Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 3

Well I'll be...I called this issue #2 in my last two posts, but it's been issue 3 I've been reviewing all this time! Sorry if I confused anyone.

It's been a long while since we last visited The Ghost, but you might recall he was tossing around Wish-level spells all over before the scenario even got started. Now that he has mobsters to fight, we get - Knock, Mirror Images, and throwing a dagger instead of casting a spell. Wow, this is what a mid-level magic-user looks like!

In my current Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign, we just had a long scene of the Heroes mixing it up with police in a precinct house, so it's interesting to see how quickly The Ghost is able to muscle his way in to see the ...Captain? Commissioner? - after just levitating a beat cop out of his way.

That is a strange spell that gets cast mid-page. It's not a Phantasmal Image because The Ghost doesn't know what the spell will reveal. It seems closer to Object Reading, the psionic power. It's also unusual to have a golden age Hero's initial hunch turn out to be wrong.

Now this is interesting! Only some magic-users have ever shown Achilles Heels - like needing to be holding their wand, or needing the use of their hands - The Ghost has to be facing you.

Wall of Force stops the car. 

It's interesting how The Ghost only sometimes bothers to use his "ghost" look and other times just walks around like a normal guy. I wonder how he decides...?

I also wonder -- is that chair a Chair of Scrying, like a comfy Crystal Ball?

The Ghost uses Levitate to save himself from bullets. I find it so refreshing to see so many 2nd-level spells getting used!

Hypnotism, or Charm Person spell? 

We don't know exactly how many hit points The Ghost has, but a surprise head blow can take him out.

The Ghost casts Wizard Eye through the door.

I like the details of that trap; it's a trap that, if you play it just right, helps the Heroes free themselves from it. Of course, you need to have Heroes weak enough not to be able to break rope...

Normally, in a Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign, exploring an entire hideout from cellar to roof could take multiple play sessions; here, we see it come to pass in a single caption. It's rather remarkable, I think, that the only clue he finds in the whole building are the pigeons on the roof. I wonder how many "secret door" rolls he failed on his way though the house...

I'm not sure what to make out of a spell that makes pigeons leave flaming trails. Some sort of Feed Jalapenos to Birds spell? Or perhaps this is just a generous interpretation of the Find the Path spell?

I believe I already have a Detect Lie spell in my game (or should if I don't). Is there any difference between Detect Lie and Speak Only Truth?

Out of all the spells in The Ghost's repertoire, what impresses this guy is the Change Self spell. 

I've never heard of a trick gun like that, but now I think it should be a minor trophy item. 

When did The Ghost cast that spell, turning the bullets to vapor? While writing the suicide note? After grabbing the gun away? As the bullets are being shot? Possibly the first two options, if the spell was cast off-panel, but it's hard to believe Tanko didn't notice. I think he could realistically have cast it at the beginning of the melee turn before being grappled by Tanko.  

Also...Tanko? That's an African name. Is it a nickname here? 

Ignoring the panel where the lights go out, but we can see everything...there are some strange reactions to magic in this story. Like, the phantasmal faces trick the chief into confessing...instead of just running away?

Was the matchbox ever admissible evidence? I bet it's not now, since a roomful of witnesses saw this appear out of nowhere. How do you prove it's the same matchbox? 

Moving on...I'm more amused than anything else by this page of the next story. For one, the "Three Comrades" are hanging out in what appears to be a middle class German restaurant, and the two German spies dressed up for a fancy nightclub aren't attracting any attention to themselves. What amuses me even more is how much Books looks like Peter Parker.

At least Cal thought the spies were suspicious. You can always count on Non-Heroes controlled by the Editor to fail to notice anything suspicious about a name like Baron Von Sneer, even though that just screams "comic book villain!" to the rest of us. 

