New Adventure Comics #26

The first crossover in comic book history was not Batman and Superman. It was not the Shield and the Wizard. It was this installment of Federal Men, guest-starring Sandy Kean of Radio Squad -- even though they never leave the car and we are only told the radio squad is in there. One month before introducing Superman, Siegel and Shuster were already building a shared universe for their characters.

Nadir, Master of Magic, is probably the most reluctant caster of spells of all magicians -- or an actual first-level Magic-User with only one spell. In this installment, we find Nadir doing nothing more remarkable than climbing a tree.  But -- a palm tree? That should be nearly impossible to climb as he's shown doing it. Could this be the first instance of the spell Spider Climb in comic books...?

This is The Adventures of Rusty and His Pals, the feature Bob Kane did before Batman.  It makes the intriguing suggestion that there are both good and bad pirates. The pirates statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies were definitely the bad type. I wonder what good pirates would be like...?

There are all kinds of situations that keep popping up in the comics that Hideouts & Hoodlums, as yet, has no rules to handle.  Case in point, how many miles one can cover per day on foot, and how long one can force a march before becoming exhausted. The closest there is are the fatigue rules for combat.

Off-hand, I'd rule that you can move 25 miles in a day, +1 mile for every made save. vs plot.

This is from new feature Captain Desmo.  Yesterday I was talking about campaign moods and how dark Golden Age comics could get. It doesn't get much darker than this last panel, with the newlyweds discussing her suicide to avoid a fate worse than death if captured...

Does Captain Desmo really have grenades? As an Aviator, he has access to the stunt Bomb, which lets him act like he has grenades to drop from his plane. There are several stunts that Aviators can use to "give themselves" trophy-like items that not only exist as flavor text, but can affect combat temporarily.

Also note, Fighter-types can smoke cigarettes.

I was thinking I might be able to make some point about this page in regards to using cover in combat, or "concealing" trophy weapons where they can be easily found if needed -- but, really, I think I'm going to share this page because I would always put down Centaur for being so racist, but DC could be really racist too.



(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)