Target Comics #2 - pt. 2

Today we're still looking at Bulls-Eye Bill as he says some not-nice things about half-Hispanic people. We're going to grit our teeth and push past that and get to the solution of the code Bill found last time. Did you guess this? It seems like Dee is only taking some wild guesses, so it'll be interesting to see if she guessed right or not. Interestingly, Dee gives me every impression of being a supporting cast member, so when Bill's player couldn't solve the code, he handed it to a character controlled by the Editor, asking for a handout. Of course, the Editor doesn't have to then give them accurate information!

A lot of what would make a Wild West campaign different from a normal Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign is all in the flavor text. Every time the hero hits, you should shout "Bull's eye!" Every time an attack misses by 1, it should hit someone's hat. 

I think I've written about lassoing and pulling off a horse before. I can actually think of a couple of different mechanics for this. The simplest would be making a normal attack and applying the push/pull rules to it, subtracting footage from point of damage (I would say at least 50% less damage would get you a save vs. science to resist being yanked out of the saddle). The other is a bit more complex, involving a grappling attack for the lasso, as if in melee, with a successful hold pulling the rider out of the saddle, while if the target wins the grappling match, then he stays in the saddle, and maybe even pulls the lassoer off his feet, depending on by how high he won the grappling contest.

That glossary of cadet slang could really come in handy for an aviator-themed campaign!

When reading non-adventure strips, like the sports genre features, I often find it difficult to figure out how I would make an interesting scenario out of them in a game. The aviation genre is tricky in the same way; what do you have characters do while not flying in combat? One thing is to have non-violent contests, like this "capture the parachute" game. The mechanics seem simple: individual initiative rolls, and then everyone rolls to attack in order; first ones to "hit" a parachute gets one. Another way to handle this, which would be a first for H&H, would be to have contestants bid on which AC they're willing to try to hit, and have those ones go first. Hmm...I sense an alternate initiative system coming up for H&H...

It's not clear if Ramon thinks it's okay to force himself on Loris because he's an entitled movie star or if the author, Campbell, thinks this is culturally acceptable to Hispanics. We've seen lots of evidence of racism from Campbell before, but I'm going to give him the benefit of a doubt on this one.

I'm a little concerned when I see scenes like this and think...man, security is lax at airports back then! If my players just wait and time things so that they can run up to an aviator just before he gets in his plane, they can overpower him and take off in his stead! Some possible complications: the aviator is leveled -- a 2nd-3rd level aviator will probably knock out a 1st-level hero and make him think twice about stealing planes again; a 2 in 6 chance of some obstacle being moved in front of the plane as it taxis before takeoff; pursuit planes taking off behind him and trying to force him to land (skill check to avoid having to land if the forcing pilot makes a successful attack roll?).  
 

"Pan" is slang for face; I've known this one before, but it's worth a reminder, since we don't use it that way much today.

It's pretty disturbing that Lucky and Loris are both convinced that no one will believe her about being abducted for sex (which certainly seems implied to me), perhaps more so because even today people often don't believe the female accuser.

It is encouraging that Lucky faces consequences for stealing a plane. Consequences are virtually unheard of in golden age stories.

Well, consequences until this evidence proving Loris' story turns up. It's actually a nice story touch, as the damsel in distress dropping something is usually just a clue for the hero, but here it proves the hero is innocent.

I can't imagine what real life actor, if any, Ramon is modeled after, but Robert Baylor is surely Robert Taylor, one of MGM's main leading men in the 1930s.

And if you're thinking Loris sounds like a made-up name, it actually was a thing in the mid-1930s. According to SSA's baby names page, it peeked in popularity in 1935 as the 863rd most popular girl's name. Certainly not common, but not made-up either.

In the "there's nothing new under the sun" department, T-Men anticipates the end of The Naked Gun (or at least the part where Ludwig escapes from Lt. Drebin, but then gets hit by a car) by 48 years. It's funny in the movie; here it's a terrible ending to a cliffhanger. 

