Speed Comics #7 - pt. 3

 We're back with Ted Parrish, the Man of 1000 Faces as he crosses over into a wizard duel in a Ditko-esque magical landscape...oh, what's that? Scarlo is jumping and not flying in panel 3? Panel 6 is just horribly drawn, with a big, long perspective line inked as it vanishes into a solid chimney and the rest of the roof behind him just vanishes because the artist got lazy? Well, that's disappointing.

Speaking of disappointing...as the Editor in a Hideouts & Hoodlums scenario, it behooves you to ensure that the players feel like their presence in the scenario made a positive impact; that they wouldn't have been better off just standing back and letting the police do their job. You know, like how Ted totally bungles capturing Scarlo alive here, when the two officers might have stopped him had Ted not got in the way. 

But there will be times when the dice rolls go so badly for the players that terrible results will happen, and then you need to have in-game consequences. You know, like how Ted must surely be wanted for manslaughter now.

Now we're going to jump all the way to the last page of Biff Bannon. Dick Briefer is going full-on Mad Magazine (only 11 years earlier) here with the frantic pace, zany humor, and exaggerated violence. That got me thinking about the H&H rules for modifying campaign mood to fit the style of comic book story you want to tell. If you wanted to run combat in zany mode, maybe every attack should push at double distance in addition to damage (instead of replacing damage), and you could hit as many targets as you want with the same attack so long as the method or results would be funny and inventive. 

I don't think this would work for campaign play, as there would soon be no suspense about whether the good guys win (it wouldn't be funny if the bad guys could hit as many people as they wanted), but it would be fun to try in a one-shot scenario.

And now I'm jumping full steam ahead into Lt. Jim Cannon and the mystery of the needlessly elaborate plot device. I mean, you can sink a ship with icebergs, or you can sink a ship with mines, but does putting the mines on the icebergs really do any extra good? If anything, it makes the mines easier to spot, which is what happens here.

Maybe I'm just so incredulous because Devilfish is such a non-threatening name for a villain. Anything-fish doesn't sound villainous. "You may call me...the Goldfish!"

That does look like a really long submarine. The longest submarine in WWII was Japan's I-400-class sub; at 400' long it held the record for two decades.

This is from Landor Maker of Monsters, and this installment is a weird, soap opera-y one that our Hero (and his girlfriend) doesn't barge into until the second to last page. What's interesting here is that Creeta is clearly an android, with steel wires controlling her body inside, and her weakness is the screw in her neck that ...well, I'm not sure how it kills her exactly, but turning it seems to do a lot of damage to her.

Bob Powell seems to be really rushing the art here too. He could do much better.

This is from Munson Paddock's Mars Mason. Mars is an interplanetary mailman because, you know, we're never going to have some kind of electronic delivery system in the future. Comic book science is as goofy as ever here, with that heat radiation wave that is somehow different than radio waves, but that's nothing compared to a ship from Jupiter leaving after a ship from Earth and moves fast enough to intercept it before it reaches Mars. I think we're going to have to accept that the Jupiter Men have extremely long range teleport technology. 

What really works here is the creative alien design work and, even more interestingly, the villain name Killraye. That is great and suddenly I want to use it (though I'd probably drop the e).   

This, this is one of the reasons why the AH&H Mobster Manual is still not done after all these years. I'll be reading "new" comics and it's the same old human bad guys, blah blah blah, and I'll be thinking I've seen everything new I'm going to see -- and then Mars Mason fights Jupiter Men. Now the Mobster Manual has to include these! This is marvelously inventive, with the spiky heads and strange growths in their faces (are those fangs? Short tentacles? Something else? Who knows!). Their bodies seem to be separated into two halves sort of shaped like wings, which would seem to make sense for a lifeform evolving on a gas giant (if the gravity wasn't so crushing), each side ending in five appendages like giant fingers. Each appendage ends in a tool, either a club or a hook, that I'm guessing are not natural (but you never know in comic book space).  

This first panel makes it look like their heads can detach. Maybe the heads are the only real part and the rest of the body is just something they wear? Crazy.

Almost as exciting is the multi-ray torture machine. Which ray will it be? Sounds like this item needs a random table, although apparently the differences are just flavor text and all of them eat out your vital organs. 

