Top-Notch Comics #4 - pt. 3

We're still reading Streak Chandler of Mars here, but it's Professor Finlay speaking first. "I might as well tell you now, the landing gear on this ship is not finished! And...while things are getting real, I might as well fess up, there isn't enough air and food on this ship for five of us. Oops!"

The science is typically terrible for a comic book story here. Granted, we didn't know for sure Mars had no breathable atmosphere back in 1940, but we did know the distance to Mars, and there would be no way to fly there in what seems to take only a few hours -- and even if you could, there would be no way to brake hard enough to not be atomized on contact with the surface. 

Streak's player must have rolled pretty low for his Intelligence score. "Is that Mars?" "Gee, Einstein, how many other planets do you think are in this area?"

And things don't get better on the next page, when they are attacked by Martians that look like demonic Elmer Fudds wearing women's bathing suits. As comical as they look, they can shoot heat rays out of their fingertips and that seems impressive, even if they can only hit one out of three targets with them (they are not rays or cones so much as "Magic Missile" spells, from the earliest editions when you had to roll to hit for them). 

Oh Streak. Yep, your plan worked to perfection -- if your plan was to shoot all the oxygen you needed for a return trip out of the ship. 

More impressive are the strange, winged green men (you know, the blue ones) who fight with gas guns and can communicate telepathically.  

 

Oh boy...it looks like I have to add three new mobstertypes to the Mobster Manual, but these are not winners. The green men who are blue are the lokis. The Elmer Fudds are ferrugas. The octopus with a horse head is called a brontauris, which is a terribly unimaginative name. 

So far I haven't seen enough of what the lokis can do to stat them. I haven't seen the ferrugas do much either, other than shoot magic missiles. 

Now, normally, you'd think, of course you're not going to have much luck fighting with just a pocket knife against a horse-headed octopus. But this is a golden age comic book, and almost all animals get killed with a single stab. So these brontaurises must be really tough! I'm thinking at least 4, maybe up to 9 Hit Dice. It obviously attacks by constricting with its tentacles, but it isn't very strong and doesn't seem to do a lot of damage per turn.

Moving on to Wings Johnson of the Air Patrol, we see that wandering encounters can occur with unexpected frequency, Even in the middle of the English Channel you apparently need to roll once per turn. It's also possible to have a house rule that, after 1 wandering encounter, you immediately roll once in the next turn only.

 

Wings is one unlucky guy -- there's not even a game mechanic for accidental wind shear. I'm imagining a scenario playing out like this -- 

Editor: "Welcome to our first solo session of H&H!"

Player: "I want to play an aviator!"

Editor: "...You're sure? You don't want to be a mysteryman? Or superhero?"

Player: "Nope, I want an aviator campaign, and I'm naming him Wings Johnson?"

Editor: "Wings Johnson?"

Player: "Yeah, why?"

Editor: "Well, it's just that your last character was named Dick Storm. And the one before that was Spurt Hammond..."

Player: "I don't see where you're going with this."

Editor: "Fine. You know...fine! You want an aviator campaign? Wings Johnson is flying home over the English Channel in a German plane when...two British planes try to shoot him down!"

Player: "Don't I have some kind of pass code I can radio to them...?"

Editor: "There's no time! Because...As you fly low to evade them...a sub surfaces right in front of you!"

Player: "What die do I roll to--"

Editor: "And then your wing falls off!"

Player (excited): "Whoa!"

[After 3 hours of successful dice rolls]

Player: "Best session ever!"

Editor: *sighs*

Back to the comic (I think that was my longest digression ever)!

We pick up with Wings climbing his tangled parachute and we're told it's cutting up his hands really bad. Okay, I guess I can believe that would happen, but how do we handle that in-game? It seems too important to wave off as flavor text, as it could make him lose his grip and plunge to his death. I'm thinking the pain should cause a save vs. science to avoid losing his grip, but should the pain itself be flavor text, or 1 point of damage? It's got to be the Editor's call.

The bottom tier of panels does make me wish I had a Popularity or Reputation mechanic in H&H. I know I've talked about it and toyed with it before, but I don't think I have ever worked out anything concrete yet.

 

Not having any military experience, I had to look up to see if "officer of the day" was a real thing. According to Wikipedia, "a duty officer or officer of the day is a position that is assigned to a worker on a regularly rotational basis. While on duty, duty officers attend to administrative tasks and incidents that require attention regardless of the time of day, in addition to the officer's normal duties."

Which, I suppose, now makes it seem odd to me that the officer of the day who is responsible largely for administrative tasks is being put in charge of the arrest here.

Wings isn't wrong; the Spitfire was the fastest plane on the Allied side and would remain so for the next few years. The Germans would soon have a faster plane, the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket plane, but that's a year from "now."

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 1

I'm pleased today to return to another of my favorite golden age heroes, Charles Biro's Steel Sterling. We're probably not going to skip a page of this story -- mostly because there's good content for Hideouts & Hoodlums-related discussion here, but also because it's a good adventure yarn.

And it starts fast! After a one-panel summary of Steel's origin (and a chance to see him naked), we launch straight into a prison break! But which prison? Can we find a specific prison by a river with housing nearby? It would seem a near-impossible task if I was looking at the whole country. However, in #1 I grabbed onto a tiny clue that Steel is based out of Texas. There is only one river, the Trinity River, that I can find in Texas that had jails near it. Of those four jails, are any of them near housing? Of them, Ellis County Jail looks closest to Riverside, Texas. That Riverside is 270 miles from Beeville, Texas, where I think Steel's first adventure took place, would only be an issue if Steel could not fly fast -- and we'll see that

happen very soon in this story.

We've seen Heroes pushing instead of doing damage before, but Steel pushing nine men at once is probably a first. It's certainly possible by the rules, if Steel is using the Flurry of Blows power, and choosing to make each hit a pushing attack. Normally, you would only be able to hit people in melee range with you, but for pushing, it makes sense that you could push people behind the people you're pushing.

There is zero game mechanic difference in H&H between slapping and punching, and Steel's punch would not have killed that guy.

Steel has Imperviousness activated for crossing the courtyard. Or is is Invulnerability? He may be needing that shortly...

Maybe I don't know cars well enough, but I cannot figure out what those things are on the side of the car in panel 1. Giant segmented worms? They're gone by panel 4, so...

Panels 2-3 would be tricky to replicate in H&H. The grenades wrecking the wall is easy enough, but determining where the debris goes is trickier. To be fair, I would position Steel on a map of the courtyard first, and then roll randomly between compass points to see where the majority of the debris falls.

How much damage should tons of brick and debris do when it falls on you? One of the underlying mechanics of H&H is that 30 lbs = 1 hp. If I calculated damage by weight at this rate gradually, 2 tons of debris could do a total of 133 points of damage. If I calculated it exponentially, doubling weight per point, that would be no more than 9 damage for 2 tons, so perhaps a range of 2-9. Anywhere in between those two seems
fair to me, but it seems that Steel took a major beating here if he

was only buffed with Imperviousness.

I love the flavor text in panel 5, that Steel has to use static electricity in his hair to jump start his powers. Here he's clearly using Race the Train.

Falling 300' would have done 30d6 damage, which Steel would have survived while invulnerable, but the prisoner in the car wouldn't. Instead it seems he used Feather Landing.

One nice thing about prison breaks is, you don't have to bother leaving crooks with evidence at the police station, since they already want them back.

This is a real curious first panel. Zooming "across the continent" to Alaska makes me think my Texas guesses were all wrong and Steel was on the East Coast after all.

Did Steel really zoom there with "lightning speed?" He can't arrive too quickly, because the escaped cons got there ahead of him, traveling by conventional means.

Let's still assume Steel is coming from Texas; that means the distance involved is roughly 4,000 miles (if NYC, add 360 miles to that). If he was using the Race the Plane power (which seems to make the most sense, going along with flying), it would need to last for 16 rest turns, meaning Steel would need to be a minimum of 13th level, as the duration on that power currently stands.




Of course, another possibility is that he took conventional travel most of the way to Alaska, and then "zooms" in by his own power only towards the end.

The crew is a mix of pirates and thugs, with that guy holding the harpoon gun under one arm probably being a higher-level fighter/leader. The harpoon gun definitely looks like a trophy weapon, probably doing at least 2-8 damage -- if Steel wasn't buffed with a protective power. Too bad he decides to wreck it!

Wrecking a propeller is treated only as a machine, whereas wrecking the entire boat would have been a tougher category.

In the golden age, if you meet a villain twice, he becomes your arch enemy. Repeat engagements are that rare!





Fake iceberg hideouts is very ingenious by 1940 standards, when most villains were still using warehouses. And having five polar bears in room 1 really sets this as a high-level hideout!
















In actual play, these polar bears would be a lot tougher, but because this is a golden age story, they go down quickly in one hit each. Of all the ways H&H purposely chooses not to emulate the actual practice of golden age comics, this one is probably the most dramatically different.

This page does illustrate, though, that grappling moves can be reversed between turns.

What material is that wall made out of, that it would break away like that? And the wall is so thin...

Most players would, if their Heroes saw that much gold, would immediately start thinking about how much XP all that gold is worth.

Apropos of current events, Steel is tear gassed. No doubt this was intended to show that Steel has weaknesses, but a H&H player knows this only shows he missed a saving throw vs poison.

On taking a look at that pile of chains, one could be forgiven for thinking that's overkill. I'm not sure how heavy a 7' tall pile of chains is, but I'm guessing it would be enough to pin down an ordinary man. A superhero probably doesn't need a Raise power buffing him to get that off, though; I'd either allow it instantly, or require a save vs. science, depending on the superhero concept and how strong we pictured him being. And, for non-superheroes, I would probably go with the saving throw.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Planet Comics #3 - pt. 3

We're going to look at two more features from this issue of Planet Comics today. First is Buzz Crandall, who lives in a future where the Moon is like the Wild West, with isolated outposts surrounded by danger. This is far from the last time I'll be making a space-cowboy parallel observation on this blog.

The autoped reminds me just enough of the real moon lander to intrigue me. Use your imagination; if you redesigned the moon lander to be mobile, wouldn't it look something like this?

But more interesting are moon bats which, to a D&D player, loo exactly like giant stirges! Look at how that one in the last panel is the same size as the autoped and can damage it just by diving into it! I'm thinking 4+1 Hit Dice, and those  probiscises can suck 1-8 hit points' worth of blood out of you per turn, or it can crash into you in a dive for 1-10 points of damage.

Now how did our astronauts manage to avoid the lunar land squids? Look at the size of that baby -- I'm thinking 16 Hit Dice for this one, and maybe using d10 for those HD. It's big enough that it has a chance of swallowing even a large opponent whole (maybe on a 20), and a medium-sized foe on a...18-20? Anyone not swallowed takes 4-32 points of damage from those giant teeth.

Like Noah and the Whale, Buzz winds up alive in its belly -- but that situation seems like it could change because the missing people from the outpost are all skeletons in his belly (in the next page I'm not bothering to show you). Being in the autoped seems to buy him some time, as the digestive enzymes need some turns to wreck it down (1-4 turns?).

Now we're going to look at the next story with Nelson Cole. Those pirate ships remind me of Zaxxon! But the real reason I'm showing you this page is "We'll keep in constant touch with you by radio." Now, radio waves travel at the speed of light, which is plenty fast, but it's not instantaneous in space-sized distances, so Cole is essentially on his own.















Where the heck in space is this? Are they flying through a nebula? This is a really busy nebula, with a lot of planetoids of varying size inside it.

The concept of "attractor-beams," or tractor beams as they are more commonly known today, comes from SF novelist E.E. Smith, but had not come into common comic book parlance yet by 1940, where we still see things like "magno-rays" doing the same affect.

I appreciate the cutaway map of the inside of a spaceship in panel 2. Those ships sure don't provide you much protection out in space, do they?

Now this is remarkable because I think it's the first page of a comic book story to show how different styles of planes (or spaceships in this case) have different degrees of maneuverability that give one an advantage over another.

A previous page I didn't show you told us that Cole had a raygun hidden in his belt buckle, but I assumed it was a tiny gun he would pull out when he needed it, not that he would be shooting it from inside his belt buckle. I wonder what the triggering mechanism is -- voice command? "Pew pew"?

Yet another story that assumes spaceships would land on the ground like conventional planes.

I guess Cole was shot by an electric raygun and the conductive lever saved him? More likely he just made his saving throw vs. science -- but it's always nice when you can come up with an explanation using science (or something that passes for science!).

Didn't I say Cole was on his own? I'm not sure how the Solar Force just happens to show up here, since Cole never called for them. Cole is able to use radio to talk to them without breaking science because the battle is taking place in low orbit.

Only a charitable Editor would give the Solar Force bonuses to hit thanks to Cole calling out plays on the sidelines.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Man Comics #10 - pt. 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing-Man Comics #10 - pt. 2

Today we'll be looking at two features from this issue -- The Magician of Mars and Iron Skull.

When we saw Jane yesterday, she had just arrived at an airport on...Earth? Mars? Even after reading the whole story I'm not sure which it's supposed to be. I do see that she's hit with perhaps the weirdest weapon yet in comics, incoherent music strong enough to knock her unconscious (and that's something, because we know that Jane has some brevet ranks and extra hit points!).

What happens to make her hair stand up like that when she's startled? Is that a Martian thing?

Suddenly, Magician from Mars is a pole-vaulter! Or, judging from that crotch shot, maybe a pole dancer? Now, stunts are no longer the province of just mystery men -- In the still-unreleased AH&H Heroes Handbook I planned to reveal that other classes above 6th level get stunts too, just a lot more slowly. Anyway, what she does to get to the top of the building certainly looks like a mysteryman's stunt, but then it could also be a Leap I use with some flavor text added, or the Spider Climb spell with a lot of flavor text/reinterpretation!

I'm also going to point out this brief dogfight and the relevance of abstract combat to H&H combat. That "fatal hit" Jane makes is very clearly to the wing of the plane and would not be fatal under most circumstances, yet with abstract game mechanics, a combat could end after just such a hit, either from loss of hit points or a chance of random complication per hit.

There's that weird hair flip again!

I like how the entire building has nothing to do with the hideout, other than hiding the secret tunnel underneath it. So dungeon-y!

I hate to do this since it's such low-hanging fruit, but...man, this artwork is terrible! The proportions on figures are just terribly amateurish. Look at those midgets in the tunnel in panel 7 here, or in the top panel on the next page...

 I like how she calls him "sweetheart."

The explanation for "sound bombs" is right up there with the worst garbage science of the comic books we've gone over.

Jane uses Wreck at Range in that last panel. Note that she hasn't really cast anything like a traditional spell this entire adventure so far.

I'm not sure what to make of The Hood being able to go immaterial. If they had the concept of holograms back in 1940, I would have guessed he was only a hologram. Is he a magician too, like Jane? In that case, this could be some Etherealness spell, or maybe even a Gaseous Form spell.

As for her force ray, I think she means the Wall of Force spell here.

If Jane is a magician, why does she have a plane with bombs on it? Or did she steal the bombs from the hideout before it caved in?

And now it's off to the far-flung future of 1970! Hmm, which five countries would profit by the splitting up of the United States in 1970? If this was based on who owns the most U.S. debt, and would hence benefit from the largest payoffs if the U.S. defaulted -- well, I don't have numbers for 1970, but if it was based on today's numbers then these nations would be Luxembourg, Brazil, the UK, China, and Japan. Not your usual list of suspects!

Other 1940 authors might have underestimated inflation in the next 30 years, but Carl overestimated it. This $10 billion fee would have made Hawkins the richest man in the world, since oil magnate J. Paul Getty only had $6 billion in 1970.

I think it's interesting how Carl thought subways would be ancient history by 1970. I wonder what he thought we were going to replace them with.

As for the rest of this page...I really do not understand what the X-ray machine is for, or why the subway train is being supported by cables in a glass tube, or why the glass tubes are suspended so high above a cement floor. It's more like a subway museum in there.

Should a superhero be able to wreck spikes at the very moment of landing on them? On one hand, I would say no, wrecking things should not be an instantaneous action. On the other hand, doing it to save the other person falling with you is a perfect superhero action and should be encouraged. I guess, in the end, I might allow it, but insist that the superhero still takes damage from the spikes at the same time as wrecking them.

Is a 1 ft.-thick glass door still count as a door for wrecking things? At what point is a barrier thick enough that it counts as a wall and not a door? The average interior wall is about 5" wide. Let's round up to 6", though, and get to a half-foot. For every extra 6" of thickness, the wrecking things category can go up one. At least this works for doors, and maybe machines and generators. By the time we get to robots and cars, we might need some other metric, such as weight.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Mystic Comics #1 - pt. 2

When we last left Zephyr Jones and Corky on the surface of the sun Cygni 61 the Mad Astronomer had a machine that sprays his secret formula on Zephyr and Corky. He tells them that this will protect them from the heat on the surface of the star, and apparently the blinding light and the crushing gravitational pull as well). Our boys are so gullible, or so smitten with his daughter, that they immediately go outside to see if it worked. Instead of walking on super-heated plasma, this seems to be a rocky place, inhabited by dwarfs that live in caves.

They find that at least nine star-dwarfs had captured the astronomer and his daughter from their ship. Most of them chase after Zephyr and Corky. The dwarves have super-tough skin (like the power, because the heat of the sun has hardened them), but are vulnerable to fire extinguishers because...ah, let's stop pretending any of this makes sense! These aliens remind me of the game Awful Green Things from Outer Space, where you're supposed to try everything on your ship on the aliens, because only one random item will kill them.

To top it off, Zephyr and Corky go back below ground to save the prisoners from eight more dwarfs. They defeat the dwarfs by throwing rope around a group of them and then pulling the rope off the cliff the dwarfs are on. Not sure why none of the dwarfs think to grab onto the rope and pull Zephyr and Corky down first, or with them. If the star-dwarfs are just too dumb, then a fair Editor would make some kind of intelligence check for them (trying to roll under a low INT score) before letting them fight too cleverly. They are very primitive, fighting only with clubs and darts from blowguns.

We've seen Heroes start avalanches to bury or block adversaries before, but Zephyr takes the cake by knowing just where to throw a rock to start an avalanche. That would take some kind of expert skill level in geology, I would think, followed by a successful attack roll vs. a low Armor Class.

The next feature is the 3Xs. The three "Xs" are private detectives, all working anonymously (although they wear no masks to conceal their identities, so it should take too long for people to figure them out), but go by 1X, 2X, and 3X. Each has an area of specialization; 1X does the detective work (high Wisdom score), 2X is a "walking encyclopedia" (high Intelligence score), and 3X is the strong-arm (high Strength score). A later caption explains that 1X is in charge and the other two are his aides (Supporting Cast Members). The 3Xs are good scrapers, but not great, as 13 hoodlums break into 1X's home to retrieve the glove and the hoodlums only fail a morale save and leave after beating all three of our good guys almost to unconscious. None of them use weapons other than blackjack/saps, during this battle. Later, 2X has a disintegrating pistol, a trophy weapon that does extra damage.

A taxi driver tells the 3Xs that his taxi cannot go over 70 MPH.

The Green Terror is a mob responsible for a rash of brazenly public kidnappings, covering their escapes with a smokescreen of green smoke. A clue left behind at the scene of their latest kidnapping yields a clue that requires an expert skill check in botany to identify -- a lost glove on the scene was permeated with the pollen of a rare orchid. Because the orchid is imported, they use freight records to figure out that when the mob came into the country, and when it plans on leaving. Of course, there are some holes in that theory -- what if only one member of the mob worked with orchids? What if the mobsters were on the ship coming, but not on the next boat going? What if an unregistered grower has the same orchids in their greenhouse and they weren't imported at all?

Their leader is also known as The Green Terror. One of the earliest supervillains in comics, The Green Terror is a green-skinned African with the vampiric power to live forever so long as he keeps drinking human blood. However, he's a real pushover in a fight and folds after getting punched by 3X once.

Next up is "Deep Sea Demon," but if you want my impressions on that story you can read here, because this is a barely modified reprint of Fred Guardineer's "Devil of the Deep" from Funny Pages v. 2 #1.

Dakor the Magician is the next feature, and like some other magicians we've seen he's light on actual magic and more of a detective. We also see, like in the 3Xs story, that travel out of the country seems to be public information, as Dakor's assistant Williams is quickly able to learn that their prime suspect in a murder is leaving the country for France.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Mystic Comics #1 - pt. 1

We're back to Timely Comics and their newest title in 1940. But don't expect any Bill Everett, Jack Kirby, or Joe Simon goodness in this one; this is pure 2nd rate-Chesler shop filler, cranked out because Martin Goodman wanted another Timely title on the shelves to capitalize on this new superhero craze.

So what does it give us first? Flexo the Rubber Man. Yes, Will Harr and Jack Binder took one look around the burgeoning crowd of superheroes in the field and said...Bozo the Iron Man looks like a winner; let's take that concept and make it even sillier. In a decision that would make for a hundred off-color jokes if this wasn't a family blog, the narrator tells us that Flexo is made of "living rubber" and filled with "secret gas." This rubber/gas combo somehow allows Flexo to outrun bullets (in Hideouts & Hoodlums, the Race the Bullet power), gives it the strength of an ox (wrecking things and Raise Car power?), and the ability to zoom through the air like a bird (Fly II power?). But narrators often exaggerate for new superheroes, so let's see if the story follows up on any of that.

Oh, and to make matters worse, the scientists who invented Flexo had to steal the supplies from the cancer hospital they work in. Nice job, leaving those cancer patients without the treatment equipment they need, jerks. It's almost a pleasure to see these two tied up by a mobster and his vamp/moll, who then steal radium from the two men. The mobster works for a mad scientist who need the radium for his death ray, of course. In one informative panel, the mobster explains that he would bump them off with a gun, but "the professor likes to wipe out his victims in fancy, scientific style," which basically explains every supervillain's deathtrap ever.

After activating Flexo to rescue them, we are told Flexo is running at the speed of a bullet, but that's our suspicious narrator again without any real proof. Flexo does leap -- very clearly leaping instead of flying -- and given the height of his leaps I would call this a very clear example of the Leap I power. When shot at, his rubbery hide provides the Nigh-Invulnerable Skin power. Then he uses Multi-Attack to grapple three mobsters at once. It takes a little bit more of a (ahem) stretch to see how stretching himself between the car and a telephone pole counts as a power, but since the purpose is to stop the car from moving, that seems to be the same as using the Raise Car power.

To find their missing radium, the unnamed scientists borrow a radium detector, or what we might call a Geiger counter, from the hospital. This Geiger counter has a really good range on it, though, because it can sense radiation from an airplane.

At the hideout, Flexo has to fight two electrically-charged robots. Flexo does really well at his wrecking things rolls vs. the robots, and demonstrates Electrical Resistance, his first level 3 power. In fact, since he hasn't even demonstrated a level 2 power yet, I'm wondering if he isn't demonstrating a power at all, but simply had enough hit points to take the hits from their electrical fields.

The hideout has a simple portcullis trap, but Flexo's solution to it, squeezing through the bars, might be our first instance of him breaking the H&H rules. Normally, I would call this flavor text for wrecking things, except that the bars are still intact and trapping the scientists even after Flexo squeezes through. For this, then, we would need a new power, perhaps some weaker version of Passwall, like a 2nd-level power called Pass through Small Openings.

Flexo defeats the mad scientist and his three hoodlums by spurting gas at them, which either does damage or puts them to sleep -- the story isn't clear. However, giving this robot a "breath weapon" is just like how I handled robots in 1st edition H&H, suggesting to me that maybe Flexo should be statted as a mobster, and a Supporting Cast Member, to the scientists, instead of a Hero with a race and class. This would eliminate any difficulties in statting him as an android superhero. But if Flexo is an android superhero, what level? One of his 1st level powers demonstrated could be his android ability, meaning he's demonstrated two 1st level powers and 1 2nd level power -- Flexo must have two brevet ranks, allowing him to start as a level 3 superhero, an extraordinary man.

Next up is Blue Blaze. This story starts in 1852 at Midwest College. It was difficult to pin down a specific college with so generic a name, but then my first assumption would be that Midwest College would be in the Midwest. What gets the story moving, though, is the tornado that sweeps through the campus and kills 85% of the people there. Finding out when major tornado touchdowns happened is easily done on the Internet these days and, possibly not by coincidence, a deadly tornado had ripped through downtown Arlington, Massachusetts only the previous year. I have commented before (see Whiz Comics #3) about comic book writers taking inspiration from headlines in the recent news.

While believed dead after the tornado and buried, Spencer is struck with "substrata dermatic rays" during his 88 years of hibernation, which is a term that doesn't really mean anything, but suggests that the rays are striking him under his skin. Is this how the author says radiation? If the narrator is to be believed, his strength increases 1,000-fold, which would make him able to lift/press about 50 tons -- or access to 5th-level Raise powers in H&H terms.  More incredulously, Spencer was supposedly buried in a skin-tight costume with attached cowl and a riveted girdle. and these were the clothes he died in.

