Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 6

It's hard to believe there is so much we need to go over from this one issue, but here we are, squeezing out a few more pages for a 6th post!

We're still on the Rio Kid. I like this one story detail, where Keller has been trying to legally acquire that land all this time, but when he faces a last minute inconvenience his true nature is revealed and he tries to bully his way past it.

I can't be certain, as I've seen that trick shot stunt in a lot of cowboy stories, but this might be the first time I've seen a pen shot out of someone's hand. Considering that the Rio Kid is maybe five feet away from Keller, at most, and could simpy grab the pen away, makes me think Rio is just showing off. 

Panel 6 is confusing, as Rio appears to be gunning down Keller, but it is just someone else wearing the same shirt as Keller, because Keller shows up again in panel 7. It also looks like Rio is shooting the bad guys in the back as they're fleeing, but it's really just that one guy who has his gun in his hand. Rio "generously" allows the others to escape because they are unarmed. 

Panel 7 has several examples of hard cover. 

I had to look up "cayuse." According to Wikipedia, "Cayuse is an archaic term used in the American West, originally referring to a small landrace horse, often noted for unruly temperament. The name came from the horses of the Cayuse people of the Pacific Northwest."

If I was to do a cowboy-themed supplement someday -- which I've not ever fully ruled out -- I wonder if tough cowhands would need to be statted. They definitely are weaker than deputies.

Panel 6 confuses me. Does Kid Rio have some past with Keller we don't know about? Because it seems like Green has a score to settle with Keller, not Rio.

Bear with me on this -- this final feature is ridiculously racist -- but it is actually the first appearance of a pegasus in a comic book, not counting the pegasus-unicorns in Action Comics #6.

I like the quest - to bring back milk for undernourished children everywhere - and it seems very appropriate for a high fantasy scenario with half-pint protagonists. 

I'm also willing to forgive the racism on this page.  Assuming this is all in Marco's imagination, including Snowball, and Marco's only exposure to black people is from comic books, then it is entirely possible that he would imagine a black person looks like this.

I can't resist commenting on this page. For one thing, Ice Cream Mountains is wonderfully evocative and would be a good addition to a Candyland-themed campaign setting.  While the narrator calls them the Ice Cream Mountains, Snowball calls them the Tutti-Frutti Mountains. My first thought was that Snowball is using the term as a euphemism for an expletive (like "rassum-frassum"), but I see no evidence that tutti-fruitti was ever used as an adjective with negative connotations before the 1970s.  Tutti-frutti, as an ice cream flavor, has been around since the 1860s.

I also had to look up if there had been a particularly bad blizzard in 1899 or if that was a made-up detail. Sure enough, it was real!

I am tempted to stat snowmen as a mobstertype...

5,000 miles is just a fraction of the distance to the Moon. Not that the snowman is wrong; since we are already in the Milky Way Galaxy, you are there whether you go 5,000 miles or 1 mile.

The idea of an alien species that simply chooses not to age is an interesting one, more so than the Libertarian fantasy of a utopia the goat-riding baby alien espouses. Also more interesting is that the alien is riding a goat at all, which makes me think of Thor and his goat-drawn chariot.

Final feature! Now how the robbers think thousands of dollars is "the world's richest haul." This is entirely appropriate for a non-serious scenario.

$1,000 is a very generous reward for the theft of thousands of dollars and quite the xp boost for Buddy Braver. We also learn that a box of candy costs 50 cents. 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 5

We're back, and so is The Lone Eagle! Here we see the Lone Eagle being overcome by four-to-one odds, which I find refreshing, even if it will not be the norm in this adventure from here. Perhaps he levels up quickly! 

Note that LE isn't placed in a deathtrap, but just left behind and they assume he's dead. Who has time to check for a pulse or watch for breathing? 

Now panel 6 is a big mystery, though you might not have realized that it was Where is this "no-man's-land"? You might assume, like I did, this is France - but this was published in February 1940 and Germany did not invade France until May! In February, the world knew Hitler had his eyes on Norway, but most of the fighting in Europe was taking place between Finland and Russia. This panel is like someone wasn't paying attention to current events and just, by coincidence, predicted the future!

I'm amused how Lone Eagle, clearly an Air Force guy, is able to commandeer a tank just by pointing at it. "This isn't Hertz, Lone Eagle!" that officer should be saying (fun fact: Hertz rent-a-car goes back to 1918!). 

