March Of The Panzergeist
Type: Dangerous Event
Key Appearance: Covert Tactics #62, March 1945
Traits:
- Nazi War Machines d10
- Stormy Weather d8
- Broken Rubble d8
GREEN
Minor Twists
- Shelling: Outlying panzers shell the area. Roll the environment dice and Attack all heroes with the Min die.
- Relay Station: A Panzergeist relay is discovered! Create a new challenge: Override the relay station. When the challenge is resolved, step down the status die of all villain minions in play.
Major Twist
- Mind Ray: A hero is struck by the Panzergeist’s Mental Ray Gun! Roll the environment dice and Attack and Hinder one hero with the Mid die.
YELLOW
Minor Twists
- Mind-Controlled Civilians: The Mental Ray Guns strike civilians in hiding!. Roll the environment die and create a number of d8 “Brainwashed Citizens” villain minions equal to the Mid die.
- Mental Bombardment: The Panzergeists radiate their power across the field! Roll the environment die and Hinder all hero targets with the Mid die.
Major Twist
- The Battle Lines Collapse: The Panzergeists rumble forwards towards the city! Advance the scene tracker one space.
RED
Minor Twists
- Will Power: The passive power of the Panzergeists emboldens the Nazi menace. Roll the environment dice and Boost all villain targets with the Max die.
- Surrounded! The Panzergeists surround and assault the heroes. Every hero must make an Overcome as a free action to avoid danger. A hero who fails takes a Major Twist.
Major Twist
- Overwhelming Mental Energy: A weakened hero is targeted by Iron Will for conversion. Roll the environment dice and Attack one hero with the Min die. Also Hinder that hero with the Mid die. The penalty is persistent and exclusive, and if the hero is taken Out while the penalty persists create a villain lieutenant with a status die equal to their highest power die to represent their compelled state.
By early 1945, it was clear to the writers of Venture Comics that the end of World War II was on the horizon. After the liberation of Paris the previous year, Madame Liberty and Covert Tactics had both begun focusing on pressing the advantage, taking down Nazis and fighting against Japanese soldiers across the Pacific. Writers rushed to get a handful of big events in to sell comics before the war ended, with a series of major stories taking up full issues of the comics instead of the more common multiple stories per issue up to that point.
In March of 1945, Covert Tactics #62 saw the last of these major events during the “March of the Panzergeist” story. As the German lines crumbled, Iron Will unleashed the last of the great Nazi war machines. His Panzergeists, amphibious tanks able to project hypnotic rays alongside their powerful artillery, evaded the Allied lines and began to cross the English Channel, with the goal of landing on the shores of Britain and collapsing Allied morale as the population was driven into a frenzy of Nazi patriotism through the hypnotic power of Iron Will!
Madame Liberty discovered the threat and stowed away on the Panzergeist fleet with her sidekick, but as they began to sabotage the enemy from within it became clear to them that they would never be able to stop the fleet before it reached Dover, and the Allied forces were too locked in to fall back in time. Madame Liberty sent a desperate radio message to her sometimes ally Jonah Drake, a supersonic underwater hero known as the Living Torpedo. The Living Torpedo was in America at the time, but he was able to receive Madame Liberty’s message, rendezvous with another Madame Liberty ally, the Italian freedom fighter known as the Partisan; the two heroes arrived on the shores of England just as the first Panzergeists breached the waves.
Together, the four heroes battled across the shores of Dover, fighting tanks and pulling mind-controlled civilians out of the line of fire. The Human Torpedo crushed the panzers before they could land on the beaches, while the Partisan led the charge against the Nazi tanks. Madame Liberty and Kid Liberty sabotaged the relays the Nazis were using to amplify their powers, confronting Iron Will as he threatened to turn the entire population of Dover into Nazi spies!
The story ended in an Allied victory, of course. Iron Will’s plans were shattered, his forces were killed or rounded up, and the villain himself was shot dead by the Human Torpedo, falling off the cliffs of Dover into the sea. With the surrender of Germany two months later, it would also prove to be the final storyline in Covert Tactics about the Nazi threat; while Madame Liberty would continue to hunt down leftover Nazi super-science for the next few years, most of them hastily-rewritten stories that had originally been about the Reich, Covert Tactics shifted its attention to the Pacific, with the Human Torpedo sinking Japanese ships until the sudden surrender of the latter later that year.
“The March of the Panzergeist” marked one of the largest superhero crossovers in the Golden Age, and there was some discussion about forming a team out of the four heroes permanently. But the slow decline of superheroes would lead to Madame Liberty increasingly being relegated to their own comics, and the gradual disappearance of the the other three heroes; by the time the true Champions of Truth were formed in the 1960s Jonah Drake was in a very different role, the Partisan was replaced by his Jotari legacy, and Kid Liberty had moved on. Iron Will would return as a Soviet agent a few years later, with no real explanation for how he survived his fall off the Cliffs; later stories suggested that he was saved by one of his mind-controlled minions, without really bothering to interrogate the situation.
Behind The Scenes:
I wanted to fit one good “fighting Nazis” environment into this book, and this was pretty much the last chance to get it there. When I saw that March 1945 was already listed as the final appearance of Iron Will, it seemed like the perfect chance to write up a mind-control tank Nazi invasion of Britain just as the Allies are winning the war.
This environment also marks the first appearance of two more Golden Age superheroes, both of whom will get writeups in the future. I’m not actually sure what Partisan’s powers are; he’s sort of the Venture version of the Human Torch or Manhunter, a hero whose name gets grabbed for a totally different person in the Silver Age and thus never really appears again.
But the Human Torpedo will be showing up again later. Much later. So much later, sorry. I thought about taking time to explain his whole deal, but I was at the edge of pagecount already, so “he’s sometimes Madame Liberty’s ally, he swims at supersonic speeds, he’s a bit of an asshole and he does not get his own comic again post-Golden Age” pretty much covers it for now.
But if you’re curious: Imagine if Namor was also Doc Savage.
