Marvel Mystery Comics #5 - pt. 3

Two features left!

Second to last is Irwen Hasen's Ferret, Mystery Detective. In it, we learn that the police code for a shooting is 23. At the crime scene, Ferret gets a good encounter reaction roll and the commissioner on the scene let's him keep a clue. We learn that Ferret's car has bulletproof glass, improving its Armor Class value and shielding Ferret from a lot of bullets as he is chased from the crime scene. Mobsters force him to crash -- treat it as an obstacle in a car chase, but with a save vs. science or a skill check to avoid? -- and he emerges with just a light wound on his arm.

We learn that "they've been doing this in Europe for years. You place a dry sheet of paper over a wet one and write a message with a matchstick. When the paper dries it's blank - but wet it again - presto! A message!" I haven't tested this to see if it really works.

Before going into a suspicious building, Ferret leaves his pet ferret outside, so he can whistle and summon it to rescue him later. Which turns out to be a good thing, as Ferret is vulnerable to the "surprise head blow" trope that fells so many golden age heroes. We learn it takes a ferret 30 minutes to chew through a wall (interior wall, I'm guessing -- or that ferret needs to be statted as a superhero!).

After escaping, Ferret has three hoodlums chasing him. He uses a length of rope to trip all three of them. Okay, I've talked about allowing this before, but giving them a bonus to their saves to reflect how his efforts are being divided. What's unusual here is that only two get back up right away to fight him, while the third takes longer. I've always ruled that it takes 1 melee turn to get back on your feet...but what if it should take 1-2 turns, to stagger how fast your opponents can get back into combat?

Speaking of combat, a ferret, at only 2-3 pounds, shouldn't even add up to 1 hit point, but Ferret's ferret Nosey looks like he does 1 point of damage in a fight.

In a queer bit of slang, counterfeit money is called "the queer" in this story.

In Ka-Zar, Ka-Zar steals into de Kraft's tent and steals all his guns. Rather than use the guns against him, he wants to make for a fair fight, so he wrecks the guns against a big rock (possibly for fighters to do, as guns fall only in the doors category).

Ka-Zar is later captured, though, tied up, and slashed with sharp weapons 100 times by natives. This has to be flavor text, there is no way Ka-Zar has over 100 hit points. Despite having been able to wreck guns, Ka-Zar is not strong enough to snap the rope tying him. Without leverage, he could have a significant disadvantage to his rolls. 

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Marvel Mystery Comics #5 - pt. 2

We're still in Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner's story in this issue. Namor is heading home! Golden Age Comic book readers know that Namor's home wasn't an Atlantis off the North American Atlantic Coast, but an icy realm under Antarctica. Namor is in the North Seas and says it is 9,000 miles from the North Sea to Antarctica. Bill Everett was either a good guesser or he spent some time with a map working that out. He is actually only a little off; it's 9,500 miles. He says the submarine can make it there in two days; assuming 24-hour travel, that means a speed of roughly 200 MPH; that's almost four times the fastest real submarine speed.

Namor refers to his uncle, the king, as "Holy one," suggesting that royalty is divinity in their culture.

Namor travels via his own power from Antarctica back to New York, a journey of roughly 9,100 miles that he makes in three days, and meaning Namor can travel an average of 126 MPH (though he is said to make this journey by air and water, so it's impossible to say how much of this reflects his swimming and how much his flying speed).

Namor does not yet spend all his time in just swim trunks; he returns to New York in a shirt, pants, gloves, and cloak. Anticipating Edna Mode and her "no capes!" advice, Namor's cloak is caught in the landing gear of a passing plane while he's flying away from police and this knocks him out -- either from the cloak collar strangling him or being buffeted by wings against the side of the plane, though I favor the first explanation. This makes no game mechanic sense, though, as he should have easily been able to use his wrecking things ability to tear the cloak before it choked him or led him to being buffeted unconscious. Unless, Namor was considered surprised by the situation, giving the cloak's strangulation a free surprise turn in which he could not react. It is still harsh, if not unlikely, to say Namor would run out of air in just 30 seconds (the time of a surprise turn in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums).

