Funny Picture Stories #7

This page illustrates a) Centaur's horrible racism, b) the importance of evasion when encounters prove too dangerous (see "Avoiding Mobsters" in Book III: the Underworld & Metropolis Adventures), and c) the danger of encountering more than one wandering encounter at a time if an encounter runs long enough.

Also illustrating Centaur's lack of originality at this time, the guy running away was dressed just like Goofy on the first page of this story.

Space adventures are good for fantastic settings, like cloud cities.

Also remember to rename everything with "space" in it, so telescopes become "space-o-scopes".

The valkyrmen are the inhabitants from that floating city. They seem a pretty barbaric lot (so it seems odd that they have a floating city) and fight with spears, but they can fly, they're fast (Mv 120?), and probably 1+1 HD.

Plot hooks don't have to be complicated. They can be as simple as waiting on your sloop for a guy to stroll up and ask you to sail him to an island with an old pirate fortress on it.

When your plot hook comes from some guy named Brute Bransom, though, you've got to be a little more cautious.

Rocky may be willing to fight using biting and gouging, but I don't recommend it for Hideouts & Hoodlums. Let's try to keep things a bit more above the board there, Rocky!

Grappling and pinning an opponent, so you can wail on them with your fists and get the bonus for attacking prone targets is also awfully un-heroic. I might ask a player to save vs. plot before allowing that kind of attack, unless it was a really dangerous situation or the stakes were really high.

It makes sense that mobsters would take advantage of the layout of the hideout and could lure Heroes into position over trapdoors. If I was the player, though, I would balk about how the scene started with my Hero outside the castle, so why is there a trigger for a pit trap outside the castle?

A good cutaway shot of a pit trap, with one wall extending only partway underwater, separating the pit from a natural cavern. The natural columns are a nice touch.

The placement of the treasure seems a bit of a giveaway, though.

Mighty suspicious wall protrusion at that dead end. Show it to your players and see if they trust to touch it!

And lastly I include this page because Lance Darrow is so concerned about U.S. neutrality in the Spanish Civil War. Isolationism was a big deal for the U.S. in the 1930s, but it's a starkly different tact than I took for Superman in my fanfiction.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)