Adventure Comics #48 - pt. 3

When we left off with Socko Strong, he was confronting Monte on the wing of a flying plane about Monte's attempts to kill him. In a clever trick, even though both parachutes are actually fine, Socko pretends he switched parachutes on Monte to give him the "sabotaged" one. You would think Socko would use this trick to make Monte confess, but instead Socko pushes him off the wing to panic him, just to pay him back.

Moving on to Steve Conrad, Adventurer, we find Steve on a cruise where he spots and recognizes 'Singapore Sal,' a notorious jewel thief (perhaps after making an INT ability score check?). When she leaves the deck, Steve is surprised she didn't notice him, suggesting they've met before (and letting us know that Steve had surprise in that encounter?). Sal's partner is called Slick -- he's almost surely a slick hoodlum. Steve comes up with a pretty clever trick where he has his comic sidekick slip a handwritten, signed note by Steve under the door, then listen to the two of them talk about their plans through the door after they read it. 

The next wrinkle in the story is that Steve tries to stop the valuable jewels on the ship from being stolen. The would-be thief appears to be Slick, but he's wearing a mask and, surprisingly, he manages to get away from Steve easily after just hitting him once with a sap (and not even a head blow at that). When Steve confronts Slick he discovers it wasn't him -- Slick is not wearing the same jacket and hasn't had time to change it. Although the wrinkle requires a bit of railroading to let the thief escape, it winds up being a pretty interesting wrinkle. The clue turns out to be the cord Steve tore off the thief; he doesn't know where he's seen it before until he remembers it was holding another passenger's monocle in place (if the player had trouble thinking of this, maybe he was allowed to "remember" after an INT check). 

The only other thing I'm going to say about the Steve Conrad story is that it is extremely verbose with big word balloons in almost every panel.

Am I just going to have to accept that it's a lot easier to throw a missile weapon hard enough to pin it into a wall in comics than real life? In Rusty and His Pals, Rusty manages to throw a spear -- and it's not really a spear, it's just called a spear in the story but it's clearly a lance -- across a room, knocks a man's gun out of his hand, sails right past him, and still hits the wall hard enough to become embedded into it. Did I mention Rusty looks like he's 11 years old? You know...sure, why not. Embedding in the wall is just flavor text at the end of the combat turn that doesn't affect the disarming attack or anything in the following turn. 

Having cleared the bad guys out of the house, they consider the clue they have, that they're supposed to look "behind Stevenson," and then they figure out that there's something in the library behind a copy of Treasure Island -- a clever clue, so long as no one felt like reading it and took it back to their room, of course. Behind the book is a button that opens a secret door. The boys realize they need to consider illumination issues behind the secret door so they all fetch candles. They mysterious passage looks straight out of D&D, leading to a small room with a chair, desk, and a small chest on the desk. The desk contains both a clue, a journal, and a secret clue concealed in a false top -- a single sheet of paper, the contents of which we'll find out next issue.

In Anchors Aweigh, we hear about the trick of putting cotton in your nose to make it look broader, when disguising yourself as someone with a broader nose. There is an interesting wrinkle to the story where Kerry finds out the man he's impersonating has a wife who he has to push away without making her suspicious. The last page, though, is terribly confusing. When the Naval officers burst in on the smugglers' headquarters, they leave the driver tied up in the elevator. The driver, trying to escape, makes the elevator go down with his feet. Somehow, the elevator doors do not close on their own (did elevators not have automatic doors at this time?), so the boss smuggler backs up to the elevator and falls. But...somehow he falls onto the driver at the bottom of the shaft and not onto the roof of the elevator car. Were there ever roofless elevators?

