Silver Streak Comics #3 - pt. 2

Not many days left in December to work on the ol' blog, but let's try to get through Silver Streak Comics #3, if nothing else.

This is the last page of Bill Wayne, the Texas Terror. Here he consistently shoots twice per turn, but I already discussed ways of accounting for that in the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules last time. This time, I want to point out the neck sheathe for a concealed knife -- and what an insanely dangerous place to store a knife that seems to be, to me.

Panel 5 is a clear example of simultaneous initiative.

Now we're going to look in on Lance Hale again, comics' only loincloth-clad interplanetary warrior.

That is one incredibly durable spaceship, since it is traveling faster than light when it crash lands. No one inside is even harmed!

Traveling faster than time transports you, not into the past or future, but into spirit-land here, which is a highly unusual twist. Spirit-land is inhabited by beast men (long ago presented as a playable race for 1st ed H&H in...one of the Trophy Case issues; I forget which one...).

How kind of the artist not to burden us with having to view that ferocious battle!

Here is some unusual evolutionary science: spiritmen have no bodies, but are somehow able to interact with Lance and grapple him. Having no souls puts them just below mankind "in the cycle of evolution." How did they evolve to have no souls or bodies?

As a reminder, Lance wears an armband that lets him operate as a superhero, wrecking things like chains (the door category) with ease.

That is a highly untraditional Crystal Ball, giving bodies to body-less beings instead of scrying.

Or is the Crystal Ball only an illusion generator? King Loti is revealed as a beastman...or a kenku...or a type I demon?

Can spiritmen/beastmen turn invsible, or is King Loti a beastman magic-user?

And what manner of invisibility is this, that Lance can see him but Dr. Grey can't. This is not like the Invisibility spell, so it must be a special ability of spiritmen, one that gives a saving throw vs. spells to resist.

Here we have the age-old question that has always plagued D&D -- how to adjudicate disbelieving in illusions? It seems that Lance here gets a saving throw just by stating the intention to disbelieve, or to "use his own will power."

Here's a special rule that will keep players from attempting to disbelieve in illusions all willy-nilly: disbelieving in one is so draining that you are too weak too move -- essentially paralyzed -- for 1-4 turns afterwards.

A chair is soft cover, improving Lance's AC by 1 (which he desperately needs, since he's almost naked).

Dr. Grey is taking quite a chance on a scheme that doesn't make much sense. Why does he need a silver bowl to disbelieve in illusions? And what if the spiritmen weren't illusions? Or are spiritmen always illusions?

This is from the next feature, Ace Powers. Here we have a very rare complication from combat -- arm paralysis caused by taking damage. Now, we could make up a new rule that any head blow that doesn't cause unconscious has a chance of a different result, and we could even design a random table for that...but the paralyzed arm doesn't here really change the combat any, so it passes the smell test for flavor text to me.

Tying the Hero to a steam radiator seems a low-key deathtrap that I'm surprised we've never seen before. Since the steam has to build slowly, it could start as 1 point of heat damage in turn 1, 1-2 points in turn 2, and so on.

This is one of those strange instances in comic books where taking damage causes consciousness instead of unconsciousness. It runs counter-intuitive to how damage works in both H&H and, frankly, every game system I can think of.

Duplicate keys must be like a skeleton key.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Silver Streak Comics #3 - pt. 1

With this issue, Silver Streak Comics finally gets its own feature called Silver Streak! Doubly important, this serves as a long origin story for the superhero Silver Streak, so long that we never see him in costume yet in this installment -- making this the longest origin story for a superhero published so far.

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Okay, Hideouts & Hoodlums hat on...it's hard to take this giant fly seriously. Besides looking seriously cartoony, I prefer to cap my giant animals at 8x normal size, which would put a giant fly at less than 1 hit point. Further weirdness comes in this fly's special features, like a ...breakaway proboscis that can impale people...?

