Amazing Man Comics #11 - part 1

Now that I'm finally publishing Amazing Man (see Funny Picture Stories #7 - on sale now!), covering this story might not only seem biased, but posting pages seems like it might hurt future sales - but oh well!

There are some big changes this issue, starting with how Aman seems to have dropped his first name, John. Gone also is the interesting struggle in John Aman between hero and antihero; the Council of Seven has decided these stories need to be a lot more straightforward from now on. 

Aman is "purified" by fire, but what this would mean game mechanically isn't clear. Is it simply a magical effect of Alignment correction? Is Aman taking damage from the fire? Given that his initial tests involved stabbing him with knives, I'm guessing he's taking damage. Aman is a really good sport about this, as I'm guessing they would not allow him to buff himself with the Resist Fire power. 

We begin to get some explanation here about why Aman is being dressed up like John Carter of Mars. Having an indestructible costume would normally be some comfort, but maybe Aman is secretly wishing it covered up enough of him to offer more protection? For that matter, how much should an indesctruble costume protect him?  In the 2nd edition rulebook, I have indestructible costumes being statted as Armor Class 2 (and remember, lower is better). My description wisely does not describe how much of the body needs to be covered by the costume, so maybe these straps and sternum hield are enough? Is what a costume looks like really no more than flavor text?

Has the purification ritual protected Aman from the Great Question's influence, or did Aman make his saving throw vs. charm?

It's just as well that Everett doesn't give us an exact number of days it takes to get from Tibet to Louisiana by plane. Even Google Maps can't tell me this today! What I can't figure out, which is probably more important, is where Aman was heading before he wound up near Louisiana. It certainly isn't on the way to Chicago or New York City from Tibet. Maybe he was planning on vacationing in Florida before fighting evil?

As far as I can tell, the "lost" in the "lost bayous of Louisiana" means that they have disappeared due to landscaping the terrain, as opposed to unmapped "lost world"-type areas. Still, this first interpretation is definitely more interesting and lends itself to adventure fiction.

This page attempts to explain away Amazing Man's John Carter rip-off togs as a "Tibetan uniform." Could this be the Great Question's final laugh at Aman, convincing him that this was the latest in Tibetan fashion?

I appreciate that Amazing Man has the subtlety, that you don't see often in superheroes, to climb a wall and oberve the bad guys unnoticed. Because he's climbing vines, I would probably still make the player roll a skill check, but at a large bonus. 

I like this hideout set-up, where the prison cells are behind a cell with three panthers in it (we'll see there are three of them on the next page). How Aman circumvents the panthers to get to the prisoner is great too, showcasing the versatility of this power. 

I've probably talked about this before, but I haven't posted in a long time and I can't remember. The issue is, how would Amazing Man have this power in H&H? Because Green Mist is not a 1st-level superhero power, or even a low-level one. It does bear some resemblance to the 1st-level magic-user spell, Poof! Could that be all it is - just an exception of allowing a Superhero to prepare a Magic-User spell as a power, and everything about it that isn't movement is flavor text?  

Three panthers is actually a pretty tough encounter in H&H, so it's disappointing that Aman takes them each out in one punch. It is more likely than them being knocked out that they have each failed their morale saves after taking damage and they choose to stop fighting. 

These bayou pirates have a lot of personality to them. We even get help with statting them. One is a brute (a variant of thug) and another is a slick hoodlum. Garlock, their leader, doesn't seem the master criminal type, but might be a mid-level fighter, since he can subdue panthers.

The brute gets upgraded on this page to pseudo-giant, a mobstertype that appears in the recently released Mobster Manual.  The throw is a very effective grappling move in the 2nd edition grappling rules - probably not enough on its own to take out a pseudo-giant, but Amazing Man may be buffed with one of the Get Tough powers to boost his damage. We also learn there are thugs present in the room (I see two of them, not counting Slick and Garlock).

Aman can be casual about what happens to the treasure because his Editor awards xp for treasure just for taking it out of the hideout. What happens to it after that doesn't matter if you don't have personal expenses!

But Aman is clearly gaming the system; there was no reason for him to kill those three alligators (he calls them crocodiles, but it makes sense that he did; he hasn't been in the U.S. more than six months). He obviously did it for the experience points!

What I like here is that Everett gives us almost a whole page of chemistry-building between Aman and Zona. Unlike Lois' attraction to Superman's animal magnetism, it looks like Zona is going to be attracted to how thoughtful Aman is (offering her his jacket for modesty) as much as for his rippling muscles. 

This next bit of research I had done back in November for the Public Domain Heroes Facebook group, but I'll reshare it here. 

