Popular Comics #46 - pt. 3

We return to Shark Egan. This is far from the first or the last time we'll see a Hero in a diving suit and, while it doesn't inspire me to race out and craft a pearl-diving scenario, I'm struck by the interesting detail that you can hear the compressors from other divers, making it difficult to gain surprise under these conditions. Maybe everyone's chance for surprise would drop to 1 in 6?

Also, having a mix of lined and line-less diving suits in an underwater combat certainly gives one side a strong advantage over the other.

Okay, old guy....It's hard to take potassium seriously as a rare and valuable element, considering I can go to the pharmacy and pick up potassium pills super-cheap. Was potassium somehow rarer in the past? So far, I can't find any sources that back up why this geezer is so excited to find potassium (unless he just forgot his pills at home...).

The moss in the waterfall, resembling a hangman's noose, is a really nice story touch, and example of outdoor dressing.

The other thing here I would want to address is that Tommy and his pal have climbed 1,000'. How many skill checks would that take (I think it's safe to say, from the 2nd edition skill rules, that this would be basic skill checks, since they have the advantage of climbing with equipment)? The rules are, I think rightly, silent on how far one can climb per check, because there are just too many variables to take into account, like the steepness of the slope, the roughness of the mountainside (does it have good handholds?), whether they have to navigate around overhangs, etc. And then there is personal bias; I personally consider mountain climbing to be really dangerous, so I would think requiring a skill check every 10-60' is not unreasonable.

Then there is the issue of how far to have them fall if they failed. The mountain is not one sheer drop to the bottom; they are likely to land on the mountainside further down below them. If they fell from 500', let's say, I would probably roll percentile dice 5 times, giving a range of 5-500' they fell (which, yes, would likely leave them unconscious unless they were super-lucky).

We haven't seen a goat on this blog in ages! This is a mountain goat, though, which I would probably stat with 1+1 Hit Dice.

"So what? If we miss Jupiter we just sail on past it forever until we die? Is it too late to get off this ship?"

Actually, Jane keeps her skepticism about Tornado's INT score to herself and we're treated to some sketchy science about re-entry (though they did get right that you would need parachutes to break your fall).

I wonder how this mistook another planet for Jupiter. Were they not checking their trajectory en route?

The 1930s was right around the time when scientists started to figure out that Jupiter was not going to look like this.

"By Jupiter! It's Jupiter!" is a great line.

The alien insect looks like a giant wasp with a disturbingly cat-like face. Very rare for Golden Age comics, the insect survives a gunshot and needs more attacks. I would probably have to assign this at least 2 Hit Dice. Giant wasps were statted in 1st edition (Book II, Mobsters and Trophies), but I only gave them 1+1 HD then.

Giant ants have been passed over in H&H so far, though the alien Bandar (statted in an early Trophy Case issue) were certainly ant-like. This page shows us 6' long ants -- which probably have 4 Hit Dice -- and come here in a group of at least 12.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)