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.)

Amazing Man Comics #11 - part 1

Now that I'm finally publishing Amazing Man (see Funny Picture Stories #7 - on sale now!), covering this story might not only seem biased, but posting pages seems like it might hurt future sales - but oh well!

There are some big changes this issue, starting with how Aman seems to have dropped his first name, John. Gone also is the interesting struggle in John Aman between hero and antihero; the Council of Seven has decided these stories need to be a lot more straightforward from now on. 

Aman is "purified" by fire, but what this would mean game mechanically isn't clear. Is it simply a magical effect of Alignment correction? Is Aman taking damage from the fire? Given that his initial tests involved stabbing him with knives, I'm guessing he's taking damage. Aman is a really good sport about this, as I'm guessing they would not allow him to buff himself with the Resist Fire power. 

We begin to get some explanation here about why Aman is being dressed up like John Carter of Mars. Having an indestructible costume would normally be some comfort, but maybe Aman is secretly wishing it covered up enough of him to offer more protection? For that matter, how much should an indesctruble costume protect him?  In the 2nd edition rulebook, I have indestructible costumes being statted as Armor Class 2 (and remember, lower is better). My description wisely does not describe how much of the body needs to be covered by the costume, so maybe these straps and sternum hield are enough? Is what a costume looks like really no more than flavor text?

Has the purification ritual protected Aman from the Great Question's influence, or did Aman make his saving throw vs. charm?

It's just as well that Everett doesn't give us an exact number of days it takes to get from Tibet to Louisiana by plane. Even Google Maps can't tell me this today! What I can't figure out, which is probably more important, is where Aman was heading before he wound up near Louisiana. It certainly isn't on the way to Chicago or New York City from Tibet. Maybe he was planning on vacationing in Florida before fighting evil?

As far as I can tell, the "lost" in the "lost bayous of Louisiana" means that they have disappeared due to landscaping the terrain, as opposed to unmapped "lost world"-type areas. Still, this first interpretation is definitely more interesting and lends itself to adventure fiction.

This page attempts to explain away Amazing Man's John Carter rip-off togs as a "Tibetan uniform." Could this be the Great Question's final laugh at Aman, convincing him that this was the latest in Tibetan fashion?

I appreciate that Amazing Man has the subtlety, that you don't see often in superheroes, to climb a wall and oberve the bad guys unnoticed. Because he's climbing vines, I would probably still make the player roll a skill check, but at a large bonus. 

I like this hideout set-up, where the prison cells are behind a cell with three panthers in it (we'll see there are three of them on the next page). How Aman circumvents the panthers to get to the prisoner is great too, showcasing the versatility of this power. 

I've probably talked about this before, but I haven't posted in a long time and I can't remember. The issue is, how would Amazing Man have this power in H&H? Because Green Mist is not a 1st-level superhero power, or even a low-level one. It does bear some resemblance to the 1st-level magic-user spell, Poof! Could that be all it is - just an exception of allowing a Superhero to prepare a Magic-User spell as a power, and everything about it that isn't movement is flavor text?  

Three panthers is actually a pretty tough encounter in H&H, so it's disappointing that Aman takes them each out in one punch. It is more likely than them being knocked out that they have each failed their morale saves after taking damage and they choose to stop fighting. 

These bayou pirates have a lot of personality to them. We even get help with statting them. One is a brute (a variant of thug) and another is a slick hoodlum. Garlock, their leader, doesn't seem the master criminal type, but might be a mid-level fighter, since he can subdue panthers.

The brute gets upgraded on this page to pseudo-giant, a mobstertype that appears in the recently released Mobster Manual.  The throw is a very effective grappling move in the 2nd edition grappling rules - probably not enough on its own to take out a pseudo-giant, but Amazing Man may be buffed with one of the Get Tough powers to boost his damage. We also learn there are thugs present in the room (I see two of them, not counting Slick and Garlock).

Aman can be casual about what happens to the treasure because his Editor awards xp for treasure just for taking it out of the hideout. What happens to it after that doesn't matter if you don't have personal expenses!

