Weird Comics #1 - pt. 2

We're still looking at the Sorceress of Zoom -- well, not too much of her on this page; this is still focused on Tom like this guy is the most important person in the world. I still don't get what the Sorceress sees in Tom, except that this is Tom's story, and I suppose if I met Tom in person maybe I'd be wowed by his 18 Charisma. 

This stranger interests me - I like the idea of the heroes having a magic-user benefactor, but one who is not acting out of altruism, but to use the heroes as pawns against the villain. It's also worth pointing out that this stranger only has to make eye contact to cast spells. Are his eyes his wand?

If I really wanted to apply science to this story, this would need to be a more powerful version of the Levitate spell that also protects the beneficiary from cold and lack of oxygen. That city is up really high! Better hope the spell duration doesn't end before you get up there, Tom!  

Spoilers: the Sorceress' spells require her concentration, including keeping the floating city in the sky (which makes you wonder how she ever sleeps...), so all Tom has to do is distract her and they all win.

So let's move on to Blast Bennett, because I think there's something interesting going on here despite these largely empty panels. Although Blast and his pal are interested in the meteor, neither is, understandably, interested in landing on it. Here's a little spoiler from the next page: the scenario requires them to land on the meteor. So what is a poor Editor to do if his players won't go where the adventure is waiting for them? You have four mysterious spaceships show up and push the location directly into the heroes' path, so they can't evade it!

The X-Men would sure like to have an anti-Magneto gun laying around! 

I was Googling "transverse valve" and the first hits were about rectums. I don't think I've ever stopped searching for something faster.

Let's talk briefly about "universe explorers," because that really seems like an all-encompassing job title. Unless they can access the multiverse in this future? 

The last caption we get just says "Later", with no indication how long it really took to build the gun. This is one of several reasons I've never been able to come up with inventing things rules for Hideouts & Hoodlums that satisfy me. Because, as easy as it is find examples of heroes kit-bashing things together, I seldom have any sense of time for how long it should take.

Now here's an interesting new mobster. I just wish it had a name! It's called "horrible monster" on the next page, so I'll probably have to go with that. Weird how this seemingly aquatic monster -- with its webbed hands and feet and sail, not wings, on its back - is on a waterless meteor, and it makes me think the space pirates either imprisoned it here, or planted it here expressly to kill Blast if he survived the crash. 

Although this page gives us a very poor sense of scale, the next page makes it clear the horrible monster is no more than 9' tall -- and strong -- as it clobbers Blast with one blow. The first panel on this page makes me think it can camouflage itself too, since Blast and Red don't notice it until it steps away from the wall. 

This page leaves the reader with way too many questions. Are they pirates or Canadian Mounties? Blast drops the monster on the pirate-Mounties? Is Blast super strong? Actually, they should all be near weightless on a meteor (there shouldn't be air either, but let's keep ignoring that), but if the monster is easy to pick up and drop because it's near-weightless, then it won't fall on anyone very hard either. And how does it happen to fall on all four of them at once? And how lucky are they that there were only four pirates on board when they confiscate the ship? And whatever happened to the other three pirate ships??

We're going to jump into the next story about Dr. Mortal, a character in the vein of Landor Maker of Monsters. The hero is Mr. Brent, who already knows something is amiss because Dr. Mortal, his girlfriend's father, has weird, malformed manservants with double thumbs. The scenario could go in several directions at the point where Mortal asks him to leave. Mr. Brent could have belligerently insisted he wasn't going anywhere until he got some answers. He could have decided Marlene wasn't worth this and started ghosting her. But I like this middle option he chose, of snooping around. At that point, it could have gone from roleplaying to exploration, with Mortal's house becoming a hideout.

However, this is just an 8-page story, so to move things along Mr. Brent just happens to see Dr. Mortal revealing all his nefariousness through the window.

Four mostly empty panels is really disappointing and tells me this was hastily made filler. 

I'm not sure what makes this guy a monster, other than having no hair, a super-long nose, and no memory of who he was until Mr. Brent, or Gary, does ...whatever it is he does here. Is he hypnotizing the monster to make him remember? 

That is one eloquent ex-monster there. 

What is up with how Dr. Mortal wants all his monsters in Speedos behind closed doors? 

Stray bullet, or intentional shot? If I was looking to make a fast escape, and I had, oh, let's say, consumed a potion of fire resistance recently, then filling the room with fire seems like a good way to safely cover my escape. 

On the other hand...if it's a pistol with six bullets, and there's only four monsters, why not use the last two on Gary and Marlene and skip escaping altogether?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

 

Adventure Comics #48 - pt. 1

In this issue debuts Tick-Tock Tyler the Hourman. The narrator is pretty unspecific about his powers. His Miraclo gives him the "power of chained lightning" (though his powers aren't electricity-based) and "speed almost as swift as thought" (though he's never nearly as fast as the Flash). Rex's schtick (his first of several) is that he has a P.O. Box and advertises in the newspaper and asks people to send him their problems. Surprisingly, lots of people start taking him up on it, despite how sketchy that set-up sounds. 

In addition to Miraclo, Rex has a ring that contains "tear gas concentrate," enough to "mark an army cry," which seems a lot like that narrator's talent for exaggeration. That narrator shows up again to tell us Miraclo is a fluid that makes him, not invulnerable, but "insensible to harm and injury." That means he's unaware of or indifferent to harm and injury, which may not necessarily be a good thing.

For the only time in Hourman's history, Miraclo gives him the power to see in the dark (Infravision). Miraclo gives Hourman the "speed of wind," which sounds right this time, as wind can gust at 40-50 MPH and Hourman can only keep the car in sight, not gain on it. Though maybe he's still using the Race the Train power and holding back to see where their hideout is?

Hourman is relatively unharmed by being hit by a speeding car; I'm guessing that's the Imperviousness power, which means Hourman has four brevet ranks. We also see him using a leaping power; it isn't clear how many stories tall the building is (it's at least two), but it still probably falls in the Leap I category no matter how tall the building is.    

That tear gas ring that can stop an army? It affects just two people. It also seems to be just a one-shot trophy item, since it never appears again. 

Barry O'Neill is back to facing his old enemy Fang Gow, who has somehow hypnotized Inspector Le Grand's daughter, made her hate them, and made her work for an unnamed enemy nation. Barry decides to bust Jean out of prison in a scene straight out of a Western -- the French jail is so small the prisoners' cells line the outside walls, and the only substitution here is that Barry uses a car to pull out the bars rather than a strong horse (though *ahem*, I suppose it's still horsepower either way). The thought is that she will head straight to Fang Gow if freed, which is a pretty iffy proposition -- if I was Fang Gow, I would have included the hypnotic instruction to forget everything she knew about my location if Barry ever freed her.  

Apparently there's a "sinister dock section" in Paris -- that might come as a shock to the people of Paris -- and if you take the stairs down to the lower docks, you'll find a secret door to Fang Gow's newest hideout there. And maybe a flashlight too, since Jean didn't have one in her jail cell, but has one by the time she reaches the secret door. Don't forget to stock your hideouts with dropped items from the starting equipment list!

Fang Gow's new plan is to incriminate Le Grand by having Jean slip stolen plans into his diplomatic pouch when he goes to "Rumania." This is an easy one; Rumania is obviously Romania. Why even bother with fake names if you're going to put that little effort into it? 

The real surprise here is how Barry frees Jean from Fang Gow's mental influence. It seems they are using the magic-user's contest of wills mechanic to see if Barry can free Jean. But when did Barry become a magic-user? The other explanation is that they are both making skill checks to hypnotize Jean, loser is the first to fail his skill check. Poor Jean!

Fang Gow only summons back-up, three thugs, after losing the hypnotism duel. Barry uses a pistol on them only while they were at missile range, drops the only one with a gun (they are very poorly armed thugs), then drops his own gun and fights with his fists once they are in melee range. One of the remaining thugs has a knife and the other one is unarmed as far as we can see.

The gag filler Butch the Pup suggests that it costs $5 to repair a broken and ripped tent, and a fine of $100 to set up a tent on private property.

Ugh...let me just pause a moment to gripe about how low the art had sunk on Adventure Comics at this time.  Fred Schwab's cartoony art, seen here on Butch the Pup, used to grace Comic Magazine's poorer titles. Barry O'Neill, that used to be graced with the elegant art of Leo O'Mealia, now suffers the bleah art of Ed Winiarski. For some reason that defies understanding, Chad Grothkopf is now the artist on Federal Men (as he is on Slam Bradley in Detective Comics), though his ugly art bears none of the vitality of Joe Shuster. Even Ogden Whitney, competent as he is, is no Bert Christman, the original creator of Sandman. You would think every good artist in New York had already been drafted from this issue...