If you're feeling cheated because Mars has to get rescued, keep in mind he's only a mailman. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Speed Comics #7 - pt. 2

We're back to Shock Gibson out West and the hoodlums he hid amongst last time, who have upped their game from hustling ranchers to attacking oil fields. This story has been a lot about escalation of threat level, whether it's targets or transportation (they've now also gone from riding horses to having planes). An Editor needs to up his game like this on the fly if he begins a scenario that turns out to be too much of a cakewalk for the Heroes. 

Though Shock is probably buffed here with the power Fire Resistance, I like how nothing else on this page requires his powers, and lifting and twisting that valve is probably something any Hero could have done. 

It is strange, though, that Shock let them start the fire and waited until the hoodlums were gone to put it out, rather than stop them here in the act. I'm hoping an explanation for that is forthcoming and it's not just a plot hole. 

Okay, I think it's clear at this point that Shock is just toying with the bad guys. There's really no reason to trick the leader after getting him alone in the plane instead of just taking him prisoner now. 

This is, though, the kind of playing I expected to see more in H&H and never have -- good guys vastly outclassing the bad guys, but then taking it easy and trying to make it fun. Players always seem to want to end things as quickly and efficiently as possible. I have wondered before if H&H needed a game mechanic that would encourage this better, like bad guys being worth more XP if you spend longer defeating them than you need to.

Given Shock's powers, you'd think he could have just wrecked the hangars on their own, but there's a poetic justice in using their own bombs against them. Speaking of which...I love that second panel and the fun sense of overkill. I suppose I would give those hoodlums a penalty to their morale saves in that situation. 

The next page is the last page that wraps things up. There's no big reveal of the head hoodlum ("Gasp -- you were Joe the Ranch Hand all along!" or something like that) and it's only implied that the hoodlums knew about the gold and that's why they wanted the land...though the oil would have been just as valuable, so...

Lastly, Shock stops by and gives the old prospector a strange admonishment (and I won't bother showing you the whole page just for it), to "remember the unemployed" when he's rich. The unemployment rate was at 17% and dropping by the end of 

1939, better than its peak in 1933, but still high enough that wealth distribution should be a serious issue for superheroes. 

Now we're in the middle of the next story, Crash, Cork, and the Baron, as they deliver explosives to Argentina. Why, and who hired them? Eh, these guys are Neutral and don't really care about that. Oddly, they flew west to get to Argentina, so...the scenario started in Uruguay? But what I wanted to discuss here was gauchos. Gaucho was a lifestyle, not an ethnicity, but since gauchos were cowboys and not bandits, it's not hard to read some racism into this. Were they ever extinct? No, but their numbers did severely dwindle by the end of the 19th century. 

But this page also gives us more questions. Is Cork not dead after the bolo wraps around his neck (yes, game mechanics-wise, he's likely only unconscious at best, but realistically...)? Is Crash really such a bad pilot that he can't outmanuever an inexperienced pilot (very bad dice rolls, I suppose)? Who is

saying "The blitherin' idiot!"? Did the gauchos change Cork's jacket from a brown one to a green one?

It seems like Crash is using the Out of the Sun stunt from the old aviator's class here, and even though the old version of stunts is gone from 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums, there's no reason why we couldn't keep the concept as a combat modifier, -2 to be hit from below, just like how Crash should be at +1 to hit for attacking from above.

I'm pretty sure this is what only doing 1 point of damage with a bolo looks like. 

We also get one of those rare examples of a hero's gun running out of bullets. While seemingly unlimited bullets is a common trope in fiction, I love it when the heroes can't rely on guns and have to think up another solution instead.  I'm sure they'll put their heads together and come up with some nonviolent solution and...

...oh. A couple o' loads o' dynamite. Well, that escalated quickly.

I have serious reservations about this. I would need the Mythbusters team back together to resolve if you could detonate an explosion big enough to create a colossal wave. I suspect the waves would just make the water choppy, but not enough to capsize the boat. And I have to wonder if it wouldn't have just been better to let the bad guy get away than to destroy an entire coastline.

In-game, I suppose you have to look at these ideas in terms of what will make the story more exciting for the players. Maybe your players like blowing up cliffs. My players probably would have just thrown the dynamite at the boat...