But Aman is clearly gaming the system; there was no reason for him to kill those three alligators (he calls them crocodiles, but it makes sense that he did; he hasn't been in the U.S. more than six months). He obviously did it for the experience points!

What I like here is that Everett gives us almost a whole page of chemistry-building between Aman and Zona. Unlike Lois' attraction to Superman's animal magnetism, it looks like Zona is going to be attracted to how thoughtful Aman is (offering her his jacket for modesty) as much as for his rippling muscles. 

This next bit of research I had done back in November for the Public Domain Heroes Facebook group, but I'll reshare it here. 

I had long assumed that Amazing Man's companion, Zona Henderson, had a made-up first name, or it was a nickname (short for Arizona?). According to SSA.gov's baby names by years list - https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi - Zona was a real name, though a rare one, ranking 712th-820th most common baby name in the span of years I think she was most likely born.

And, of course, we get the familiar trope of televisions being able to function like crystal balls. 

Chuck Hardy has moved up to second feature (which, I understand, was not generally considered the second best position in a comic book; it went first, last, and then alternated in towards the center). 

Frog men last appeared in Fantastic Comics #3. They turn up like bad pennies!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 1

It's no Multiverse of Madness, but on this Dr. Strange adventure we get a trip to the Orient. Or at least as far as Chinatown, so far. Is this page worth sharing? I thought it noteworthy for three things. One, "plans for canal fortifications" felt like such a welcome relief from the upteenth adventure to revolve around a stratoplane or a new type of torpedo. Two, there's the interesting distinction between Chinese and Manchurian. Although we think of Manchuria as part of China today, and it was pretty much assimilated by China long before 1940, throughout most of the 1930s Manchuria had been conquered and "liberated" by Japan. Three, most heroes' contacts in Chinatown are "respectable" businessmen who turn out to be criminals, but this story skips over all that and reveals this guy Fang as a gang leader from the start. This is better (and less racist), as it frees up the rest of Chinatown to be represented by real respectable businessmen. 

That's got to be pretty embarrassing, falling for the ol' go-in-first-while-I-lock-the-door-behind-you trick. Almost as embarrassing as the collection of racist cliches in panel 3! But even that may pale in comparison to how incredibly dorky Doc looks in panel 4, with his incredibly misshapen shoulder, Don King hairstyle, and his short pants that barely reach his socks.   

That is a lot of attackers coming at Doc, but he does have a tactical advantage of bottlenecking them on the same side of the railing. 

More interesting to me is the last panel, with all the hideout dressing in the corner. There's a box, a pail, a coffer, a barrel, a chest, a...couch? A drip pan for oil changes? It's harder to tell with the smaller objects.

Trap doors with slides to lower levels? How D&D-like! A room filled with coffins? Also D&D-like! We only differ when the action moves away from the hideout to a new locale -- though cargo ships can also be hideouts!

I'm pretty sure Doc just killed four men with his Raise Elephant power. 

He could have wrapped up the adventure right there by capturing the men on the ship and learning from them who they worked for, but instead he inexplicably leaves the scene to go talk to someone, so the ship can slip away in his absence, and then has to get lucky trying to find it again. He can't track over water, so this is just a question of a lucky wandering encounter, and/or the Editor just being nice. 

Doc is pretty rich, owning a yacht and a plane already. We've talked many times about brevet ranks for this game. Do we need to start talking about ...brevet starting money?

Doc is lucky that plane isn't a rental!

There isn't any mechanic that would determine if your foot catches in something, so that's simply Editor's Fiat.

Kicking a plane out of the water...hmm. I'm tempted to say that's Extend Missile Range with several Roman numerals after it...but since it isn't used for combat, this could just be flavor text. 

More important is the following panel. How far can a superhero swim? Non-superhumans have swam over 100 miles without stopping, so the fact that Doc swam 30 isn't that impressive. Maybe it's the speed that he swam it? But that could be measured easily with a Race the- power. Anyway, back to my original question...I'm going to say that H&H Heroes can swim 1-6 miles per point of Constitution they have.

Hoo-hum, the old cliche of the warship disguised as a tramp! 