I'm calling shenanigans on being inside an exploding tank and emerging unharmed, unless Lone Eagle is secretly a superhero buffed by the Invulnerability power. I think 8-80 points of damage, for being caught inside when a tank explodes, seems more than reasonable.

How did Lone Eagle catch up with Brent? If Brent was there some time ago, asking for the fastest route to German Intelligence, why is he still wandering around the battlefield? Or, if the soldiers didn't believe him and took him into custody - again, how is he now wandering around the battlefield? I feel like we missed at least three pages of Brent's daring escape from confinement.

Lastly, I'm again amused, this time by how Lone Eagle has a secret pocket in that jumpsuit. Come on, LE, the "secret" compartment is one of those huge, obvious cargo pants pockets above your knees, right?  

Great, thanks to this page we need to address the unpleasant subject of torture. Comic book heroes get tortured more often than I enjoy seeing. The goal is never to beat the hero unconscious, but to break his spirit and make him act unheroic. But how to handle that as a game mechanic? It might make sense to consider the whip damage subdual damage -- the hero can no longer resist if he reaches zero hp -- but LE just got over 100 lashes and I'm guessing he doesn't have over 100 hit points. I think how I would handle this is, every time the hero is reduced to zero hp, he has to make a save vs. plot or be broken by the torture. If the hero makes the save, hit points are effectively restored to full and the process can start again. 

But even if the hero is broken, what does that look like? Is the player forced to roleplay blubbering? A player could simply spare himself the headache of the game mechanics and chose this, as it's not really a consequence. But what if the hero lost something crucial - like experience points - if broken? There is precedent for energy draining in the game and, while it's purely supernatural, torture is a draining experience too...

One can't help but wonder what the warden was doing, taking a late night stroll without guards through the prison...but before that is the mystery of how LE got out of his cell. Did he use wrecking things to bust the door down?

Nope, nope, nope - unless that plane was planning to drop a person onto the roof of the train, there is no way LE should be able to leap up to the plane. I can no longer ignore that LE is clearly statted as a superhero, despite his lack of a proper costume and other genre tropes. 

That a superhero could have so much trouble with a single pilot is very much in keeping with how I pictured the superhero class balancing out in H&H; being a relatively weak fighter when not buffed with combat-related powers. 

But he's not just a superhero; it seems pretty clear that he's going to win this 6:1 dogfight (spoiler from next page: he defeats three and then escapes), which suggests to me that he's at least a 3rd level aviator, in addition to at least a 1st level superhero.

I do like the smart tactics of the Germans - trying to stop this unstoppable killing machine indirectly rather than continuing to approach the train with that field gun on it.

There were a lot of comic books published around this time that proved to be prophetic, not that it was hard - during WWII, if you imagined the worst scenario possible, that usually happened sooner or later. This comic predicts a German invasion of the Netherlands three months before it actually happened. Apparently the Dutch failed to believe Lone Eagle's warning. 

Again, this story predicts the bombing of London seven months before it happened. It predicts the bombing of Berlin by four months, though clearly the author is wrong that bombing Berlin first stops the bombing of London.

"Gee, good thing you told us not to miss, Lone Eagle! We were aiming low for a 50-50 success rate!"

A 50-50 success rate is, of course, the norm for 1st-level characters in H&H.

Yes, the British RAF did use some American planes, but most of them were British-made. The implications of this story are, of course, that the English can't save themselves withou the U.S.'s help (again, largely true), and that Americans would seem like superheroes on the battlefield with Europeans (this is just propaganda).

Moving on, we return to what I have long dubbed the Mythic West, a "demi-plane," if you will, that allows for "Wild West" action in the modern day. 

Nueces, Arizona, is not a real place, but is likely named after Nueces County, Texas. 

Panel 3 has some rather disturbing implications.

I had to look up the use of punchers here. From the Internet: "In those early days of cattle drives the cattle were not particularly eager to enter loading chutes or box cars, so the cowboys poked or punched the cattle with long poles to get them in to the cars. The term was first recorded in 1880 and soon became a synonym for all those who worked cattle."  I don't think "Fork-D punchers" has any special meaning, other than they work for the Fork-D ranch...