We'll just glance ahead at the third story in the book, this feature being Ted Parrish, the Man of 1,000 Faces. Here, we learn that if you have a steel-lined cap, it protects you from head blows. We also see a clever trick, disguising yourself as one of the bad guys and escaping with them to see where their lair is -- but then Ted goes the easy route and leaves a note on the door for the police. Boo, Ted! What kind of action hero does that (you'd think his player doesn't want XP or something!)?

Also note one of my pet peeves about golden age comics -- colorists who just don't care and get wrong obvious things, like the constantly changing suit jackets. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

  
 

 

Speed Comics #7 - pt. 1

This is the first issue of Speed Comics to trade owners from Brentwood to Harvey Comics, and while the cover reflects the future look of Shock Gibson, the interior art (luckily) is inventory from the old look. 

Shock is reading The Daily Blade, a newspaper we haven't seen him read before, which is good; you shouldn't get all your news from just one source.

More importantly, this is a prime example of the Mythic West. As detailed in Hideouts & Hoodlums Supplement III: Better Quality, the Mythic West is a place, like a D&D demi-plane, where the "Wild West" still exists in the present day. There's really no other explanation for why the Hooded Riders, KKK-like extortionists, would travel as inefficiently as on horseback for getaways.  

In the Mythic West, there's always a job waiting for you at a Lawful-aligned ranch. 

$1,000 doesn't seem that bad. I wonder if any Heroes would just offer to pay it rather than bother to go after them.

It's surprisingly rare that we see bad guys actually being called hoodlums. I'm thinking these guys are bloodthirsty hoodlums. 

I can't really think of much to say about this panel, except that I like it. The bad guys are so obviously bad guys. Shock is wearing his costume underneath a cowboy costume. The humor and light tone of it. 

Of course, the axe doesn't hurt Shock, and it shatters on the next page. Take my word for it. I gave that a bit of thought just now and realized that, if the player has a good in-game rationale for it, like an electric forcefield, then the Editor should let him use his wrecking things ability even when not physically touching something he could be touching (the flavor text rule of Hideouts & Hoodlums I keep referring to so often: if you can explain it, and it doesn't violate the game mechanics, it happens). 

A couple of things: one, as much as I'm enjoying the story, I'm hating how Shock's hair color is inconsistent from panel to panel. I'm having a hard time explaining to myself how his superpower could be causing that, which just leaves a lazy colorist.

Two, it's great storytelling to drop this ethical challenge into the scenario, something that requires a choice and not just an application of superpowers. It tells us a lot about Shock's character.

It also tells us how long he was chasing them -- 20 miles. That he wasn't able to overtake them means he didn't have Race the Train prepared as one of his powers today.
 

Here we can see that making the right moral choice earns Shock valuable information for solving the scenario...though, admittedly, the same information he would have discovered by following the hoodlums and leaving the old man. 

This is likely coincidental, but Dead Horse State Park is in Utah, and it's full of canyons!

I'm willing to bet that bullet doesn't hurt him on the next page...

Well, look at that, I was right! Note that Shock was automatically protected without needing to see the bullet coming, which fits with powers having continuous duration.

The more interesting thing is the grizzly bear in the cage. I'm thinking of an adventure now where all the wandering encounters were really animals in cages, released "offstage," that exploring Heroes might come across later. 

See, as primitive as the art sometimes looks and as simplistic as the story may seem, this is actually better than many other golden age stories I've reviewed for this blog. Here, Shock refreshingly doesn't kill the bear -- another moral choice for our hero -- and the reward for taking this action (or inaction) is that the bear flees (missed morale save) and turns on the hoodlums. 

Moreover, while the villains are nameless, hooded antagonists, they are resourceful and are able to quickly escalate their threat level to match (well, nearly match) Shock, with unexpected variety. 

Of course, this water impediment facility is also unexpected because there aren't any in the real Dead Horse State Park. 

All that said, I think it's rather silly to base all your powers on electricity, and have no weakness to water. And he doesn't even to necessarily have a weakness here, but it should follow that activating any of his powers should shock him rather viciously here. 

Instead, Shock demonstrates some sort of Swim Against Current Power -- or simply Race the Train, to give him enough forward momentum to overcome the wave? There's no explanation for why he didn't use it earlier when he was trailing the horsemen for 20 miles -- unless, as in Hideouts & Hoodlums, you can only use the power once and he was simply holding onto it for later.
  