What the swami does is the equivalent of a D&D campaign where a powerful wizard puts a Geas spell on the entire party and makes them go on his quest for him. Nobody likes that. Still, in this instance, it also explains how Silver Streak gets his powers.

Speaking of weird features on this giant fly...tentacles? Where? Aren't those just legs?

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Oh dear...swamis are Hindus, not Muslims, so it seems unlikely this one would be invoking Allah by name. It's also pretty unclear how being hypnotized kept our Hero from dying in the car crash.

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Back to gaming talk; can a target hurl away two men trying to grapple him at the same time? Here we have to consider the impact of this on the combat. If combat is being affected, then we should be careful not to invoke "flavor text" on this, and it does appear that, since the two men are knocked prone, this allows Silver Streak to leave the area without them getting free back attacks on him as he flees.

On the other hand, this could be appropriate flavor text if SS is buffed with the Untackleable power.

It's hard to imagine the police are baffled without a clue, when a fly the size of a car must keep flying away from the scene of each crime. How hard can that be to follow?

This may be the earliest example in a comic of the main villain not even being mentioned until the second half of the story. Of course, because this is a golden age comic, the villain is a mad scientist, but a mad zoologist is a new twist.

$20 million dollars is one of the steeper ransoms we've found in these early comics.

Silver Streak has not really demonstrated any traditional superpowers yet (though Feign Death appears to be one of them earlier), but here he clearly uses the Leap I power to reach the giant fly and grapple it.

I'm going to include giant flies now in the Mobster Manual...but am going to cap them at 3 Hit Dice.

No, he's not Bruce Wayne or even John Wayne, but Bill Wayne, and this is one of the earliest cowboys to have a vigilante name not itself a blatant rip-off of The Lone Ranger.

Mesa Bluff seems like there should be a real Mesa Bluff out there somewhere, but while I could find examples of streets and neighborhoods called that, I couldn't find that there is any real town called Mesa Bluff anywhere. 

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Bill is clearly getting two attacks in the same turn with his guns here. I've previously ruled out getting a bonus attack by carrying a second weapon, which means Bill must be at least a level 3 cowboy/fighter to get that many shots with single-shot firearms. Since Bill Wayne is debuting in this story and should not be third level yet, this could be our first confirmed instance of a fighter class getting (two) brevet ranks.

Lastly, let's revisit the curious intersection of physics and game mechanics. If you throw yourself down a flight of stairs at a group of people all bunched up together, can you defy the "one attack per turn" guideline for H&H combat? I would still be inclined to say no...and yet...I have previously encouraged Editors to go easy on their players in solo play and make more allowances than the rulebooks suggest. And, in this case, the Editor could offset the bonus with some serious repercussions. For example, the player might get only one chance to hit the whole group, and a miss means taking 1 point of damage on the stairs, plus lying prone for that turn, plus losing initiative on the following turn. A player would have to think about how lucky he was feeling before making that call...

Or, this could just be an example of a third-level fighter getting to use the combat machine special ability, giving him three attacks in combat against non-classed opponents.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Shadow Comics #1 - pt. 2

Wrapping up my review of this issue...

Bob Burton is a half-pint cowboy with an unusual angle to his story. A villain is trying to get the dead to his mother's ranch by convincing them their ranch is haunted. Noises in the attic and a ghostly face at windows are used to spook them, but the face is revealed to be a luminous mask hanging from a pole, and the noises in the attic are -- you couldn't get away with this in a comic book today -- from a cat with weights tied to its legs.

The story has an unusual resolution; instead of the villain getting arrested, or getting his comeuppance, Bob's mother sells the ranch to him -- but only after they find out that the man wanted buried treasure on the property, and after they had already dug up the treasure.

Bill Barnes is an aviator hero. He is after the Yellow-Jackets, a paramilitary group with an island base -- sort of an evil version of the Blackhawks! -- since publisher Street & Smith seems hesitant to label foreign countries as villainous so far. The narrator refers to how they have a "world-wide web," which is funny given what it means today.