I had to look twice to verify this, but the guy in the fight at the bottom isn't the Rio Kid; he's just some guy who's about to become Supporting Cast, and is probably at least a 2nd-level cowboy, given how well he's doing in this fight.

Boy, this is one violent comic book! This page is a nice reminder, though, that not everyone in a given organization is going to be the same Alignment. Here we have a Lawful jailer having a disagreement with the Chaotic sheriff. Turn this around when you're stocking your hideouts - make sure there are the occasional Lawful hoodlums who may turn on their bosses and help the Heroes!

Shooting a rope, while riding on horseback, would normally require a natural 20 on an attack roll (at least while I'm running the game) - but this is why the cowboy class, when it resurfaces in 2nd edition someday, will still need to have stunts. 

Tombstone is, of course, a real place. It is likely a portal site that exists in both the real world and the Mythic West, so one could leave Tombstone heading into either.

(Scans courtesty of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 5

We're back with The Invisible Man Known As Dr. Gade, which is admittedly a really unwieldy title and perhaps one reason why Gade literally disappeared from comics after this. 

While visible, Gade is no better at fighting than an ordinary person, which makes me wonder if he isn't a Magic-User with some brevet ranks at all, but should be statted as a 1st-level Mysteryman given a powerful mad science trophy item by his Editor. 

Gade also has a disintegrator - and not just any disintegrator, but an "old disintegrator" - like he'd invented it ages ago and then lost interest in it. Maybe it didn't work proper, because Gade has to throw his enemy into it and make it explode to kill the man.

I think I'm more turned off by heroes who kill now than I was a few years back, as I'm only giving that story a B+ now.

The next story is Zara of the Jungle, a Sheena clone (but with dark hair). It starts with Captain Jeff Graves, heading out into the jungle to try and stop the local tribes from fighting. He has a wandering encounter with a lion that he ... *sigh* kills with a single bullet. 

The native tribes are drawn...really weird. I've seen a lot of racist depictions of black people in these early comic books, but these guys look almost like aliens. 

Jeff is captured after falling into a concealed pit (even though it doesn't look even 5' deep). Zara rescues him, first by shooting the natives who are about to execute Jeff with her bow, and then by shooting the ropes off of Jeff -- which would be a near-impossible trick shot for anyone but maybe a Mysteryman using a stunt. So Zara is a Mysteryman instead of a jungle Explorer? 

Again more racism -- it is implied that Zara is able to stop the tribes from fighting just by the "white goddess" showing up on the battlefield. But I wonder, would they have stopped fighting if a pretty woman of any color had shown up? And if so, this speaks to the power of a having a high Charisma score.

The last story is Dakor the Magician. Dakor is unusual in that he has a personal secretary. He also needs to cross the Pacific by plane instead of magic. To rescue a British consul from Chinese bandits in Singapore (quite the international adventure!), Dakor disguises himself as Chinese, apparently using makeup instead of magic, and pretends to be a pistol peddler to win the bandits over (instead of just charming them). When a guard catches Dakor at the consul's cell, Dakor punches him out instead of using a spell. 

The spells don't start until page 4, at which point Dakor Polymorph Weapons (3 spears into cornstalks; I think I've talked about needing this spell before). He then creates magic scissors that cut the ropes binding him, which could be flavor text for a Knock spell? Then he casts Knock again for sure on the cell door, with the added wrinkle being that he can make the door swing open so hard that it hits a bandit enough to hurt him (a freebie from the Editor? An extra-strong Knock spell?). 

The biggest takeaway from here should be that Dakor can cast spells with his arms bound, proving that Hideouts & Hoodlums magic-users need to be flexible in what disrupts their spellcasting. The second biggest is that Dakor casts the same spells twice. I have long toyed with the notion of a mechanic that would give magic-users a chance to retain a cast spell...and it seems that Dakor has that, unless he just happened to memorize the same two spells twice. Actually, three times with Polymorph Weapons, as soon he's changing a thrown knife into a bird. 

I have serious issues with Dakor being able to cast a spell, while falling into a pit trap, to polymorph the spikes at the bottom into springs. Casting a spell in melee is one thing -- he could have started casting that Polymorph Weapons spell before the knife was thrown -- but he doesn't know about the pit until he's already falling, and it should only take 1 second to hit bottom in a pit that shallow, which is way too little time to cast a spell. The only other suggestion I have is that maybe one of these polymorph spells has a duration and he can change anything at will during the spell duration.