Lastly, Cotton Carver and Deela crash-land in a petrified valley where the challenge of this scenario is finding food! On day 2, they find a tree with edible berries (skill check to identify they are not poisonous?). Hunting for meat, Cotton knows he will run out of bullets soon, so he builds a bow. The terrain gets progressively worse for them; they come across a chasm thousands of feet deep filled with hot geysers, and at their backs they encounter three ape men armed with warclubs weighted for throwing. The ape men seem unusually intelligent and manage to defeat Cotton, then carry them away down to the bottom of the chasm by leaping from branch to branch growing out of the rock wall. Cotton was only stunned and cowardly shoots the ape men in the back (I guess with his last bullets?). Too bad he didn't try to talk to the ape men, because it seems like they could talk. They probably also were responsible for making the stairs they find, and the tall ladders that lead to the top of a volcanic cone. The volcanic cone is dangerous because of poisonous fumes in the air. Both of them make saving throws vs. poison and Deela fails, faints, and falls off the ladder. Cotton grabs her with an attack roll, then makes a Strength check, probably with a significant penalty (-5? More?) to continue climbing the ladder one-handed, while holding Deela with the other.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

  

Popular Comics #49 - pt. 1

The radio drama allegedly always used true cold cases from the FBI files, and the Gang Busters comic strip at least started out the same, but how true is that by 1940? I can't find any evidence of an actual FBI agent John Winston, though Winston being the middle name of John Lennon is, admittedly, clogging my search results, and there's no reason why the name couldn't have been changed to protect a still-active agent's identity.

Richmond, Virginia is of course a real place. I can't find a Calvert Bank in Richmond, but there is a Calvert Drive in Richmond, and perhaps there was once a bank there? 

The Tri-State Gang was real. According to the Sword and Scale website, their crime spree ran "through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia during the early to mid-1930’s."

By this page, the scene has shifted to Baltimore, Maryland. The names of the streets seem to have been changed to ...protect the innocent streets. Although there is a Harvey Street in Baltimore, it is commercial instead of residential, and doesn't intersect with an Elm Street. 

The map hardly seems necessary, since the maneuver of blocking the intersection with cars is really not elaborate. 

The story of the Tri-State Gang is actually pretty interesting, but you wouldn't know it by this rushed retelling. Indeed, the Gang Busters comic strip often has a bland sameness to its stories.

So we'll skip ahead into Martan the Marvel Man. I'm pleased with what this installment is trying to do, showing us Martan and Vana getting to know Earth, but I'm skeptical that they would immediately understand our comedy as quickly as they do here. Even more interesting is that this is an alien invasion story, but with the twist that Martan and Vana are on the ground with regular people and get to see how they react and deal with it.

The locations are worth mentioning here. It's unusual that the aliens land somewhere in New Jersey and San Francisco and not more obvious targets, like Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C. Likewise in Germany, the aliens skip Berlin and are landing in less important areas of northern Germany.  

On a page I'm not bothering to share we also learn that the invaders are Martians, but the story ends with us still not even having seen the invaders yet. Maybe next time!
 

I am leery of this page because of the gruesomeness of that final panel, but two points here: one -- and we've seen this elsewhere before (and done better) -- is the idea of mistaking dinosaurs for dragons, or having dinosaurs and dragons be one and the same thing. It's a fanciful idea today, but much less was known of dinosaurs in 1940, so it would be easier to equate them with fantasy creatures. 

Second, and going along with how less was known about dinosaurs, pterodactyls are here displayed acting like carrion-eating vultures, when they were actually fish eaters, more like seagulls and albatrosses.  

Again, pretty gruesome, but I appreciate that the author knew the poisonous fumes are at least as dangerous as coming into contact with the lava (oops, Jurassic World 2 seemed to have forgotten that!). I would say anyone within 10' would need to save vs. poison or take ...let's say 2-8 points of damage from it, per combat turn within that distance.

Rekra is a weird name, but it actually is a name! I'm not entirely sure from where, but Google searching seems to be pointing to it being Slovakian. So this Slovakian spy has a gas gun and gas mask. Well-outfitted! This is a variant gas gun too, one that sprays paralyzing gas instead of sleep gas (both are chemically fanciful so, why not?). 

