Fight Comics #4 - pt. 2

We return to Kinks Mason to find he's...well, improvising a club to bet a pirate captain with, I have no problem with that, but using a cape, underwater, to distract swordfish like a bullfighter...that seems problematic to me...

...especially since Kinks does it to pull off this trick, which I find flat-out impossible. I know, as a good Editor, I should be encouraging my players to come up with clever solutions and give them a chance to work, but sometimes you need to consider the mood, or tone, you want for your campign and if the idea is compatible. 

We're jumping ahead now into the futuristic adventures of Saber. How can you tell it's the future? Well...there's that weird machine next to his desk, and that weird machine hanging from the ceiling. And no clutter!

Saber unlikely has active powers buffing him in panel 3. The spies failed to gain surprise, which allowed Saber to "size up the situation." Saber appears to be using Leap I, but the distance crossed is no different than what he could have reached running, so the leap is flavor text.

Saber is rolling great for damge to knock out one person per punch, but it is possible without buffing. It is also possible he is buffed with the Get Tough power. 

Saber fails his saving throw vs paralysis.  

It's nice that, in the future, spies will all wear uniforms so you can tell they are spies.

It's unclear if Saber is saying he "must get out of here" from within his jail cell because he is frustrated with the speed of the judicial system or because his cell is somehow Saber-proofed. He doesn't look like he's trying very hard to escape, but maybe we missed all his wrecking things checks.

It's also unclear why that exchange with the guard had to happen through telepathy; I would be comfortable with handwaving that as flavor text, since it doesn't really impact the story whether they spoke out loud or not.

An electo-mort seems to be short for electric mortar, though I can think of several better names for the weapon than that, like an electro-mortar, e-mortar, or - heck - why not just call it a raygun?

500-foot leaps are covered by the Leap I power...but the rules as written are intentionally vague as to what the lifting capacity is while leaping. If my explanation for the leap power is my super-strong leg muscles, then maybe I should be able to carry more than someone who can leap because their magic belt lets them float. The important thing is to reach a decision between player and Editor and remain consistent.

"That just about finishes everyone in this stronghold! Oh, that's the wrong building? I just murdered dozens of sunbathers? Oops!" It never ceases to amaze me when I find someone arguing that heroes didn't kill in the golden age, because people like Saber had absolutely no compunctions stopping them from casual slaughter. There is absolutely zero consideration of bringing these traitors in for trial going on here; it's more like -- ooo, this is easy!

It's very gracious of Saber to give credit to Lt. Chandler, but I think we can trace a lot of his success to the absurdly deadly weapons Saber keeps finding, and that the spies have nothing compatible. The spies/sunbathers on the rooftop apparently had no weapons to fire back. While Saber is zipping around with an atomic disintegrator, the enemy ships are just trying to ram his - the equivalent of letting your 1940-era Heroes arm themselves with sub-machine guns, while the mobsters are armed with sticks and broken bottles. 

This is the second half of a two-page strip called Slug-Nutty Sam. The end gag isn't particularly good, but neither would the fall be lethal in Hideouts & Hoodlums; falling damage always leads to unconsciousness, except for falls resulting from deathtraps. And that is assuming an average or higher damage roll for the fall; a three-story fall could still be as little as 3 points of damage if the rolls are lucky enough.

Wang Chi and Chin Lo are surprisingly realistic Chinese names...so it's all the more disappointing that this story takes place in Mongolia. Although most Westerners, even at the time, thought of Mongolia as a province of China, Mongolia was more closely aligned with the Soviet Union than to China at this time.

The twist plot - that the Heroes are recruited by the bad guy under false pretenses - is worth pointing out, and an exciting scenario alternative when used sparingly.

Shanghai is probably a thousand miles from where "Wang Chi" lives; that's a long distance to travel to recruit the Americans. Geopolitically, the story makes little sense; Wang would be better off and have a shorter route to go heading north/northwest to recruit some Soviet pilots. 

Again, when you ignore these particulars, the plot itself is clever, using your own gunmen to convince Chip an innocent man is the enemy.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fight Comics #4 - pt. 1

If you'd asked me this morning what I planned to do with my day, writing about George Tuska's Shark Brodie boxing a kangaroo probably wouldn't have been any of my guesses. 