I had long assumed that Amazing Man's companion, Zona Henderson, had a made-up first name, or it was a nickname (short for Arizona?). According to SSA.gov's baby names by years list - https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi - Zona was a real name, though a rare one, ranking 712th-820th most common baby name in the span of years I think she was most likely born.

And, of course, we get the familiar trope of televisions being able to function like crystal balls. 

Chuck Hardy has moved up to second feature (which, I understand, was not generally considered the second best position in a comic book; it went first, last, and then alternated in towards the center). 

Frog men last appeared in Fantastic Comics #3. They turn up like bad pennies!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

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. 5

We're back with The Invisible Man Known As Dr. Gade, which is admittedly a really unwieldy title and perhaps one reason why Gade literally disappeared from comics after this. 

While visible, Gade is no better at fighting than an ordinary person, which makes me wonder if he isn't a Magic-User with some brevet ranks at all, but should be statted as a 1st-level Mysteryman given a powerful mad science trophy item by his Editor. 

Gade also has a disintegrator - and not just any disintegrator, but an "old disintegrator" - like he'd invented it ages ago and then lost interest in it. Maybe it didn't work proper, because Gade has to throw his enemy into it and make it explode to kill the man.

I think I'm more turned off by heroes who kill now than I was a few years back, as I'm only giving that story a B+ now.

The next story is Zara of the Jungle, a Sheena clone (but with dark hair). It starts with Captain Jeff Graves, heading out into the jungle to try and stop the local tribes from fighting. He has a wandering encounter with a lion that he ... *sigh* kills with a single bullet. 

The native tribes are drawn...really weird. I've seen a lot of racist depictions of black people in these early comic books, but these guys look almost like aliens. 

Jeff is captured after falling into a concealed pit (even though it doesn't look even 5' deep). Zara rescues him, first by shooting the natives who are about to execute Jeff with her bow, and then by shooting the ropes off of Jeff -- which would be a near-impossible trick shot for anyone but maybe a Mysteryman using a stunt. So Zara is a Mysteryman instead of a jungle Explorer? 

Again more racism -- it is implied that Zara is able to stop the tribes from fighting just by the "white goddess" showing up on the battlefield. But I wonder, would they have stopped fighting if a pretty woman of any color had shown up? And if so, this speaks to the power of a having a high Charisma score.

The last story is Dakor the Magician. Dakor is unusual in that he has a personal secretary. He also needs to cross the Pacific by plane instead of magic. To rescue a British consul from Chinese bandits in Singapore (quite the international adventure!), Dakor disguises himself as Chinese, apparently using makeup instead of magic, and pretends to be a pistol peddler to win the bandits over (instead of just charming them). When a guard catches Dakor at the consul's cell, Dakor punches him out instead of using a spell. 

The spells don't start until page 4, at which point Dakor Polymorph Weapons (3 spears into cornstalks; I think I've talked about needing this spell before). He then creates magic scissors that cut the ropes binding him, which could be flavor text for a Knock spell? Then he casts Knock again for sure on the cell door, with the added wrinkle being that he can make the door swing open so hard that it hits a bandit enough to hurt him (a freebie from the Editor? An extra-strong Knock spell?). 

The biggest takeaway from here should be that Dakor can cast spells with his arms bound, proving that Hideouts & Hoodlums magic-users need to be flexible in what disrupts their spellcasting. The second biggest is that Dakor casts the same spells twice. I have long toyed with the notion of a mechanic that would give magic-users a chance to retain a cast spell...and it seems that Dakor has that, unless he just happened to memorize the same two spells twice. Actually, three times with Polymorph Weapons, as soon he's changing a thrown knife into a bird. 

I have serious issues with Dakor being able to cast a spell, while falling into a pit trap, to polymorph the spikes at the bottom into springs. Casting a spell in melee is one thing -- he could have started casting that Polymorph Weapons spell before the knife was thrown -- but he doesn't know about the pit until he's already falling, and it should only take 1 second to hit bottom in a pit that shallow, which is way too little time to cast a spell. The only other suggestion I have is that maybe one of these polymorph spells has a duration and he can change anything at will during the spell duration.

The last spell he casts makes a giant net, but ...man, that sure looks like a Web spell to me!

 

Champion Comics #5 - pt. 1

After a long time away we come back to the first Harvey Comic and the continuing adventures of The Champ. This is a nice first page, with just a little recap, and launches us right into some action where the last chapter left off -- but I'm not sharing this page for any of that. I'm sharing it share with you the unusual word "wetting." It means the act of making something wet, and usually applies to urination, but not always and clearly doesn't here.

The guy with the motorboat is just a handy wandering encounter.