Upon digging himself out of his grave, BB immediately encounters two superstitious hoodlums. They both fail their morale saves after he activates his Super-Tough Skin power. One of them "has a heart attack," but you know how those pesky narrators keep exaggerating, and there is a result of "faints" on the morale failure table. The other one simply surrenders.

The hoodlums were digging up bodies for a professor with a super-cool hideout, accessible by a secret elevator in an inn on the edge of town, miles below ground. The elevator lets out in a foyer which accesses a huge entry hall through a Dr. Suess-shaped archway. The hall looks posh at this end with checkerboard tile flooring and thick columns. Either at the far end, or perhaps in a side hall, the columns are thinner and decorated with skull motifs.

There are also traps. Red gems spaced around the hideout activate "tension beams," like a Hold Person spell. Then the rays whisk their prisoners on a high-speed tour of some nearby laboratories (the professor is quite the show-off) to Professor Maluski's audience hall (a "receiving" gem ends the tour here). Near the audience hall is a dungeon where 50 zombies are kept. The zombies are not supernatural, but controlled by ray receptors sewn into their shrouds. Maluski is armed with a "new type automatic," which seems to be a way of saying a Gun +1 to me. The zombies turn on Maluski with the control tube is smashed, which is conveniently keeps in the dungeon with the zombies. There is also an access to an subterranean stream in the dungeon.

The next feature is Zephyr Jones; despite this being a first issue, Zephyr has crossed over from Daring Mystery Comics #2. Zephyr and Corky are now making routine trips to Mars in the near future, when they are hijacked by a mad scientist and his daughter at gunpoint. "The Mad Astronomer" wants them to take him to Cygni, by which we can assume he means Cygni 61, a star 11.4 light years away. This is going to be an extremely long story if not for faster-than-light travel. And when they call him mad, they aren't kidding. He thinks there is stardust on stars that can cure any illness. No explanation for why they have to go to a star so far away to get that instead of our own star.

The science is wonkier than that; apparently the author thinks there are "lesser stars" between Earth and Mars, by which he seems to mean comets. These stars are covered with gasses and Zephyr figures out that if he can combust the atmosphere of a comet, it will propel the ship away at faster-than-light speed. This actually works, devastating the number of known comets in near space and somehow fails to destroy their spaceship every time they try it. En route they almost hit a moon, but are traveling so fast that they pass right through it. This reminds me of the Silver Age Flash vibrating through solid matter at super-fast speeds, but it does beg the question how they are interacting with comets to gain speed from them if they are effectively immaterial.

(Read at readcomicsonline.to)

Shadow Comics #1 - pt. 2

Wrapping up my review of this issue...

Bob Burton is a half-pint cowboy with an unusual angle to his story. A villain is trying to get the dead to his mother's ranch by convincing them their ranch is haunted. Noises in the attic and a ghostly face at windows are used to spook them, but the face is revealed to be a luminous mask hanging from a pole, and the noises in the attic are -- you couldn't get away with this in a comic book today -- from a cat with weights tied to its legs.

The story has an unusual resolution; instead of the villain getting arrested, or getting his comeuppance, Bob's mother sells the ranch to him -- but only after they find out that the man wanted buried treasure on the property, and after they had already dug up the treasure.

Bill Barnes is an aviator hero. He is after the Yellow-Jackets, a paramilitary group with an island base -- sort of an evil version of the Blackhawks! -- since publisher Street & Smith seems hesitant to label foreign countries as villainous so far. The narrator refers to how they have a "world-wide web," which is funny given what it means today.

Bill thinks the Yellow-Jackets base is "Mantigo Island." If the author is referring to Montego Bay, then the "island" is Jamaica.  Montauk Point is referenced, but that's a real place, a state park on Long Island.

Bill has night-glasses, binoculars with polarized lenses that let him see an oncoming aerial attack in time to prepare. He doesn't display having anything else of a trophy nature, though he owns at least 10 planes, assuming each of his hangars has two in them.