Actually, Namor is only stunned and when he recovers, he uses "jiu-jitsu" to throw a fireman trying to grapple him. It's unlikely Namor has any direct knowledge of Japanese wrestling moves, but it's not like the Japanese invented the idea of flipping someone over their shoulder.

Namor fails his saving throw vs. chloroform and is knocked out by a really brave ambulance driver and taken into police custody.

Based only on a sergeant's permission, Betty Dean gets Namor released into her custody. Namor is uncharacteristically forgiving of his treatment by the police, pledging to work with them if he is deputized.

At that same time, a subway "accident" floods the tunnel at "5th street." In Midtown, this is likely the 5th Avenue-59th Street Subway Station. There, he uses "the strength of 100 whales" to tip the subway cars upright. I don't know how to measure the strength of 100 whales, but we could talk about the weight of 100 whales, with 100 of the smallest whales (dwarf sperm whales) weighing 25 tons total. This would be a 4th-level Raise power. By watching for air bubbles, he can find submerged passengers to rescue without having to make a search skill check (or does so at a bonus, since the bubbles should be easier to see).

Finding the hole that is the source of the flood, Namor flies into it with "his usual impulsiveness," showing Everett had a strong idea of Namor's character that has stayed with him for 80 years. The hole was made by three robbers trying to drill into the "Treasury," which we would know today as Federal Hall National Memorial. When Namor comes across a vault door, he thinks it will be hard for him to open, but he rips it open easily. Inside he finds the men and beats them up, breaking their bones in the process. The gold vault under Federal Hall was protected by a reservoir of water that they drilled and drained into the subway tunnel.

Next up is The Masked Raider. MR comes to talk to a troubled sheriff, but the sheriff mistakes him for an outlaw and draws on MR. MR is able to close the distance and punch him, despite the gun being pulled on him at range. So, in H&H, random initiative has to take priority over a more reasonable order of attack (not all missiles first, then melee).

MR uses an interesting tactic to lure out the bad guys in town, hanging a threatening sign from an arrow in town as the bad guys have been doing, and then following whoever sees it and looks suspicious. The bad guys plan to off the sheriff with poisoned arrows (the plan is to make gullible locals think Indians did it), but the Masked Raider shoots the head off the first arrow before it's fired and the bad guys all fail a morale save. That was one lucky roll, particularly since MR had to have been at long range to be out of sight; I would have said only a natural 20 would have made that shot.

Next up is Electro, the Marvel of the Age. In it, Professor Zog summons two of his twelve agents (he must have an 18 Charisma to have such a large supporting cast -- unless Zog is a non-Hero character and only his operatives are being played) and assigns them an international mission. He must be using code, though, because he describes a country called "Molivia" being attacked by a country called "Torpis." Molivia is easy -- that has to be a poorly disguised Bolivia. Torpis is going to be trickier. If we go by number of syllables, it has to be Brazil, Chile, or Peru. And yet...if we go by history, this whole story was likely inspired by the Chaco War of 1932-1935, suggesting a renewal of fighting between Bolivia and Paraguay. And yet again...when they finally get to "Molivia" it looks very European, and has a king instead of a president, so...who knows!

The brutality of war is illustrated by dead women and children in the street -- though the figures lack any gory details.

The radio controls for Electro have fantastic range -- 4,336 miles, in fact, if the operatives are summoning Electro from Sucre, capital city of Bolivia (called "Braka" in this story). It is unclear how long it takes Electro to fly the distance; it is possible there is some story compression before and during the siege of the city. Regardless, Electro does make it the entire way without needing to refuel, or that, if statted as a superhero, his Fly power has a remarkably long duration.

