M&M Campaign Report – LA Stars Volume 2, Issue 10 “Sea, Sky and Black Sun”

Cover: Bald Eagle punching a jetpacked soldier while Legionnaire wrestles with boilersuited animated corpses, in the background a giant High-Q is wrapped in black bands.  A white male figure and a multicolored female one are seen from the back and they are saying “Do not worry, we will save you!”  “Who are these New Heroes?!” is splashed across the bottom.

LA Stars Volume 2, Issue 10 (October 1967)
Sea, Sky and Black Sun!

Our Heroes: Bald Eagle, winged agent of justice and symbol of America.
Hi-Q, genius with size changing powers.
Legionnaire, the latest attempt by the US military to build a super-soldier.

And Introducing:
Daytripper, counter culture inspired creator of rainbows and empath.

Professor Light, over-educated master of photons.

Appearing in this issue: Villains: animated drowned Kriegsmarine submariners, jetpack equipped Black Sun troopers and Hauptmann-Doktor Schwartz.

Guest stars: Doctor Occult, heroic sorcerer, Governor of California Ronald Regan, and Patti Duke.

Opening page: Shows a two massive trucks towing a huge flatbed bearing with a barnacle-encrusted submarine through LA, crowds are watching, Bald Eagle flies over head.  The caption reads “The German WW2 U-Boat U-7166 was recovered off the California coast and is being sent to UCLA for archaeological research.”

Splash page, “But something would go wrong . . .” Showing the U-Boat slipping on the flatbed as part of the cradle holding it shatters.  From inside, spill animated corpses of the drowned Kriegsmarine submariners who move to menace the crowd.

Cut to the inside of the Rainbow in Amber art gallery where Louise Margarete Blenheim is watching, seeing the disaster unfold, she rushes out the back and changes into Daytripper!  The rest of the page is her background:

She comes from an upper-middle class family; as the 4th daughter she had always been a bit of a tom-boy, and her parents were glad when she met her late husband Jack and settled down. Jack was tragically killed by a drunk driver 5 years prior, and she has kept open the modern art gallery that they ran together (Rainbows in Amber).

Her powers arose in wake of Jack’s death; some combination of her personal stress and deep transcendental meditation, after a particularly intense session she discovered that she was soaring over the Pacific, bathed in light.

Meanwhile, the Bald Eagle and Legionnaire are trying to prevent the animated drowned from attacking civilians.

Back on the UCLA campus, only a few blocks away, High-Q dons her uniform and Professor Light ducks under cover and activates his powers.  Professor Light also gets a introduction, but it yet to be fully detailed, in basic: super science gives powers!  They emerge in their heroic identity jusr as a small zeppelin appears over the UCLA campus and six Black Sun soldiers wearing jetpack fly off toward the submarine, promptly followed by Professor Light.

Swirling melee follows with Bald Eagle, Daytripper and Legionnaire fighting non-dead submariners, Professor Light engaging in aerial combat with Black Sun troopers and the giant-sized High-Q (at maximum growth, 120′ tall!) fighting the zeppelin and the magical Hauptman-Doktor aboard.

The best scene was when the Dark Sun troopers tried to fly into the U-Boat through the hole in its side and Daytripper used her light mirages to “move” the hole, causing two of the troopers to crash into the side of the sub, briefly stunning them.  Other fun things saw a VW bug used to create a barrier to save civilians from the animate dead, giant High-Q picking up and moving the entire speaker’s stand to protect it from dark magic,

At the end, the submarines are put to rest, the troopers are captured, the Hauptman-Doktor vanishes and detonates the (hydrogen filled) zeppelin and our heroes secure the Lazurus Serum which was inside the submarine and the goal of the Black Sun strike force.

Governor Ronald Regan congratulates the team, and obviously considers Daytripper and Professor Light members though the starstruck Bald Eagle tries to discourage such thoughts about Daytripper (“damn hippy”).  Doctor Occult shows up apologizing for being late be he had to stop an invasion from Qrvzw (shown in a single Ditko-esque panel), explaining that the Lazurus Serum is useful in reanimating the dead (and a spillage of such obvious animated the submariners) and helps to ward it inside the LA Stars’ base until it can be decided where to permanently store such dangerous occult-science materials.  Daytripper and Professor Light are given LA Stars badges and radios should they need to contact the team.

World Notes: The villainous Black Sun Organization made its first appearance back in Issue 8.  This adventure was inspired by Improbable Tales: Aqua Zombies of the Kriegsmarine.  The Lady’s Man is out due to protest from the NAACP and I-Man just vanishes from continuity at the point without explination.

Doctor Occult, former PC and member of Heroes Inc, is the all-around magic specialist on Earth-H, more or less filling the Doctor Strange role.

In the future, it will be revealed that Daytripper’s powers were actually caused a particularly unique drug interaction. Never a heavy drug user, just curious, Lousie ran afoul of the government’s MK Ultra project and was dosed with something that definitely included a modified form of LSD.

Notes:  Returning, briefly, to M&M after a long hiatus (last game back in 2011!) to introduce new player (J2 playing Daytripper) and characters (Professor Light for Z, replacing the Lady’s Man) for potential further play over the Summer.  Sadly, the new series would not continue and I would not back to Earth-H adventures until 2020.

U-Boat picture from Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain.