spells this won't apply to), as there should be a chance of losing your mind/personality to the new form. Otherwise, these would be satanic rabbits!

I'm not going to show you the rest of this crazy story, but here's two spoilers: one, Zambini meets a dinosaur down there, either brought down there in prehistoric times as a pet, or the story is suggesting that's where dinosaurs all went when they died?

Lastly, Satan is killed, which is a pretty crazy ending for just your third issue. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 6

We're going to spend one more post on Zip Comics #2, not because this Zambini story is so good, but because there's a lot going on here that still bears observing.

Here is a new spell -- maybe a 3rd level spell? -- that I'd call Ice Sheathe. It creates a flexible sheathe of ice around you that makes you temporarily immune to all fire damage.

In tier 3, we see Zambini has another new spell that I'd call Fist of Iron, which lets him temporarily wreck things like a superhero.

The more I see these Inferians, the more I like them. They are somewhat Dalek-like, in that they have a simple geometric body shape, appear to be robots, but are living, hateful beings. They can be encountered in large numbers, I think I see 18 of them there in that last panel. And, ooo - they have energy lances!

Well, flaming spears, but energy lances sounds cooler.

Unfortunately, because magic-users are always ridiculously overpowered, Zambini easily shields himself with a Polymorph Aura-like spell that turns anything approaching him harmless (that's got to be a 7th-level spell). Although, actually, why can't thrown icicles hurt him? I wouldn't agree that is harmless. Maybe the spell only transforms things into something less harmful, which could be a lower level spell (4th?).

Zambini's Vibration spell seems awfully specific, most useful on glass men. Perhaps it's an Earthquake spell, which would also create vibrations, and affects a large area of effect.

And lastly, Zambini uses a Move Earth spell to imprison their king.

If you've managed to swallow the rest of this story, including the glass tree stretching the entire length of the solar system, and you can accept that the tree is still there, that the planet hasn't revolved away from this position; see if you can wrap your head around Zambini using a Missile Reflection spell on Prof. Stargaze, turning him to ash. Then Reincarnating him as a rat. Then polymorphing the rat back into the Professor's form when they get back to Earth. So...the Professor has the mind of a rat now? Does Zambini see this as an improvement? Bit of a jerk move...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 5

Mr. Satan returns and, expectations aside, he's still a good guy! Ed Ashe's artwork here is growing on me. I love the cryptic letter-plot hook and the use of shadows on this page. There's a real sense of menace here, despite the fact it looks suspiciously like the monster has a periscope. Can this story live up to the art...?

Actually, things are going great halfway through page 2. They start to go weird when Mr. Satan, wondering why Mrs. Heaslip locked Blake's door, decides he'll get the answer by investigating at the pond, rather than following her, or just saying, "Hey, Mrs. Heaslip! Why did you lock Blake's door?"

Satan is lured out onto the lake by a scream. First his canoe is capsized (I skipped showing you that page) and then the Monster tries to grapple him and misses. Rather than surface right away, Satan dives deeper to escape the Monster...in its natural element. That's a creepy third panel, with the three corpses floating in the whirlpool. Satan either makes a save vs science or a Strength check to pull free from the whirlpool (I would accept either mechanic).

It seems curious to me that he can see the three scientists clearly underwater, at night, but he can't see the Monster, but I suppose this is bound to happen sometimes from random search rolls.

The "bomb" looked like a grenade (I skipped that page too) and while it isn't explained to us why it went off too soon, the implication is that his wife rigged it to happen to kill him.

I think this is the first mention of the radium ray, unless I missed it in there somewhere. It's hard to believe that monster costume would fool anyone; Scooby Doo villains get more convincing monster costumes than that.

The motive of the affair is surprisingly adult.

It may seem ridiculous to suggest there can be a newly discovered planet, but remember that Pluto was not discovered until 1930, and for many years afterwards people wondered if there might not be more planets further out. The Mount Wilson Observatory in California was the largest telescope in the world in 1940, unless this is a fictional rival.

It's pretty hard to take "Stargaze" seriously as a surname; it must be a nickname?

Every time someone calls out for help anywhere, Zambini's "radioscopic" mind picks it up? Is he hearing voices constantly, then? Although, it actually says "any" distress calls, not "all." So maybe it's random or, more likely, happens whenever the Editor wants to drop him a plot hook.

His first cast spell must be a reverse of Word of Recall, where the spell teleports you from home to where ever you sense danger.

Some sort of low-level Untying spell, or simply Unseen Servant?

Oh boy...now, magic-user comic books tend to always err on the side of the ridiculous...but the magic tree that grows over 3 billion miles tall overnight is waaaaay crazy. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the tree is made of glass? That's not even flexible! How did this make sense to the people who made this?

The best part of this story is the glass men, living robots made of glass, hard to surprise because of their telescopic eyes, and immune to heat and fire.