Bill thinks the Yellow-Jackets base is "Mantigo Island." If the author is referring to Montego Bay, then the "island" is Jamaica.  Montauk Point is referenced, but that's a real place, a state park on Long Island.

Bill has night-glasses, binoculars with polarized lenses that let him see an oncoming aerial attack in time to prepare. He doesn't display having anything else of a trophy nature, though he owns at least 10 planes, assuming each of his hangars has two in them.

The Yellow-Jackets have thermite bombs, or incendiary bombs. Incendiary grenades are in the trophy section of Hideouts & Hoodlums, so these would just be a slight upgrade.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Shadow Comics #1 - pt. 1

I have access to an incomplete copy of this issue, so I'll review what I can.

The first Shadow story takes place somewhere near the U.S.'s largest munitions works, which is interesting, because that would not likely be by New York City. I haven't been able to find out exactly what was the U.S.'s largest munitions works in 1940, but I know the Navy's biggest munitions works was out on Nebraska because, you know, putting that much explosives next to a major metropolis probably isn't a great idea...

Is the Shadow a fighter or mysteryman? Other than walking the ledge of a building, he does little that would count as stunts. He's also really ruthless, slaughtering all the enemy agents, including a woman.

The next story is Iron Munro, another future hero, this one set in 2093. It starts with Iron, being one of the last five survivors of a Ganymede colony, finally escaping Jupiter's gravity to get help from Earth. The science is okay...Ganymede is said to be −120 °F when it's really more like -343 °F. The escape velocity from Jupiter would have to be 2.4 times faster than Earth, but it's weird that anyone would set up a Ganymede colony while being unprepared for that. The author also thought Ganymede would have an atmosphere, when it doesn't. The 1,000 MPH winds would be closer to realistic for Jupiter, but tend to top off below 400 MPH.

Why are there no colonies between Earth and Ganymede?

Iron doesn't know that Earth's President died five years earlier, despite radio waves only taking 35 minutes to each Jupiter from Earth.

Iron is a superhero on Earth, using the Multi-Attack power to beat up the soldiers he first encounters on Earth. It also appears he can safely jump 50' down without injury, using the Leap I power.

Gold is still valuable in the future.

The current President becomes Iron's Supporting Cast Member, and follows him off-planet on adventure!

Iron's new spaceship is solar-powered. It can travel at almost one-fifth the speed of light. News to science: when an object strikes another object at that speed, they get shunted into another dimension. In this new dimension, the sun is blue. No idea how that makes sense...

Next up is that other stalwart of pulp fiction, Doc Savage! Doc Savage is in the delicate situation of having to put down an uprising of natives in an African colony...allegedly to keep the natives from being slaughtered, but it also looks like Doc is okay with maintaining the status quo of colonialism.

True to a Doc Savage story there are elements of mystery here; who put the handwritten note on the dead man's body? But because this story is much shorter than a Doc Savage novella, the answers come in one page (spoiler: it was the villain, Von Guyter, to lay a trap for Savage).

Doc escapes from being tied up thanks to a mini-flamethrower in his belt buckle -- which is a cool trophy item for Heroes, but one Doc has never needed in his stories, since he's easily escaped being tied up before. Doc also carries a vial of liquid explosive, good for pouring into rifles to wreck them, and if he pours it into fire it -- no, it doesn't explode (for some reason), it makes a smokescreen.

Carrie Cashin is a female detective with her own feature...but she's not a very good detective. She picks up a suspect's dropped gun with her own hand, obscuring any useful fingerprints. "Don't you know it's a penal offense to send threatening notes?" she asks, as if unaware that any law violation, even a misdemeanor, is a penal offense.

Pulp hero Nick Carter gets his own adventure, but the only thing remarkable about it is that the "hatchet men" Nick fights are refreshingly un-stereotyped, wearing ordinary suits and using knives as weapons.