The Yellow-Jackets have thermite bombs, or incendiary bombs. Incendiary grenades are in the trophy section of Hideouts & Hoodlums, so these would just be a slight upgrade.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Jumbo Comics #13 - pt. 3

This is Stuart Taylor's lab now? Interesting, because in the beginning, Stuart was just lab assistant to Dr. Hayward. Has Hayward died and left everything to Stuart?

Laura raises a good question about how sexist Stuart is, though Stuart could have countered with the more logical response, "I need you to work the controls that get me home!"

So, in the future, giant mosquitoes will be mankind's worst problem, just like in Minnesota today.

The numbers encountered in this story seem way off. Somehow, the city's defenders are just three guys with one cannon?

And then there's the convenience of Stuart being the only person in the room to think of picking up a hand weapon when the insect arrives. Yes, it makes sense to always give the Hero an opportunity to shine before any non-Hero characters in the room, but this would have made more sense if the soldiers were outnumbered.

So, in the 93rd century, there are very few people left, they have atomic-powered hand weapons, but don't wear pants.

We never learn how the atomo-gun is better than what Stuart last used; he appeared to disintegrate the giant insect in one hit before, so this gun is an improvement how...?

What kind of time machine is this that, that Stuart doesn't know what year he was sent to? Does it just randomly fling him to some year?

Are we to believe the City of the Insects was built by insects, or just taken over by them?









I had to laugh out loud when I read this page. What a terrible plan this was...

"I'm going to take on the insects in their lair! Stay behind men, I'll take this stranger with me!"

"Oops -- I forgot, their lair is outside my jurisdiction! I'm not a soldier, just an ordinary policeman. Here, why don't you take care of the insects for me? Bye!"

So...can only the leader talk, or are they all intelligent insects? We never learn!

This page is pretty comical too. The insect king keeps Stuart prisoner, but without any restraints, without any guards -- in fact, the insect king is now all alone! Where are his followers? Apparently either all killed by the invading army ("Just kidding -- it was actually in my jurisdiction after all!"), or like an ant queen the other insects lack direction without their leader.

Speaking of if things make sense...Stuart is the one who bumps into the generator, but is the only one in the room not hurt? I guess the electricity has an area of effect, with a saving throw for half-damage, and Stuart was the only one who made his save.

Moving on, this is ZX-5 Spies in Action. This story seems to take place in Ukraine or Russia, given the names, which makes it so weird when something like "Chester City" winds up in the mix. Is this supposed to be Chester, England?















I hadn't bothered including the first page of this story so you might not follow the twist here, but ZX-5's girlfriend was with him at the start of this story and, apparently didn't have the documents yet or this adventure would have been much, much shorter. This is a novel twist to pull on your players, having a supporting cast member turn out to be something other than she appeared to be, as long as you don't use this too often.

Completely ignored between panels 7 and 8 is how ZX-5 gets into enemy HQ and gets the general alone. That's probably not the sort of thing you would normally gloss over in a game scenario; in fact, that's likely more likely to be the main goal of the scenario, as there is exploration involved then.

ZX-5 has successfully grappled General Miaha, but does not need any kind of game mechanic to just point a gun at his head. Rather, the player stated the intention, the Editor adjudicated on the spot and determined that warranted a morale check, and the general failed. Or is that the general...?

...Because it seems really weird to capture the enemy's general, but then take Captain Vybral hostage instead. In fact, the whole scenario gets super-sidetracked at this point, with the mission becoming rescuing Manya from Vybral and nothing else really happening on the front. This is part of the charm of a roleplaying game that there is no winning or losing and goals can be highly flexible in a scenario...but as a story, it really doesn't make much sense.

In addition to guns, we see soldiers using knives and whips. These soldiers seem like they would need to be statted as something other than ordinary fighters, because they go into a berserk frenzy if their leader gets taken down first. I hesitate to stat Cossacks as a mobstertype because that's a little racist...maybe we should call them berserkers, or just add this special ability (+1 to hit if their leader is incapacitated) to bloodthirsty hoodlums.


Speaking of berserk, ZX-5 does the same, and I think we can safely say he would be statted as a Mysteryman now, because fighting after a woman has been struck seems like his signature move now.

Panel 6 sure makes it look like some passion is about to spark in the heat of the moment. And just how did his shirt get ripped off again...?

Lastly, why is ZX-5 being congratulated, when it seems like Manya did all the work? She delivered the papers herself and then summoned the English Army herself.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)