At the scene of the siege, machine gun bullets bounce off Electro, suggesting he has the Imperviousness power activated. When cannonballs and bombs dropped from planes fail to harm Electro, we know he has the Invulnerability power activated. Electro's wrecking things ability makes short work of the army, allowing him to even wreck "huge" tanks. If the tanks are truly of abnormal size, I would shift them up one category to battleships. Tanks were not used during the real Chaco War.

In the end, Torpis' dictator, Kalph Belgri commits suicide when his invasion fails, perhaps anticipating Hitler's famous suicide. No one committed suicide after the Chaco War.

(Read at readcomicsonline.to)

Marvel Mystery Comics #5 - pt. 1

We're heading back to check on Timely Comics today, back in (cover date) March 1940. This month, the Human Torch leaves New York City for the Midwest. It's the old story of a remote Alaskan village that needs urgent medical supplies but is cut off by the weather, only transported to a fictional island in the middle of Lake Superior because...I guess Alaska was too far? This weird island is covered in a glacier...I suspect Carl Burgos never visited Lake Superior and maybe heard some tall tales from Minnesotans about how cold and snowy it is there.

So HT leaves for the Midwest, but using the Newark Airport, which is an interesting choice. That's a real airport in New Jersey, and one New Yorkers still use today. The LaGuardia Airport had just opened months before this comic book would have been written.

HT, or Jim as his friends know him, has a supporting cast member named Johnson, who Jim isn't apparently on a first name basis with, but is still willing to come along on this dangerous flight to Lake Superior.

HT badly fails a skill check to pilot during a storm (probably at a penalty) and crashes their plane. In a rare occurrence, a Hero is knocked unconscious in a crash. The wrinkle here is that two hoodlums just got free from jail on the island (not sure how this island is big enough to have a jail, but okay...), they discover the plane, rob the medical supplies, and then set the plane on fire to get rid of the pilots.

I've never been fond of the Human Torch and reading these old stories make me less fond. It really bothers me how unscientific his powers work, that fire somehow answers to him as if it were alive. Nowhere is it more evident than in this story, where the fire forms a protective circle around HT, even while he's unconscious. So either he can subconsciously control fire in his sleep, which I think is way overpowered, or fire has some sort of collective consciousness, which is really weird and wonky. Now, once he's conscious again, using his Control Fire power to make the fire part for him -- that makes sense to me.

More wonkiness comes a bit later when HT falls into water and, instead of his fire being extinguished, the narrator says he was "ordering his flame out." Now, maybe there is a sensible explanation for that too. Maybe he extinguishes his flame voluntarily before the water extinguishes it because, if he turns it off then he can turn it right back on, while if it's extinguished, then he can't use his powers for a random amount of time.

Still more wonkiness is when HT searches a wooden cabin, while still ablaze, and doesn't combust anything. That Control Fire power really gives you complete control. But what you can't explain away with that power is towards the end when he encircles a pack sled and its dogs completely with fire, and the dogs keep running. That all six of them make their morale saves, at their Hit Dice, is rather incredulous.

There's an interesting wrinkle where HT flames on (he doesn't call it that; that's a Johnny thing) and his heat helps keep Johnson from freezing. Now, an Editor could hand-wave that as a common sense side effect...but it could also be a new power, Resist Cold, that a superhero can confer on someone else. We also see HT do sky-writing with flame, which I think we've seen before and needs to become a power in the Heroes Handbook.

Lastly, the two hoodlums plummet into the icy lake waters and die after HT melts the ice under their feet with a circle of fire. Whether he intended for that to happen is unclear...but he shows no regret, and we already have seen he has total control of his fire, so...

Next up is The Angel. The Angel's strength level is really up in the air in these early stories. Except for one text story that had him at Superman levels, he usually was only a strong human in most of his stories. Here, he can tip over a car with extreme effort (or a little help), so he can maybe lift 1,000 lbs. In Hideouts & Hoodlums terms, this is the Raise Car power, as there is no Can't Raise, But Can Tip Cars power (H&H deals more with abstraction than specific measurements). This isn't just a prank; it's all part of a plan to foil bank robbers by tipping over their getaway vehicle and any other vehicle on the street they can use to escape.