This is the first and, as far as I know, the last mention of La Grange, Illinois in any comic book.Curiously, there was never an airport in La Grange, so why this relatively obscure town got name-dropped, when there were plenty of towns with airports near Chicago, like Evanston, Park Ridge, and Wheeling, that could have been named instead, is a mystery to me.

Hideouts & Hoodlums has no guidelines for learning skills; all Heroes are meant to be naturals in any subject the moment they make their first successful skill check.

I'm amused by this comic book logic. "It's okay that the Army is giving me a fighter plane to use over U.S. soil, because I'll have an Army Reserve pilot with me and I've been deputized by a local police chief." This is so crazy, and yet so perfectly encapsulates the "anything-can-happen" feel of the Golden Age of Comics.

I wish I could identify this fighter plane. It looks realistic enough that it probably based on a photo reference.

We never do get an explanation for why the Champ's hunch turns out to be right. I would have thought that, 24 hours later, the blimp would be miles away instead of sitting there, hoping for a rematch.

Rays that can stop motors are a dime a dozen in these early comics and should have the best chance of being encountered of any mad science invention. But the real icing on the cake here is being able to broadcast onto your enemy's radio to taunt them as you're killing their motor. And then have your men take potshots at them before they plummet to their deaths, just to rub it in!

I particularly like this page. Rescuing people off a mountain in a blizzard might seem like a subplot that takes The Champ in a totally different direction, but put the scientist he needs to talk to in that blizzard and suddenly it becomes an important complication in the main plot. The Editor, just like a good writer, needs to carefully plan the placement of his characters.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but The Champ is an interesting bridge between the sports genre and the superhero genre. The Champ seems to be able to do anything he sets his mind to, but within the confines of sports (and aviation also, apparently).

Game mechanically, though, the easiest way to explain super-skiing is with the stunts of the Mysteryman class. Another possibility is a Strength check to ski while holding someone, followed by Dexterity check for each crevasse and gully.

Searching for concealed things in the sky is more difficult than you'd think. It seems like they get a new roll to spot the blimp every 1,000 feet.

How does The Champ know the "infernal ray" will set off grenades? Wouldn't they more likely not function, like motors?

Climbing the dangling cable isn't anymore difficult because of how high they are, but it certainly would end the campaign for him if he fell. I do think there needs to be a common sense maximum possible damage limit, if you take this much damage you're dead even if it's not a deathtrap scenario, though rather than having a set amount in the rules I'd rather that be left to the Editor's discretion.

This first panel makes me wonder if it should be an optional rule to let the player decide if he wants to take physical damage or be moved back a number of feet from the combat. I would very rarely allow this, but I could see it being a good thing for keeping a solo game going.

Panel 2 has me confused, though. How exactly is The Champ trapped in the flaming gondola? It looks like the fire is mostly in front of him, licking a little bit at his flanks, but not keeping him from running out onto the catwalk at all.

Should explosives do more damage on a direct hit? Something to consider.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 2

When we left off on this story the other day, I was talking about how, game mechanically, Steel Sterling could get out of these chains without wrecking them. And yet, for some reason, he doesn't. He doesn't for a very long time, even allowing himself to be dropped out of the plane. It's a very odd sequence in an otherwise very enjoyable story. There is no reason Steel's magnetism-based powers wouldn't make escaping this very easy. I can almost believe that he is playing possum, thinking the Black Knight is taking him somewhere important to give more of his plot away. Then he can't escape during the villain's monologing because he blows his saves vs. plot and can't interrupt the monolog (this is officially in the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules!). A 3,000-foot drop would do 30d6 damage, which would still only render unconscious if this was not clearly a deathtrap, and that changes how damage works.

Magnetism is really just a label pasted over Steel's Superman-like powers; there's no reason I can think of why magnetism should make it easier to fall onto an iceberg, or how he's pushing two icebergs apart, unless there's a lot of iron content in that ice.

An iceberg can easily weigh 100,000 tons, so tipping one over is going to require a high-level Raise power buffing his strength. I'm still tinkering with a more uniform structure to the Raise powers, now leaning towards something like this:

Level 1 - 1 ton
Level 2 - 10 tons
Level 3 - 100 tons
Level 4 - 1,000 tons
Level 5 - 10,000 tons
Level 6 - 100,000 tons

It's rare when a henchman looks cooler than the main villain, but we have another example of that here. This supervillain, let's call him Liquid Fire after his weapon of choice, looks plenty intimidating! I'm not even sure what this stuff he's squirting is, as we're still two years away from Napalm being invented (I had no idea it was so early). The concept for Napalm has been around since antiquity, with Greek Fire, but I wonder if that was where Biro got the idea here, or if the concept for a modern version was floating around before Napalm...