The last spell he casts makes a giant net, but ...man, that sure looks like a Web spell to me!

 

Zip Comics #3 - pt. 5

More Captain Valor today, with Mort Meskin showing off his skill with crowd scenes, though hampered by some really racist depictions and sometimes sketchy details. I bring this to your attention, though, for panel 1, so we can talk about the two ways to set up a fight scene. Version 1 is that it occurs in "real time," with the crew arriving onto the deck in waves as they can reach it. Version 2 is that you set the scene with all the fighters already in the scene and then start the clock again. 

And we're jumping out of Captain Valor already into the next story, Mr. Satan. Holy cow, this scene is gory. There's actual blood everywhere! These bad guys are brutal...but the point of sharing here is the second to last panel, where Mr. Satan runs out, grabs the girl, and escapes unseen. But unseen by how many? We only see that one guy, but there must be a lot of other killers around. Is it fair to say this can be explained away as a surprise turn, a moving silently skill check, or maybe both to reflect the difficulty of no one happening to see him?  
 

The panels seem to be in the wrong order here...Mr. Satan should probably try to get that woman to safety first, instead of leaving her alone in a tunnel and going out to look for clues. 

What else can we gather from this page? Superhero costumes, despite appearing to have no pockets, must have room for matches or a lighter on them somewhere, or Mr. S would never have got that giant fire lit so fast. 

Also, we learn that rocks used as improvised weapons don't have to be very big.

That seems, at first, to be a clever twist about the sheriff, and having them both wind up on the tracks makes it seem extra surprising when the big reveal happens, but...why did it happen? Is he showing off his confidence in his men, that they would not betray him by tying him up for real? Is the deception part of trying to get Mr. Satan to reveal when the payrolls are "going to ride," and if so, why not try to trick him into telling while still on the tracks? Or he could have revealed himself as leader sooner, never been tied down, and still used the threat of the train to coerce Mr S into giving up the info? But on the other hand, if the robbers don't know when the payroll is coming, why are they so sure a train is coming soon? 

And if Mr. Satan knew the national guard was coming, why go back early to scout with the sheriff without them?

If it wasn't already obvious, Mr. Satan would be statted as a mysteryman. His "spectacular leap" and snatching Doris out of the car and jumping out in time both qualify as mysteryman stunts.

Now we're going to jump into the next story with Zambini the Miracle Man, and this is a prime example of everything wrong with the magician genre: if your magic-user is so powerful that Satan himself has to plot against him while he's on vacation so his guard is down -- then your magic-user is too powerful.

As if to illustrate this, Satan causes a tidal wave to threaten Zambini's ship and, instead of simply calming the waters, Zambini freezes "the oceans." Way to alter Earth's climate there, Zam! 

More interesting are these devil men...let's see if I need to stat them! Hmm...I guess not -- they get mass polymorphed into penguins on the very next page before they can do anything!

Mass Polymorph is, of course, going to be a Hideouts & Hoodlums spell. I think I've determined before it would have to be a ninth level spell, even though it gets cast an awful lot in comic books.

Sure, Zambini could have just cast Resist Fire on himself instead of conjuring asbestos...although, perhaps he did cast Resist Fire and this is how it manifested? Previously, we've seen Zatara cast a healing spell that made a first aid kit appear. The conceit here is that magic takes whatever form is most familiar to the caster. 

Really, Zambini? You're traveling into Dante's Inferno and your only concern is how long the trip is taking you?

And is he really trapped in a net, or just relaxing on a hammock?  

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa - take a close look at that Cage of Flesh. The bars are made up of human forearms, each grasping the next one in the row. That is crazy grizzly -- but also just the thing to impress veteran D&D players, accustomed to dungeons full of grizzly things. That it seems to contain an anti-magic field is just icing on the cake.

Who's the fool, Satan? You just told them to push the flammable cage into fire. 

The "docile" rabbits tracks with how polymorph works (or at least the spells of 4th level and above; H&H has lower level polymorph spells this won't apply to), as there should be a chance of losing your mind/personality to the new form. Otherwise, these would be satanic rabbits!