Oops, griped too long. I'll get to Federal Men tomorrow! (Stories read at readcomiconline.to)

 

Miracle Comics #2 - pt. 2

Welcome back! We're not quite done with Sky Wizard yet, and neither is Hawk Armand and his pals Vera and Butch. In fact, Hawk now has the upper hand and is taking his prisoners to his boss' secret kingdom in the Himalayas. Is it Black Bolt of the Inhumans? Oops, too soon for that!

Hawk may be smart, but he doesn't get the difference between a map and a globe. On a flat map, it appears the fastest way to get to Tibet from Guatemala is east, but it's actually north!  It's 9,460 miles to the Arctic Circle and back to get to Tibet. Since we know from yesterday's pages that the villains were able to catch up to the sky island in a plane that could go 300 MPH, we know sky island moves slower than that. That means it will take 37 days to reach Tibet. No wonder Sky Wizard had so much time to get free!

Let's also take a moment to talk about Kee-Shan. Keeshan would become a name used by blacks (sparingly) by the 1980s, but would be meaningless in 1940. Unless it is a phonetic spelling? It 

matches no Arabic names I can find...

I don't know about famous, but Secret Agent K-7 really was a radio character with 15-minute weekly episodes in 1939. 

Secret explosives are a common MacGuffin in spy stories. It's not clear here if the thermite bomb explodes silently or drops silently. Either way, it would be a trophy weapon to mid- and high-level Heroes (and probably best kept out of the hands of low-level ones!).

Sometimes it's the simple things that jump at me while reading these old pages, like the clever idea of having a machine gunner hiding in the back of an old cart under a pile of wood. Saving that idea for a future scenario...

I'm only including this page because I am so baffled by what is going on in the top tier. It appears that K-7 has shot the machine gunner and the driver surrenders to him as he drives past...but in the next panel he's saying "Good girl" to Yvonne because she...got the driver? So, did they jump out between panels and attack the driver? Was Yvonne shooting too, but we just never saw her do it? Did she take the wheel and run the driver over?  What do you think happened?

Hircon is clearly meant to be a Rasputin-like character. I could call this mobstertype a hypnotist, mentalist, or even a rasputin (following my examples of fu manchus, genghis khans, and napoleons). Hircon is not a real name and suggests no nationality/ethnicity.  

Ironically, petrosene is more of a real life name, even though it is used as a fictional chemical compound here. Fulmites are not a real thing either, though nitro is obviously nitroglycerin.

Would he really kill his best friend? The theory is never tested in this issue, and Charlotta could be wrong about how hypnotism works. In-game, I would say that a magically charmed fighter could be tricked into killing his best friend, and any other class might if they fail a save vs. spells. I don't think normal hypnosis should allow this, though. 

There are a lot of ways for Heroes to foil being locked in a room -- shoot the lock, bash the door in, pull it off its hinges (if you've a superhero in the party), cast a Knock spell...heck, this door even has a glass window in it, so you can just break it, reach around, and turn the doorknob from the other side. Normally, the reason why you would do this to your players is so your bad guy(s) can get a head start on running away, but our charmed doctor squanders his lead by searching for a bomb.

Here's something I don't think we've ever seen before -- un-hypnotizing someone. I guess it makes sense that one would use the same skill to unhypnotize as hypnotize. 

We're halfway through the issue now and we're just going to peek in on Dash Dixon again before heading out for the day. Yes, Dash is still dressed like a bellhop with his tighty-whiteys on over his uniform (at least you can't see his undies clearly on this page). The only cool thing here is the villain, The Eyes, a blind spy who has two light-up glass eyes (not that it makes much sense that they light up, but it becomes a semi-cool visual on the next page (and maybe I'll show you next time!)

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Mystic Comics #1 - pt. 3

In part 3, we finally get to our first mystic!

Dakor seems to have limited spells; he can't use magic to get onto Tom Denver's trans-Atlantic steamer, so he has to take the next one and arrives in Paris after Tom has already joined the Foreign Legion. Dakor, with no ability to magically persuade the Legion to give Tom up, joins the Legion to look for evidence against Tom. Tom makes it easy for him, openly admitting to have the dead man's cursed gem. To protect Tom, Dakor casts a Phantasmal Image of two lions, this being his first spell. Later, he uses this spell to make someone think their gun has turned into a snake so he drops it.

Dakor hypnotizes Tom later, but in Hideouts & Hoodlums hypnotism can be a skill and not just a spell. Hypnotism is not the same as mind control; Dakor can't make Tom stay and fight later when he turns chicken and deserts.