Oil line to motor broken is a good random complication in aerial combat (though this time it's being faked by plane thieves!). 

Out of the Sun was an aviator stunt in 1st edition Hideouts & Hoodlums, and here is used to give the Masked Pilot a surprise bonus while tailing the hijackers. 

This could be the earliest mention of Nicaragua in comic books. It's interesting that Nicaragua, being a neutral county in this story, gets to keep its name, but the villainous country is called "Vulcania." It's pretty easy to figure out which country that is, as El Salvador is known as the Land of Volcanoes. Although ruled by a dictator, Nicaragua was at least officially on the side of the allies during WWII. Although Nicaragua's dictator, Somoza, was corrupt, he wasn't as bad as El Salvador's dictator at this time, Matanza, who had more than 30,000 of his people killed.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Amazing Man Comics #10 - pt. 4

We're back with Martin Filchok's Mighty Man, the first and possibly only 12' tall superhero. Here we see how he's transported around, in a gutted out trailer.

The scream of the damsel in distress is the most common plot hook of all.

Remember that now; Mighty Man is 12' tall...

How tall are the ceilings in this house? MM can often stand upright without crouching at all.

If you have a group of Heroes, and you're about to barge into a house to see if a distressed damsel is alright, it might not be a good idea to send the 12' tall one in first. She might have had a heart attack!

That is one cool-looking monster, like a 12' tall bugbear! Too bad it's (spoiler!) fake.

I really like this idea of guys coming into the rooms behind the Heroes and changing all the furniture around to throw them off; it's a nice, low-tech puzzle to confound them with.

MM also spotted some good clues to look for around the car outside.

MM seems like he's using the Race the Train power to keep up with the car, but it's interesting how he doesn't come out at a fast sprint, but seems to have to pick up speed at the same rate as the car.

Panel 4 is confusing. Gas Gun of Gangsters? The wording seems so D&D-ish, but that couldn't have been intentional. Does he mean gangsters gave them this gas gun? And if so, does that mean they don't self-identify as gangsters, despite being self-confessed counterfeiters? And is the gas gun the explosive thing that blows up when they hit the trailer?

Maybe the best part of this scenario is the inversion; Agent Yakik would normally be the plot hook character at the beginning of the story, but they have everything already solved before them meet him!

The Shark has always been an odd character, but this one is really weird. This certainly won't be the first time a comic book hero has battled a giant octopus, but it's the first time one has been portrayed as at least as smart as the hero!  Now, science now says octopi are a lot smarter than we ever used to give them credit for, but this author seems to have anticipated a lot of that.

Whirlpools are good traps for underwater lairs. Always a good idea not to get caught in your own traps, though! What's really odd about this trap, though, is that it leads to the whole rest of the adventure. Had the Shark dodged around it, or made a saving throw to resist, this would be a much shorter scenario. To keep the Shark from making that saving throw, without fudging dice rolls, the Editor can assign him a -4 penalty to hsi roll because the whirlpool is just that strong.

The center of the Earth has a lot more open space and giant mushrooms than I would have figured! This is sort of a compromise between hollow world stories and legitimate science. If the pressure is too much for the Shark, then how strong is that monster that it can resist? Or did it just make its saving throw while Shark failed his? It doesn't seem like pressure would be a save to negate situation, but more of a save for half-damage-type thing.

We've got a curious mad scientist here, and not because he wants to trade bodies with the Shark -- that's a pretty common mad science trope already -- but because he can also read minds. ESP is an unusual power to associate with a mad scientist, and I wonder if some device in the room is letting him do that.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Man Comics #10 - pt. 3

Iron Skull is back and so is Igor Raston (I don't recall him, but we're supposed to believe this is a grudge match between the two).

The fisticuff is fairly pedestrian, but I wanted to share this page to point out that it's not too late after a fight starts to have traps in the area activated. Indeed, traps going off can liven up a fight!

