Silver Streak Comics #3 - pt. 3

We're still looking at Ace Powers, who I thought was a private eye, but it looks like he's actually a police officer. Or maybe this patrolman in the car just owes Ace a big favor? Or should be considered one of his supporting cast members?

That last panel...some of the artwork is terrible in this feature...

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I'm sure this scene has played out in plenty of gangster movies and TV shows, with the car conveniently flipping right after the driver is shot, like there was some symbiotic relationship between driver and car. But I'm not going to talk about that so much as the tommy guns and facing. Because, if you're firing out the side window of a car, should you be able to aim straight ahead?  Normally, and I've said this before on this blog, facing is largely irrelevant to the Hideouts & Hoodlums combat system, but there are common sense occasions when facing can't be ignored, like when you're sneaking up from behind, or like when you have to lean out a window to shoot sideways. I think I'd be charitable in giving the mobsters only a -1 penalty to hit.

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The clearest picture of a 1940 drivers license I've ever seen. Looks remarkably like the ones we have today!

Now we're going to move on to our next feature, Dickie Dean, a half-pint scientist. In a very rare instance, we not only learn what city Dickie is from, but we learn his exact address from that letter!















This machine is a two-in-one mad science trophy. See if you can follow this: sound waves don't ever disappear, but keep echoing back to their original source for weeks, just too faint to be normally heard. And shadows last just as long, but you can't see them under normal lighting conditions! If you can swallow that kind of science, you could include this invention in your next campaign!

The first panel suggests the kind of world-altering change that super science would bring to the campaign world, if it was followed through on.

We never learn what kind of improvements Dickie plans to make to the machine. It's hard to imagine what else it could be made to do.

I did have rules in 1st edition H&H for inventing things, but it didn't cover improving things.

I love this page; a Hero who doesn't use brute strength or even something sharp to free himself from being tied up. He burns the house down around him!

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Now we're going to jump to the next feature, which is Sgt. Drake.


This chauffeur should be statted as a guard, since his uniform can be stolen once he's knocked out.

As if we didn't have enough mad science in this issue, we now have a radio-controlled plane...which is really weird, because Drake is in the plane. Why he is controlling it with his radio instead of, say, manual controls, is deeply puzzling.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)