Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 2

Here we have Dr. Strange using wrecking things, only to find his great strength "sapped." This actually happens just like that in Hideouts & Hoodlums, when activated powers run out and you're out of powers to activate. By waiting until the next day for his deathtrap, the villains have actually given him time to regain all his powers from the previous day.

I'm tempted to stat wild hill warriors as berserkers. I could also make them 2nd level fighters, using the level title of warrior from That Other Game.  I could also just use natives, since that's the broad stereotype being used here. 

I've never seen elephants in an arena before! Too bad Doc has Raise Elephant prepared. And a Leap power (looks like II or better) that makes escaping from an arena super-easy. 

As unstoppable as Dr. Strange seems to be, you have to wonder why he doesn't stay at the arena and take out Kong then, and sneaks back in disguise later. Maybe because there's more pages to fill...?

"You're fighting for freedom, men! Don't waste your shots! Keep dropping like flies - even though I could have wrecked my way through that wall for you at any time!"

Or could he? Dr. Strange has to be at least level 3, the bare minimum for wrecking stone walls, but he could also just be rolling poorly and failing to wreck the walls the whole fight so far. 

Or..maybe he really did not try wrecking through the wall until now. This is an early precedent for a trope of the superhero genre to come, that says superheroes try to stay neutral in the course of events until something occurs that ordinary people can't deal with on their own, like a deathray. Of course, not every superhero respects this trope - like Superman himself, who almost exclusively dealt with mundane crime despite being able to do so much more. 

Is this our first evidence that Doc is Neutral in Alignment? Hmm...

Interestingly, the deathray can only affect a single target at a time. So, even though it is killing them like a deathray, it is also, game mechanics-wise, perhaps no different than a Magic Missile spell (with cool flavor text). 

And here we've got a line-up of standard cliches - the big cat (a panther, this time) in the cage, the damsel in distress...and somehow Doc gets to the panther before it gets to the damsel? Now, I've covered many times before in this blog that random initiative needs to trump common sense when it comes to who goes first in a comic book story, but, Doc is wrecking things in the same turn that the panther is first attacking. So, we can only assume, then, that the panther missed with every attack on Virginia, even though it didn't even need to roll very high (reminds me of my rolls when I'm playing!). 

So, we also get the cliches of a big cat being killed (SIGH), and the villain threatening to blow himself up to take out the Hero. I bet it doesn't work...

Hmm...now, if I was running this scenario, I would have let Kong drop the potion as a free action; that is too easily done, and not a direct attack, for it to be trumped by initiative. 

Also, why not use Kong's raygun to revive the men, instead of experimenting with Alosun in a totally untested way (though, I suppose, Doc could argue that they're already dead, what worse could happen to them?)?

Here's a new character and an interesting twist on Tarzan and the Jungle Book. Instead of the infant being raised by animals, he's raised by yogis in India. They teach him potent spells like Rope Trick and ...Wall of Force, to stop mad dogs with? That seems a bit like overkill.

*SIGH* ...what I wouldn't give to read a magic-user story that doesn't throw around ridiculously overpowered spells all the time. Causing a submarine to rise into space ...well, that's got to be a Wish spell. So we've already given The Ghost 17 brevet ranks! Just to get him through a wandering encounter!

Here we get a dose of more insanely powerful magic being tossed about haphazardly -- a Telekinesis spell as powerful as the Raise Trolley Car power, and a Teleport Sandwich spell able to reach around the world. 

Chance's only interest in fighting crime is when the man who just hired him to entertain at parties was murdered. Had the man not been murdered, would Chance have been content to be a party magician instead?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 2

We're back for round 2 of Samson vs. Eelo! Although he doesn't look like your "traditional" merman, I'd already decided last time I would stat Eelo as a merman. So panel 1 is either proof that mermen have great swimming movement rate, or this is the first clue that Eelo is actually a supervillain buffed with the Race the Train power.

I've seen some interesting rayguns in golden age comic books, but an underseas gun is a new one. A heat ray shoots heat. What is this one shooting out? Underseas? Is it just a water pistol?

That is some significant wrecking going on there. A submarine weighs a couple of thousand tons, so we're talking battleship category. 

But a hero shouldn't have to do everything; eventually moping up the enemies gets to be rote, or antic-climactic. It's good, then, to have the "cavalry" come in and mop up the remainder, or the remaining sub in this case.
 

I like most of this page. Samson, stoically guarding the two reunited lovers...Eelo, almost heroically, pulling himself up for one more contest with Samson (Eelo must be a supervillain with a few more powers at his disposal, to think he has a chance here)...