It's hard to say how much that platform weighs or how fast it's moving, but a good rule of thumb might be 1 die of damage for 180 lbs, +1 die each time that weight is doubled.

We've seen the annod-comptod machine before (I even statted it for H&H already). It normally allows anyone to use the Wreck at Range power freely, but here is an unusual use of wrecking, simply short-circuiting electronics.

Here we also get another trap, a simple one with a tripwire and four spear-holes, with the only unusual wrinkle here being that the four spears are somehow all aimed at the same spot.

It's possible that I.S. is using a defensive buffing power to protect himself from the spears, but it's also possible that they "missed," or he made his saves vs. missiles, and them crashing against his skull is merely flavor text.

Your powers of deduction are amazing, Iron Skull!

Here we see wrecking things being used more traditionally, but I point this out because I.S. is concerned enough about melee vs. what looks like five unarmed hoodlums that he takes that drastic an action. Or perhaps he really doesn't want Igor to get away. Shut up, Rensen, I've got to go catch up with Igor!

Iron Skull has to make a conditional threat in that last panel because of the save vs. plot he needs to roll before he can punch a lady.

We're going to all assume I.S. won and jump into the next story, featuring Minimidget (and Ritty, who has the same power but no billing). Ignoring their shrunken state, this is some of the best science I've read in a comic book in awhile. If they were in a rocket going 400 MPH and were thrown to the floor of the ship, I would expect them to take at least 1-4 points of damage and could conceivably be knocked unconscious.

It would take the rocket about 10 hours to get to Africa. I bet they're really hungry for lunch!

Does it make sense for the rocket to go slower? Actually, I think that's pretty good science too. If the rocket had leveled off and all its inertia was horizontal, then when it loses that inertia it will fall into gravity. Gravity wouldn't pull it any faster than 120 MPH (terminal velocity). That all gets scrapped if there was any downward momentum, which would have added to that speed.

I'm going to spare you this part where the superstitious natives see two tiny people and immediately assume they are gods. A LOT of these comic books make the racist assumption that blacks would worship anything they couldn't understand.

No culture ever had a god named Ramu, though there is a river in Papua New Guinea with that name.

Jumping into Chuck Hardy's adventure, we see how a flood can turn any environment into a nautical adventure. I'm not a big fan of this feature, but I definitely want to use natives riding huge turtles someday.

Lots of comic book Heroes have their own Supporting Cast, but you rarely see them fail their loyalty checks. You see that with the princess right here, which is nice.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.) 

Jungle Comics #3 - pt. 1

After my longest lull ever, I'm back! And so is Fiction House and the unrelenting racism of the jungle genre. Gird your loins, because we're wading deep into the racism today!

We'll jump right into the lead feature, Kaanga, in progress. I don't know why so many golden age comic book artists had trouble with drawing cats, but this black panther with a distinctly seal-like head tempts me to go back to work on the Advanced Hideouts & Hoodlums Mobster Manual so I can stat it! I guess it would be just a black panther that likes to swim a lot more, though.

Tree-based fighting is interesting because there's a chance each turn of falling out of the tree. Here, Kaanga and the seal-panther both miss their saves vs. science at the same time.

It's interesting how brutally murderous Kaanga was against black panthers, but how gentle and caring he is over leopards. Or maybe his player was just looking for a good deed XP award. Killing a defenseless leopard would have netted him no XP award.

An assegai is a real thing, a slender, iron-tipped, hardwood spear used chiefly by southern African peoples.

That's a big python! But is it a "huge" python -- in terms of needing additional Hit Dice -- or just a normal-sized python? The average length of a python is, I believe, about 9 feet. This one looks to be twice that long, making it a large python (remember our large/huge/giant categories from D&D!).   Pythons can reach 26' in length, though, meaning that even in the real world there are such things as large and huge pythons.

I'm preeetty sure that constrictor snakes do not bite and hold fast like that. Had it looped around him and squeezed, I do think Kaanga would be a goner now.

