Wonderworld Comics #11 - pt. 1

Ah, the early Fox Comics were gorgeous! This installment of The Flame was written by Eisner and drawn by Fine, which is about as good as it gets here in (cover date) March 1940.

It scarcely requires explaining that "Kalnar" is Germany and "Rodend" is Hitler, especially not when you see "Rodend" on the last page below.

"Dorna" is a little trickier. It seems most likely Poland, given this time in the War, but the capital of "Dorna" is not yet captured in this story, while Warsaw was taken four months earlier than this was published.


For those mathematically impaired, The Flame was born in 1915. Ichang, or Yichang, is a prefecture-level city located in western Hubei province, China. It is the second largest city in the province after the capital, Wuhan.



This is surprisingly credible; the Yangzte ("Yangtse" here) is responsible for 70-75% of China's floods, flooding nearly every monsoon season.

Just like Siegel and Superman, Eisner borrows from the story of Moses here.

This seems to be Tibet, though the geography is a bit off. The Yangtze River begins in Tibet, so the flood waters would have had to somehow sweep the basket upstream.

It's interesting to wonder if the "grand high lama" is the dalai lama, or a fictional lama that supersedes the dalai and panchen lamas.

It's also worth noting that this nested origin story is being told to us by a character in the main story, who may well be an unreliable narrator.

We're given no clue how messages are sent to the Flame. Radio? Telegram? Write a note and burn it with fire?

"Quick, let's ignore the anti-aircraft guns around us (I see three) and bring him down with our small fire guns! I'm feeling like a challenge today!"

I was really surprised by how much this page reminds me of Walt Simonson's art. The layout is great, if awfully background-less, but the perspective in that final panel makes up for any imagined deficiencies.

Continuity glitch: the Flame is clearly leaping from his plane in the third panel of the previous page, but is back in his plane in panel 2 of this page, and then back on the ground by panel 4. It seems that Lou Fine had intended the plane to be immune to the fire gun and demolish the gun, but Will Eisner wanted the Flame to be responsible for destroying it and gives him credit in the caption.

Despite having only destroyed one gun and beaten up about seven soldiers, the entire army surrenders at that point. Personally, I would have made separate morale saves for each squad, three saves per platoon. But I understand this was a scenario with a short time limit.

Let's also talk about the effectiveness of a giant flame gun. I get that, thematically, it fits the title, but there's no way it could shoot fire as far as it could shoot a shell. I fail to see how this

weapon would be very effective.

I don't have much to say about this page except -- see? Hitler. Great "punch to the face" panel there, well before the famous Captain America cover of punching Hitler.















For this installment of Yarko the Great, "Anthony Brooks", aka Will Eisner, starts us off in faraway India, but how accurate is that geography? The Kabul River does empty into the Indus River near the city of Attock, in what is now Pakistan, but would have then been India. Far from isolated frontier, Attock would have been, I think, a metropolis of about 400,000 people at this time. It's typical racism of the times, though, to make other cultures look more primitive than they were.

All I have to say about this page is that the men from India must be statted as mysterymen (burning stunts), superheroes (using the Wall Climbing power), or magic-users (using the Spider Climb spell) to be able to scale a sheer wall like that.

(Spoiler: they're mysterymen; on a page I won't be showing, they use a mysteryman's weapon, a garotte.)

And that this is an awful long build-up to Yarko showing up in the story...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Jungle Comics #3 - pt. 3

We're back and still looking through Fiction House's Jungle Comics #3 and seeing what lessons we can apply to running or playing my RPG Hideouts & Hoodlums from it.

This is Captain Terry Thunder of the Congo Lancers. The geography seems way off here, since the Congo is in central Africa, he desert is in northern Africa, and then they somehow find swamps, followed by more desert, before coming back to the jungles. Did they just make a big circle?

Regardless, the lesson we can take away from this is that the details of travel can be glossed over to get us to the main story.

You might feel as uncomfortable as I do looking at how the Africans are colored on this page. Now, in 4-color coloring, blue highlights often accompany something that is supposed to be interpreted as all-black, but you usually don't see this applied to black people. 

That said, the natives show some clever tactics in the last panel. While Terry can do nothing but try to resist the grappling attack, the other three are all free to try and beat him with their (spiked?) clubs. Now, there is an element of risk for them as well; I would rule that, if you were trying to attack an opponent being grappled, and you miss, you have to roll again to see if you hit the grappler on your side instead. 

"Smitten from ambush?" Are the natives using Cupid's arrows on them? What strange wording.

I also checked; grass rope is a real thing.

This is Wambi the Jungle Boy. I don't think much of Wambi, but these two trappers have a super-inflated idea of his value. Worth a million, in 1940 dollars, for being able to talk to animals? I'm skeptical...

Especially since animals have no problem talking to each other, across species lines.

It's remarkable that, just from word getting through the animal grapevine that Wambi is in trouble, an elephant and at least 11 gorillas show up to rescue him. It seems unlikely that Wambi would have this many support cast member animals, but perhaps his SCMs joined up with a wandering encounter...?

 I like to share unusual disarming attacks; this could be the first time we've ever seen a man disarmed with an orange.

This is from the next story, Roy Lance. "Nyama" is the word for spirit, used by the Dogon people of Africa. Did the author, know that, or was it a lucky guess?

More evidence of natives using poisoned weapons.

You don't often hear about cattle herding in Africa, but that's legit; they do keep cattle herds over there.

The last story we'll look at today is Simba, King of Beasts -- you know, Disney's other source material for The Lion King other than Hamlet. Simba, in turn, seems to have The Jungle Book as some of its source material, so that leaves me wondering if the boy isn't paralyzed with hypnosis instead of fear, ala Kaa. Regardless, not being able to do anything is one of the eight random results of a failed morale save now, in Hideouts & Hoodlums 2nd edition, so maybe it really is fear.

Of course, that reminds us that the boy is not a played Hero in this scenario, but a Supporting Cast Member under the control of the Editor. Simba is the Hero, obviously classed as a Fighter, with the Editor allowing Lion as a playable race. The Lions special abilities are being able to attack with bite and claw attacks, and hopefully a few extra Hit Dice too, or he's toast against this wandering encounter of an angry rhino.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)