Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #7 - pt. 2

Dan Dix, Ship Detective seems like a strip that doesn't have a lot of room to grow, but this scenario does sport some interesting locals. It starts in Miama, is bound for Puerto Rico, and winds up on the Island of Nassau -- and I had to look that one up, but it is a real island in the Bahamas. It almost sounds more like someone's idea of a dream vacation more than an adventure story, until someone starts shooting at Dan.

$50 for a sailboat, even a small one, seems like an awful good deal, but let's give the author the benefit of a doubt; maybe the economics of the Bahamas were like this in 1939.

This cheap deal seems to be the only break these bad guys get; other than that, they are comically incompetent. Which may be fun to read for a page, but does not make for a challenging adventure scenario in game play. Your villains need to be about equally competent with your players.

This is from a one-shot story called "The Keefer Snatch". I find myself highly skeptical that someone could hang on to the side of a car as it drives for miles, then roll under the car when it stops, and have no one in the car notice. In fact, I'd probably assign a stiff penalty to his surprise roll -- like down to 1 in 8 -- but that still makes it possible.

You wouldn't think it from looking at this page, but it brings up an age old issue, as old as Dungeons & Dragons modules themselves -- why do bad guys leave treasure lying around to be collected, without using it themselves? In this case, it's the sub-machine gun conveniently left sitting out while the bad guys try to pick off the cop with their revolvers.

Comic books and their inconsistencies....I had just posted recently about needing to apply falling damage rules to horizontal sliding/falling -- and here's a motorcycle cop who takes no harm from falling off a speeding motorcycle. Maybe there needs to be a save vs. science to avoid horizontal sliding damage?

This is from Spy Hunters. We usually see people seemingly fall dead right away from poison in comics, but on this occasion we actually get an example of the onset time for a lethal poison -- 15 to 30 minutes.

How to rig a trap in a hockey stick (in case you ever plan to do so in a scenario).

Dean Denton, Scientific Detective, doesn't want to ride the fancy plane with the electric refrigerator. That's the only plot point I've seen so far, but it's worth pointing out that an electric fridge light enough to be on an airplane. and this is just the sort of modular perks I was talking about yesterday.

I'm not sure if 12 hours to fix a smashed carburetor and ripped ignition sounds right. Right now, Hideouts & Hoodlums has no mechanic for fixing things, just inventing things. I'm not sure if we need a mechanic for fixing things...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)