Shielding himself from fire is easy, that's just the power Fire Resistance at work. But shielding or blocking someone else with his own body...that requires a different mechanic, one that is universal in application and not specific to a certain power -- since there are many circumstances in a H&H game when the Heroes might need to shield people.

I am reminded of a recent time I ran Monsters!Monsters!, the Tunnels & Trolls variant where you play the monsters. In it, the only game mechanic outside of combat was saving throws. Need to hide? Make a saving throw! Trying to duck behind cover? Make a saving throw! Shield someone with your body? Oh! Hmm...

There's some insidious history alteration going on here I should point out. Kachukuo isn't a real place, but it looks like it's based on Manchukuo. Yes, Manchukuo had a ruthless dictator, but that dictator was Japanese, not Manchurian, and he was Hirohito -- Manchukuo was a puppet state created in Manchuria by their Japanese "liberator"/conquerors, as I alluded to at the beginning of this post. Suggesting that the Manchurians themselves were the bad guys suggests Japanese sympathies which surely evaporated in December 1941.

 

Besides that, there's a rare (at this point) example of a superhero punching a villain upwards into the air. The H&H mechanics deal with converting damage into feet pushed at a 1:1' ratio, but if that should be modified to account for gravity, I haven't done so yet - nor will likely do, honestly; sometimes realism just robs us of chances to have fun.  

The old man being attacked feels like a wandering encounter, while the twist of the "main bad guy" being so civil is refreshing, even if he's just being civil in a Bond villain-way.

Doing random good deeds have a way of coming back to help Heroes later, like how the old man knows a secret entrance. It would have been nice to see how the secret door operated! We do get some nice hideout dressing, with the carved pillars, and the closing walls trap is a classic. 

 

I think it's interesting how there's guards stationed at the secret entrance. I guess Kong doesn't like to take any chances? Or perhaps they too were just wandering encounters, heading back to their guard station.

 

It's interesting that Kong is so sure this cage will work when he knows Doc just busted through a stone wall. I wonder what the bars are made out of/what they were treated with? 

I also like the prismatic raygun, each color having a different power. This one is quite powerful - not for the charm ray, but the raise dead ray.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)
 

 

Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 3

Welcome back to our blog, where we discuss the game Dungeons & Babes. Oops, that's not a thing?  Well, you'd think it was from this page of Golden Knight. Because, obviously, medieval maidens went around stabbing men while dressed in modern swimsuits. I'm familiar with the phrase, "never trust a dame," but who knew dames could backstab for double damage? Is Alice a femme fatale? A D&D thief? Or just a highly effective, perhaps mid-level fighter?

Does wrecking things get easier during confusion? I don't think so, but it allowed him to act undetected. 

Then there's the concept of "saving your strength." It actually is a Hideouts & Hoodlums rule that you get +1 to hit if you take a turn to aim. What if you took an extra turn to rest for each +1 you wanted to your wrecking things roll? 

"Stay away from this fight, Alice!"

"What, are you kidding me? I just killed two guys on my way here, while you were being tortured so long your hair grew out!

"Alice! Alice! Are you hurt?"

"Well of course I'm hurt, you moron! You took my sword and left me with this little knife, and now you're not even using the shield I laid down for you!"

It turns out to be a very awkward family reunion, that Alice mortally wounded the man who turned out to be her dad.

Isn't a flying torpedo a missile? 

I like those guard uniforms. Those will be very handy for any heroes looking to knock out a guard and disguise himself as a guard!

There are real Edgewood's in Florida and Washington, but a Meadowlark Village? A real counterpart for that is proving hard to find.

Waaiiit -- the torpedo has to be controlled by a two-man crew inside it? Willingly sitting inside an armed torpedo? I may have to lower the morale save number for guards -- these guys are fearless!

"Hurry - we'll tell the Professor!"

"You know, Ted...not only couldn't the Professor figure out a way to remote control the torpedo, but he didn't even give us a portable radio to contact him with. Do you suppose we weren't meant to come out of this alive...?"

Waaaiiiiit (again). The torpedo made no noise and there was no sign of a plane -- then how does Yank follow any trajectory back to that forest? Is he just flying randomly over hundreds of square miles until he spots something that looks like a hideout? 

