Smash Comics #7 - pt. 2

Moving on, this is Archie O'Toole. Reducing machines that make you shrink is a very old joke, and one that should be in the trophy section of Hideouts & Hoodlums.

Also worth pointing out is the joke concept in this story that all kings belong to a union to which they have to pay dues. There's an unusual concept for a campaign in that, I think.

This is Clip Chance at Cliffside, a very boring member of the sports genre that I almost never cite here, but today I share this page to point out three things. 1) If you ever see red clay, it's a clue as to where it came from. 2) Abandoned mines are perfect hideouts for gamblers. 3) Clip suspects the gamblers are in that dark mine, so he heads straight there without so much as a flashlight...

Don't play like Clip.

If Smash Comics didn't already have Will Eisner work in it, Vernon Henkel's Wings Wendall would look much more impressive. Here, as with Eisner's Espionage, Vernon did not shy away from making very clear anti-Nazi messages.

But what I'm more interested in is that the bad guys have the "more powerful car," and what the best way is to have a game mechanic reflect that. Honestly, I've been struggling with this since the very beginning. Is a Car +1 going to move faster? Provide a better AC to the driver/passengers? If I ever decide to assign hit points to cars (a notion I've toyed with in the past), does it get more hp? There are just too many variables to a car, or should a "+1" reflect a slight increase to all of them...?

This sort of thing happens in my H&H campaigns all the time. Okay, maybe not an Army Air Forces bomber, but my players will show up with crazy-heavy armament to face bad guys I just gave a pistol to defend themselves with.

This is Philpot Veep, another feature we don't visit often. This is a goofy feature with some goofy perspective problems going on here, but I share it because fake babies may be a mobstertype we need to consider adding. Or would this just be a half-pint? He's even shorter than most children, but he seems unusually tough for his size, but would that still make him 1/2 HD...?

Unless I've forgotten something, I don't think we ever had a home town for Invisible Hood before, but now we have Glenport. I wish I could find a real Glenport so we could pin down what state this takes place in. Is Glenport our first fictional city for a superhero?

There wasn't much suspense to this mystery about the disappearing safes, but we do get to see a group of bad guys all wearing asbestos suits.

"One week later"? That's a long time for a stakeout, particularly in a superhero story.

What kind of drug is IH giving to that driver??

Also, instead of acetylene torches, the bad guys have "fire-pistols." Which I'd stat the same anyway.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)