I'm not going to show you the rest of this crazy story, but here's two spoilers: one, Zambini meets a dinosaur down there, either brought down there in prehistoric times as a pet, or the story is suggesting that's where dinosaurs all went when they died?

Lastly, Satan is killed, which is a pretty crazy ending for just your third issue. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #3 - pt. 3

We're still looking at Nevada Jones, and there's a few interesting details here. One is the entrance to the hideout, only accessible from a narrow ledge. This would make for a challenging encounter area if the entrance was guarded.

The way the horse is saddled is an interesting and unusual clue that something is wrong in this scenario.

That's some Spider-Man-level agility Nevada Jones shows there -- he doesn't actually fall 100' into the saddle (the man and horse would both take 5-30 points of damage and Jones would have no testicles left), he appears to be doing something even more impossible. He falls 100' until he's next to the saddle, then grabs onto it and swings himself onto it.

The only way I would allow this to happen in Hideouts & Hoodlums is if he was using the mysteryman class, or the old cowboy class from 1st edition, had a lot of unused stunts (5+?), and offered to spend all of them on this stunt.

If you plan on introducing a non-Hero character earlier in the scenario so they can turn up later as the surprise villain, it probably is not a good idea to use an obvious name for them, like Doc Poser. 

 

We're going to jump into the next feature in progress, Kalthar the Giant Man, King of the Jungle. I've written before about Kalthar and how his height seems to be no more than flavor text explaining his powers, like in panel 4 when we learn Kalthar's flesh becomes like granite while he's bigger. So his density increases even faster than his size? Is that why he tops out at 15' tall, because if he grew larger he'd be too dense to move? It also tells us, from a game mechanics perspective, that he's activated his Nigh-Invulnerable Skin power.

White men and guns. Ugh! And what's up with how that gun's discharge is drawn in panel 8? It always looks like it's backfiring.

Taking weeks to recover from 1-6 points of damage doesn't track with how healing works in H&H, though it's possible Kalthar is just enjoying being nursed. 

Interestingly, Kate taught Kalthar the meaning of "golden" and "tablets," but failed to teach him when to use "I" vs. "me." 

Kybys is fictional, as you would expect from a lost city. 

The two lions are a wandering encounter, and it's interesting that only the male lion chooses to fight, as if random encounter reactions were rolled for each of them.

The good look we get at Kybys, with its domes and spires, begs the question - who built it, and when? It looks vaguely Islamic, and more medieval than prehistoric. A written language is more likely to have been composed later rather than earlier. Why gold tablets instead of paper or parchment, though? 

I might need a new power called Danger Sense for superheroes that stops them from being surprised -- though we don't get to see it in use here, as Kalthar is surprised before he can activate any new powers.

That stonework looks medieval to me, and the Romans used lots of domes. Could these be Roman ruins? 

"Science, ha ha! Gravity is hilarious!"

Panels 7 and 8 look pretty sexy -- until you think about how Kalthar lives in the jungle and probably has lice in that long hair of his. You better hope that's a grain you pulled out of his hair, Kate!

Game mechanics-wise, there is no reason why Kalthar should need the grain to activate his powers or wreck things, except that if he established that once then his Editor can demand consistency from him. 

Kalthar uses Improvised Missile Weapon to catch the dome and hurl it back, but either a very high level version of the power, or the tower was full of dynamite. Check out that explosion! 

We're going to end this post with one glance at the next story, War Eagles. I don't have much to say about this page except that I'm pleased that the activities of the two heroes have consequences, in this case, the Germans flying in larger numbers to defend their planes. I expect there to be a lot of this during the course of an H&H campaign, to the point where history itself could be changing. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Prize Comics #2 - pt. 1

Oh boy. We're visiting with Power Nelson again in his Buck Rogers-esque "future" of 1982 and, boy, the racism practically jumps off the page and pokes you in the eye. 

The "bonk heads" attack sees a lot of action in the early comic books, which makes it frustrating that it's hard to model with the Hideouts & Hoodlums combat rules. This could be the Multi-Attack power for superheroes, or it could be grappling one opponent and then using the first one as a clubbing weapon against the other in the following turn. 

This might be the first time we've seen a gun backfire against its holder. This is even harder to model in the rules and is likely just a freebie to the player. 

These stratosphere freighters look awfully un-flightworthy to me. What keeps them from rolling in flight? 

