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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8501839" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 85: July 1993part 5/5With Great Power: Dale decides to go back to the Golden age of superheroes this time, talking about what distinguishes them from more recent Marvel stories. Surprisingly few of them have inherent powers, most either using gadgets or just their own skill and pluck to fight crime and explore strange places. They're also much lower on angst than the silver age onwards, both of the general balancing mundane life with superheroics, and whether they've got the right stuff to beat their various villains in the first place. To be fair, the average power level of said villains tends to be lower as well, with many of them only appearing once rather than recycled endlessly with a little more power creep each time. There's still plenty of weirdness though, particularly as there's much less worry about continuity and shared universes in general, so they can introduce elements without worrying how superman showing up might affect batman's rogues gallery. It was a more innocent time, when people still believed in good and evil, and every IP didn't have a wiki chronicling every character's every appearance and broadcasting it to the world days after each new instalment. As with Roger's columns, he has plenty of references, including the obligatory plug of their new, more pulpy Buck Rogers game, which is specifically tailored for tales of derring-do with implausible cliffhangers between each session. Gangbusters and Boot Hill also get their first mentions in a while - they must still have a fair amount of the new edition's books lurking in the warehouses. Call of Cthuhu gets a mention for being made in the same time period, despite not particularly fitting the pulp style. There's definitely no shortage of source material as long as you can find it. This is all pretty familiar stuff, formulaic both in what it's referencing and the way it's referencing it. Overall, competent but dull.The Roving Eye: They've published convention photos irregularly for many years now. It looks like they've decided to try and make a regular column of it, just like Dungeon did with Side Treks. get ready for another round of goofy facial hair and gamers posing awkwardly. Let's see if this attempt at branding sticks, or it'll be forgotten within a few issues like half the columns in issue 323 of Dragon.With no Living City material at all, this issue feels quite different from the last one. That doesn't mean it's good though, with the long-running regular columns being particularly formulaic in both topic and approach. A name change won't help you if the contents start to bore people away with repetitiveness. Another of those times where I'm quite glad I get to flip between sister magazines to get a change of pace and writing style.</blockquote>

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