And really, Professor? You're planning to blow up the country, but you can't even remember to lock the front door?

A sliding panel in the floor that catches your foot sounds like the most "1st-level" trap I've ever heard of. Would that even do a point of damage? At best, if you miss your save, you can't move during combat until a turn when you do make your save.

Waaiiiit (third time) -- what's with this strange plane that just happens to look like the torpedoes that just happens to land outside in panel 1? Did the artist put panels in the wrong order somehow? It seems like even the author couldn't make sense of what was going on there.

Gee, Yank, if punching them in their helmets doesn't work, maybe you should aim somewhere else? In game, Yank's player is either rolling terrible, or those uniforms are giving a much better Armor Class bonus than I would have thought.

They didn't check to see if Yank was still alive? Classic villain blunder there. Maybe a villain should have to save vs. plot before he can check.

If the "heart of the country" is the continental geographic center of the country, then we're in Kansas, near Lebanon (or Lebanon has been renamed Edgewood). If "heart of the country" means its governmental heart, than Edgewood means Washington, D.C. -- though that doesn't make much sense (but what in this story does?).

Waiiiiittt (gah!). Yank is hitting the percussion caps on the nose of the torpedoes with a length of chain? This means the crews aren't arming the torpedoes just before bailing out, but well in advance for some reason and -- what really bugs me -- Yank's plane is somehow always able to zoom out of range just before the torpedo blows. Why is there that long a delay? Whhyyyy?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Zip Comics #3 - pt. 1

Yay, it's Charles Biro's Steel Sterling! Panel 2 is packed with detail. Steel looks so cool in that suit. The way Steel amuses himself when he's bored is a trait we seldom see from action heroes, and the third identity was super-original at the time (we can call this the "Mike Murdock" mistake now, in hindsight).

"Notorious" is an odd term to use here. Steel isn't wanted by the law that I recall from issues 1 and 2, so I think what she means here is "famous" or "most talked about."  

Brazonia is Brazil, that's an easy one. Orio is a little trickier, since Brasília is the capital of Brazil. It's certainly unusual, from a RPG campaign perspective, to send your Heroes to another continent already on their third adventure, but there's certainly strong precedent for it, going back to Superman's trip to South America in his second story. Biro's Steel Sterling is very much intended to be his answer to Superman, with the invention of the twin used to solve the question of how the maskless superhero goes without being discovered, and Steel conquering South America around the same time in his career. 
 

I can't figure out what city "Colosso" might represent; it doesn't match any of the big city names in Brazil I know. 

Winged tanks should not be a thing, but golden age comic book writers really seemed to love them.

That is a long range for that magnetism power. It's impossible to say how far exactly, but those planes could be anywhere from 100-1,000 feet away already.

Foreign nations always seem to be turning their defense over to Americans; at least Steel used some powers to impress them first. 

Okay, sometimes Biro is moving too fast for his own good. Steel has been given 12 hours to stop Dr. Yar, so instead of looking for Yar, or questioning that pilot he captured (unless the plane crashed and the pilot died...?), he decides to keep up his second secret identity on a long boat trip. So long that it takes him 12 hours to get back to Orio? Or did Yar break his word and attack early (that does seem very villainous)?  

Here's a surprisingly tough call -- if Steel is wrecking the hatch on a tank, is he wrecking a door or a tank? When it's too tough to make a call, go in the middle; Steel is wrecking the hatch as if it was a robot.

Taking over the winged tank instead of wrecking it seems sound strategy. And you get a trophy out of it afterwards!

I'm not sure what tactical advantage the protective circle would have...but tank pilots can make mistakes and this was clearly a mistake, grouping up like that.

Steel survives the explosion thanks to the Invulnerability power. The fact that he's now worried about being hurt by fire proves that powers have limited durations, especially since Steel got his powers in the first place by diving into molten steel (we even saw a replay of it on page 1!).

Steel is going to regret wrapping himself in asbestos someday -- but nobody knew that in 1940. At the time, fashioning himself an asbestos suit out of the lining was quite ingenious. 