Despite the fact that Agent Turner wasn't responsible for stopping the bad guy, he's rewarded with a new mission immediately (or maybe I'm just assuming immediately; we don't know when "later" is)!

At least it's an easy mission. "Don't look for clues or try to solve anything, Turner. We want you to find a plane, so check all the planes."

My first thought on reading this page was that 45,000 tons seemed either awfully specific or awfully random, if it didn't match real battleship weights. It turns out, that weight is historically relevant and makes this strip extremely timely. The U.S. and the U.K. had a naval treaty with an "escalator clause" that limited them to building 45,000 ton-ships to maintain their neutrality. Iowa-class battleships were being built in 1940 at that exact weight in order to satisfy the letter, if not the spirit, of that treaty. 

More exciting, there actually was a U.S.S. Hawaii, but built in 1945, 5 years later, and while it was not built in Brooklyn, it was built nearby, in Camden, New Jersey!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Target Comics #2 - pt. 1

We return to Carl Burgos' third android hero. I don't have much to say here, since this is largely recap from the first issue, but...Dr. Simms, the world is at peace? In 1940? How long has it been since you looked at a newspaper?

Carl Burgos seems to be on the side of isolationists here (spoilers: that's definitely not the direction the U.S. wound up going in). 

So far, we don't know what this chromelac can do, unless it can make blinding flashes. Maybe an alloy made with magnesium?

Here's the page where we first learn chromelac is an alloy. We also get a demonstration of how you made phone calls in 1940.

It's worth noting that Manowar has to climb the fence; he does not have the leaping power prepared and it's not his built-in android power. The white streaks from his eyes suggest Wreck at Range is his built-in power. However, a speeding bullet is an awful specific, hard-to-hit target to wreck.  It's tricky because wrecking doesn't specifically call for attack rolls normally, to some extent wrecking is an area-effecting ability, but the Editor can require them at his discretion. A stingy Editor could assign an Armor Class of 0 or lower to a speeding bullet.  

It's rare for us to learn that mobsters are using automatics, not that it does them any good. It seems that only one of them gets a chance to hit before Manowar gets to go, which defies how initiative normally works in H&H, with each side rolling against each other. Now, it won't break H&H if you, as Editor, decide to switch to individual initiative rolls, but it does slow combat down unnecessarily.  Of course, just because they're present doesn't mean mobsters need to attack.  They might have been overconfident enough to just have one attack first.

"High tension electrons," huh? Well, that's sort of a thing. He must mean high tension electron voltage, but tension is, as far as I can tell, what helps power your television or your electron microscopic; it's the voltage that can harm you. Here, Manowar is using the Blast power -- perhaps our first encounter with it in a comic book! -- to harm, although an alternate explanation is that he's using Wreck at Range to disarm (his goal is clearly to disarm, but both attack methods have a chance of disarming).

I'm not sure what the science is, if any, behind the electrons having to strike the steel bar first before hitting the water. Apparently being stunned by electricity makes you mispronounce words. 

Manowar is sort of correct, that electrocution typically means grave injury or death, but I think, technically, even being stunned should count as electrocution.

I don't plan on making "toughie" a mobstertype. Toughie sounds enough like thug that I would just use that one.

Note that, again, Manowar has to climb because he can't leap (I point it out because it's so unusual for a superhero circa 1940).

Ha, I would have been right to use thug stats for the toughie!

The narrator calls those guys guards in panel 4; I wonder if that makes them rented cops, as opposed to on-duty officers. There shouldn't be any difference in statting them; they would still be beat cops. 

There is no game mechanic that causes heart attacks; that must have been a freebie from the Editor because the game session needed to wrap up. 

I'm going to have a Message power in the Heroes Handbook, if I ever get that done.

Wait - we still don't know what chromelac is! Is it a magnesium alloy? If it is, why do you want to make bridges and houses out of it? Maybe you should have thought this through before killing Tomsen for just wanting to make a profit off of it, Manowar...