The next feature is the unfortunately named Diamond Dick, and you would never in your life guess that Diamond Dick is a frontier scout character. The story takes place at Fort Advance, currently under the command of General Custer. Interestingly, I couldn't find evidence that Fort Advance was real, but a Fort Advance does figure into the dime novels of Buffalo Bill. Diamond uses a two-gun fighting style, highly unusual in 19th century stories. He makes a disarming shot with one gun, but only shoots the hat off the man's head with the other, seemingly verifying that holding two weapons doesn't give you a meaningful second attack in comic books (and in Hideouts & Hoodlums).

Dick escapes from Indians and finds the fort's horses the Indians are keeping; the story doesn't say how he finds them. It would make sense if he used his tracking skill, but it seems more likely that he just luckily stumbled across them while running away. The horses only have a single guard on them, a mistake bad guys often make in fiction.

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Jake Bigley, the evil trapper who sold the stolen horses to the Indians, leaps down on Dick from a tree to give himself both a height advantage bonus (+1) and a from behind bonus (+2) to his surprise attack. In the ensuing conflict, it appears that Dick is grappling to keep Jake's knife away, which is technically true because if Dick initiates a grappling attack, Jake can only grapple back. If Jake won initiative and attacked with his knife first, then Dick's grappling attempt might just be flavor text.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Jumbo Comics #13 - pt. 4

I've got time for one more rant session -- I mean review! -- of this issue of Jumbo Comics.

Wilton of the West is in Skull Valley, which is an actual place out in Utah. It should also sound familiar because of the White Boy in Skull Valley strip we already reviewed a few years back on this blog.

Drinking water does not restore hit points in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but giving water to a dehydrated person can count as first aid, and that does heal back 1 hp.

I'll skip most of the story; this page reminds us that the cowboy genre is often set in modern day times, so you can include modern cars in your stories.

I don't know how you jump off a horse into a speeding car, but I wouldn't make that easy. It should require an attack roll vs. a low AC, like maybe 2, or even 0.











Jumping ahead, this is our final story, Inspector Bancroft. Bancroft has been given a lot more supporting cast this story, including a fiancee and...well, I don't know what relationship those two kids are supposed to be to Bancroft or Wini, but they don't figure into the plot anyway.

Lumps of jelly used for containers in medicine that melt in heat are good clues to find in a poisoning murder.

"Swanky!" That's a word you don't see often enough in comic books. 

Bancroft gets incredibly lucky here; his accusation comes way out of left field, and all Benza has to do is deny it and Bancroft has no evidence. Things like this always seem to go incredibly easy for the Heroes in Golden Age comic books, so in a H&H campaign, if you accuse a mobster of a crime, that mobster has to save vs. plot or confess.

The author, "George Thatcher" (likely a pen name), likes unusual words, so he gives us "hoary creatures." I'm not sure if he's referring to the color of the spiders or how old they are...

But speaking of spiders, why place them so far from Bancroft, instead of, you know, throwing them in his lap? It seems like a particularly poor deathtrap, if the spiders choose to go in a different direction. 

Keep in mind, as you're reading this, how badly Bancroft has failed at this scenario. He gets captured. He fails to get himself out of his deathtrap. He fails to capture the killer. He doesn't even phone for the police himself; Wini does all of this for him. The moral is, it's okay to fail when you're playing H&H. You're still a Hero as long as you tried.

If I was Wini, I would be hesitant to untie him too. If Dayton had just stood by and let the cops take him, Benza would have gone to jail. Well, maybe. I mean, Dayton still has nothing on him for the murder other than a confession that Dayton has no corroboration for.

But punching him gives Benza the opportunity he needs to try and run, and the cops are so enraged by this that they don't even shout "Stop or we'll shoot" first. This lack of due process and vigilante justice, though, is entirely appropriate for Golden Age campaigns.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Jumbo Comics #13 - pt. 3

This is Stuart Taylor's lab now? Interesting, because in the beginning, Stuart was just lab assistant to Dr. Hayward. Has Hayward died and left everything to Stuart?

Laura raises a good question about how sexist Stuart is, though Stuart could have countered with the more logical response, "I need you to work the controls that get me home!"