And then Samson just hits him and kills him. Ugh. Death-Dealing Blow needs to be its own power. It would be more powerful than Super Punch because Super Punch just does a bunch of damage to knock out virtually any foe, whereas Death-Dealing Blow must make you save vs. plot or die. So, a level 5 power? Maybe level 6? At this point, Samson only should have enough XP to reach 2nd level, so he's either been gifted more brevet ranks, or he's had more all this time and was actually holding back.

Like with ultra-powerful magic-users in the comics, one could ask me, Scott, if superheroes are this powerful, then don't you need more power inflation in even the early levels for Hideouts & Hoodlums? Good question, random stranger, but two explanations for this: 1) the superhero class is based on the first year of Superman stories, before all this power inflation happens, and 2) there are certainly elements I don't want to emulate about the early comic books because I just don't like them. These include done-in-one-blow fights and grossly overpowered heroes.

"Mercury is getting closer to the Sun every year. Eventually it will be destroyed by the - ah, I'm just kiddin'. Mercury is in a stable orbit and is gonna outlast both of us, baby." Apparently Flip just likes to periodically test how gullible Adele is.

Now I'm being flip, but this science is so bad it actually makes me mad that anyone would write it in a book children would be reading. What if they repeated this nonsense in class?

You know...you'd think someone brilliant enough to invent a fourth-dimensional projector would figure out a way to put two separate seats into it. I suspect Flip just uses this as an excuse to get all hands-on with Adele.

I don't even know what I'm looking at with those aliens. Are they giant pigeon angels with halos? Are those beanie copters?

Darn, I was just getting excited about statting Mercurian pigeon angels, but those are just thought-wave helmets. 

Whoa, I thought the misogyny in this issue was just going to be subtle, but this just got way over the top. Not cool, giant pigeon angle impersonators! But what do we think about Flip now? Is he off the hook for sparing her feelings, or should he be honest and tell her that the aliens are women-bashing in front of her? 

A thought about the architecture: at first these look like Earth skyscrapers, but if the natives are birds...what if these "buildings" are actually solid perches for the natives to roost on top of?

Nice...looks like I'm getting something cool for the Mobster Manual after all out of this issue. Heidites are D&D basilisk-like monsters, but instead of having a petrifying gaze attack, they exude green slime from their skin! From a D&D context, this potentially makes them even more dangerous than basilisks. 

Heck, I'm so excited, I just added it into the manuscript now! *sigh* Now to fix all the layout of the book after it...

 

Jumping ahead to Golden Knight, we have a lot of people in chainmail here. Except the girl, of course, who is for some reason in a 20th century bathing suit instead of even a dress. The chainmail is AC 5, but it exists almost as flavor text -- if you hit the target, you can stab right through the chainmail as if isn't there.

I had commented recently on a Facebook post about monster tactics in D&D that the DM has to have some latitude for deciding how advantageous to make those tactics, that the Editor had to stop short of making them so advantageous that the players will switch to the same tactics.

Here, we see entangling with nets giving great advantage. The Golden Knight, despite having a sword in hand, can apparently not cut his way out, or stab through the nets. Now, if this is simply a failed saving throw, and the player knows it, maybe this won't become his next character's main tactic. But if nets work like this every time? Then he will, and he'll expect it to always work for him too, and should. 

Other than that, what bothers me most about this page? The spaghetti straps on The Golden Knight's tabard? The Gothic style of the castle in medieval times? The fact that the castle is brightly painted all over? Okay, it's actually all three.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.) 

Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 1

That's one big Samson! And this is one nice opening page, establishing our hero, our villain, and the setting, as the scenario gets quickly rolling along.  

Zanbar is just a lazy substitute for Zanzibar, which is also an island in the Indian Ocean.

There was a time when I would have statted Eelo as a merman...but now we have fish men in the Mobster Manual.

But already, on page 2, the fictional geopolitical landscape gets a little confusing. Zanzibar was a British protectorate, so Malajaca is either the name of the British colony there, or maybe it's the name of a neighboring island and Marie is just vacationing on Zanbar/Zanzibar. 

The amphibian henchmen are likely the same race as Eelo -- but not necessarily! I could see an underwater hierarchy where Eelo is a merman, but he can boss around fish men. 

That Eelo thinks he can interbreed with surface humans further suggests to me he is a merman, since we already have precedent for Namor (admittedly from another company) being half-merman.

 

You'd think Eelo would be able to grapple at least one of those girls before they all escape through the window, but he might be waiting for his wedding night to touch them, and his henchmen are all out of range. 

