Planet Comics #2 - pt. 3

Well...that was a disappointing debut for the Taloned Man. We don't even get to see if Tiger Beat punched him off the roof or just pushed him off. At least we know he's okay, as he must have fallen into the same moat.

That is some sword Tiger Beat has; he just whacks a diamond and it shatters into a thousand pieces? That's better than a Ginsu knife!





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That's also a really improbable example of the wrecking things mechanic from Hideouts & Hoodlums. This would be like wrecking a dam, but at a -1 or -2 penalty.

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There's a whimsical naivte to thinking that we'll still have a Washington in the year 40,000, not to mention the notion that we'll be launching our spaceships from giant mortars.

The notion of our power source being special elements only found on some planets, though...well, that's textbook Star Trek with its dilithium crystals.

As Spurt Hammond might conceivably go on to become an obscure influence on Star Trek, so does this page show us how Spurt is inspired by the John Carter of Mars series. Well, "inspired" might be too generous, as the Red Men of Mars are blatantly ripped off from A Princess of Mars here.

Even the Martian ships look like they were taken straight from Edgar Rice Burroughs' imagination, while the Earth ships are more boring rocket-like ships.

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This is a large scale aerial combat. I have no plans to produce game mechanics for such; it would need to be handled by someone with a firmer grasp of wargames than me.

Spurt uses a raygun to wreck his way inside, takes out a guard, and uses the guard's cloak as a disguise -- some of the details are different, but the tactic has been used a thousand times in fiction up to this point.

Now, how Spurt knew this was the ship that the prince was on, that part is much harder to follow. Was he somehow able to detect that this ship was more heavily protected than the others?

You would also think that at least one of the prince's guards would have a weapon on them, but Spurt catches them all empty-handed and gets to wale on them with his fists!

Now we're moving on to the next story, with Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol. Here we get a new mobstertype -- crab-men! Crab-men are numerous in appearance, outnumbering a spaceship's crew. We also find out here that crab-men are vulnerable to radiation, and this makes them susceptible to commands.

Look at how tough this crab-man is, picking Buzzup and just throwing him on the ground like a rag doll. These bad boys have got to be at least 4 Hit Dice.

Being trapped in giant specimen jars is an unusual form of trap too.

Spoilers: Buzz wins.

...So we're going to jump ahead now to the next feature, Captain Nelson Cole of the Solar Force. 

Dwight Field Airport is a real place, and I strongly support using real world locations in comic book stories for realism, though the ground-based, sideways-launching spacecraft then take some of that realism away.

There's also no such thing as  "light mile," though this might just be future shorthand for miles traveled at the speed of light. If 250,000 is the number of light years, though, that makes the number of miles 1.4696563 x 10¹⁸. Conversely, if it means 250,000 miles, that is just the distance to Earth's Moon, and reaching it at the speed of light would be like teleportation.

The object that can take out two spaceships moving at the speed of light? A shooting star, or meteor. Meteors, of course, move nothing close to the speed of light.

"Poor fellows! Oh well, they were newbies and kinda deserved it for being dumb. Full speed ahead, and let's skip contacting their families back home!"

Note how spaceships are controlled by simple levers.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

The Funnies #35

According to The Crime Busters, it's possible to take the hinges off a vault door with a pocket knife, though it will take you hours to do it.

Ew, John Carter -- did you have to cut off his whole head? Cutting off heads is not so easily done in Hideouts & Hoodlums. Perhaps John has his hands on a magic vorpal sword. Or it's something about how strong John is in this environment that lets him do that. But would that make it possible for superheroes to decapitate on Earth, then? I'm not comfortable with this precedent...

A Hero capable of super-leaping, like a superhero on Earth or a fighter on Barsoom, can apparently leap long distances in a downward direction. Should that mean he can fall long distances safely? I had such a precedent for awhile in my Sundays at Home campaign, but I don't care for it. There should be a difference between a controlled fall and an uncontrolled fall. Could a super-leaper take less damage from falling, though?  I'm still thinking about that one...

Atomic cartridges? They were just called radium rifles in the original books. I wonder why they changed it here. "Atomic cartridges" seems like there should be a mushroom cloud with every shot, which is definitely not the case here. Maybe they do 2-12 points of damage per shot, though...?

Cerebus the Aardvaark??

Yeah, I didn't have anything else to say about this one. I'm not statting mosquito swarms...

Lost Temple of the Swinks should become a H&H adventure module somewhere down the line. But it does bring up for me, the issue of illumination.

Wash isn't carrying so much as a lit match to see by, but he seems to be able to see these spacious chambers quite clearly. Is it a mix of the outside light coming in through that small hole, combined with his eyes adjusting to the dark? Should dim light not be an issue in H&H?

I'm okay with the diamond eyes on the statues, but when there's a Fibber McGee closet-full of pearls, I think the Editor is being way too generous with treasure.

Wash seems to just happen to notice tracks on this page, but tracking in H&H is an active skill, not a passive skill.

But, yeah, I'm mainly just sharing these pages because it's Captain Easy...

This is from The Wonderland of Oz and I'm wondering...am I going to have to break down and finally put gnomes in H&H?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

The Funnies #30

Captain Easy might be easy, but weapon damage in Hideouts & Hoodlums is not easy. After all these years, it's still a hotly debated topic in the ongoing campaigns! One of the pros of all weapons doing d6 damage is that it makes players less dependent on getting bigger and badder weapons. One of the cons of all weapons doing d6 damage is that it can lead to some Heroes taking silly weapons -- like a wet broom -- confident that it doesn't matter if their weapon makes sense to do regular damage.

This issue marks the first appearance of John Carter of Mars in comic books. This, of course, opens up a huge can of worms for H&H -- how much of John Carter can be considered public domain and available for inclusion? It's not an issue I plan to resolve right here and now, but it's something under consideration.

Even without discussing copyrights and trademarks, there are still elements here that bear discussion. Like, a cave full of gas that sparks astral projection to other planets is one doozy of a trap! Or the fact that a human, on a different planet, may or may not become an alien, depending on how relativistic the Editor decides to treat the Hero races (or how much he wants to ape Burroughs).

And then, if we do include mobsters from Barsoom, we get to start with considering green Martians. The size of green Martians was pretty inconsistent in the books; I wonder if the comic book stories will follow suit. Here, Tars appears to be 10-12' tall. I'd generously give green Martians...7 Hit Dice?

Tars is riding a thoat, but it is drawn just to look like a giant horse with six legs.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)