We're going to jump right into the middle of Bulls-Eye Bill and the good stuff. Everett does not write your typical hero stories, so here's the bad guy kicking the good guys' butts. The question I pose here is, should kicking with boots with spurs on them do more damage than kicking with boots alone? Except in deliberately rare situations (trophy weapons), all weapons do the same range of damage in H&H. Again, it's a deliberate choice to go with abstraction over accuracy. 

Now, an option for the Editor that isn't really spelled out in the rulebooks is that, in a situation like this, where the bad guy really kicks butt due to lucky die rolls, the Editor could make his weapon a trophy weapon with a higher damage die, even if the weapon had not been intended to be a trophy weapon, nor did higher damage during the battle. The fact that there's a fun anecdote tied to the item enhances its importance in the campaign.

Let's overlook the racist Chinese caricature for a moment. Can you guess the code? That's the kind of clue that can keep your players guessing for sessions...I love it!

*sigh* Now we have a racist "half-breed" caricature. Relax, I'm not going to create a half-breed mobstertype with fantastic leaping abilities. Rather, I think this is a good example of an enemy mysteryman using a stunt! He's probably higher than 1st level too, since he takes a bullet and is still ready for more fighting!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

   

Slam-Bang Comics #1 - pt. 5

I just can't seem to let Mark Swift go. There are only three pages left that I didn't get to in the last post that I want to get to today.  

Being thrown into a cage with an animal you have to kill is an okay trap. Being sporting enough to send you in with a sword is just offering you XP. 

Eagles is a really unusual choice; I can't say I've ever heard of eagles being called "vicious" before and think wild turkeys might have made a better choice. It's also unclear if these are meant to be huge eagles, or the narrator is saying eagles are huge birds. Huge eagles might be worth up to 1+1 HD...

If you didn't think this story was gonzo-crazy enough -- now the Indians have a pet dragon. It's big, it's fearsome-looking, and more importantly it should have some impressive Hit Dice given its size and mass -- but one of the most annoying tropes of golden age comics for me is the "dead in one hit" I keep seeing in so many stories. 

Hey Indians, if this guy can kill a dragon in one thrust, you really think you can take him with spears...?

The next time I run Hideouts & Hoodlums, if/when my players try something just off-the-wall crazy, before I say "that could never work," I need to recall this page and how a Viking rode a dragon like a bronco.

It's actually consistent with how dragons are pretty much uniformly treated in the early comics as unintelligent animals. Be cautious, Editors, about giving your players the opportunity to domesticate some of these and start a dragon breeding farm.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Slam-Bang Comics #1 - pt. 4

 He may not deserve it, but we're back with another look at Lee Granger, Jungle King. The mentally augmented lion -- something Lee was not only able to do with 1940-era science, but with whatever equipment he was able to find in the jungles of Africa -- comes to Lee for healing, which makes me wonder if the Scientist class should be allowed to heal, or if this is just the first aid skill.

I feel obligated to point out how unlikely it would be for this plan to work in any game session I run. It's predicated on the Arabs splitting up so much that they not only can't see Hassan caught in the snare, but they can't hear his cries for help either. If not the first, surely the second would have happened and reinforcements would arrive before Lee has time to change out of his clothes.

Now this part of the plan is more sensible, and I like the extra detail of an underground stream with a fast-moving current being under a pit trap. The unusual thing is the shape of the pit trap, seemingly 5' x 30', which is great, I suppose, only if the enemy insists on traveling in single file.

By now I've seen a lot of fake names for Germans, but Kazilians has got to be the weirdest. "How many Germans are coming?" "Kazilians of them, sir!"

Also, and I know this is petty and nitpicky of me, but those have got to be the thickest lips I've ever seen drawn on a white man in a comic book.

Using logs dropped in the water to foil torpedoes sounds like a great tactic, and one likely to work. The torpedo then angling off the top of the log and shooting entirely over the ship seems entirely less likely...

This tactic would be difficult to duplicate in H&H with combatants on foot, as a shield between combatants only improves AC by one, and it is too easy to run around obstacles. With slower-moving and less maneuverable ships this should be more effective, so much so that I can't think of much in the way of game mechanics to assign to this. Maybe a skill check for each pilot to outmaneuver the opponent?