So, islands don't just float on the surface of the water like that. In all but the cartooniest of Hideouts & Hoodlums campaigns, I would refrain from messing with geology like that.

Here's my second clue that the three girls are vacationing on an island not their own. If her father was on the same island, and the islands is that small, you wouldn't need a telegraph to reach him.

The surface area of Zanzibar is 2,654 sq. km, so that island cannot be Zanzibar after all.  

Eelo seems to be an overreactor. Girls jilt him? He sinks their island. To punish the girls...he puts them in a trap that looks like it could kill them? 

That is an amazingly accurate teleporter, able to sit Samson down in a specific boat in an entire ocean. How does the Brun know where the boat is? It's probably best not to question things like that...though it's always possible that the seismograph is so sensitive that it can sense where boats are displacing water?

I find it very interesting that Samson has a blanket around him in panels 2, 3, and 5. What happened? Like the Teleport spell, is there a chance of failure and Samson appeared in the water next to the ship? Did he ask for the blanket so the crew would not get jealous of his amazing physique? 

Ceylon is what Sri Lanka used to be known as, so it's especially interesting that we've had fictional or half-fictional country names so far, and yet here we get a real one.

There's really no reason why the underwater pressure should be sapping Samon's strength, but not the amphibians, and no weakness to water pressure ever comes up again, but this is the beauty of game mechanics with unpredictable, random results -- that when the unexpected happens because of bad dice rolls, you have to explain/rationalize it in-game.

I really like Alex Blum as an artist, but I like him best for his layout work on inspired pages like this one. Panel 1 reveals so much about the characters from their stances. Eelo's dramatic posing in panels 1 and 2 remind me of 1960s Marvel Comics. Samson looks incredible powerful in panels 6 and 7 as he tears the torture apparatus apart and then stands over its wreckage, but the highlight of the page is being dropped down a chute into the deathtrap, as the deathtrap is slowly closing. 

Also note this implies a multi-level hideout.

I don't normally spend this long on admiring the artwork, but look at how panel 1 here zooms out from panel 7 of the previous page. Look at how practically Steranko-esque that 2nd panel is! Look at how panel 5 only exists to show a change of scene, in an age when many comic book panels were background-less. Admire the detail-planning that went into establishing that Eelo's machine has to be started with a key before the levers work. Admire the dynamics of Eelo leaning back, to show us he is about to pull the lever, instead of showing us a moment earlier when he was simply grasping the lever. Observe how the waves of pressure are illustrated in panel 8. 

Game mechanics-wise, I'm not sure how to handle thrusting one's way against pressure, except maybe by Strength checks.

I really don't get how the pressure creates a pathway to the sub, or what that even means. 

I have been grappling with where the "Maljacan fleet" comes from, but I think I've finally figured it out - Maljaca is Malacca, a small (at that time) British protectorate on the Malay Peninsula. I don't know why we're back to fictionalized names again. Now this makes sense, as the British Empire did have a formidable navy that would give even Eelo pause.

Samson sure gained on the sub quickly. He is likely boosted here by the Race the Train power. But how does movement translate underwater? I've never published specific rules on this, I don't think. 

Swimming speed should be 1/3 land speed...though I would be willing to consider it if a player argued that the Race the powers do not consider terrain. 

Turning the torpedo around sounds like the 4th-level Turn Gun on Bad Guy power. I've previously established that Samson started with five brevet ranks, so this should come as no surprise.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)
 

 

Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 2

Next up is Flexo the Rubber Man. This is like old home week for me, as both of these heroes (Mastermind Excello and Flexo) were played in my 1962 Marvel Super Heroes campaign I ran two years back. 

Flexo's inventors, Joel and Joshua, aren't ones to rest on their laurels; they're already hard at work reinventing those common comic book staples, the torpedo repeller and the new, more deadly explosive. And our enemies are up to the same tricks, because they have one of those dime-a-dozen rayguns that turn off electric motors. The 2nd edition basic book has no tables for specific trophies, but if it did, they would be weighted by frequency and these items would have some of the widest ranges on the table. 

Joel, captured by spies, is placed in a pretty lame deathtrap; he is tied to a tree with rope and left for wolves to eat. Wolves? Do these spies think they're in Siberia? The spies also don't think to check Joel's pockets, or they would have found the portable transmitter. Portable transmitters are also pretty common among comic book characters, but what makes Joel's different is that he taps on a button on his jacket, Morse code-style, and that transmits the message. 