There's another issue, though, of how to handle striking something against a stationary object after grappling it. I wouldn't introduce a new mechanic for this, but just reverse how hitting something with a rock works -- simple attack roll and damage if you hit.

Kaanga ducking is just flavor text; The King's attack roll missed and Kaanga ducking is simply how the miss is explained by the player and/or Editor.

I'm not sure where Cheba came from. Is Cheba the leopard from earlier, or a third cat? Did the Editor decide that Cheba just happened to be walking by and tossed her into the encounter, to make it easier for Kaanga's player?

It's unclear what happens after panel 5. It seems the gun was knocked out of The King's hand when Cheba leaps on him -- and disarming guns is supposed to be a common occurrence in Hideouts & Hoodlums, to reflect pages like this. But how does he choose to pick up a rock instead of the gun? Was the gun damaged? Because there is no chance of that happening in the disarming mechanic as written. Does he accidentally pick up the rock instead? There is no game mechanic for random picking up stuff either.

Incidentally, in case you need the top hat explained to you, The King is able to take over a tribe of naive, superstitious natives because he comes from New York. So, that makes him smarter than an African.

The Red Panther feature is not any better. Okay, the artwork is better, I meant racism-wise. Here, we're supposed to side with the "innocent" miner wanting to take the land and its resources away from the natives living there because, you know, he's white (though having a hot blonde daughter probably helps his case too).

I don't have much to say about this page, except -- dig that elephant portrait on the wall. What is the backstory between the miner and that elephant that would make him put a photograph of the elephant on his wall, as if it was a beloved pet?

Did I mention I like the art? Comics.org's contributors think this is Arthur Peddy's work, and I really dig the layout of that first panel.

No, there was no African deity named Zagu. Most tribes, from what I've read, didn't worship deities so much as ancestors. Of course, this could be a cult, and an exception to that rule. Of course, maybe they are worshipping Tabu, so that this segues into the next feature...

Lastly, we're going to take a quick peek at the next story of Tabu , Wizard of the Jungle. Gee, I wonder why it's black panthers that are always the cats getting picked on (though at least this one is drawn well)? I'm also sparing you from the previous page where a black man is being tortured to death, supposedly not far away. Tagu doesn't hear those screams at all, but conveniently hears a white woman's screams.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Flash Comics #3 - pt. 1

The Flash's hometown is New York City, at least for this story, and the city's newspaper is the Town Cackle, a paper that sells for 2 cents. When his fiance Joan's father is framed as a spy, the Flash's first suspect is the newspaper that reported it (to be fair, it was Joan's idea, and who wants to say no to their fiance?). At the office, Flash just happens to hear the city editor implicate himself to a subordinate.

In Hideouts & Hoodlums, there can either be a random chance of coming into the room at the right moment, or the Editor can simply force the encounter to happen that way if the entire plot hinges on it. Of course, it is not a good idea to make scenarios hinge on a single choice of the player(s). Suppose no one had thought to go to the newspaper office?

Flash uses the powers Invisibly Fast and Race the Train (provided the first power's duration had ended).

Major Williams' science project is the "neutronic bombardment of uranium," which suggests that with minimal research you could learn some reasonably accurate atomic research talk at the beginning of 1940.

Flash is smart to interview Williams to find out what he knows and who he suspects (indeed, it might have made more sense to do this before starting to investigate the Town Cackle), but his timing works against him when Williams' house is robbed at the same time Flash is in jail interviewing Williams. When super-speed is available (or Teleport, for high-level magic-users), plots will need to hinge on this sort of lucky timing.

Not sure what the average temperature was in March 1940, but if Flash strips you down to just your dress shirt and leaves you on the top of the Empire State Building, you'll take a point or two of cold damage.

Rather than use his powers to coerce confessions out of the editor, Flash goes incognito and uses a concealed dictaphone to record his confession. And then the same trick works again when he talks to the spy above him. It's like, if you try to trick a mobster into confessing, the mobster has to save vs. plot to resist the urge to monolog about everything.