Not that he's actually boxing the kangaroo yet; at first, he's just sailing along, minding his own business, when he gets his first wandering encounter (spoiler: there will be more of these). The encounter is a chance for a good deed and some easy experience points, so Shark leaps at the chance. 

A dory is a small boat with pointed ends and high, flaring sides, like a large rowboat, only it can also support a sail or a motor. 

Here's a clever tip for Editors; when the players aren't spoiling for a fight, but you want to make a fight happen, have the bad guys make this mistake. 

I'm honestly surprised that players have never actively sought this out in one of my H&H campaigns yet, but fighting for gamblers seems like an easy way to make both xp and $, though Lawful Heroes should not be considering this option. 

Ten to one odds is very good odds. I would probably sink some levels in the fighter class into that kangaroo if I wanted it to be that challenging.

I like how there's no overarching plot to this installment, but just a series of random encounters that are made to overlap thanks to Stubby and Fritz motivating each encounter.

I hope I'm not reading too much into this page to think Susie and Dolly are prostitutes, but since Susie is a pickpocket we can always stat them as thieves instead of vamps. 

We're going to jump from there into the next feature, Kinks Mason. 

A 100-lb. swordfish is average size, so at 300 lbs. would be a large swordfish, at 900 lbs. a huge swordfish, and ...well, luckily giant swordfish don't exist in real life, and I would call this a huge swordfish. 

Huge swordfish can overturn small boats.  

I'm interested in how treasure can be concealed on a fish and be hook enough for an underwater adventure.  Treasure is always a good adventure hook, but don't forget that treasure should usually be guarded.

Sometimes it isn't enough to dangle plot hooks and Editor's can get impatient. When the Editor wants to get a character to an adventure locale so badly that he takes extraordinary measures to move the character there against his will that's usually called railroading, but here we can call it swordfishing.

Ooo, nice surprise encounter at the end here!

At first I thought he was going to be a ghost pirate, but that he's got a Potion of Water Breathing with a really impressive duration is a novel wrinkle. Since he's a captain, level titles tell me that he's probably a 5th level fighter. Having trained huge swordfish instead of a pirate crew is another interesting wrinkle. Did he have a Potion of Animal Control as well?

I'm not sure what's going on in panel 5. Either Kink is knocking over the table to serve as cover (which is sensible), or he knocked it over so he can jump off of it and lunge for the sword, burning a stunt and essentially wasting a turn of combat. 

If he managed to keep the sword maybe the extra damage over punching would be worth it, but Sneely (a terrible name for a villain, by the way, other than the villain's sidekick) manages to break the sword. This could be a non-superhero wrecking things roll, or the Editor had simply decided in advance that the sword was rusted and useless and just there to inconvenience the Hero. 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 4

We're back (after a LONG time away!), still with the Three Comrades, though you'll only see two of them on this page. 

Max should be statted as a guard, or maybe a beat cop. 

Note that our two Heroes intentionally surrender to Von Sneer, no doubt to learn what he's up to. If they'd wanted to, they could have rushed him, even from across the room, and still gone before him if they'd won initiative (which I see happen in comics a lot!).

It's worth noting that Heroes shouldn't have to worry about what languages they know, but you're encouraged to take this benefit away from non-Hero characters. This is a good way to give Heroes another advantage over normal people (and here, greatly assists the plot!).

This page brings up an interesting point, because a lot of the time Heroes are tied up for deathtraps, but are almost never gagged. And they almost never yell for help either. Now, we don't expect them to because it doesn't come off as very heroic, but it is certainly the most natural reaction to being tied up. 

I am skeptical about allowing a filing cabinet tipping over on someone to knock them out - though it will famously be super-effective against Iron Man years later - and would probably allow this to do no more than 1 point of damage. Of course, it's possible for mobsters to only have 1 hit point!

That's a really good guess as to what the oil drums are for. I probably would have guessed they were smugglers myself, but this makes for a better story with higher stakes.

It's weird how physics work in comic books to feed the narrative. A filing cabinet tipping over knocks out a guard, but Lucky bounces down a flight of stairs, caught halfway in a barrel, and seems virtually unharmed. Two thoughts: 1) this proves that damage ranges are a thing, and 2) it makes me wonder if objects should be able to soak damage. I have ruled before if you fall on a person, you can half your damage and transfer the other half to the person you're landing on. But if we applied that to inanimate objects...then armor has to work much differently game mechanics-wise. I think we'll skip this for now.