When Josh gets the message, he takes the hi-tech approach of using Flexo to get him there and the low-tech approach of tying himself to Flexo's back with rope. I hope you're really good at knots, Josh! The comic book doesn't really explain how Flexo flies, but in the RPG campaign I ran that Flexo was played in, we came up with the idea that he shoots gas out his butt for propulsion. 

Josh reaches Joel just as 4 or 5 wolves arrive and, even though the wolves have shown nothing but curiosity about Joel so far, Flexo is made to viciously attack the wolves.

Flexo lifts their plane over his head (its head?). I think a 4-seat, single prop plane weighs about 1.5 tons, which is almost to the point where the power Raise Car tops out. Then they follow the repeller because it's magnetic and their compass in the plane points towards it because...you know, magnetism has no range to it.

As they charge into the spies' hideout, the marching order is unusual in that Josh and Joel go in first, with Flexo trailing behind. You'd think the human beings would want to use him for cover. Unless Flexo just moves really slowly on foot? 

The entrance is trapped with dynamite and all three of them are buried beneath "a mass of rock and heavy timbers" (without specifying how much a mass weighs). The entrance is trapped with dynamite and all three of them are buried beneath "a mass of rock and heavy timbers" (without specifying how much a mass weighs). The panel is pretty dramatic, with it looking like the timbers are exploding towards them instead of just falling. I would rate that as at least 3-18 points of damage. It makes sense that Flexo is not harmed by it if he buffed himself with a strong defensive power, but what's really surprising is that Josh and Joel only have scratches. I had considered them noncombatant supporting cast members - but are they actually mid-level scientists with a fair amount of hit points?

Although Josh and Joel normally control Flexo with a remote, it seems it can respond to voice commands too. The really interesting thing about Flexo is that bullets don't just bounce off of him like you'd expect from a rubber robot; instead, Flexo reseals after being punctured, like self-sealing tires. Only, as far as I can tell, self-sealing tires weren't a thing until 2006, so this seems to have anticipated the technology.

Flexo's "machine gun blows" must be the Flurry of Blows power. What's harder to describe with game mechanics is when the spies' car bounces off of Flexo, as there's not really a good power for that. Bounce Back Blows, maybe, if you let it work on vehicles and not just living attackers. Bounce Back Blows is powerful, so Flexo has a lot of brevet ranks. At this point, Flexo should still be just a first-level superhero. 

Moving on, the next adventure features Dynamic Man, and it starts with a curious mystery. Saboteurs are planning to blow up a bridge to crash a train. Dynamic Man is riding, in costume, on the top of the train. Is that because he knows the train is in danger, or is it just coincidence? Like Mastermind Excello, Dynamic Man has Clairvoyance and can see the bomb being placed, but Clairvoyance only has so much range, so he shouldn't have known about this until the train was close. 

Dynamic Man can fly fast enough to catch up to a speeding car, which is difficult to do with Fly II, and might require Fly III if the car had enough of a head start. He is buffed, possibly with Imperviousness, or relying on Nigh-Invulnerable Skin and a little luck, before going in so he doesn't have to worry about the bullets bouncing off of him. He picks up the men with ease, suggesting he has Raise Car activated, and appears to be beating the men against the ground like clubs, doing clubbing damage to them (which would be 1-6 points only -- unless he is also buffed with one of the Get Tough powers). The one surprise is that Dynamic Man seems to have a power that works just like rayguns that shut off engines, though you might be able to duplicate that effect with Wreck at Range, if the Editor allowed you to use it on just the engine and not the whole car. 

The bad guys' car has a special add-on; a radio transmitter in the back seat so their boss can listen in on everything...

(Read in Marvel Masterworks: Mystic Comics vol. 1.)

  

Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 1

Happy New Year! Let's kick things off with a return to Timely Comics!

This issue starts with the debut of Mastermind Excello. Mastermind Excello is Earl Everett's code name with Naval Intelligence. Everett is an interesting choice of surname, since Bill Everett would be a known name in the small world of comic book publishing already. 

When Excello meditates, his mind conjures images of nearby evil, like he was casting a Detect Evil spell, only the Editor was allowing additional information here, including a visualization of the evil act (planning sabotage), as if Excello was scrying with a crystal ball. I think that's too much information from a 1st-level spell. Of course, it's also possible that Excello has a miniature crystal ball in his pocket and we just aren't privy to that information yet...

Excello allows himself to be captured, confident he will be taken to the spies' boss. Why he doesn't instead assume they will knock him out and just toss him overboard is puzzling, unless he was also casting an ESP spell?