It's hard to say how terrific a leap that is. It seems that Nelson is higher than the skyscrapers, so this could be Leap II. The steel plates on top of the plane probably wreck as if a generator, though this could be "futuristic" steel and wreck one level higher.

It was tough to say what the raygun did, but we get some clues here about them being heat rays. If it is, that means Nelson is buffed with the Fire Resistance power here.

Ugh...Prince Ugi can't be very good at piloting if his fighter can't outmaneuver a freighter. Nelson might be out-piloting him in skill checks despite rolling at a penalty, or maybe he is high enough in level to have a stunt (higher-level superheroes will get those in the Advanced H&H Heroes Handbook, if I ever get it done).

The result of the wrecking things seems plausible, given its a heat ray.

The first three panels are good here, with Nelson improvising a weapon and coupling it with a buffing power (Extend Missile Range -- but at which level? We can't tell the distance from these panels) to solve the problem. 

The rest of the page is crazy. A planetoid/giant meteor just happens to show up out of nowhere for the fighter to crash into? That should be like a 1 in 1,000 chance on a wandering encounter chart, at best.

More crazily, the planetoid comes into our atmosphere -- and then leaves, like some kind of boomerang meteor.

Take a careful look at these first two panels. Although it's attached to something (a recharger on his belt maybe?) by wires, Nelson is using a pocket sending-receiving set -- a cellphone. 

Again, the rest of the page is crazy, or let's say deeply flawed, at least. If the gun is designed to fire a message to Mars, but it would atomize Nelson, what would the message be made out of...?

Okay, I can't let this page go without ranting. 

Oh, you won't be blown to bits because you...can breathe? In what way does that make sense? Are empty lungs his Achilles' heel? 

And what is he packing his robot-repair kit in? The atomizing-proof shell the message for Mars was going to be shot in? 

And what kind of space-gun is fired by pulling a lanyard? Is it a gun or a convention-goer?

Yeah, I've had enough of that. We're going to jump into the next feature, Ted O'Neil the Barnstormer. Here we see that a low-level aviator might have to take dangerous jobs for only $100.

Whoa -- I knew we had a tight southern border for people coming north over it, but I wonder if we ever really had a time when we would shoot down American planes trying to fly into Mexico? 

(Scans courtesy of ComicBookPlus.)

Daring Mystery Comics #3 - pt. 1

Dale of the FBI is our first feature and it takes place on an island in the San Francisco Bay called Dream Island. There are really 28 islands in the bay (and fewer in 1940, since some of them are artificial), none of them called Dream Island. The heavily forested appearance of the island makes me think it looks closest to Angel Island after perusing some photos. 

This story predates the founding of the real San Francisco National Bank by 22 years.

Dale likely arrives in California at the San Francisco International Airport, which in a year will become a Coast Guard base and Army Air Corps training and staging base. The story isn't clear if Red Corker's men just happen to be at the airport or if they on lookout duty watching for G-Men to arrive. It seems unlikely the gang can spare lookouts for every unlikely occurrence, since the gang doesn't appear to be very big.

Dale isn't very good at noticing his car is being followed; he must have failed his skill check to spot things. 

Other than having a keen eye, I would think research beforehand must explain how Dale immediately recognizes Red's lieutenant. This would either have occurred in-game, with the Editor giving the player specific information, or the player could, in the moment, ask for an Intelligence check or a save vs. plot (but not both!) to determine if he had any foreknowledge of what Red's lieutenants looked like.

Red's scheme is to kidnap the child of a San Francisco oil magnate. The most famous San Francisco oil magnate was J. Paul Getty. 

The rescue scene is peculiar, to say the least. Dale comes riding in on an airplane wing, scoops up the kidnapped girl between his legs while holding onto the wing with his hands, then climbed back onto the wing, held the girl with one arm, drew his gun with the other, and shot Red while holding the wing with his leg. There's a lot of unlikely things in there. A Dex check to cling to the wing (or a stunt), an attack roll "to hit" the girl (at a low AC, given the speed of the plane), and then another Dex check for all the balancing he does. And why does he shoot Red? It's his job to arrest Red and Red can't do anything at this point to harm the girl anymore. 