"Attaboy, Lucky, keep 'em busy killing you!" Seriously, how is Lucky not dead, as the mobsters shoot down at him at short range and he's only moving as fast as a motorboat attempting to match to their vessel? Luckily, in the hands of a 1 HD mobster, even sub-machine guns only get 1 attack per turn. 

I am as unconvinced by that wooden beam being able to do that as I was by the filing cabinet. This is a very generous Editor these boys' players have.

Using the oil seemed an ingenious move at first, but wouldn't starting a fire with it have been more effective?

We're done with those crazy kids and moving onto the next feature, The Woman in Red. The violence level is pretty extreme in this feature, with a man being shown (granted, in silhouette) hanging from the rope that you see on this page on the previous page, and on this page you get a knife thrown into someone's neck (again, granted, not the first time I've seen that in a golden age comic book; it even features into Amazing Man's origin story). 

I mainly include this page for two points. One, American mansions have a tendency to be castles or have many castle-like features in golden age comic books -- and that is a good thing, because you can freely borrow castle maps from That Other Game and use them here and they fit this game. And secondly, telling the handedness of someone from how they tied a knot sounds like a basic skill check to me.

Okay, one more observation - other than having very pronounced cheekbones, there doesn't seem to be anything too terrifying about The Terror.

 

Since The Woman in Red and The Terror are both unencumbered and, hence, moving at the same movement rate, it's only natural that WiR fails to catch up. 

 

Here, we learn that you can open a secret door and still get a surprise turn after. 

 

A 200' drop is a very tall castle, unless this also accounts for a dry moat at the base of the castle wall too? 

 

It's not clear where the mysteriously handy rope is hanging from. Depending on how far down she is when she passes it would help me determine how fast she's falling and, from that, the AC to reach out and "hit" the rope -- AC 9 in the first second, AC 7 in the second second, AC 4 in the third second - by then she's fallen more than halfway. I might also require a Strength or a Dexterity check (whichever is better on the 1st second; whichever is worse on the 3rd second) to determine if she can keep a hold on the rope after catching it, or if her downward momentum pulls her past it. 

 

I'm puzzled by what that shape is in front of the window, as I'm not aware of that being a castle feature. I mean, it makes sense, as it makes it harder for anyone to smash through the window and fit inside, but I just don't know what that pole would be called.  

 

I wish I had enough detail to map this castle, because we keep getting tantalizing glimpses of how elaborate it is. So far we have a rooftop access door from a tower, multiple staircases, rooms that are only accessible by secret doors and outside windows (or by digging your way into them), and a literal dungeon with cell doors (double-barred no less) on the same floor with a library.
 

 

More interesting points - the Woman in Red gives away her real name in order to gain someone's trust, a rare instance of a gun being used to disarm a knife, and in the Scooby Doo-esque climax we learn that the butler - that is, someone named Butler - did it.

 

 

 

 

Here's a quick look at the next feature, which gives us two novel twists - one, a new location to rescue a damsel in distress from, and two, a new "Macguffin" - a military code book (thank goodness it's not yet another new invention!).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)
 

 

  

Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 2

Here we have Dr. Strange using wrecking things, only to find his great strength "sapped." This actually happens just like that in Hideouts & Hoodlums, when activated powers run out and you're out of powers to activate. By waiting until the next day for his deathtrap, the villains have actually given him time to regain all his powers from the previous day.

I'm tempted to stat wild hill warriors as berserkers. I could also make them 2nd level fighters, using the level title of warrior from That Other Game.  I could also just use natives, since that's the broad stereotype being used here. 

I've never seen elephants in an arena before! Too bad Doc has Raise Elephant prepared. And a Leap power (looks like II or better) that makes escaping from an arena super-easy. 

As unstoppable as Dr. Strange seems to be, you have to wonder why he doesn't stay at the arena and take out Kong then, and sneaks back in disguise later. Maybe because there's more pages to fill...?

"You're fighting for freedom, men! Don't waste your shots! Keep dropping like flies - even though I could have wrecked my way through that wall for you at any time!"