Wow...you can also always count on European villains to have castle hideouts, even when just visiting the U.S. The caption calls it a mansion, but I know a castle when I see one...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 3

Let's resume with Dynamic Man, just as DM is surprised by a headblow that knocks him out for 1 whole hour. When he comes to, he's in one of those cliche deathtraps where the spiked walls are closing in on him. Rather than fretting, he simply wrecks his way through the ceiling and escapes. This is a problem I have in Hideouts & Hoodlums, where it is hard to stick superheroes in deathtraps if they can just wreck their way out, but I'm glad that the earliest superhero writers seemed to be grappling with this problem too.

It's important for mobsters to leave clues behind in their desk drawers. I'm amused that the ship they plan to sabotage is called the Batavia, as there's a town near here called that. It's odd, though, that Dr. Vee goes along personally to sabotage the Batavia, but stayed in his hideout when the train was to be sabotaged. Maybe Vee just doesn't like trains?

One punch from Dynamic Man sends Vee flying off the ship and, it appears, Vee goes sailing pretty far through the air. We're told he survived, but it's hard to imagine an old man being able to take that kind of punishment. To have punched him so far, DM must have been using the power Super Punch power, which means Dynamic Man has access to a 4th level power. 

Lastly, I think it's interesting that DM loses interest once the master criminal is defeated and lets the police mop up the lesser spies.

Space Rangers is set in the year 2300 and it's a future where just about everyone has spacecraft that you can crisscross the solar system in and space rangers dress like 1940 police officers. New elements have been discovered, and "plinium" ore is the "only substitute for radium" -- which is a really unusual thing to say. Has all of the radium in the solar system been used up by 2300? This is a pretty forward thinking sci fi strip if it's thinking about the depletion of natural resources already in 1940. 

Space rangers' ships can travel from Earth to Mercury in two days, and they need to find the space bandit Black Hawk. It's hard to take Black Hawk seriously since he wears pointed shoes and what looks like a bathrobe. 

The rangers, Bob and Nibbs, are overwhelmed by at least 11 bandits, probably more. For some reason, they don't have a weapon more hi-tech than wooden clubs among them (even for missile weapons all they have is wooden clubs!), but that's okay because Bob and Nibbs have lost their guns, somehow, between panels -- but we're reminded twice that they lost them! We're left to imagine what their handguns could do, but the weapons on board the spaceships can paralyze and disintegrate. 

And it's not just weapons that are low tech on Mercury; once they captured Bob and Nibbs, the two rangers are tied up with simple hemp rope. And they don't even tie good knots!

Moving on to the next feature, that's Blue Blaze, the super hi-tech zombie. When I saw this scenario was about sabotage at an anthracite mine I was expecting something hi-tech, but that's just a fancy word for hard coal. The hi-tech comes in Blue Blaze's new car, a "supercharged speedster capable of unlimited speed." Infinite is awful fast for a Movement rate, though comic book captions are notorious for hyperbole.

Reaching the mine super fast, almost like he's teleported there (hmm...), Blue Blaze searches the wreckage and his "superior knowledge of science" helps him identify bomb parts, which sounds like a successful Intelligence check to me.

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

Target Comics #3 - pt. 1

Welcome back to Target Comics! As you can see, Manowar, the White Streak, is in Chicago, planning to clean up the meat packing industry. Chicago's big three meat packers were Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Nelson Morris -- which one does Leighton represent, I wonder?

We also see Manowar activating his X-Ray Vision power.

As crazy as I think Manowar is for ignoring the fact that he's literally witnessed Leighton committing murder and going after more evidence from the inspector, I just saw this same thing happen in an episode of Superman & Lois last night, where Superman could stop Morgan Edge's scheme any time he wants by simply abducting Morgan and locking him away in a cave somewhere. But this is a trope of the genre, and so Manowar has to save vs. plot to go after Leighton directly. 

There is no game mechanic involved in a grappling match that would be a fumble, or other explanation for causing the car crash. This could be Editor's fiat. This could also be prompted by the player, who suggests, "You know, with all this tussling around in the car, does that make us crash?" And the Editor says, "Gee, I don't know, and either gives Manowar a save vs. plot, or perhaps a save vs. science for the driver to determine if his player was right or not.

