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)

Jungle Comics #3 - pt. 4

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, we're going to do a fourth look at this issue for its final feature, Fletcher Hanks' Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle.

The makers of this ancient city loved spires, which is interesting because spires didn't appear in architecture until the 12th century. So how "ancient" are we to consider this?












Can we credit Fletcher with combating racism in comics by refusing to color black characters in comic books any differently than whites? Two other possibilities are a) he was just lazy, b) careless, or c) this is one of those racist lost cities in Africa populated by whites, because blacks couldn't be believed to have created civilizations themselves.

It looks like the archers are enjoying a much better rate of fire than the tommy guns by that last panel -- and that is perfectly appropriate to 2nd ed. Hideouts & Hoodlums, where rate of fire is based off of level/Hit Dice more than weapon choice.

It scarcely is necessary to mention Fantomah is using a Fly spell here.

Okay, assuming the green death plague was a real thing, what are these two big game hunters doing with a sample of it in a syringe? Random trophy selection?

If the green death will kill a man in a few hours, is it really a good idea to be that close to the infected mandrill?

I'm not aware of any culture that holds the mandrill sacred.

This is definitely the first time I've seen a diseased mandrill used to infiltrate a guarded city. Players take note!

Fantomah, still working behind the scenes, casts Cure Disease (for the first time in comics?).

A spell that mysteriously returns things to their places is...Telekinesis? Some kind of Put Things Back Where They Were spell?

Fantomah used Polymorph Other twice on the two men, showing that it doesn't have to be a real species one is polymorphed into -- unless I stat these guys as some kind of asparagus men.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Superman #2

Superman catches a man jumping off a bridge in mid-leap and "receives the brunt of the shock when they strike water." Which seems odd because falling in water is usually safe in comic books. If Heroes can take a hit for someone else, can they also take falling damage for someone else?

Superman fails to recognize ex-heavyweight champion of the world, Larry Trent, right away. Is recognizing others a skill that needs to be checked?

Superman uprooting a tree is a use of the Raise Car power. It's not clear if Superman is using make-up or a power to disguise himself. The narrator says he punches out 11 boxers at once (even though we only see 6 in the panel), which has to be the Flurry of Blows power. When another man he punches out mistakes Superman's fist for a sledge hammer, Superman might have been using the Get Tough power to buff his damage. He later uses Super-Senses to hear every word being said from a rooftop away.

I'm not sure what to make of Superman's ability to resist a hot foot. Resist Fire? Super-Tough Skin? Or can he ignore it because a lit match would do even less than a point of damage? He's definitely using Super-Tough Skin his second time in the ring.

He tells Larry that he plans to impersonate him for several months. That's really different, as most adventures only take days, if not just hours, to finish.

When Barnes accidentally punches himself out in the ring, there's no game mechanic justifying that happening; the Editor just throws that in because it's funny.

Demonstrating that Superman isn't yet a Lawful paragon of virtue, he takes a drugged drink from corrupt manager Tom Croy and forces Tom to drink it himself. Luckily, it wasn't lethal poison.

Superman is surprisingly wrecking-lite in the first story in this issue. He does "jam his hand over the" muzzle of a gun to make it explode, which would probably be treated as wrecking things.

In the second adventure, "Superman Champions Universal Peace", Superman shows no suspicion when Professor Runyan demonstrates how his new formula for poison gas can penetrate a gas mask and kill a monkey, but it can't penetrate the glass jar Runyan conducts the experiment in.

When mobsters show up at Runyan's office and threaten him, Superman does everything right -- giving the mobsters some figurative rope, following them from a distance to find out where they operate from, and goes off to perform his civilian duties as Clark Kent with no since of urgency, since the mobsters gave Runyan 24 hours. That the mobsters "cheated" and killed Runyan early could have felt unfair to Superman's player, and discouraged him from not hitting first and asking questions later in the future.

The mobsters are actually spies from "Boravia" -- probably meant to be Bolivia.  Curiously, Bolivia had never had a civil war, like what happens in this story, though it does seem to predict the 1949 Bolivian Civil War.

When the spy leader, Bartow wrecks the controls for his plane and it crashes, his two henchmen emerge practically unscathed, suggesting again that crashes are almost never lethal in comic books.

For one of the only times in comic book history, a bomb lands next to Superman and knocks him unconscious (he forgot those defensive buff powers!).

Is Superman using Invisibly Fast when he fools the firing squad in "Boravia"? He's definitely using Imperviousness when he does let them shoot him. When he starts fighting back, he wrecks a tank gun (treat as a truck). He collects aircraft bombs, temporarily, as trophy items, but then uses them right away.

Now, how high is Superman jumping when he leaps up to attack a blimp? He appears to be above the clouds, but WWII-era blimps didn't typically go that high; the Hindenburg's cruising altitude was only 650' up.  Leap I could reach that height, and what appear to be clouds might just be smoke from the munitions factory Superman destroyed. Lastly, I would say that blimps wreck as if generators.

Superman again shows he has a cruel, non-Lawful streak. When Lubane tries to use the deadly poison gas in a desperate attempt to kill both himself and Superman, Superman saves himself with the Different Physical Structure power, then just watches as Lubane dies by his own hand.

At the Bolivian (excuse me, "Boravian") capital, Superman wrecks the load-bearing pillars in the conference hall to force the sides to come together -- or else! I would treat load-bearing pillars as cars, for wrecking purposes.

In the third adventure, "Superman and the Skyscrapers", Superman is able to hide in shadows despite the bright colors of his costume/uniform (a skill check and/or a surprise roll -- considering how long Superman remains unseen, I would probably have required both).

Even though Superman is supposedly a well-known public figure by now, the skyscraper saboteur fails to identify Superman's distinctive appearance and mistakes him for a detective. Maybe recognizing others really is a difficult skill!

Superman's encounter with the skyscraper saboteur is harder to explain in H&H terms than one might think. Curiously, the saboteur gets off three shots with a revolver before Superman can close with him, despite already being at close range. Even with an automatic, the saboteur can't get off more than two shots per turn, meaning that Superman merely saunters up to the saboteur for one full turn, then loses or forfeits initiative in the next turn to take more shots (all he's protected from by his Imperviousness power) before getting his turn. But Superman doesn't get to attack because the saboteur moves after attacking and before Superman gets to go. Now, in 1st ed. H&H, that is actually how it works, with movement split into two phases before and after attacks. In 2nd ed., though, I planned to simplify things and keep movement all in one action at the beginning of the combat turn. Maybe I'm erring, though...?

Superman uses Extend Missile Weapon I to toss a living person -- which we've seen before, but not thrown straight up into the air. It's a clever way to break the power so that it does more damage, as Butch Grogan's bodyguard flies up at least 30' and would take 3-18 points of damage upon falling. Ultimately, Superman uses the 4th level power, Bounce Back Blows just to take out Butch's one bodyguard -- a pretty excessive act. Just having the power means Superman is at least an incredible man (6th level superhero).

Superman is interrogating Butch Grogan out in the street when a beat cop comes up to question them both. Both Superman and Butch feel the need to escape, and it's telling that Superman is the one who gets shot at.

When Superman finally tracks down Butch's boss, he encounters a trapped hallway where photo-electric cells trigger bombs along the hallway as soon as Superman passes by them. Since "only a swift sideward leap saves Superman from annihilation", he must have buffed only with Imperviousness and not Invulnerability.

(Issue read in Superman Archives v. 1.)