Aerial torpedoes look like rockets to me... 

This is from the next feature, Mark Swift and the Time Retarder. Mark is the boy in shorts, going back in time with his scientist neighbor friend (because it goes only back in time, that's why he calls it a retarder; no explanation how they get back if it only retards time...). The strip's author pulled 940 out of his hat as the year Vikings landed in North America, but it's not a bad guess; even today we can only guess the 10th century is when it happened. 

I've no idea why a Viking princess would have come along on this expedition...

How convenient that Mr. Kent just happens to know Old Norse! Perhaps he knows modern Icelandic, which is closest to Old Norse still spoken today. But then, in H&H, it doesn't really matter; we let everyone talk to everyone, like it happens in most comics.

It's typical racism of the period that the Indians are "savages" and the Vikings are "brave," but not savages. 

Mark and Mr. Kent don't make for good action heroes, but they can still be useful, as can your non-combat supporting cast during adventures. Just give them torches and tell them to set everything they see on fire!

Oh, and we also know that Vikings didn't wear horned helmets; that's a myth that came from 19th century art. And while I'm getting nitpicky, this likely is happening in Newfoundland, which means the Indians are Beothuk, and the Beothuk lived in conical dwellings known as mamateeks, not teepees. It's also unlikely they're all running around shirtless in Newfoundland, since only Alaska is even further north.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Slam-Bang Comics #1 - pt. 3

Hello! We're back, still looking at the Lucky Lawton feature. We could talk about the oddly rectangular word balloons (the very next page goes back to rounded corners), or the terrible coloring job on this page, but I'm going to focus on the "no guns" law, which was actually quite common in the "Old West," and is something we badly need more of today. Personally, I would like to run a "no guns" H&H campaign, but I know that wouldn't emulate the comics well.

If you've followed this blog long enough, you've probably seen plenty of examples where the artist just seems to be guessing what an animal looks like without using a reference. The artist here is Hal Sharp, and I have a feeling Hal owned a dog; Pal is in real dog poses every time we see him.

Lucky does the smart thing, circling the perimeter instead of barging right into the bank. 

Also note how not going solo gives Lucky twice the chance to detect the activity in the bank that he would have had walking along alone.

There are two ways to achieve Lucky's noiselessness. One, he can make a skill check to move silently. The other is that he trust to his surprise roll and, if successful, means he must have been moving silently. Since chance of surprise is normally 2 in 6, it seems like that would be easier for most Heroes (unless Lucky is a mysteryman using a stunt, but I doubt it). 

Combat in the dark adds a greater level of challenge, what with the -4 penalties to hit. Just by not flipping the lights on, every unarmored combatant is now effectively at AC 5. Now, from the panel art it appears that there is plenty of light coming in through those front windows, making the scene only dimly lit, but this could just be artistic license so we can see more than five black panels with word balloons in them.

And yet, in this scene, the bandits are silhouetted in front of the windows, so it wasn't really that dark after all? And the remaining band sees Lucky in the darkness now? To emulate this scene, we need a new mechanic for eyes adjusting to darkness after a certain, or maybe random, number of combat turns. 

Although the rest of this story is seemingly set in the Old West, the remaining bandit's hat looks suspiciously modern.

The bad coloring job on the lower half of this page might be fooling me, but it appears that the rancher is wearing his bandana up over his mouth. I only mention it because I see so many people wearing their masks wrong like that these days...

There aren't game mechanics on display here, but I like how Lee is a scientist/explorer. Both were classes in Hideouts & Hoodlums 1st edition, and while both classes did get playtested in my campaigns, no one ever thought to combine those two.

My initial reaction was that having the slavers be Arabs was racist, but while there have been many white slavers through history, there was a strong tradition of slavery in the Middle East, with several countries not outlawing it until 1970. Also in the writer's favor, Ali and Hassan are real Arabic names, and not gibberish names meant to sound Arabic (I know, some golden age writers set the bar really low!).