Anyway, it's worth mentioning that any defensive powers that buff you from hit point loss do not protect you from other attack forms, like blinding attacks -- which is precisely why Steel has to dive in the water.

A yacht like that probably weighs about 35 tons, putting it in the level 3 Raise power category, or Raise Trolley Car. The description for Raise Trolley Car even mentions being able to shake out occupants.

The end of that story is confusing...how is Steel's job finished, if he just leaves Black Knight standing there with his anti-aircraft gun? Did he use Turn Gun on Bad Guy between panels? Or did Biro simply run out of panels to tell his story?

Speaking of stories, we're going to jump into the Scarlet Avenger's story in progress. SA, aka Jim Kendall, is kinda all over the place, stylistically. He keeps skulls around him to seem scary, then keeps electrical equipment around him to look nerdy. He uses "phono-vis" -- yet another television-radio trophy item -- to contact some of his operatives, but he also uses carrier pigeons to reach other ones.




For a mysteryman who should only be 1st level this far into his published career, SA sure has a lot of powerful trophy items at his disposal. Here he is, driving his rocket car, with a "super-solaric heat ray" apparently attached to his windshield (or maybe it pops up out of the hood, we really can't see it). The heat ray uses wrecking things, and can wreck at least up to the cars category.

It's usually the main villains who wear hooded robes, but this guy in panel 2 talks like he's just a lieutenant. This guy's no dummy, though, he bought a robe with pockets!

Yeah, that's not how a bullet-proof cloaks would work, unless it's got some mad science inertia dampening field around it. This is far from the first time armor has defied physics in a comic book, nor the first time bullets have.

I've never treated racketeers as a separate mobstertype,

and I probably still won't since I don't see them doing anything here ordinary hoodlums can't do.

The chief looks suspiciously like a KKK member who left something yellow in the white wash.

Hoodlums don't have a very good chance of carrying trophy items, but when they do it makes them much more dangerous. Note how the hoodlums divide their tactics; two are grappling, one is clubbing from behind, and the fourth is using the sleeping gas spray can.

I still don't like the Scarlet Avenger feature very much, but I have to say I like panels 6-8 here. The door in the extreme foreground gives a subtle sense of place, and the panel compositions on the next two are above average too.

At 1940, mustard gas was probably still the most deadly gas known to man -- unless this was a fictitious chemical agent.

One million volts sounds like a lot, but we can make Tasers that can discharge more than that these days. I don't think it's the electricity that lets SA bust through that glass.

A million volts could, I suppose, kill someone, but I think it's more likely to just knock them out.

That last panel makes me think the chief is hiding, but he passed gas and that's how SA is going to find him...

As your last resort you pull out your magnetic ray that can wreck through walls? That wasn't your first choice when you were put into the glass cage with mustard gas? There's something very comic book-y about that, though...enough that I feel like maybe Heroes should need to save vs. plot to use their most effective attack mode first.

How long can SA hold a million volt charge, when he keeps discharging it on people? And what about when he climbed in his car, wouldn't that ground his charge? The science here is a bit beyond me.

I get deja vu reading a lot of these Western stories, but none as much as this issue. Every facet of Nevada Jones' transformation into a Lone Ranger clone seems calculated for maximum rip-offidity.

All these Western tropes, despite their commonness, don't necessarily make much sense. If you're an outlaw trying to look less suspicious, it seems like a wearing a mask is the exact opposite direction you should take.

My favorite part of this page is the arrow pointing to the final panel, foreshadowing the arrow that strikes the dying man in the back.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Jumbo Comics #13 - pt. 3

This is Stuart Taylor's lab now? Interesting, because in the beginning, Stuart was just lab assistant to Dr. Hayward. Has Hayward died and left everything to Stuart?

Laura raises a good question about how sexist Stuart is, though Stuart could have countered with the more logical response, "I need you to work the controls that get me home!"

So, in the future, giant mosquitoes will be mankind's worst problem, just like in Minnesota today.

The numbers encountered in this story seem way off. Somehow, the city's defenders are just three guys with one cannon?

And then there's the convenience of Stuart being the only person in the room to think of picking up a hand weapon when the insect arrives. Yes, it makes sense to always give the Hero an opportunity to shine before any non-Hero characters in the room, but this would have made more sense if the soldiers were outnumbered.

So, in the 93rd century, there are very few people left, they have atomic-powered hand weapons, but don't wear pants.

We never learn how the atomo-gun is better than what Stuart last used; he appeared to disintegrate the giant insect in one hit before, so this gun is an improvement how...?

What kind of time machine is this that, that Stuart doesn't know what year he was sent to? Does it just randomly fling him to some year?

Are we to believe the City of the Insects was built by insects, or just taken over by them?









I had to laugh out loud when I read this page. What a terrible plan this was...

"I'm going to take on the insects in their lair! Stay behind men, I'll take this stranger with me!"

"Oops -- I forgot, their lair is outside my jurisdiction! I'm not a soldier, just an ordinary policeman. Here, why don't you take care of the insects for me? Bye!"

So...can only the leader talk, or are they all intelligent insects? We never learn!

This page is pretty comical too. The insect king keeps Stuart prisoner, but without any restraints, without any guards -- in fact, the insect king is now all alone! Where are his followers? Apparently either all killed by the invading army ("Just kidding -- it was actually in my jurisdiction after all!"), or like an ant queen the other insects lack direction without their leader.

Speaking of if things make sense...Stuart is the one who bumps into the generator, but is the only one in the room not hurt? I guess the electricity has an area of effect, with a saving throw for half-damage, and Stuart was the only one who made his save.

Moving on, this is ZX-5 Spies in Action. This story seems to take place in Ukraine or Russia, given the names, which makes it so weird when something like "Chester City" winds up in the mix. Is this supposed to be Chester, England?















I hadn't bothered including the first page of this story so you might not follow the twist here, but ZX-5's girlfriend was with him at the start of this story and, apparently didn't have the documents yet or this adventure would have been much, much shorter. This is a novel twist to pull on your players, having a supporting cast member turn out to be something other than she appeared to be, as long as you don't use this too often.

Completely ignored between panels 7 and 8 is how ZX-5 gets into enemy HQ and gets the general alone. That's probably not the sort of thing you would normally gloss over in a game scenario; in fact, that's likely more likely to be the main goal of the scenario, as there is exploration involved then.

ZX-5 has successfully grappled General Miaha, but does not need any kind of game mechanic to just point a gun at his head. Rather, the player stated the intention, the Editor adjudicated on the spot and determined that warranted a morale check, and the general failed. Or is that the general...?

...Because it seems really weird to capture the enemy's general, but then take Captain Vybral hostage instead. In fact, the whole scenario gets super-sidetracked at this point, with the mission becoming rescuing Manya from Vybral and nothing else really happening on the front. This is part of the charm of a roleplaying game that there is no winning or losing and goals can be highly flexible in a scenario...but as a story, it really doesn't make much sense.

In addition to guns, we see soldiers using knives and whips. These soldiers seem like they would need to be statted as something other than ordinary fighters, because they go into a berserk frenzy if their leader gets taken down first. I hesitate to stat Cossacks as a mobstertype because that's a little racist...maybe we should call them berserkers, or just add this special ability (+1 to hit if their leader is incapacitated) to bloodthirsty hoodlums.


Speaking of berserk, ZX-5 does the same, and I think we can safely say he would be statted as a Mysteryman now, because fighting after a woman has been struck seems like his signature move now.

Panel 6 sure makes it look like some passion is about to spark in the heat of the moment. And just how did his shirt get ripped off again...?

Lastly, why is ZX-5 being congratulated, when it seems like Manya did all the work? She delivered the papers herself and then summoned the English Army herself.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #4 - pt. 6

Phew! It took a long time to finish analyzing this issue, but I just have a few pages left of Sub Saunders to go. I didn't want to ignore these pages, as I have thinks to say and some venting to do about them...

Pizga must be a wizard, since there is no scientific way to extract gold out of hydrogen and oxygen.

Similarly, there's really no reason why land-based clothing customs would extend underwater. Long dresses? Hats?

I've talked before about how giant clams, game mechanics-wise, are more like traps than mobstertypes.

The evaporation plant is a pretty elaborate piece of machinery. good for borrowing if you need a description for a mad science invention.

Tons of water, per coin? Has he ever thought about digging in the ground? Still, it's an unusual to find an environmental-themed morality tale in early comic books.

And kudos to Sub for being this ballsy!

"Sheer force of numbers," against Sub, is about seven guards.

Checking Sub's blood samples is the soundest science here.

Women always rescue Heroes, in these stories, even when it puts them in mortal danger.

How does Sub know they have a radio room?

So, on a page you missed, a bunch of submarines showed up with American soldiers. I wonder how they got in...did their hatches somehow dock with the front entrance to the hidden city?

I know we're supposed to be rooting for Sub at this point, but after seeing Pizga's people getting slaughtered, and Pizga thrown around like a bully's victim, I can't help but wonder if Sub doesn't just want the mermen's secrets for America...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)