Friday, April 5, 2019

Review & Commentary On Lady Satan 1944 By Steve Miller From NUELOW Games

"I'll answer the invitation to death... but not with bullets."
When everyone she loved was killed in a Nazi bombing raid, a young woman surrendered her entire existence to a quest for revenge. Under the name Lady Satan, she first hunted and killed the Nazis wherever she could with conventional weapons... but later, she became a master of black magic. Even after the Nazi monsters were broken and consigned to history, she continued her fight, becoming a hunter of all manner of supernatural monsters."


So the year is 1979  I'm living in Hudson New York, my family is getting ready to move back to Connecticut. Like many families we survived the Recession of the late Seventies  via tag sales,odd jobs, & any mean necessary. Flea markets were also a must back then & there was a comic book dealer that used to blow through from New York City. One of the comic books he had was 'Lady Satan' & I became obsessed with the character.  So when Steve Miller of Nuelow games offered me the chance to do some reviews of his games I gravitated to the comic book character I was imprinted with. Lady Satan 1944 is a good solid introduction & overview of the Lady Satan character with rules for creating your own version of the character as NPC or PC. The layout is easy on the eyes & not too much is expanded upon so there's room for the dungeon master to make Lady Satan their own. I owned a few Lady Satan comic books back in the 90's but an apartment fire took those. You can go over a bit more of Lady Satan's background on the Public Domain Super Hero's site here. 


That being said Steve goes into a bit more background on the now public domain character;" Lady Satan was one of the legion of superheroes that rushed onto the market during the superhero comic book craze of the early 1940s. She has the distinction of being among the first female superheroes, debuting in 1941, the same year as the more famous Black Cat and Phantom Lady, and premiering the same month as the most famous of comic book heroines, Wonder Woman. But Lady Satan was not destined for the success enjoyed by some of her classmates. After just two stories—published in Dynamic Comics issues 2 and 3, she vanished into the haze of war, without the world even getting to know her real name. (Several years later, publisher Harry A. Chesler would give Lady Satan a second shot at stardom, bringing her back as a sorceress instead of a spy. This second chance didn’t fare much better than the first, and this time she faded away for good.) The first two Lady Satan stories in this book are the two that were published in 1941 and 1942. They are illustrated, and possibly written by, George Tuska, who would would go onto assist in the creation of the first black superhero to headline his own comic book, Luke Cage, Power Man, as well as celebrated runs on World’s Finest Comics and Iron Man. Tuska’s unmistakable hand is evident throughout the stories, even if his style was still developing. Tuska was a staff artist at Chesler’s comic book studio from 1939 to 1941, and most sources credit him with creating the character of Lady Satan. The two other stories are from the second batch of stories featuring the character, after she gained magical powers. Again, Chesler did not credit creators, but the first one (To Catch a Predator) appears to have been penciled by Chesler staffer Bill Madden and inked either by George Tuska or Ralph Mayo. The final tale included here once again looke to have been drawn by George Tuska. The short story that bridges the two versions of Lady Satan and revealing the source of her magic, first appeared in NUELOW Games’s The Werewolf Hunter #1, and is reprinted here in slightly altered form. This story is the first time Lady Satan’s transformation was explained"

NUELOW Games’s does an excellent job of bridging the gap from vengeful assassin to full on sorceress of the black arts. This is done  with a simple & easy to understand bit of D20 Basic magic with some easily converted feats & skills via her transformation into the black arts. All of this ties into the first two comic book story "The Daring Lady Satan" &  The Rebirth of Lady Satan fiction piece. This gives the character a solid grounding as a bad ass NPC for your games. "
Lady Satan was ranked sixth in the Huffington Post's list of the 10 Most Bada** Comic Book Heroines" via Lady Satan Public domain Super Hero entry 


Lady Satan  lives up to the moniker & the character is easily converted over to Troll Lord's Amazing Adventures! rpg. There's enough background & fiction that an enterprising dungeon master could easily convert her over an AA!  game campaign. But that's not the only way that this excellent character could be used! There is often a deep & abiding connection between post apocalyptic worlds & supernatural evil. This connection often comes from quasi fictional Biblical or Satanic occult  sources. Often times these encounters happen via dimensional or planar gateways. Imaging a party of pulp or Dungeons & Dragons adventurers encountering Lady Satan in say the Mutant Future Rpg wastelands.



 It would not be outta of the realm of possibility to find ones adventuring party encountering Lady Satan in the post apocalyptic wastelands. If she was on the trail of a supernatural mutant that had been whisked into the late 30's or early 40's via Nazi super science time or dimensional gate technology. Lady Satan & the adventures might find themselves coming face to face with several of Tim Sniderman's Deviant Database I & II  mutant supernatural horror themed mutants.
Lady Satan is also a full on investigator of the supernatural & could be encountered jumping through a time gate only to wind up right within one of Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classic   or Mutant Crawl Classics campaign adventures as well via Nazi or super hero super science!


All together I really enjoyed the Neulow Games Lady Satan 1944 booklet clocking in at thirty six pages there's just enough here to get the juices flowing & serves a solid introduction for the character!!

 Lady Satan 1944 

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