So, in the future, giant mosquitoes will be mankind's worst problem, just like in Minnesota today.

The numbers encountered in this story seem way off. Somehow, the city's defenders are just three guys with one cannon?

And then there's the convenience of Stuart being the only person in the room to think of picking up a hand weapon when the insect arrives. Yes, it makes sense to always give the Hero an opportunity to shine before any non-Hero characters in the room, but this would have made more sense if the soldiers were outnumbered.

So, in the 93rd century, there are very few people left, they have atomic-powered hand weapons, but don't wear pants.

We never learn how the atomo-gun is better than what Stuart last used; he appeared to disintegrate the giant insect in one hit before, so this gun is an improvement how...?

What kind of time machine is this that, that Stuart doesn't know what year he was sent to? Does it just randomly fling him to some year?

Are we to believe the City of the Insects was built by insects, or just taken over by them?









I had to laugh out loud when I read this page. What a terrible plan this was...

"I'm going to take on the insects in their lair! Stay behind men, I'll take this stranger with me!"

"Oops -- I forgot, their lair is outside my jurisdiction! I'm not a soldier, just an ordinary policeman. Here, why don't you take care of the insects for me? Bye!"

So...can only the leader talk, or are they all intelligent insects? We never learn!

This page is pretty comical too. The insect king keeps Stuart prisoner, but without any restraints, without any guards -- in fact, the insect king is now all alone! Where are his followers? Apparently either all killed by the invading army ("Just kidding -- it was actually in my jurisdiction after all!"), or like an ant queen the other insects lack direction without their leader.

Speaking of if things make sense...Stuart is the one who bumps into the generator, but is the only one in the room not hurt? I guess the electricity has an area of effect, with a saving throw for half-damage, and Stuart was the only one who made his save.

Moving on, this is ZX-5 Spies in Action. This story seems to take place in Ukraine or Russia, given the names, which makes it so weird when something like "Chester City" winds up in the mix. Is this supposed to be Chester, England?















I hadn't bothered including the first page of this story so you might not follow the twist here, but ZX-5's girlfriend was with him at the start of this story and, apparently didn't have the documents yet or this adventure would have been much, much shorter. This is a novel twist to pull on your players, having a supporting cast member turn out to be something other than she appeared to be, as long as you don't use this too often.

Completely ignored between panels 7 and 8 is how ZX-5 gets into enemy HQ and gets the general alone. That's probably not the sort of thing you would normally gloss over in a game scenario; in fact, that's likely more likely to be the main goal of the scenario, as there is exploration involved then.

ZX-5 has successfully grappled General Miaha, but does not need any kind of game mechanic to just point a gun at his head. Rather, the player stated the intention, the Editor adjudicated on the spot and determined that warranted a morale check, and the general failed. Or is that the general...?

...Because it seems really weird to capture the enemy's general, but then take Captain Vybral hostage instead. In fact, the whole scenario gets super-sidetracked at this point, with the mission becoming rescuing Manya from Vybral and nothing else really happening on the front. This is part of the charm of a roleplaying game that there is no winning or losing and goals can be highly flexible in a scenario...but as a story, it really doesn't make much sense.

In addition to guns, we see soldiers using knives and whips. These soldiers seem like they would need to be statted as something other than ordinary fighters, because they go into a berserk frenzy if their leader gets taken down first. I hesitate to stat Cossacks as a mobstertype because that's a little racist...maybe we should call them berserkers, or just add this special ability (+1 to hit if their leader is incapacitated) to bloodthirsty hoodlums.


Speaking of berserk, ZX-5 does the same, and I think we can safely say he would be statted as a Mysteryman now, because fighting after a woman has been struck seems like his signature move now.

Panel 6 sure makes it look like some passion is about to spark in the heat of the moment. And just how did his shirt get ripped off again...?

Lastly, why is ZX-5 being congratulated, when it seems like Manya did all the work? She delivered the papers herself and then summoned the English Army herself.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)