Wow, we're in pure fantasy territory at this point. First, there's no way a plane explodes, and someone sitting in that plane falls from that wreckage completely unharmed. This should be a save for half damage situation at best. 

Then, there's no way someone's coat would be big enough to create enough wind drag necessary to cushion his fall, so there's more damage Lee should have taken by now. I think we're looking at the tune of 55d6 damage at this point - and that's assuming the plane was at a near dangerously low altitude for flying.

As unlikely it is that all the spear attacks Lee left himself open to while charging the pygmies missed, it is even more impossible for him, game mechanically, to push the leader onto a spear, unless the Editor was house ruling a fumble mechanic. More likely, this is just a freebie from the Editor.

Neutralizing poison is really easy in Lee's world. All you have to do is stick someone with a knife and the poison leaks right out of you! If I was willing to implement this as a new rule (and I'm not), for every point of damage you do to the wound, you would give the recipient a new saving throw. 

The pygmies are very patient in indulging Lee's rampant passive-aggressive racism. "Uh...ever heard of donkeys? The domestication of donkeys started in Africa. And we know what iron is, iron smelting and forging technologies were discovered in Nigeria as early as the 6th century BC. Bricks too, since about 7,000 BC. And just what are you whittling? A giant banjo?"

I am so torn on this page. On one hand, I think it's great that, for once, a lion shows up in a story and the Hero wants to capture it alive instead of stabbing it to death, or snapping its jaws, or shooting it. But that he wants it so he can perform experiments on its brain doesn't sit well with me, even though I get that the author is trying to offer a scientific explanation for how the jungle Hero is able to talk to animals. 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Slam-Bang Comics #1 - pt. 2

Okay, the planes going dead are explained (as if we needed it, as cliched as the rays are), but what we never get explained is how the machine guns have no effect. Bulletproof armor on the planes?

Also, take a look at the jowls on War Bird. In the Golden Age, a Hero could debut in his late 40s. 

It's nice that Von Kruhl was kind enough to write his note in English for us, despite being Serbian and writing this for Frenchmen to read.

Where is the searchlight that was on the front of the plane before? Perhaps more odd, what was holding it in place on that smooth surface?

I do like that, as hi-tech as Von Kruhl's forces are, it's an ordinary pair of binoculars that foils him.

We don't see enough of this tactic, where the hero sneaks into the enemy's hideout and, instead of engaging the enemy, wrecks their stuff. This makes especially good sense in the aviator genre.

"Look! A Frenchman!" Is the thinking there that only a Frenchman would be sabotaging their planes?

"Hammer-like blows" would normally be flavor text, except that it seems pretty clear War Bird is hitting them with a wrench, which would be heavy enough to do normal club damage.

You can probably guess that War Bird gets away and wins the day, so we'll jump into Jim Dolan. Jim is in the reporter hero genre, but with the twist that he's an editor.

The list of his past accomplishments seems like a set-up for starting him out with a brevet rank. It's also a pretty good list of scenario ideas you could add to a longer list, and the final panel illustrates the advantages of making the police chief your supporting cast (something I saw being put to good use in my last H&H campaign).

I'm not going to address everything on this page; we've talked about trip attacks and improvised weapons plenty of times. We could talk about movement and if rushing out the door should really be faster than standing up (hint: in H&H it's determined entirely by initiative rolls). But I'm mainly sharing this page because the mobsters are not only using hot irons as torture devices, but somehow have flaming hot irons. Did they soak those things in kerosene first? They look pretty fearsome; I might let them do 2-7 damage as melee weapons.

I've talked before about smoke and heat damage from trying to rescue in an arson scenario, but what's interesting here is that Jim spots a clue in the fire, when he clearly wouldn't have had time to do a search. This has to be a freebie from the Editor, as every skill check should take at least one melee turn, and in most cases should take one exploration turn. 

Does Jim have to roll to hit to land in the net? To truly be fearless, one would think he does, but it makes equal sense for the firemen to roll to hit him with the net, and as long as two of them succeed their rolls, they catch him. 