Dakor supposedly has "super-sensitive hearing," but you know how suspicious I am of those caption narrators, and indeed the panel showing a guard easily sneaking up on him from the side doesn't back up that claim.

The Tuareg people of the Sahara sure get shot at a lot in old comics; here, the Foreign Legion spends hours shooting at them. We're told the Tuareg are ferocious raiders, but we see no evidence of this. Maybe they were riding up to the fort to say hi? Anyway, the Tuareg capture Tom. Dakor follows invisibly. He polymorphs a sword into a dagger (an Alter Weapon spell?) to keep Tom from getting killed, then uses Poof! to move across the room when swordsmen rush him. It looks like he plans to use Rope Trick to escape, but the spell fails when a swordsman gets in the rope's way. Or, he cast Rope Trick just so the rope would lift the man into the air, which seems like a waste of a 2nd-level spell. Surprisingly, Dakor fails to rescue Tom -- a guard kills him! Something happens to the guard in the next panel, but it is so confusing I can't even tell what it is.

Later, Dakor reveals that he had earlier used telepathy (ESP/Detect Thoughts) to discover where Tom buried in the cursed gem, back in his cell. In a pretty insulting/bigoted second-to-last panel, the Tuareg allegedly tell Dakor that Allah would fear him. And to top it off, in the final panel Dakor casts a high-level Control Weather spell and creates a snowstorm. Surprise! He was actually powerful enough to stop this adventure way back before it ever left New York. Double surprise, there's actually one more page! In a sort of epilogue to this story, Dakor travels to China to return the cursed gem to a statue of "Kung," a deity worshiped by millions of Orientals, which is of course nonsense. In a final insult, Dakor fools the Chinese with ventriloquism from the statue, as if they were stupid natives.

In all, Dakor reveals enough magical firepower to need 11 brevet ranks to pull all this off.

The final feature is Dynamic Man, a feature with another android superhero, and one who's introduction is very Frankenstein-like (substitute Prof. Goettler for Dr. Frankenstein, and Dynamic Man is made from synthetic materials instead of human parts). In a twist, Goettler dies of a heart attack immediately, denying our hero a parent/supporting cast member/potential future enemy. Dynamic Man, we are told, has X-Ray Vision (a 3rd-level power), can Change Self (a 1st-level power, but he really uses it just to alter his clothes), and can fly because of his magnetic field (we aren't told how fast, but later he outpaces a train, putting him at Fly III, a 4th-level power!).

Dynamic Man soon takes the identity of Curt Cowan and applies for the FBI. The FBI, apparently not suspicious of his lack of a birth certificate or naturalization papers, takes him in, but he intends to work as Dynamic Man in secret while performing his field work.

The mobsters DM goes after are causing a drought by generating lightning -- which isn't how you would cause a drought -- and they do it to buy up some farmland cheap. Though, after building a mountain retreat and a giant electrical generator, you would think their profits would be a wash. DM has to lift a boulder blocking the entrance to their hideout with the Raise Car power. Then Nigh-Invulnerable Skin protects him from bullets. Then he uses magnetism to disarm two gunmen at once, and that's a little trickier; he may be using Gust of Wind to disarm them with a lot of flavor text covering up the wind part. He throws lightning bolts, but not to wreck the generators, not harm people, so this is actually Wreck at Range. 

King Bascom, the millionaire financier for this scheme, has super-science at his disposal like -- a two-way television! And a hose that sprays liquid "lantholum," a fictional element that is both insulating (blocks electricity-based powers) and corrosive (does damage to DM while also paralyzing him). He also has a deathtrap room that can be flooded with liquid nitrogen and the ceiling lowers to crush occupants because -- hey, he's rich, so why not? Turns out, Bascom is working for the "Richonians," which sounds like Russians a little when you say it out loud. Bascom sics a dozen hoodlums on DM, but he beats them all up. When Bascom tries to escape by plane, DM uses Wreck at Range to destroy it.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Jungle Comics #2 - pt. 1

Jungle Comics is what happens when a publisher (Fiction House) has one successful title (Jumbo Comics, packaged by the famous Eisner-Iger studio) and decides to launch another, but on the cheap. When Fletcher Hanks is your best artist (and you'll be seeing his contribution in a day or two)...

