Smash Comics #6 - pt. 1

Oops! Almost passed over this issue!

I love Will Eisner's early Espionage stories so much, I'm half-tempted just to post the whole thing...but I'll be strong and just post the relevant pages here.

This time, we're treated to yet another obvious stand-in name for Germany -- Govania.  Thalga is obviously Hitler. You might think Stadt represented Himmler, but Hitler made Himmler, not the other way around. Stadt better represents Franz von Papen, an ex-chancellor who helped Hitler rise to power so von Papen could get his office back. But, was this common knowledge in the U.S. in 1939...?

The last gold rush was 1896, but I'm sure in 1940 people were still hoping for another one. I could spend my whole blog, or start a new one, talking about how good Eisner's art was, but note how panel 7 represents the swirl of activity around the discovery of gold, represented by water-like ripples around the upraised hand, as if it was the Lady of the Lake offering up that gold nugget...

I've nothing to say here, because I'm completely stumped by the reference to an "East Rush." I have no idea what event that is referring to and can't find anything on such a thing having happened.

This page is great for the tidbits of backstory we finally get on Black X.  It's a shame Kadu-Kan is an entirely throwaway reference and never comes back in a story. Google Translate detects Kadu-Kan as Malaysian for some reason, but can't give me a translation. I suspect Kan is Khan misspelled.

Black X's technique, of drawing out his opponents by making himself a big target, happens to be one of my own personal favorite strategies in RPGs.

As mentioned in Black X's write-up in Supplement IV: Captains, Magicians, and Incredible Men, Black X seems to have remarkable ability to request trophy items from Espionage Division at short notice, including this fighter plane that just happens to also be packing a torpedo.  Spoiler alert to my future players: I don't usually give out trophy items this cool.

Chic Carter spends a lot of his time reporting from Moravia. The last time I wrote about Chic Carter, I thought Moravia was fictitious. And, since I write in what seems like a vacuum here, no one corrected me that Moravia is a real place in the then-Czech Republic. Now, Krasnow, that could be fictional city.

This would be a difficult scenario to actually play, because so much is happening around Chic, but he doesn't really have to do anything but observe. He gets the opportunities to do good deeds, or to take over fighting for others, but he has to decide very quickly if he is going to take those opportunities. And if he decides not to live dangerously, this is going to be a very boring series of the Editor just describing exciting stuff going on around him the whole time.

I think this is a weakness of the newsman genre as a whole and why it will be difficult to emulate in Hideouts & Hoodlums game play...though, that said, I haven't actually tried one of these scenarios yet to test that theory.

Speaking of the newsmen genre, Chic gets followed immediately by Flash Fulton, the Ace of Cameramen. Here's a perfect example of Flash not taking any active steps to fight the fire, even though the opportunity to do so is right there. He's just doing his job and filming the situation. Of course, danger still finds him even though he's not actively looking for it.

He also gets to wear a trophy item asbestos suit (though I don't think he gets to keep it).

The game mechanic issue on this page is subtle and not immediately evident. When Tony shouts out and warns Flash about the boom, does that make the boom miss? H&H has no active dodge skill -- if the attacker missed, it's just assumed you dodged (or something else happened that saved you). Now, what did likely happen here is that the shout did not make the boom miss, but took away the surprise attack it would have had and made the attack roll happen during the first (and only) turn of combat.

Splashing water in unconscious people's faces does not wake them up in H&H. Rather, the two mobsters were only stunned and the duration of the stun just happened to wear off while they were being hosed down.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)