Strontium Dog Westinghouse blaster

[Boggler]

Can anyone out there help with a query about Johnny Alpha's Westinghouse blaster?

How many different types of cartridges does it fire and what are they called? What are the effects of each type of cartridge?

Cheers

Boggler

[stront692]

im off to do a bit of research now

[stront692]

off the top of my head i think there are four cartridge types though

[Smiley]

Yeah, there's four.

One and two are a bit sketchy and open to speculation IIRC, but three is definitely a "high intensity tuneller beam" (why from a cartridge I dunno) and the famous number four is high explosive.

[rc]

A specialist warhead and a solid fuel propellant.

[Thread Zero]

Alpha never vocally selects a Number One cartridge, so it's presumably some sort of default bullet.

He sets his blaster to fire a Number Two Cartridge only once - it's a high velocity armour piercing round that he uses to destroy a robot during 'The Kreeler Conspiracy'.

Number Three cartridges turn up quite regularly - it's some sort of high intensity heat beam. He uses one to melt his way into Hitler's Bunker and to shoot down the slaver ship in 'Smiley's World', and sets fire to a whole bunch of living dead during the one with Malak Brood that I can't remember the name of at the moment. It's also referred to as a 'tunneller'. However, the Number Three cartridge that he uses in 'The Kreeler Conspiracy' has a completely different effect...

Number Four Cartridges also turn up several times - it's a high explosive round which he uses whenever he wants to blow something up. It first appears in 'Death's Head' and almost every story afterwards.

He can set his other blaster to 'stun' and 'flesh', and the one he uses in 'The Ragnorak Job' also has a 'maximum' setting.  

[stront692]

there is also an electro flare which i do not think is one of the four settings

the number 1 default beam has maybe diffrent setting, such as stun, flesh, normal and maximum

then number 2 is armour peiercing, number 3 seems to pack a higher punch as stated here a high intensity heat beam (but seems a bit like a magnum, leaves a bigger etc)

number 4 i presume is hi ex

[El Spurioso]

Okay, good, good... iinteresting... [scribbles notes]

So what's the doohickey that can pass through walls, like a little mini-bullet-teleporter gig?  I vaguely remember Johnny using it to shoot someone through his own head one time...?

[Leigh S]

Ah - a blaster beam can be set to only be destructive at a certain range - so Alpha can specify this, fire away and the beam will pass harmlessly for a while, then destroy everything after a set distance.... Alpha does this by setting the "range-finder" on his gun - though I dont think a Westinghouse Variable Cartridge Blaster ever showed that particular function - it was more the little(r) guns he had

[stront692]

the westing house blaster doesnt have that function nope, thats the smaller one

i think wulfs was once referred to as (checks notes) a webley custom hand blaster

alphas is different and has never been named specifically

[stront692]

number 3 cartridge was used most in the older strips

the strip darted wildly between 'man with no name type western' plot to 'dirty harry' and in those strips the number 3 cartridge seems to do the most damage

[Thread Zero]

'there is also an electro flare which i do not think is one of the four settings'

No, that's his other blaster.

'the number 1 default beam has maybe diffrent setting, such as stun, flesh, normal and maximum'

No, that's his other blaster, too!

Checking back, the Number Two cartridge is actually referred too as an explosive armour piercing shell.

Alpha uses his other blaster (Wulf refers to his as a 'Webley custom hand blaster' during 'The Killing', the one in 'The Ragnorak Job' is a 'standard issue blaster') more often - the Westinghouse is more like a piece of hand-held artillery. The other blaster is capable of stun, flesh (it disintegrates flesh but leaves the skeleton intact - it makes an impressive first appearance during Starlord 1 but leads to the unforgetable line 'Blast you, Alpha! You've boned me!' during 'The Shicklegruber Grab'), electro-flare and the delayed detonation setting (this seems to work with both stun and flesh settings). Both guns seem able to fire a 'life-wire'.  

[Oddboy]

Possibly, the cartridges are interchangable - and therefore they fire whatever Alpha's loaded them with at that time (that nicely clears up any continuity glitches).
He usually keeps them loaded the same way so he can remember what he's firing.

[stront692]

in the killing - the westing house blaster (longer gun) definitely fires an 'electro flare' and is also set to 'flesh'

so that suggests im right

cartridge number 1 is variable (from stun to maximum), cartridge 2 is armour piercing, cartridge 3 is laser and cartridge 4 is hi-ex

i have always thought that the electro flares were a bit like the way an uzi can also fire a grenade attached to it, so they could well be interchangeable

this means i am agreeing with oddboy on that point

[Trout]

Oddboy - I'm afraid that can't be true.

Remember that shite scribbly non-Equzerra story where Johnny, Middenface and others ended up up a planet where everyone was at war?

It was the one with Middenface's granny's dog. Urgh.

Anywa, at one point in that, Johnny blows people up by putting number four cartridges in a pile and shooting them from afar.

IMO that means the cartridge itself bears the name, not the part of the gun it's stored in.

- Trout