Next up is Breeze Barton in the Miracle City. It takes place in 1945 "and the world is at war" -- which was sadly accurate. Less accurate is the Japanese invasion of South Africa. When Breeze sees it, his first thought is to report this to London, which is weird because that's 5,600 miles away and there must be dozens of places he could check in closer. It's just an excuse to get him flying north over the Sahara Desert. That's how he finds a mirage of a city that turns out to not be a mirage, but an actual city - a super-scientific city where they already have anti-gravity transportation. People have lived there for over 30,000 years -- the same people in some cases, because the city exists in a pocket dimension where time doesn't pass like normal. Time does pass, even though we're told otherwise -- the sun rises and sets and events are not occurring simultaneously. It's aging that doesn't happen. 

More interestingly, the city can only be entered through a "spot" where the electrons flow just one way, so you can't leave. There is at least one neanderthal in the city and at least one dinosaur outside the city; the neanderthal makes some sense but the dinosaur doesn't on a lot of levels. It pushes the existence of this "one-way electron flow spot" way into the distant past, the dinosaur looks extremely unrealistic (even by how much they knew in 1940), more like a dragon, and if it is really that dangerous you'd think it would have been put down long before now. The weapon that puts it down is a tripod-mounted "heatwave" gun.   

Even the dinosaur is quickly eclipsed by my biggest problem with the story, that Breeze solves how to reverse the electrons with magnetism in less than a day, while the best scientist in the city hadn't thought of that in 12,000 years. It hadn't even occurred to the rival city in this pocket dimension, this one occupied by the demon people, an interesting-looking nonhuman race. They are furry, with spiky manes on their heads, pointy ears, hooved feet, they can fly, but with a single sail on their backs instead of wings. They have their own super-technology; they can make a cloud appear around someone's head that sucks thoughts out of your head through the astral plane. Both cities have heat-wave guns...but yeah, magnetism is beyond them. 

There's a further interesting detail about the culture of the demon people. They keep slaves, but the slaves are other demon people...on first inspection, but the slaves don't have sails on their backs.   

In the Purple Mask, Frederick Swabert refers to the Panic of 1907. I had to look this up, but the Panic of 1907 – also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis – was a financial crisis that took place in the United States over a three-week period starting in mid-October, when the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50% from its peak the previous year. Swabert is being threatened to reveal the location of a secret vault he doesn't know the location of, but Purple Mask (Dennis Burton) swipes a book with all of the floorplans to Fred's house in it, like starting a hideout crawl with the whole map in your hand. Since the house has secret doors, this is extra handy. 

The bad guys have a trap for Fred, his phone is rigged to spray poison gas in his face. Purple Mask somehow guesses this -- an impossible hunch -- and shoots the phone. The phone turns out to be a big clue that wouldn't exist today; because the bad guys have their own phone in the same house, so all PM has to do is follow the physical phone line and he locates the rooms they are hiding out in. 

Purple Mask has no compunction against shooting any mobsters holding guns, but if they attack him with fists he switches to the same. 

Somehow a stray bullet hits the secret button that opens a secret door, which is a freebie from the Editor because there's no way that should have happened. The secret room behind the door is where the treasure is and it's an interesting room; the money is in a big box on an island in the middle of a pool of acid with a narrow drawbridge leading to it. The drawbridge can be controlled with controls on the island.

Another discrepancy in the story: Purple Mask somehow knows there is a secret trapdoor under the island, but he didn't seem to know anything about this room from the maps earlier.  

The next adventure is the Phantom Reporter. Typical of these stories, they don't tell us where it takes place. We do get the name of his newspaper, though, and that's interesting because it's the Daily Express, and that is a well-known London newspaper. Is this a UK hero? Even the fact that the crimes occurred in the "East Side" fits, because the East End of London was infamous for poverty and crime. My theory only breaks down when the bad guys start talking in New York accents, and then the reference to Park Avenue clinches it; this is New York City. Oh well.

We're told the Phantom Reporter, in his regular identity, inherited $50 million from his father. Since Henry Ford had $200 billion in 1940, that doesn't even put him close to richest guy in town. 

I don't know what's going on with his mask. It seems to be glowing? Or maybe it's just artistic license to make him look more dramatic, as there's really no reason for it to be glowing.   