When Major Williams is cleared and released from the county jail, he blurts out to the warden that the Flash's real last name is Garrick.

Flash spends a considerable amount of time running out of costume, putting to bed the conceit in 1st ed H&H that superheroes would not be able to use their powers out of costume.

Is that Flash is using some sort of spinning power against the boss spy when he spins him around by his heels (he's pretty strong to lift a man up by his heels!), but the end result is the mobster simply being prone on the ground, so this could have been a simple trip attack with a lot of flavor text added to it.

Further analysis of this issue can be found in The Trophy Case #1.

Next up is Cliff Cornwall, Special Agent. In Panama, Cliff is apparently seduced by a vamp working for spies in the employ of a fictional country called Bortola. Bortola is an Italian female name, meaning that "Bortola" is likely a stand-in for Italy. The naval plans spies are after this month are for a new design of battle cruiser. There's a wrinkle to this one, as the plans currently contain a fatal flaw known to Cliff and the inventor. Instead of keeping it away from the spies, Cliff needs to get these faulty plans to them without making them suspicious -- a good scenario for players who enjoy role-playing over combat, I suppose.

There are a few flaws in the execution. Keeping Cliff's girlfriend in the dark about the seduction was stupid and should have lost him a girlfriend before the end. The Bortolan navy spends "$1 million" on their new fleet of faulty cruisers. Why are they spending American currency?

In this issue, Hawkman is spelled "Hawk-Man," and the narrator also refers to him as "The Phantom of the Night," which doesn't really make much sense. Hawk-Man isn't too concerned about his secret identity (neither was Flash, really), as he sees an old friend of his out for a stroll and calls out to him, "I'm Carter Hall!" He's wearing a completely different design of helmet in this adventure too, one that rests on top of his head and leaves his whole face exposed.

(Flash story read in Golden Age Flash Archives vol. 1, the rest read at readcomiconline.to)

Whiz Comics #2(b) - pt. 1

Back in 2009 I last wrote about Captain Marvel's second adventure on my oldest blog.You can read it here, here, and here.

Back so soon? Now let's talk about that story in terms of playing it out using Hideouts & Hoodlums.

Rushing into combat with Sivana's army, Captain Marvel is buffed by Imperviousness, if not Invulnerability, to be safe from heavy ordinance. He then is able to pick up tanks over his head because he is buffed by a level 4 Raise power. The tanks weigh too much for the Extend Missile Range powers, so that doesn't explain how CM is throwing tanks at each other. Instead, I would say he is using the Wreck at Range power for this. All he really needs the Raise power for is tipping them over, which really is just as effective at taking them out of the fight.

Taking out the tanks forces a morale save from the army. I would not normally roll once for the entire army, nor roll for each soldier, but maybe roll for each sub-commander on the field, and have him pull back his men if he fails.

It's always a conceit of the Captain Marvel stories that CM can't sneak around, but as Billy Batson he can. It certainly has nothing to do with bright colors, since they largely wear the same colors, but with size. I have long been tempted to make half-pints a race option because it seems like it should have its own special abilities, like a bonus for stealth.

CM later chases after an airplane and jumps up to catch it, but it's impossible to say from those panels how fast the plane is taxiing and how high it gets before he jumps, so it's possible he's not using buffing powers at all in those panels. If he is, then Race the Train and Leap I would be sufficient.

CM is rendered unconscious by a gas trap. Given how difficult it is to render CM unconscious, this must be super-potent gas, probably with a big penalty to the saving throw vs. poison.

There must be something special about the chains that Sivana thinks they will hold CM for five whole minutes, given what he knows CM can do. Maybe they get wrecked as if the generator category. Had he stayed there longer, it's possible the explosion would have killed him, but it was probably an explosion with highly variable damage, like 1-100 points, since Sivana survives it.