Or could he? Dr. Strange has to be at least level 3, the bare minimum for wrecking stone walls, but he could also just be rolling poorly and failing to wreck the walls the whole fight so far. 

Or..maybe he really did not try wrecking through the wall until now. This is an early precedent for a trope of the superhero genre to come, that says superheroes try to stay neutral in the course of events until something occurs that ordinary people can't deal with on their own, like a deathray. Of course, not every superhero respects this trope - like Superman himself, who almost exclusively dealt with mundane crime despite being able to do so much more. 

Is this our first evidence that Doc is Neutral in Alignment? Hmm...

Interestingly, the deathray can only affect a single target at a time. So, even though it is killing them like a deathray, it is also, game mechanics-wise, perhaps no different than a Magic Missile spell (with cool flavor text). 

And here we've got a line-up of standard cliches - the big cat (a panther, this time) in the cage, the damsel in distress...and somehow Doc gets to the panther before it gets to the damsel? Now, I've covered many times before in this blog that random initiative needs to trump common sense when it comes to who goes first in a comic book story, but, Doc is wrecking things in the same turn that the panther is first attacking. So, we can only assume, then, that the panther missed with every attack on Virginia, even though it didn't even need to roll very high (reminds me of my rolls when I'm playing!). 

So, we also get the cliches of a big cat being killed (SIGH), and the villain threatening to blow himself up to take out the Hero. I bet it doesn't work...

Hmm...now, if I was running this scenario, I would have let Kong drop the potion as a free action; that is too easily done, and not a direct attack, for it to be trumped by initiative. 

Also, why not use Kong's raygun to revive the men, instead of experimenting with Alosun in a totally untested way (though, I suppose, Doc could argue that they're already dead, what worse could happen to them?)?

Here's a new character and an interesting twist on Tarzan and the Jungle Book. Instead of the infant being raised by animals, he's raised by yogis in India. They teach him potent spells like Rope Trick and ...Wall of Force, to stop mad dogs with? That seems a bit like overkill.

*SIGH* ...what I wouldn't give to read a magic-user story that doesn't throw around ridiculously overpowered spells all the time. Causing a submarine to rise into space ...well, that's got to be a Wish spell. So we've already given The Ghost 17 brevet ranks! Just to get him through a wandering encounter!

Here we get a dose of more insanely powerful magic being tossed about haphazardly -- a Telekinesis spell as powerful as the Raise Trolley Car power, and a Teleport Sandwich spell able to reach around the world. 

Chance's only interest in fighting crime is when the man who just hired him to entertain at parties was murdered. Had the man not been murdered, would Chance have been content to be a party magician instead?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Rocket Comics #2 - pt. 3

We're still reading Steel Shark. It's a curious feature; I can't tell from this story if this is supposed to be some time in the future or if it's a more hi-tech version of 1940, so I had to go back and read the first issue's story and this is actually meant to be 1960. The widespread use of television is pretty accurate. But Flux-Ray guns that melt ships in minutes? That's a wrecking ray that didn't exist in 1960. 

Wrecking is so often instantaneous in the comics that it's interesting to read about a ray that takes over 1 exploration turn to wreck. 

"Gyro-pilot control" must mean autopilot, which is odd because autopilot had already been a thing since 1914.

Batteries seem to work different in this 1960; I can't guess how a lurch would foul the batteries. Batteries only "foul" like that when they've been overcharged, and even then the risk is more about an explosion than suffocation, because not that much hydrogen should be leaking.  

We know we're not in the kids adventure genre when Tommy is sent below deck. If this was Dickie Dare, that boy would be all up in the action! 

"Aqua-vapo"? You're trying awfully hard to sound scientific when you have to come up with a new word for water vapor. Water vapor - also known as fog -- doesn't seem like it would make for concealment as well as smoke would. I might treat fog as light cover.   

There are some puzzling aspects of this page and the next.

1. What is the area of effect of a depth charge? How much in danger was Jones' sub? 

2. Again, we are told the subs are very close together, so close that the Flux-ray-guns backfire and jolt Steel Shark just for holding the controls. How do they feedback only to the controls and not the whole sub? And why would flux rays bounce back? I suppose we need to understand what flux rays are first, and I doubt we're ever going to get that information.