The spies are Sovernians. The monocle on one of the spies is usually artist shorthand for them being Germans, but the naming conventions are odd; the spy chief's name is Kadash, which is a Jewish name. Sovernia sounds a little bit like Slovenia...so these are Jewish spies from Slovenia? 

While imprisoned on the Jewish Slovenians' battleship, Excello uses Clairaudience to overhear the chief plotting. To this point, Excello has seemed to clearly be a Magic-User -- but then he wrecks his way out of the chains binding him! In the next panel, Excello's wrecking ability is explained away by "Secret Chemical SF 44," which he has vials of concealed on his person. But are these trophy items, or flavor text explaining his wrecking ability?

"...machine guns are no match for Excello's triple propeller pistol." Really? Because it looks like an ordinary six-shooter. It doesn't seem possible that it can shoot three bullets at once through a single barrel. Does it shoot three times as fast as a pistol? That still doesn't seem as fast as a machine gun. Of course, that's thinking in terms of real world physics...in Hideouts & Hoodlums, your rate of fire is determined by your level. So a machine gun isn't super effective in the hands of a 1st-level spy, but still gets four attacks per turn. If a triple propeller pistol works like an automatic, then Excello can outshoot it if he is level 5 or higher -- and we already know he is if he can cast Clairaudience. H&H works again!    

I'm going to have to go with my earlier theory about the pocket crystal ball, because Kadash's plane should be well out of spell range when Excello reads where Kadash's HQ in New York is. It's on the 80th floor so, naturally, instead of taking the elevator or stairs, Excello dons "vacu-pads" on his hands and knees and climbs all 80 stories on the outside of the building, in broad daylight, because that's surely not going to draw attention. Or is it broad daylight? The sky is colored orange for some reason, so that makes it hard to pin down a time of day. 

After easily defeating Kadash and his men with just his fists, Excello disguises himself as Kadash using a disguise kit that we even get to see the contents of (which includes several fake mustaches of different styles). As a magic-user, this could have been explained away as a Change Self spell, but since we can see the kit I'm going to agree he used mundane means and saved the spell slot for something more useful. 

He also has a seaplane now because he took one from the spies and now uses it to get around. He heads to find Kadash's boss in Reedsville, New Jersey. An interesting choice of states -- Pennsylvania has the largest Reedsville, and West Virginia and Ohio also have their own Reedsvilles, but placing this in New Jersey makes the town fictional.  

The boss's boss's plot is kinda complicated. His spies have planted explosives all across the country. Instead of setting them off one at a time, they are all rigged to be set off remotely from one master switch in Reedsville -- a set-up that required taking over a powerhouse with "super turbines" to power the master switch. It might not take a mastermind to notice something that suspicious. 

The jig is up and we know Excello is a superhero as well when he picks up a turbine and throws it at guards. It's hard to guess how much that turbine weighs, especially since it looks more like a boiler than a turbine...but I should think the Raise Car power would handle it. Excello combines that with Improvise Missile Weapon I to take out three guards, and then shoots the rest. Excello must have a license to kill.

Until now, Excello hasn't seemed too overpowered, but one vial of his secret chemical and blow up the entire powerhouse, which seems a tad powerful. Even if just a one-shot item, he's just wrecked things like a superhero of at least level 6.

Excello also has a pocket transmitter he can use to contact Naval intelligence and have them, on his orders, fire a coastal defense gun at any target he names, plus calling cards with an American flag on them and the catchphrase "America first, last and always" (and without the Oxford comma, no less!). 

From this story, I would say Excello is a magic-user/superhero with four brevet ranks in magic-user and one brevet rank in superhero.

(Read from Marvel Masterworks: Mystic Comics vol. 1)

Weird Comics #1 - pt. 1

It's been some time since we read the debut of a "brand new" comic book together, but here we are with the inaugural issue of Fox's Weird Comics, plus the first appearance of a version of Thor in comics -- unless the character named Thor in Top-Notch Comics was the real Thor, and I've still reached no decision there). 

Already we're getting an unusual take on Thor...apparently he waxes, runs around in shorts, a cape, and a hat, and lives in Valhalla instead of Asgard. Say...is that acknowledging that Ragnarok already happened, and Thor is dead? That actually makes this truer to mythology than the Lee/Kirby version started, if I'm right.

Although Thor appears to be shooting an energy bolt from his hand, I believe that's meant to represent the path of his hammer.

Another interesting development: Grant Farrell could have just been given Thor's hammer and his powers, but instead he's "transformed into Thor's being," which seems more complex, like how Don Blake and Thor were merged into one person? 