Golden Arrow's second adventure ever starts more low-key, with him shooting and killing a gila monster with an arrow. It's just an ordinary-sized gila monster, something I wouldn't normally grant a full hit point, but it's apparently venomous enough that it's bite can cause humans damage (1-4 points?).

A rancher hires GA to help find his missing cattle. Interestingly, it's the rancher who does most of the tracking on the journey, demonstrating how important it is to keep a supporting cast member with you in order to give you a second skill check.

When a sniper tries to kill GA, GA shoots an arrow into the man's rifle barrel, "wrecking it." Now, if GA was a superhero, this would merely be an instance of the Wreck at Range power, but I have not seen enough evidence yet that GA should be of the superhero class. If the rifle wasn't wrecked, this would be a simple disarming attack, which you may recall is easier than normal to do against firearm-wielders in H&H. The damage to the rifle could be flavor text if the "wrecking" isn't serious and the rifle is still usable. We never find out because the sniper/assassin misses his morale save and flees on the next turn.

Soon, GA is roped by a lasso and dragged from horseback, but he starts up a contest of Strength and pulls the horseman from his saddle. This is one of those situations I've talked about before that my own H&H rules don't cover, where you have to bring in ability score checks and opposed rolls.

GA summons his horse, White Wind, by calling it to. The cowboy class, if it's going to come into 2nd edition ever, needs to have special skills still that other classes don't have, like Summon Mount.

GA's bow skills prove difficult to explain by the rules again when he shoots an arrow hard enough to break the wooden bar across a pair of doors. At this point, I think I have enough evidence that GA is of the superhero class, just like the earlier archer hero, Arrow. That makes it much easier to explain how he wrecked the bar with the Wreck at Range power.

Moving on to Scoop Smith... the reporter is sent on a mission to look for a missing person in Antarctica. It's amazing that, in 1940, newspapers had bottomless resources to fund months' long expeditions for wild goose chases after stories. They have a freighter, a "snowboat" (it looks like a truck), and a biplane. It seems like it's going to be a realistic story -- until the Antarctic is shown to have natives. And polar bears. Oops! The writer seems to have the South Pole confused with the North Pole! Among the natives are pseudo-giants -- people who the narrator calls giants, but don't really look that much bigger than ordinary people. The natives are supposed to be primitive, but they have elaborate ice palaces. Somehow the palaces are heated so people can wear normal clothes inside, which makes no sense at all.

The Antarctic has some realistic hazards, at least -- mile-deep chasms and snowstorms seem possible. We never see much of either, but I'm guessing they involve falling damage and cold damage respectively.

That natives' deathtrap is a giant block of ice held between the walls by two icy struts, one of which is slowly melted by a lit torch.The weight of the ice would probably make it do a lot of damage, but it would only render the victims unconscious if they were not trapped underneath it (what makes it a deathtrap instead of just a trap).

Scoop is in no hurry for deadlines; after spending months getting to the Antarctic, he spends a whole month just hanging out with the missing man and the natives before heading back home to report his story.

(Captain Marvel story read from Shazam Archives vol. 1, the rest read at readcomiconline.to)

 

Silver Streak Comics #3 - pt. 4

I have just a few pages left of this issue that I want to share, all from the final feature, Planet Patrol. It's the future of 2000. Remember when we had a colony on Mercury in 2000?

Long before space travel was real, if you didn't understand the mathematics behind figuring out where planets are at any given moment, you might believe that compasses would need to be reset so that the sun is north.  

It's not true that Mercury's axis is locked so one side always faces the Sun. I wonder if people believed that was true in 1940?

The real temperature on Mercury varies from -279 Fahrenheit at night to 801 Fahrenheit during the day. Those who remember Hideouts & Hoodlums Supplement III: Better Quality may recall that I suggested balancing real world physics with comic book physics, smoothing out these inhospitable elements so they are only mostly inhospitable. So, without Ken's heat-resisting outfit (itself a trophy item), he would take 1-4 points of damage per turn spent on the surface in the daytime. 