I'm a little apprehensive about allowing Heroes to catch missile weapons in mid-air, unless they are superheroes buffed with one of the Race the- powers, or perhaps some other related power -- I could see maybe Improvise Missile Weapon being rationalized, if Steel were catching it to then use as a missile weapon.

The range seems really impressive on those oil ball canons, but if Steel has seen the trajectory of enough of them, I could see letting him find the source with a successful Intelligence check.

Although the narration in the final panel says Steel is breaking into a building, it appears he is breaking through a fence outside the building. Steel walls wreck as tanks, but a steel fence, I might treat that as a truck instead.

Okay, I've had my fair share of quibbles with this story so far, but this page is gold. Henchmen with lightning guns! Steel showing a vulnerability to electricity (or at least thinking he is). Steel's smart tactics -- bringing down the roof to get at the villains out of range, and smashing through a wall to help surprise the main villain. Alligator men (anticipating the Monster Society of Evil?)! Although, between "Oogle gop!" and that suspicious looking seam between shirt and pants in panel 7, I have a sneaky suspicion these are just human hoodlums in costumes. 

Biro also anticipates something that at this time isn't yet true about Superman's stories: here the Black Knight is behind every plot, even in disguise, much like Luthor will later be in Superman stories.

Little details like how Steel recharges his powers from the static electric charge he gets from running his fingers through his hair help me really appreciate this feature. In H&H, you don't need to have a visual gimmick to activate your powers, but if you as a player decide to have one, it is up to you to play it consistent.

It looks like I was wrong about the alligator men being guys in costumes, unless those are amazingly good costumes. I would probably treat them as lizard men instead of statting alligator men separately. And yeah, I can definitely see 6 lizard men being able to take down one superhero with grappling attacks, particularly if the superhero has no good combat-related buffing powers left.

That the sound carrier looks like a giant megaphone is one of those comic touches that tells me Biro isn't taking this story too seriously, and neither should I.

The deathtrap is a good one, particularly for superheroes who can so easily wreck open doors...

 

But I'm skeptical about this solution. Does pushing a drill through a wall really not apply unusual pressure to the wall? In an instance like this, where I'm unsure if I should have a trap go off or not, I might allow the hero a save vs. science to answer the question for me.

Sterling's aim being perfect is worth noting because unbuffed superheroes don't get the bonuses to hit that fighters do. A lucky roll, or was he holding onto the Bulls-Eye power? 

I'm amused by how the colorist often doesn't know what to do with Biro's sometimes sketchy art style. When he doesn't draw lines on the sides of Steel's head in panel 1, suddenly he has no hair there anymore! And the colorist has no idea what to make of that guard. 

Things get really dark in panel 8 -- the Black Knight/Dr. Yar has apparently convinced Dora's father to concoct a chemical weapon, even after telling her father that he plans to use it on Dora. BK is either extremely convinced that he's broken the man's will, or isn't all that worried about whether whatever's in that cocktail will work or not. Perhaps it's just one last attempt to torture the old man before escaping.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

  

  

Top-Notch Comics #4 - pt. 4

We're back and looking at the next page of Wings Johnson. Panel 4 looks very dramatic, but playing chicken that close with two airplanes seems like a terrible idea to me. It also gives the impression that facing really doesn't matter in aerial combat -- and in Hideouts & Hoodlums, maybe it shouldn't. In hand-to-hand combat, you don't get a bonus to hit for being right in front of someone; your odds are still about 50/50.

Finding a grenade in your plane seems like a dangerous idea, but in a campaign where trophy items are randomly dropped this makes more sense.

We're going to jump out of that story (nothing is every really resolved in a Wings Johnson story, he just hops from one dire situation straight into the next - as if anticipating how Marvel Comics will work someday!). 

...And we're going to jump ahead to yet another disastrously named comic book character, the laughable Bob Phantom. This particular story isn't too laughable, though, because you're going to be choking on the racism here instead. But if we look past that, we'll see an instance of game mechanics poking through here at the end, where the mobster gets a bonus to his morale save as soon as he knows his boss is listening.