I'm amused by the fact that the hoodlum, stripped to his union suit, is not dressed all that differently from Shock Gibson in his. The similarities highlight the true contrast in their faces and posture. 

Having a uniform that always fits a hero is a characteristic I associated with the guard mobstertype, but maybe this guy was a rearguard...?

I was amused at first that the hoodlum was cold, in a desert, but then it's probably getting to be nighttime, even if the color in the sky doesn't reflect that.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Prize Comics #2 - pt. 5

   

This close to the end of the issue, I probably would have been forgiven for skipping the last story, but tucked away at the back of the issue is the only good feature in this issue, so of course we're going to look at Storm Curtis of the United States Coast Guard!

The date on the newspaper clipping tells us this adventure started back on December 26, 1939. There have been at least two real S.S. Lincolns, the first was sunk in WWI and the second was built in 1944 during the next war, but there was likely no real S.S. Lincoln at the time of this story.

Just to make sure we remember our terms, Q-ships, also known as Q-boats, decoy vessels, special service ships, or mystery ships, were heavily armed merchant ships with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. 

A trawler is a vessel that trawls, and trawling is a method of fishing that involves pulling a fishing net through the water behind one or more boats.

The reference to a tramp refers to a boat or ship engaged in the tramp trade, which is one that does not have a fixed schedule or published ports of call.

I think this page is really remarkable. When I read it, on the following pages I kept waiting for the trick to be revealed, the trick of how Storm planned to survive that shot in panel 6. A bulletproof vest, most likely, I thought. Only, there was no trick. He really just stood there, face-to-face, with the bad guy, without any protection from harm, because he should.

He does win in the end, though there's more shooting ahead, and a bit of unnecessary sexism in the finale...so I think we're going to end this while we're ahead.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Prize Comics #2 - pt. 4

Things don't get better in the following Secret Agent M-11 story. The Secret Service want to know who this spy works for so they let him escape, but they do so in a really obvious way, letting him bolt past three people for the exit and having no one block the exits. The spy should be suspicious, but instead goes straight to his bosses working for the "Hugonian" -- Hungarian? -- government. The question is, why wasn't the spy followed? Or did they try and he eluded them?

The bad guys have a familiar tactic here, but M-11 uses an unusual one, so unusual that I'm not entirely sure what I'm seeing. Does M-11 carry a pouch of sugar with him to use as a blinding weapon? And why sugar? There are so many more irritating irritants he could be carrying. 

M-11's sugar fixation just gets weirder. Sugar is way too soluble

to be left on the road and expect anyone to be able to see it later. 

Then there's the carrier pigeon. If M-11 just followed them inside, when did the ambassador have time to attach the papers to a pigeon?

I'm just going to jump into the Black Owl story that follows and, nope, it doesn't get better. This is the Black Owl's debut story and it's not off to a good start. Beyond the silly mask and the horrible racism here, we have the Black Owl beating a suspect to get information instead of using his brains to find where the woman he was following went, and then when two yellow peril hoodlums start attacking him, instead of fighting back right away, he knocks over a shelf first. Why this would distract them from fighting him escapes me, unless the Black Owl figured something on the shelf was sacred to them and would upset them? But that seems unlikely, since not that much thought is being put to anything else in this story.

I include it mainly for the appearance of a copper. Coppers debuted in an early issue of The Trophy Case in order to explain how police officers sometimes make things worse for the heroes in comic books, and this is a perfect example. Black Owl was about to have everything wrapped up, but the copper comes 

along and, to escape his bad luck, Black Owl has to flee.

Observing from outside is a tactic you would think Black Owl would have tried first, and yet the secret gambling den doesn't seem to be on high alert despite the fact that there had just been a vigilante break-in and a police raid 30 minutes earlier. One guard at the door, with one more for back-up, isn't very secure for all those rich guests to gamble in secret. 

I have problems with this page too. I know, when have you liked any page in this issue, Scott? Good point, reader.

First of all, I disapprove of the use of torture by heroes. At least it's clear that all the information is questionable, as the hoodlum seems to be rambling intentionally until Black Owl is standing right over that pit trap.