It's odd to call something that is so clearly a plane a "land cruiser."

The blast-ray gun fires a true ray, making it an area-effecting weapon.

It's really tacky to insult them for their speed while killing them.

Even in the future we have dungeons!

Most importantly, consider Aavon's pocket transmitter. This alone is the only accurate prediction about the year 2000 -- Aavon is using a cellphone!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Fantastic Comics #4 - pt. 3

I know, I left you with a real cliffhanger last time. Would the Golden Knight really climb down the well? Well, he does, and it's a way loonier adventure than you ever would have expected at the start of this story!

The well has become an entrance to the underworld, and a deep entrance it is! The drop to that ledge looks like it would have been at least 40', so it's a good thing he was most of the way there when the rope snapped. That the cave mouth is at the level of the ledge suggests that this is level 1, with at least one more level further down.

The first set encounter on level 1 is a giant scorpion! And not just a realistic giant scorpion, but one with tentacle-like legs, no apparent stinger, and spins webs like a spider! Look out, there's two of them!

"Horde?" I only saw two. I wonder how many were watching from a distance and then failed their morale save...

That the constrictor snake encounter comes so fast on the heels of the scorpion battle suggests to me that it was a wandering encounter, attracted by the noise of the first combat.

And then we get more violence against animals. Oh joy...

Lava boils at a temperature of 1,292-2,192 degrees F. If Golden Knight failed that extremely risky leap, he would be taking about 6-24 points of damage from the heat alone, plus should probably be bumped up higher for the toxic fumes and suffocation damage -- so let's say he's risking 8-32 points of damage.

The Editor has a choice of game mechanics for the actual leaping. There is a skill check (I would call that an expert skill check, for leaping that far in heavy mail), or a save vs. science, or even something unofficial like a Strength check.

Things get even crazier on this page, as our hero encounters winged people who, from a medieval perspective, must look an awful lot like angels, yet GK has no compunctions against trying to kill them as soon as they come towards him. On the next page, which I didn't bother sharing, GK acts like the winged men attacked him first, but it sure doesn't look like it on this page.

Moving on, this is Yank Wilson, Super Spy Q-4. Comics.org's experts put question marks by who did this one, and it does look like a quick fill-in job by someone in the Eisner shop, but I'm not sure who either.

We've got a really unusual hideout design here, with a castle built into the side of a cliff (you can see the front of it on the next page), a standalone spiral staircase around a tall column in a really tall laboratory, a skylight-covered hangar above the castle, and a back door exit from the hangar in the cliff behind the castle.








Super-explosives are a dime-a-dozen in comic books already, but what's new is that we know how much this one is worth.

Now, there's a few really weird things about this page, and not just the ridiculously high entrance to the castle. One is that Terro has the audacity to test out the explosive on the village that is basically outside the front door to his castle. I mean, he is taking zero steps to conceal his involvement here, particularly since he just flew a plane from the castle over the village in broad daylight.

But more strangely, Yank leaves Washington, D.C. for Terro's castle before the wounded have all been taken away and, as you can see on the next page, before Terro's guests have even had time to leave. How close is that castle to Washington, D.C.? Does Yank have access to Samson's transporter?

"What?! That's absurd! How could you follow the painfully obvious clues leading here?"

Yank folds like a house of cards. Critical hit? Chance of stun from head blow? It doesn't have to be a surprise attack because he swings at Yank from right in front of him.

Terro's aviator look is pretty cool, and unusual for a mad scientist.

"Pell mell" is a rare term meaning "in a confused, rushed, or disorderly manner."

Yank was only stunned, hence his quick recovery.

The 2nd edition rules for grenades includes a note about catching them before they go off.

It's a little convenient that Terro just had to gas up his plane before takeoff, but what really doesn't make sense is using it on Von Garoff. Isn't it more useful for spies to follow other spies than to kill them?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)