This page gets really dark, as Bob completely fails to save an entire plane-full of people. Are there consequences? Only for the bad guy, as Bob now has an excuse to really cut loose on him.

And here we see something unusual; a superhero using an opponent as his instrument of wrecking things. The H&H rules are really set up to avoid this, mainly for game balance; the superhero is supposed to be good at breaking stuff and the fighter is supposed to be good at hurting people. Now, the superhero can knock a bad guy into a wall, essentially treating the wall as a club, and doing 1-6 points of damage (possibly modified by the superhero's Wisdom bonus). Wrecking things should be a separate action the player would have to wait a turn to do...but suppose the hero was buffed with a power, like Race the Train, that granted him an extra action per turn? Then he could legit wreck the wall at the same time as knocking the mobster into it, though it would confer no additional damage to the mobster. 

And check out the text around that newspaper article! It's the text from a story, but not from a made-up newspaper story. It seems to be cribbed from some piece of fiction. Maybe a text story from another MLJ comic book? I don't read the text stories, so I'm not sure.

I am really hoping that the writer of this story just didn't think it through. All the bad guys want to do is smuggle Chinese citizens into the U.S. Five times Bob has forced the planes to dump their human cargo into the ocean and kill them all. Never once has he teleported into the plane before it takes off, or waits for it to land and then catch the smugglers red-handed. It's really bizarre how Bob's player keeps making the situation worse every time he intervenes, and he just keeps right on doing the same thing each time.

 

You'd guess that pit was, what? Sixty feet deep based on the drawings? It seems unlikely that the boss could survive that fall, but Bob could just teleport down there and check. But this is a comic book story, so Bob would have to save vs. plot to interfere with a villain plunging to her death. 

Walt (it's hard to believe that his real name isn't Bob) goes to great pains here to hide Bob Phantom's involvement in the case, and this seems like it would be up to the personal preference of the player. Maybe it's just as well that there's no Popularity or Reputation mechanic in H&H, because it would hurt the players wanting their characters to act more anonymously.

I'm going to jump into the middle of Stacey Knight, M.D. If you do a good deed, but someone's forcing you to do it, even though you would have done it anyway - do you still get the 100 xp for doing a good deed? It's a question almost as tough as, why did these mobsters leave a kerosene can within reach of their prisoner? 

As dumb as the mobsters are, Stacey's plan is pretty bright. Not only does the fire distract his guards and puts their mobile hideout in jeopardy, but it draws the attention of much-needed help.

 

It's unclear if Stacey can boss the Coast Guard around because of his occupation or because of his level. 

Is that guy on the radio saying "Roosevelt" really slowly or spelling it out? 

The Roosevelt Field?  According to Wikipedia, "Roosevelt Field is a former airport, located 2.3 miles (3.7 km) east-southeast of Mineola, Long Island, New York. Originally called the Hempstead Plains Aerodrome, or sometimes Hempstead Plains field or the Garden City Aerodrome, it was a training field (Hazelhurst Field) for the Air Service, United States Army during World War I.

In 1919, it was renamed in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt's son, Quentin, who was killed in air combat during World War I.

Roosevelt Field was the takeoff point for many historic flights in the early history of aviation, including Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo transatlantic flight."

Apparently, "auto-giro" is still a legitimate spelling, even though you never see it anymore. 

Good guys can pretty much go around punching bad guys with complete immunity, whereas in real life that cop could also arrest Stacey for assault, and Moriarty could still sue him for the assault even if Moriarty was found guilty of a crime.

And is this the biggest waste of the name Moriarty ever? You're going to use the name of Sherlock Holmes' nemesis on a guy who rigs boxing matches?

 

Before we wrap up this post we're going to take a sneak peek at Kardak, the Mystic Magician. Here we see an unusual type of mermen, for two reasons -- one, they have legs and fishtails, and two, despite obviously being mermen they are never once called mermen. They are referred to as underseas men, fishtails, and Anderrans (after the name of their city, Anderras). 

Oh, and Kardak casts Part Water, so, as commonly happens in comic book magic-user stories, we can expect the high-level spells to come fast and furious...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)