How does he recognize them as spies? Grant isn't a spy himself. Is this some kind of Thor sense? Or are the Editor and player meta-gaming, where the Editor just tells the player what everything is he encounters?

The spies' motivation here is pretty suspicious. Could they really find no one to pose as a tourist for them willingly? 

"Andurian" makes me think of Peruvian. Peru is the 2nd largest world producer of copper and silver, 8th largest world producer of gold, so that does sound like something international spies would want to get their hands on.

Riding on a lightning bolt is a curious way for Thor to get around, but the Marvel Thor seldom used his goat-drawn chariot either. It could be the Teleport through Focus power, since electricity is technically everywhere, or this could be flavor text for a slower Race the power; after all, he doesn't really need to be faster than Race the Plane to catch up to the spies.

Forcing a plane to land I could see as a freebie result with a Control Weather power. 

So, Plan A was to sneak spies into the country to look for the mines, but Plan B was to roll tanks into the country and crush everything but the mines. It seems like a lot of escalation is happening there and maybe there should have been a plan in between?

No one in Hideouts & Hoodlums should be able to smash five tanks at once. I think I would cap Mass Wrecking at three tanks. Five...that's just a lot of tanks.

Speaking of plans...it's hard to imagine what Grant was thinking to accomplish, changing back to normal and just waltzing up to the mines. Was he planning on asking how they planned to defend the mines? Was he trying to flush out any spies around the mines? Couldn't he have done both as Thor? The story hasn't told us yet that there's a time limit to how long Grant can be Thor, but if there was one that would explain why there needs to be scenes like this. 

It's also worth pointing out that the low ceilings in the mine are pretty realistic, more so than how spacious mines usually look in the movies.

I didn't show you page 9, but Grant stays in the same spot throughout, which begs the question -- where did that lightning come from? Can Grant summon lightning even when he doesn't appear to be Thor? Did the real Thor send it? 

  

Again, it's difficult to get a sense of Thor's plan. Carrying the spies back to their home country seems more like doing them a favor then deporting them...unless Thor wanted them to get shot by the anti-aircraft guns? He must have been expecting it, because he buffed himself with Invulnerability before taking off.

 

Lastly, Thor must have eight brevet ranks, going into this adventure. 

 

Moving on, we meet the Sorceress of Zoom in her magic floating -- and mobile! -- city. I wish we could see more clearly the monsters in panel 4. When it says she created them with her magic spell, I don't think we should consider this an ordinary magic spell, like Mobster Summoning, with a duration. Rather, I think we can hand wave this as flavor text explaining where the monsters came from.

 

 

 

The monster in panel 1 reminds me of Spider-Man's future foe, the Jackal. It also looks kinda goblin-like? Even more interesting is the monster in panel 2 -- I really wish I had a clearer picture of it. It looks like it has webbed feet, one glowing eye, attacks by strangulation, and is wearing a cape? I want to stat it, but I don't even know what to call it!

 

The floating city "speeds off into the distance"? How fast can a magic floating city move? Fast enough that planes can't catch up to it? 

 

If I thought the Thor story was confusing, the narrator here is of little help whatsoever. I don't understand why the Sorceress wants to take over the city by force, but then gets upset when one single boy is knocked out. 

 

Ohh...carefully looking at the page numbers, I see two pages are missing. Now I may never understand what spell "hundreds of us" were under, or how the mysterious figure knows to single out Tom to help him.

 

There's our goblin friend again. While before I thought the red dots on his undies were gems, now they just look like polka dots. 

 

Hmm. I didn't actually have anything game mechanics-related to say about that page. I think I just wanted the excuse to mention his undies. 

 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 
 
 

Prize Comics #2 - pt. 2

We're still visiting with Ted O'Neil in Mexico. He's dealing with diamond smugglers, but pretty poor smugglers. Are they really about to brag about having $1,000 in diamonds? That should be easy, even in 1940. 

Here we have an uncommon instance of a whip being used as an entangling weapon. 

Just as rare, we have a missile weapon -- a rock -- being thrown into a melee to great effect.

Here we're told these are poor smugglers again, willing to kill over only thousands of dollars. 

They're slow smugglers too, though that is because of Hideouts & Hoodlums' initiative system. Even though Bates should be able to pull a trigger before Ted can reach up and grab that beam, he can't if Ted out-rolls him.

The smugglers are also poor shots, missing despite the +2 bonus they should have for attacking from behind, and while Ted can't move too much.