Maybe the second best part is the name Zambini's Shower Ring, which seems like a great name for a spell. It may be a unique spell too, as I can't think of any Resist Fire 5' Radius spells out there -- which this seems to be, with some flavor text added.

It almost goes without saying that Zambini casts a Polymorph any Object spell in this story. H&H really needs a low-level version.

The glass men are called Inferians here, which does seem like a better name.

It's ...interesting how Zambini chooses to polymorph the Inferian into a hunky guy in short shorts. Is this for his benefit or the girl's? We never do learn the girl's name. Apparently the radius of Zambini's Shower Ring is so narrow that there was no room for their prisoner, and Zambini had no problem with handing out a death sentence, even though the Inferian cooperated.

Is that a fern in the king's chamber? How would any vegetation grow on this planet?

Will Zambini survive the lava flow? Of course he will. He's a golden age magic-user; he'll probably turn all the lava into butterflies or something.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #1 - pt. 4

Moving on, this is Captain Valor. If the art looks above average to you, it's because this is by Mort Meskin, the Jack Kirby before Jack Kirby was Jack Kirby.

Does the writing hold up to the art? Let's consider the stool. A stool is a perfectly good clubbing weapon. Valor could have just handed the stool to Ronnie. Instead he breaks one leg off. He doesn't even break three legs off and pass the weapons around; he tosses the rest of the stool aside. And then he leads with the stool leg, when he's actually holding a gun? He could have taken the first guard prisoner and used him as a hostage.

===

Finding grenades in the saddle bags is a huge lucky break. Too lucky? He blows up at least 15 pursuers with that last grenade (definitely possible, since I had lowered damage and extended blast radius on grenades in 2nd edition), slowing down Ho Tsin's army enough that our Heroes can ride out well ahead of their pursuers.

We don't see much of the chase scene, but losing line-of-sight is an example of an obstacle to overcome during a chase.

I suspect Valor is exaggerating about a million, though in a wilderness setting, numbers encountered could be in the hundreds.

===

This is Mr. Satan, what would be a pretty standard pulp feature, except that it reaches deep for its inspirations. This page alone evokes both The Moonstone and The Sign of Four.

Now this page strikes me as odd. You'll note that Mr. Satan chokes the guard unconscious, but when more mobsters show up ...they find blood? I'm having trouble even figuring out how that happened, unless the guard hit his head when he went down...?

Mr. Satan appears to be hitting two bad guys at once, but I think we have to account for some time compression in that panel and he's hitting them on separate turns.

Is it relevant that Dudley Bradshaw likes to go to the gym? It is, because it speaks to what Heroes do in their downtime. Should it have some game mechanic benefit if you go to the gym? Probably not...but if enough game time passed and a fighter or mysteryman had not been to the gym, I might be willing to assign a temporary penalty to attack rolls...

Lastly, this is Zatara -- oops, no it's not, but a clumsy imitation Zatara named Zambini the Magician. Here we see Zambini can cast Snake Charm and, I'm guessing, Hypnotic Pattern (though we never see a pattern, just its effects).

We also see him using his "wand" -- a boomerang amulet -- to cast spells. The boomerang aspect is a bit forced.

Thank goodness he doesn't say "I'll rub my boomerang amulet and find out who sent the snake!" from in bed.

Here Zambini seems to be casting the spell Fumble.

Some of his spells -- but not all of them -- require command words. They look like they say something backwards, like Zatara's spellcasting, but they don't.

And then he casts Reduce Person...

...and, presumedly, Charm Person, so the spy chief will serve him.

Mass Polymorph is going to be a tough spell on this game; it seems fairly common, but it should be a high-level spell for what it can do. Normally I would say, okay, let's make a weaker version with just a very short duration, but these guys stay pigeons long enough to coat a statue. This would be an 8th level spell, meaning Zambini has a whopping 15 brevet ranks.

Or, he used his already cast Hypnotic Pattern to make them think they were pigeons, then used Charm Animal to make two real pigeons do what he made the two men think they were doing. Convoluted, yes, but more feasible in a balanced campaign world.

The Basic book made it clearer than 1st edition Hideouts & Hoodlums did that magic-users needed to be limited by something -- either verbal, somatic, or material components. Zambini has a unique weakness -- human contact. That may seem pretty rough, but essentially, someone's touch could do the same for the first three examples -- covering the mouth during verbal components, swatting the fingers out of alignment on somatic components, or batting the material components to the floor. And grappling always halts spellcasting, though I did not clarify this enough in the rules.

The last spell is actually a power, Turn Gun on Bad Guy. I think this is the second time I've seen this, so there does need to be a spell.

Incidentally, the countries here are "Ritania" and "Hundanian," clearly meant to be European countries. Hundanian must be a stand-in for Germany, though Ritania is less clear -- Germany had so many enemies by 1940!

Saving a king and getting knighted are high honors for a rookie Hero. I would personally have waited longer and built up to this.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)