I was recently in a Q&A with Don McGregor on Facebook and I asked him about pushing the envelope for violence in comics. His response was that he wasn't trying to push violence so much as show that violence has consequences. Which is relevant here because violence is on display on practically every page of Jungle Comics, but a strangely bloodless violence, even when characters are getting stabbed in the face. I found some of these images too unpleasant for sharing on my blog, so you'll just have to take my word on the face-stabbing incident.

Today we're just looking at the first two stories from this issue, Kaanga and Red Panther (called White Panther last issue).

Kaanga is drawn by Ken Jackson -- often free of the constraints of any backgrounds -- and so stiffly that he can sometimes be mistaken for Fletcher Hanks (in fact, I'm not entirely convinced that Jackson isn't just a pen name for Fletcher, with someone else inking over him).

Compared to Kaanga, Arthur Peddy's work on Red Panther is positively dynamic, though still gory. Later, Arthur will join DC Comics and get to work on the squeaky clean later appearances of the Justice Society of America.

Now, let's talk about the pages! In the first one above, we get possibly the first instance of a stick holding crocodile jaws open in comic books. At least he doesn't kill it!

Ape men often look -- or are blatantly -- racist in nature, but this story skirts that problem by depicting the ape-men as white as they can get. Dr. Wratt may be the first mad scientist in comics who won't wear pants. Or shoes. Or socks. I think we can safely assume he's naked under that long shirt. Dr. Wratt may be evil, but he's not too evil; he operates on Kaanga using an anesthetic gas.

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Game mechanic notes: Sticking a stick in a crocodile/aligator's mouth requires a successful attack roll, followed by a failed save vs. science for the animal. The ape man achieves a surprise attack and lands a head blow that stuns -- unless Kaanga was just low on hit points from the crocodile fight, in which case Kaanga has been rendered unconscious at zero hit points."Torn legs" do not require miraculous cures in Hideouts & Hoodlums, just normal rest.

Wratt needs to only establish eye contact with his victim to hypnotize him, but we've had plenty of evidence of how easy it is to hypnotize people in comic books. He does have one limitation, though, he can only hypnotize someone to make them do something they already want to do (like escape the island). To "dominate another's will" he needs that big, stationary machine.

It's unclear if the machine does all the work, or if it only makes his normal hypnotism more effective.

A choke hold is a result on the grappling table in 2nd edition H&H.

Here is a very rare example of tripping two opponents at the same time.

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Wait a minute...if the shore was that far from his lab, how did they see the hypnotized guy get torn apart when he "neared" the shore?





The island is in the middle of a lake (I didn't share the page that established that); the long suspension bridge is the only way to the shore of the lake. But couldn't Kaanga swim the lake...?

We see ape men can be encountered in groups as large as eight.

Are the crocodiles in the lake, a lagoon, or both?

Meanwhile, Red Panther is trying to save missionaries from headhunters.

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A stunt never seen before, or likely since, in comic books, is swinging from a vine held in one's teeth and scooping up two full-grown people, one in each arm. I have toyed with the notion of restoring the multiple levels to stunts that they had in 1st ed. But how to distinguish 2nd level stunts from 1st edition ones? A thought I've had here is that a stunt should only be able to accomplish one thing, but a 2nd level stunt can accomplish multiple things (2? 3?) at once.

A skill check can discover a hidden trap if the Hero is actively searching for them, though Red Panther seems to just happen to spot one here as if by accident. 

A long established practice in RPGs is to combine traps with something to fight, such as a tiger in a pit trap.

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It seems odd that Red Panther chooses to jump into the pit and kill the tiger, rather than simply reach into the pit and pull the man out. He could have even helped the tiger out and sicced it on the headhunters.

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Red Panther is able to use a stunt -- cutting his bonds against the sword -- even though combat has already started because he has not yet taken a combat action.

This is not the first time the term "giant" has been used to apply to a combatant who is actually just normal-sized. This is why I was thinking of creating a pseudo-giant mobstertype.

A push attack does not need to be away from you; here it shows a push attack being used to move an opponent behind you.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Feature Comics #26

I've talked before about how easy disguise needs to be in Hideouts & Hoodlums, and how easy it should be for Heroes to disguise themselves as mobsters. But here we see how easy it is for mobsters to disguise themselves as mobsters too!

Captain Fortune stops to woo a maiden in the street. Because he's such a lady's man? No, so she'll be moved to lie about seeing him! Given the conventions of the genre, it should only take a positive encounter reaction result to get a fair maiden to do that for you.