It's interesting that Jim doesn't know his Bible well enough to know the psalm without researching. His Editor could have spared him the trouble and let him have an Intelligence check to remember.

The clue seems like a bit of a stretch to me, though...

I'm not personally cool with Heroes holding guns on people's faces while interrogating them, but it does happen in games.

Swimming from the patrol board to the yacht is a smart tactic, giving him a chance at surprise he would have lost had the patrol board pulled up alongside the yacht.

We'll jump ahead to Lucky Lawton, this anthology's western feature. I could mention that the law was tougher in the Old West than many give it credit for; even in self-defense these two still have to make their case in court. Or I could mention that Pal can act without being ordered to, making me suspect that Pal the dog is actually being played as a Hero character. But what really catches my eye are the hashmarks on the wall of the jail outside the cells. What would the sheriff have been keeping track of like that, and couldn't do on a calendar...?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Slam-Bang Comics #1 - pt. 1

This is my first time ever looking at this issue. I know none of these characters become hits, but I'm hoping for a gem in the rough...

This is Diamond Jack, the Green Lantern before there was Green Lantern. He's got an interesting amount of hubris to him for what should be a 1st-level Magic-User. Of course he's not; the Magic-Users never are. Here he casts Protection from Missiles and Polymorph Any Object, neither of which are 1st-level spells.

I was long ago asked why Hideouts & Hoodlums bothers emulating D&D's low-level Magic-Users at all, if you never find them in comic books; but this is precisely why comic book Magic-Users are always so boring, so unbeatably overpowerful. I choose not to emulate that.

A gangster chief is a master criminal, while thugs are their own mobstertype. 

Magic-Users never seem interested in keeping secret identities, or keeping their magic a secret. It's a wonder that the existence of magic stayed secret as long as it did. 

I think this is the third time we've seen Cure Light Wounds being cast. 

Here's where things start to get interesting for me. The mobsters just happen to know a witch? And what to make of this smoke dragon? Is it a spell, like an Aerial Servant? Or is it a conjured, living (or "living"/enchanted) creature?

That the smoking dragon disappears as if dispelled instead of killed makes me lean towards treating it as a new spell. Speaking of which, this Create Sword spell may be a new spell too. What he does to the spell is the all-too familiar Polymorph Any Object spell.

On this page the dragon is now consistently called a demon and is treated as if it is a mobster instead of a spell. You would think the witch would know which it was...but I'm thinking consistency isn't the priority in this story.

It's possible that Jack was able to use the Disguise spell here, but only if the smoke dragon-demon is in humanoid form here. Otherwise he had to conceal himself with a higher-level illusion, or even a Polymorph Self spell. 

The witch's spellbook is her "wand," just as Jack's ring is his "wand." 

This suggests that Polymorph Any Object is a permanent spell, or this is a higher-level permanent version.

It's interesting how Jack uses no magic to disguise himself as one of the thugs, but still can't help himself and uses a Knock spell on the door.

If jack opens the safe for them, has he really caught them in the act of doing anything...?

I wonder if magic-users should get extra XP for when they defeat opponents without spells, given how many times I've seen powerful heroes choose to settle things with normal fisticuffs instead.

Tom Sharp would itself be a pretty decent name for a strip. 

This is not the first time I've seen fighters given experience in the Spanish Civil War. I wonder if this is how you explain brevet ranks for fighters, circa 1940? 

The Lafayette Flying Corps was the name given to the American volunteer pilots who flew in the French Air Force (Armée de l'Air) during World War I. I don't think its name was changed to the French Flying Corps during WWII.

Sermia sounds like Serbia. It's an unfortunate bit of naming, since Serbia was a victim during the war, invaded and occupied, with many deaths.

This is not the first radio-controlled plane we've seen, and it's far from the first ray gun that kills engines we've seen -- surprisingly, this is the first searchlight mounted on a plane we've ever seen. Apparently it's a rare feature, but then so is night flying...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)