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Colossus Comics #1 - pt. 2

This is still Lucky Lucifer (that's a good guy's name, in case you couldn't tell). Game mechanically, I wanted to point out a rare instance of an aviator not using the wing walk stunt and just holding on for dear life. Should the fact that he's injured lower his number of available stunts? 

Storywise, I just want to point out that Lucky takes a huge gamble ditching his plane to hop onto another plane because he believes -- correctly it seems -- that the anti-aircraft gunners would ignore the still active pilot and concentrate on the plane that was going to crash soon anyway.

"Lt Lucifer, your reconnaissance -- I'm sorry, I just have to ask, why am I calling you Lt. Lucifer? Lucifer is just your nickname, right? Your father's surname isn't really Lucifer. Your mother didn't really go, 'O, I love this man, I can't wait to change my last name to Lucifer"?

That said, I like both how complex and how simple this next scenario is. It's complex in that there's going to be a lot of moving parts moving around, but simple in that most of that is going to be background detail, as the focus of our Hero is going to be on this spy retrieval side-mission. 

Given the speeds involved, the target AC for "hitting" the spy's outreached arms must be pretty low, though she can also roll "to hit" Lucifer back. 

Now, I know I have no skin in this game, but if I was the one flying into enemy territory to pick up a spy, I wouldn't go in alone; I would want at least one more plane with me to run interference.

As I said, the scenario is simple because Lucifer's orders are basically to stay out of it. If he ignored orders (and you'd sort of expect that from someone named Lucifer), he could fly into the battle and then you'd have to play it out, but if it's just going on around him, you can treat it as flavor text and describe a pre-decided outcome. 

When one plane separates to attack Lucifer's plane, that isn't necessarily bringing him into the big battle and can be treated as a separate battle/one-on-one dog fight.

Ugh...I can tell this one's going to hurt to read. It looks like some 4th grader's attempt to draw a L'il Abner clone. Although it might be hard to imagine drawing inspiration from this...I wonder if hillbillies, as a mobstertype, should have a bonus to "rasslin'."

Normally I would not apply the wrecking things rules to missile weapons used against you, but sometimes it could be fun flavor text. It could also be of practice use, like if arrows were being fired at you, to find out if the arrows broke or are retrievable (because arrows are a lot more likely to break than boulders).

Aside from that, I think I'll just mention that it's pretty weak storytelling, that the only spooky thing these guys pretending to be ghosts do is talk through a bush. I can't even count them as fake undead!

Jumping in here to the next story, Mory Marine.  Thumbscrews are a real thing, and could be as small as what is sorta drawn here, but they are archaic by 1940, being more of a 17th-18th century device. 

It is more likely that Mory (what kind of name is Mory?) blew his escape artist skill check than the mobsters have past experience as sailors. Mobsters don't generally have individualized skills. 

Finding a blood trail could be a searching check, and following a trail could be a tracking skill check, but an Editor should not require both unless the blood trail is very faint.

The bottom keeps dropping out on this artwork! Ugh...it looks like someone is dropping crumpled up balls of paper at our Heroes, here in "The Gold of Gartok." 

But behind that atrocious art is a pretty good idea to explain superheroes. Tulpas are real things too, or I should say real world theory. "Tulpa" is a concept in mysticism and the paranormal of a being or object which is created through spiritual or mental powers. It was adapted by 20th-century theosophists from Tibetan sprul-pa which means "emanation" or "manifestation." It can do anything the person who wills the tulpa into being is able to believe the tulpa can do, but only while concentrating and, as we learn here, if that concentration is disrupted, it takes an hour to create a new one.

A ledge saved our "white hero," but he's quickly captured and dropped into this snake pit. Interestingly, the snake pit only has four snakes in it, as if to give Rob a really sporting chance. 

Chanti and Charmi are Indian names -- but girls' names -- Genghis is a Mongolian title and not a name (but maybe a nickname?), and Bhutra is an Indian surname. Maybe Chanti and Charmi are nicknames too, like calling someone a Nancy or a Karen. 

It's interesting that the tulpa's explanation for what happened to him is patently untrue. Does a tulpa have to believe in itself to exist? Or it simply doesn't want Rob to know it can disappear on him again if the lama smells something else good? 

I may be having a deja vu moment, but, amazingly, I don't think this is the first time we've seen someone picking up snakes and throwing them as missile weapons in a comic book story.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)