From Mickey Finn we learn that you could make up to $10 a day selling brushes door to door.

The Clock and this thug/robber tell us that this lone mobster managed to net $250,000 over three robberies. That's an awful lot of money to leave in a hideout as recoverable loot. I've tried before to deal with a solid demarcation between recoverable loot and claimable treasure, but the line remains frustratingly blurry, particularly with Heroes of different Alignments.

Back when I first read this story, I thought "Oh, how unusual -- a mysteryman knows hypnotism!" It was the first indication (there will be more) that The Clock doesn't fit just the mysteryman class. It was also an early example that the mysteryman class was varied enough and led to my adopting the concept of stunts for them instead of set skills.

By now, though, I've read every kind of character practice hypnotism and it's not so big a deal anymore...

This is Rance Kean's strip, but the real star of this page is the sharpshooting outlaw Dirk Purdue who managed to shoot half the mustache off a man through an open window.

Now, there is the fact that this only happened to a supporting cast member, was not crucial to a combat or a life-or-death situation, and so the Editor could choose to hand-wave game mechanics in instances like these and just say that happened. However, doing this sets a precedent for "impossible shots" being possible in your game and players will ask to try the same things eventually.

I would require a natural 20 on the attack roll for an impossible shot like that (giving a generous 5% chance of success).

This is from a filler page called Off-Side.  I include it mainly for the gag on the right, which is what I feel like whenever people around me are talking about sports.

This is a well-equipped Charlie Chan, with a miner's helmet and gas mask, but even those aren't enough to save him from a cave-in. Cave-ins are tricky, mechanics-wise. The damage from the falling weight alone should be enough to render Charlie unconscious, and then the continuing damage from having that weight on top of him should kill him. Perhaps a generous Editor would allow two saves here -- a save vs. missiles to avoid the initial falling damage and a save vs. science to avoid the continuing damage (assuming the rubble all became miraculously balanced over him).

Here, Charlie beats a dynamite stick in initiative and gets the chance to toss it away; dynamite sticks get thrown at the end of the turn, ignoring normal procedure for missiles, and don't go off until their opportunity in the next turn.

It's unclear what Kirk is doing, but it seems he's shooting the second dynamite stick in mid-air. While not an impossible shot, I'd be inclined to make a dynamite stick thrown in the dark to be AC 2 or even 1...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

The Funnies #24

The continuing adventures of Alley Oop have him brawling with his ex-friend on the back of a flying pteranodon (the narrator refers to it as a pterodactyl, but it is way too large to be a pterodactyl). Any combat that takes place on a moving animal's back, moving vehicle, or some other terrain where balance comes into play should require a save vs. science from each participant per turn to keep from falling.

According to Alley Oop, pteranodons must have a low Armor Class from frontal attacks because their beaks are so hard (or Alley is just griping because his attack rolls have all been so bad).

If nothing else, maybe Reg'lar Fellers here makes the best case that anyone should have a chance to hypnotize others. But how good a chance? A 1 in 6 chance of triggering a save vs. plot?

Captain Easy has been struggling for the past few months, with its directionless plotting, but here Easy struggles with an issue Hideouts & Hoodlums players may struggle with someday -- how far can you move someone against their will that your character is grappling? I would have the grappler roll to hit and the victim roll a save vs. science and then look at those numbers. If the to hit roll was 5 or more higher than what was needed, the grappler can move the victim a half-Move away. If the save was 5 or less below what was needed, the grappler can move the victim another half-Move away.

The Editor must be careful to remain neutral, especially when the players are bluffing. Sure, the Editor knows that Easy's cannon has no gunpowder in it, but he has to realize that the guards in the truck would have no way of knowing that and should be given a morale save accordingly.

Machine guns have been a trophy weapon available in the game since Book II: Mobsters & Trophies, with canons and anti-aircraft guns being added in the more military-themed Supplement I: National. Note that Fighters do need tripod mounts for machine guns, as pictured correctly here, and anti-aircraft guns are not handheld weapons for anyone other than buffed Superheroes. 

As for that antique plane...even I wouldn't be mean enough to give my players transportation that antiquated...

Decades before The Godfather gave this a different context.  This gag filler is called Hold Everything.

This seems to be a clear-cut case, to me, of a stunt I gave the Cowboy class (in Supplement III: Better Quality) called Quick Draw.  Otherwise, I wouldn't even roll for initiative if one side has their guns out and the other doesn't.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)