Again, the science here is pretty sketchy, but we really can't say for sure that dry ice wouldn't counter a flux ray, since we still don't know what a flux ray is.  

More interesting is the fact that Steel Shark is able to observe Jones telling his crew how to counter the flux ray. Did Jones forget to turn off their closed circuit television connection? It reminds me of the beginning of this sketch, which I just happened to watch earlier today - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp_Fw5oDMao

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this story is the last page, which says "Harry 'A' Chesler Syndicate" at the bottom, proving this comic was produced by the Chesler Shop for Hillman (really, from its pedestrian-ness alone I would have suspected that from this title). Since there's nothing else on that page worth seeing, you're just gonna' have to take my word on this....   

We're going to jump into the next story now, which is Buzzard Barnes. There's little to see here, including the amount of cover necessary to hide behind for a successful hiding skill check. 

Past that...it's looking like this was a false lead. If Maynard was really up to something suspicious, he probably wouldn't get drunk right away, and he would try to flee rather than pick a fight. Let's see if I'm right...

Nope, I was wrong! So what was the point of the drunkenness? Was he feigning drunkenness to appear innocent, or is he just an alcoholic spy? Or is he a drunken hoodlum? That would be interesting - we haven't see one of those on the blog in a long time!  

You know, I'm also thinking how easy this scenario was: figure out who the spy is, from a list of one suspect.

We've seen prisoners hurt themselves before in order to wreck bonds. Now, every hero has a chance of being able to just flex their muscles and break bonds -- but not much of a chance unless a superhero. If I haven't made this ruling before, I would consider allowing a +1 bonus for every point of damage you inflicted on yourself in the process.

Now, how did Andy just happen to stumble across Barnes, inside the enemy hideout? Barnes should immediately be suspicious that Andy is also working with the bad guys.

Nope, Barnes still isn't suspicious! I think we're going to have to chalk this one up as a plot hole.

A supercharged pursuit plane sounds like a trophy item. I would say that it moves at normal speed (whatever that is for that type of plane) except when in pursuit mode (in a chase scene), and then it is always x amount of Movement rate faster. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.) 

  

Rocket Comics #2 - pt. 1

I don't recall a thing about reviewing #1 of this series, which doesn't bode well as we begin issue #2...

We start with Rocket Riley and pals crash landing on a surprisingly solid and foliage-covered Saturn. We can't necessarily call this bad comic book science, though; the term "gas giant" didn't even exist until the 1950s. 

YES! Oh, sorry, I got excited because this new alien starts with a Z, so I don't have to quickly add it to the Mobster Manual Vol. 1, which is just a few pages away from being completed now.

We don't know anything about Zarno yet except that they must fly very quickly, or have a higher chance of surprise, for it to pounce on Griselda before Rocket can shoot at it.

Sadly, the Zarno is shot dead on the first try on the next page and we learn nothing else about it.

Now this is nice; the big globe with chairs in it is a sort of floating elevator that doesn't need a shaft. It's the kind of trapping that would be perfect for an ultra hi-tech hideout.

Not every villain is so considerate to tell you what you'll encounter in his dungeon before you go there. Oh, interesting, giant leeches and - WHOA! HARPY-VAMPIRES?? I've gotta see this...

+

Huh, those do look like harpies. So they're harpies, and they have all the powers of a vampire? I've gotta put these in the Mobster Manual now. Sigh. More to do...

Oh come on! They're dead already? From an ice gun? Harpy-vampires must have some kind of special vulnerability to ice. 

Speaking of ice guns...it's powered by a detonator? Was the writer thinking of batteries, but couldn't remember the word?

Well, we lost the harpy-vampires already. Let's check in on the giant leeches and see if they're -- OH MY GOSH, the giant leeches are dead already too! How is he even killing them by hand? Are these some rare form of vertebrate leech and he's snapping their spines? Or is he squeezing them too hard, like a roll of Charmin's toilet paper?

In our next story, here's a pearl that's worth a fortune, when the average pearl is going to be worth $100. Statistically, the chance of its worth doubling that many times is highly unlikely.

Shadowy figures are a mobstertype since Supplement V. 

Lastly, this is a page from The Phantom Ranger. I'd previously added killer stallions to the Mobster Manual. I'll have to add a note about how lack of water and being driven crazy by heat can turn a horse into a killer stallion.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)