About that pit trap, it seems odd to me that Black Owl and the hoodlum were standing so far apart that only Black Owl is now close to it. I suppose there should be a random chance of falling into a trap and the hoodlum was just luckier at his roll.

It gets really confusing past that. How did Black Owl avoid getting hurt in the fall (or was it just a really lucky die roll for damage)? How is no one else aware of the trap door opening and just go on about their torturing business? I know, I know, it

could just be lucky dice rolls again (this time for surprise), but there have got to be times when common sense should overrule dice rolls.

I tried to look up if "wire vest torture" was a real thing, but kept getting nothing but BDSM hits...

Next up is Buck Brady of the FBI. It's a pretty standard "hunt down the escaped convicts" scenario. Danford Prison seems as made-up as "The Daily Blurb" for a newspaper (though not that generic, at least). Which is odd because the action then swings to real-life Wichita, Kansas instead of, you know, Cityville, Kansas, or something like that.

Gosh, no investigation skills required for this mission. They're just walking down the street and a plot hook jumps out at them!

The art on this strip is terribly amateurish, but the layout work is sometimes inspired, particularly panels 2 and 4 on this page. 

Unless the law was really different back in 1940, I would think Buck would have to show a badge or something before commandeering that car. 

Apparently the chase goes on for so long that they are in Oklahoma by now, as this area looks way too mountainous to be around Wichita. Next page makes this geography even more suspicious, when the mobsters' hideout is in a box canyon. 

Buck's plan of parachuting into the canyon either depended on the mobsters sleeping during the daytime, having their radio up so loud that they couldn't hear a plane overhead, or getting a lucky surprise roll.

The mobsters blame the wind for all their missed bullets, but I think this is an excellent example of the "save vs. missiles" mechanic from Hideouts & Hoodlums in action.

This is also an excellent example of grappling attempted by multiple combatants, which is explained in the 2nd edition grapping rules (though it's been awhile, so I had to re-read it to make sure just now!). 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Prize Comics #2 - pt. 3

One last page of Jupiter to look at. It should surprise no one that microzoric isn't a real thing. The effect of the ray is impossibly fast, but consistent with how illogical comic book science works. 

Ganging up on the mad scientists, though, that seems like pretty sound psychology. I can also understand the mad scientist, overpowered by all that magic, committing suicide to regain some control.

We get a Mass Teleport spell again, suggesting Jupiter is actually 16th level. The spell he hints at in the end is a much simpler spell-version of Sense Friend in Need. 

That looks like it might actually be a map of the Congo, showing the lost city of Tsul in the southeast corner, in the Mitumba Mountains, which actually makes sense for hiding a city. 

But the real reason I took a close look at this page was the notion of a collapsible canoe. I wasn't sure that was a thing, but apparently it is, and that would be a handy thing to put on an expanded starting equipment list at some time.    

This is interesting to me, as it seems there was a good chance Laura would have drowned had Jaxon not saved her, as if Jaxon made a save vs. science to avoid drowning and Laura didn't, but him helping her convinced the Editor to give her another save?

"Who are those strange creatures?" "Whoa, Laura, that is uncalled for and horribly racist! Those are just black men, not strange creatures! Geez!" Laura might be racist, but the artist treats them pretty decently, with un-typically realistic depictions.

A jaguar is pretty cool for a boss monster's pet.

The start of this story was pretty solid, but it got downright weird by now. The story here is that she's leading them to the secret exit only she knows about to get of Laura, so her husband can't replace her with Laura...but killing Laura would do the same thing, and sending her to walk into fire would sure accomplish that. And yet, amazingly, there really is an exit behind the ever-burning cave mouth. There should be no save for this one, running through fire automatically does damage in Hideouts & Hoodlums.

It gets weirder to find the lost city's treasure is sitting in a cave halfway to the exit instead of, you know, somewhere in the lost city. 

And then there's the matter of how they're even seeing the treasure and the snakes...in a cave, in complete darkness. I think I count nine vipers in that last panel.

It keeps coming. The twist ending of the disguised professor comes out of nowhere and throws everyone off so much that they forget all about the fact that there is still another way into the city of Tsul, so dumping the dynamite into the hole and caving in the exit caves doesn't really hide anything. And that's not even bringing up the racist depiction marring the last panel, after blacks were treated fairly normal the rest of the story.

(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.)