Wha? No, I am not creating a new power called Create Ladder Out of Electrons. This is flavor text for the Levitate power, and I'm sticking to that story!

I've seen the need for a Messaging power before, as we see in panel 4. 

Manowar's earlier X-Ray Vision power is still active, even though this would seem to be a lot of turns later. 

Slipping on a greasy floor may seem silly by modern superhero standards, but it is just the sort of embarrassing thing that can happen in any RPG scenario where random dice rolls determine results.

A player would need to be a really good sport to put up with that headblow from a burning falling timber. 

It's a nice twist that Leighton shows no interest in monologing, or even putting Manowar in a deathtrap and then leaving the room. 

Unlike magic-users, superheroes don't need their hands free to activate their powers (normally; this could make a good weakness for alien superheroes) and here he uses Wreck at Range on that gun. 

Explaining how he electrocutes the door with an already established power is trickier. I'm thinking we might need a new power like Shocking Touch, that a hero can do hand-to-hand like Shocking Grasp or project it onto a nearby conductive surface. 1-6 points of damage +1 per level at a max range of 10' per level?

At first it seems like, to me, that Manowar is using Hold Person, but this is a more dangerous version of that where you can move, but take damage for doing so. But would that be a higher level or lower level version of Hold Person? On one hand it has an extra effect, but on the other hand you can simply choose to take the damage and escape the other effect. Aw, I'm going to split the difference and leave Minefield as a 2nd level power (and maybe set the damage at 2-8 points?). 

This is the second time in the same story Manowar is knocked out cold by a head blow. What terrible luck!

 

Hmm...I wanted to explain away that electricity ladder as flavor text for a power we already have, like Levitate. And it does look like levitation, until he goes sideways over the street. It doesn't look like Fly, but that is the only power that really fits, unless we accept this as a new power. Something like Create Normal Item? There is an AD&D spell like that, Minor Creation, but it's a surprisingly high-level one, 4th level. Even if we nudge it down to 3rd level, that's pretty high for Manowar, though a lot of our characters need to be explained with brevet ranks. 

One could argue that, if superheroes in their third issues can do these things, that maybe every superhero should be able to do these things, but it is important that some superheroes can't be able to do these things -- the "if everyone is special, then no one is" argument from The Incredibles.

 

We're going to jump into Bill Everett's Bull's-Eye Bill in progress. This page jumped out at me because of the "Bottles don't mean nothing" comment, and not just because it's a grammatically poor double negative. What it could mean, game mechanics-wise, is that the bottle hit, but didn't "hit" to the point where it did damage, or it could mean that it only did 1 point of damage, and Bill has so many hit points that he can confidently not worry about it. 

I also think it's interesting that Bill isn't the one who wins the quick draw contest, but the sheriff, who just conveniently appears in that moment. It's like the Editor saw where the dice were falling, was afraid Bill was going to get killed in this turn, and intervened on his behalf.

Here Bill, by virtue of being a played character, and possibly because of his level title, is able to tell the sheriff what to do. The sheriff, for his part, is perfectly fine with locking the bad guys up, not for disorderly conduct or anything like that, but for being strangers. In the Mythic West, it's important to know someone!

That "trip" into the ravine just reeks of plot convenience. I would normally never require a saving throw to stay on a trail unless it was extremely narrow.

Huh? Okay, it wasn't a plot convenience at all; the fall was just to fill panels. I seem to recall a recent Amazing Man story by Everett had a similar thing where a giant ball of ice was blocking his way for no other reason than to slow the pace of the story down. Of course, in a RPG, random setbacks occur all the time, but you're not as used to seeing them in stories, especially ones with such tight page counts as golden age stories. 

I can't decide if that is a caricature depiction of a black man or as realistic as Bill could draw him; his art can be quite stylized sometimes, and I want to give him the benefit of a doubt. Also, I'm quite familiar with the "girl pretends to be kidnapped to get the western hero's attention" story because I had re-published an old Centaur story very similar to this in Funny Picture Stories. Order your copy today!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)