Tossing a lasso over someone while flying by in a fast-moving plane strains cred -- oh, who am I kidding? This whole story is straining me. This lasso trick would need a natural 20, over a result over 20, to pull off. 

And how dark is this ending? It's implied that Ted landed so rough that Bates' face is smashed in by the fall. 

You know, this issue really isn't winning me over, and Jupiter, Master Magician isn't helping. Let's ignore for the moment that Jupiter's antennae look like pencils sticking out of his hair. Let's pretend that monster is drawn less goofy-looking and more like the D&D gargoyle it superficially resembles. Let's even try to ignore the fact that, if the city is shielded by rays so he can't locate it, then how does Jupiter know it's far away? Instead, let's talk about how dumb your supporting cast member has to be to volunteer to be a decoy, while you watch a monster carry him away, even though you have no idea if the monster is going to eat him the minute it leaves town with him. And even if they're convinced from the crystal ball that the monsters are taking their abductees to this far away city, maybe the abductees don't need to show up alive, or with their heads still on. 

Okay, I lied -- let's go back and talk about the crystal ball shielding too. We need a Protection from Scrying spell for H&H

to simulate that.

On this next page, we learn how gargoyles are made. Ouch! And made by mad scientists...or is the old man a magic-user? It seems he is if he knows about white magic and shielding his location from scrying.

Jupiter here casts Hold Person, Knock, and ...Clean Room? Or just a use of Telekinesis maybe? Oh, and previously he used a Fly spell I forgot to note! It's worth noting that the Fly spell for magic-users is slower than gargoyles fly (12 vs. 15), so it would be hard for Jupiter to keep up, unless he has a faster Fly spell.

It's not a very successful ambush if the other side is able to attack first, is it? 

Jupiter's next spell is a new one and I'm inclined to call it Jupiter's Disarming Hand. It creates one invisible hand per level of the caster that can all make attack rolls vs. visible targets within a, oh, let's say 20' diameter area of each other and if the roll succeeds the target is disarmed of a weapon. The range is, let's say, 60' + 10' per level. It's a pretty weak spell, weaker than Sleep, so I think I'd put it at 1st level.

I'm not clear about how to describe the next panel. Is Jupiter using Hold Person, and then loading the paralyzed gargoyles onto Floating Disc spells? Or is there a new spell in play here (actually, Floating Disc would also be new, to H&H)? Maybe something called Jupiter's Delivery, where 1 inanimate, or paralyzed animate, object per level will float to any location you name for them to go, as long as the caster knows the location,

and it is within, oh, let's say 200' + 25' per level? This is maybe a 3rd level spell.

Then Jupiter scrys the bad guy's location with his crystal ball. "Wow! I still don't know how you do it!" "Really? Really? I'm holding a crystal ball right in front of you. How was this not a big clue for you?"

Up to this point, I could still pretend Jupiter is 3rd or 4th level with a Crystal Ball trophy item, but then he casts Earthquake and I'm just rolling my eyes at how many brevet ranks I have to throw at comic book magic-users. 

Now this turn of events starts out pretty cool; we get a nice visual of a paralysis raygun. And then...whaaaat? Instead of Jupiter thinking his way out of this trap, they luck into a stupid gargoyle tripping over the cord and unplugging it? They're miles underground -- why are there even wall plugs down here? 

It's unclear how Jupiter wrecks the raygun (and a lot of wooden rafters around it). Some spell version of Wreck at Range? Or a Fireball spell? 

It's worth pointing out here that Jupiter has either cast Fly twice, or has a Mass Fly spell that let's them both fly separately. He also has a higher level version of the Strength spell that boosts multiple (at least 2, let's say 2-5) targets' STR scores. This spell is going to be level 3. 

"Hey, watch where you're grabbing with that hand, mister!" You know which panel I'm talking about.

That is one funky ramp onto the plane. And for that matter, why are subterranean monsters using a plane?

Uh...H&H already has an Enlarge spell, but the size of Jupiter's hand is pretty ridiculous there. More so because we're lead to believe it's only his hand that gigantic and the rest of his body, off-panel, is normal size. 

