Keen Detective Funnies #8

It's July 1938 now (just pretend with me here) and this issue from Centaur Comics is on the stands. It's a bit confusing; despite being #8, it's actually the first issue of Keen Detective Funnies (and it's unclear what title it would have taken over the numbering from, since all of Centaur's titles had been higher than #8 at this point). Further, if you only looked at the first story (The Clock), you would have thought this was an all-reprint book, since the Clock story is (and the Rocky Baird story later on).

And then there's new stuff, like "Bayfront Cowboy".  He's more of a Fighter than a Cowboy and his weapon of choice is a grappling hook. There's no reason for it to do more than ordinary weapon damage, but it should have a range of at least 20'.  More importantly, it appears a hook can pull someone off their feet with a failed save vs. science after the tug.

This guy's pretty bada--. Besides grappling hooks, he also uses human body shields!  I would make even a Chaotic Hero save vs. plot before allowing them do such a deed. The living shield would count as soft cover (hard cover if he wasn't also attacking). Any miss would require a second attack roll against the shield (who, in this case, would be dead on a hit).

"Terror of the Timber" is a done-in-one story with a Fighter protagonist who can shimmy up a tree (something he's not supposed to be able to do by the rules) and definitely seems to be kicking two men at once, even though one of them is armed (something else he's not supposed to be able to do).

I've said before that it's rare for comic books to name specific types of guns, but here we've got a Smith & Wesson .38 Special carbine. Nothing special about that, in game mechanics terms, other than range. 

This page is from an installment of The Spinner (just an old guy who spins stories for kids), and the highlight of this story is definitely the Lost Maniac Mine. A perfect adventure location -- there's caves full of owls, bats, skulls, and chests full of gold for the brave souls willing to go in deep enough. Of course, this wouldn't even challenge a single 1st-level Hero without being toughened up a little. Maybe giant bats? Or an undead skeleton or two?

Oh, never mind -- there's a brown bear in there! Maybe this requires a party of 1st-3rd level Heroes!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)