Jupiter demonstrates a Mass Teleport spell that, gosh, that would have to be a 7th-level spell, especially since Johnson isn't anywhere near them when Jupiter and the mad scientist teleport. Johnson is, of course, only there to either witness Jupiter's victory (because Jupiter needs it for his ego) or -- as happens -- to give the mad scientist one last chance to threaten them. Polymorph is already a 4th-level spell. Based on the 7th-level spell alone, we know Jupiter is at least 15th level, and that's with 13 brevet ranks, just for what we see in this story. And I don't even remember how many brevet ranks we had to assign him last time!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

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)   

Adventure Comics #48 - pt. 1

In this issue debuts Tick-Tock Tyler the Hourman. The narrator is pretty unspecific about his powers. His Miraclo gives him the "power of chained lightning" (though his powers aren't electricity-based) and "speed almost as swift as thought" (though he's never nearly as fast as the Flash). Rex's schtick (his first of several) is that he has a P.O. Box and advertises in the newspaper and asks people to send him their problems. Surprisingly, lots of people start taking him up on it, despite how sketchy that set-up sounds. 

In addition to Miraclo, Rex has a ring that contains "tear gas concentrate," enough to "mark an army cry," which seems a lot like that narrator's talent for exaggeration. That narrator shows up again to tell us Miraclo is a fluid that makes him, not invulnerable, but "insensible to harm and injury." That means he's unaware of or indifferent to harm and injury, which may not necessarily be a good thing.

For the only time in Hourman's history, Miraclo gives him the power to see in the dark (Infravision). Miraclo gives Hourman the "speed of wind," which sounds right this time, as wind can gust at 40-50 MPH and Hourman can only keep the car in sight, not gain on it. Though maybe he's still using the Race the Train power and holding back to see where their hideout is?

Hourman is relatively unharmed by being hit by a speeding car; I'm guessing that's the Imperviousness power, which means Hourman has four brevet ranks. We also see him using a leaping power; it isn't clear how many stories tall the building is (it's at least two), but it still probably falls in the Leap I category no matter how tall the building is.    

That tear gas ring that can stop an army? It affects just two people. It also seems to be just a one-shot trophy item, since it never appears again. 

Barry O'Neill is back to facing his old enemy Fang Gow, who has somehow hypnotized Inspector Le Grand's daughter, made her hate them, and made her work for an unnamed enemy nation. Barry decides to bust Jean out of prison in a scene straight out of a Western -- the French jail is so small the prisoners' cells line the outside walls, and the only substitution here is that Barry uses a car to pull out the bars rather than a strong horse (though *ahem*, I suppose it's still horsepower either way). The thought is that she will head straight to Fang Gow if freed, which is a pretty iffy proposition -- if I was Fang Gow, I would have included the hypnotic instruction to forget everything she knew about my location if Barry ever freed her.  

Apparently there's a "sinister dock section" in Paris -- that might come as a shock to the people of Paris -- and if you take the stairs down to the lower docks, you'll find a secret door to Fang Gow's newest hideout there. And maybe a flashlight too, since Jean didn't have one in her jail cell, but has one by the time she reaches the secret door. Don't forget to stock your hideouts with dropped items from the starting equipment list!

Fang Gow's new plan is to incriminate Le Grand by having Jean slip stolen plans into his diplomatic pouch when he goes to "Rumania." This is an easy one; Rumania is obviously Romania. Why even bother with fake names if you're going to put that little effort into it? 

The real surprise here is how Barry frees Jean from Fang Gow's mental influence. It seems they are using the magic-user's contest of wills mechanic to see if Barry can free Jean. But when did Barry become a magic-user? The other explanation is that they are both making skill checks to hypnotize Jean, loser is the first to fail his skill check. Poor Jean!

Fang Gow only summons back-up, three thugs, after losing the hypnotism duel. Barry uses a pistol on them only while they were at missile range, drops the only one with a gun (they are very poorly armed thugs), then drops his own gun and fights with his fists once they are in melee range. One of the remaining thugs has a knife and the other one is unarmed as far as we can see.

The gag filler Butch the Pup suggests that it costs $5 to repair a broken and ripped tent, and a fine of $100 to set up a tent on private property.

Ugh...let me just pause a moment to gripe about how low the art had sunk on Adventure Comics at this time.  Fred Schwab's cartoony art, seen here on Butch the Pup, used to grace Comic Magazine's poorer titles. Barry O'Neill, that used to be graced with the elegant art of Leo O'Mealia, now suffers the bleah art of Ed Winiarski. For some reason that defies understanding, Chad Grothkopf is now the artist on Federal Men (as he is on Slam Bradley in Detective Comics), though his ugly art bears none of the vitality of Joe Shuster. Even Ogden Whitney, competent as he is, is no Bert Christman, the original creator of Sandman. You would think every good artist in New York had already been drafted from this issue...

Oops, griped too long. I'll get to Federal Men tomorrow! (Stories read at readcomiconline.to)