Angel then uses a length of rope (he must carry rope sometimes) to get to the roof and watch for them to come out. Note that he does not simply leap to the roof, so he has great strength, but not great leaping powers, again confirming that H&H is on the right track by making players choose which powers they have for each scenario.

Speaking of Raise Car, later in the scenario he is on top of a speeding taxi and pulls the driver out through an open window (if the taxi had air conditioning, maybe the hoodlum who carjacked it wouldn't have carelessly left his window down). Now, this seems to defy science, because you would think that even with great strength, someone with no way to brace himself would just fall over the side before being able to pull a braced man out the car window. Superpowers, luckily, defy science by their very nature. I might also, on a generous day, allow a Mysteryman using a stunt to do that as well.

For some reason, The Angel isn't wearing pants today.

Soon, when The Angel is swinging on that rope, one of the robbers manages to shoot the rope, and it seems to be merely accidental. There is some precedent for this, with firing into melee giving a chance of hitting a random combatant. For this to apply here, we would have to consider the rope and The Angel in "melee," which is a bit of a stretch. For the Editor to just randomly through in this complication would seem unfair in game play. 

The Angel joins a long line of comic book Heroes willing to use mobsters as living shields, but this might be the first Superhero to do so.

In the end, Angel decides to pummel the last of the hoodlums unconscious and he rains "blow after blow" on him. Now, in most game systems, a superhero's strength remains constant and the damage he would have done after just one blow might have knocked out an ordinary hoodlum. But here, a superhero has to buff his strength first before doing additional damage, so if he wanted the satisfaction of punching out a bad guy slowly with normal blows, that's very easy to do.

Next up is The Sub-Mariner, called the "Ultra-Man of the Deep" on the first page of his feature here. Demonstrating the difference in pace of Golden Age stories, the Angel story took place all in 10 minutes, while Namor accompanies a cargo ship to protect it for 3 days before the scenario even gets started.

Remarkably, Namor is said to communicate telepathically with the crew of his flagship submarine in this story. If you've ever wondered how Namor talks underwater...this would be how.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Amazing Man Comics #10 - pt. 4

We're back with Martin Filchok's Mighty Man, the first and possibly only 12' tall superhero. Here we see how he's transported around, in a gutted out trailer.

The scream of the damsel in distress is the most common plot hook of all.

Remember that now; Mighty Man is 12' tall...

How tall are the ceilings in this house? MM can often stand upright without crouching at all.

If you have a group of Heroes, and you're about to barge into a house to see if a distressed damsel is alright, it might not be a good idea to send the 12' tall one in first. She might have had a heart attack!

That is one cool-looking monster, like a 12' tall bugbear! Too bad it's (spoiler!) fake.

I really like this idea of guys coming into the rooms behind the Heroes and changing all the furniture around to throw them off; it's a nice, low-tech puzzle to confound them with.

MM also spotted some good clues to look for around the car outside.

MM seems like he's using the Race the Train power to keep up with the car, but it's interesting how he doesn't come out at a fast sprint, but seems to have to pick up speed at the same rate as the car.

Panel 4 is confusing. Gas Gun of Gangsters? The wording seems so D&D-ish, but that couldn't have been intentional. Does he mean gangsters gave them this gas gun? And if so, does that mean they don't self-identify as gangsters, despite being self-confessed counterfeiters? And is the gas gun the explosive thing that blows up when they hit the trailer?

Maybe the best part of this scenario is the inversion; Agent Yakik would normally be the plot hook character at the beginning of the story, but they have everything already solved before them meet him!

The Shark has always been an odd character, but this one is really weird. This certainly won't be the first time a comic book hero has battled a giant octopus, but it's the first time one has been portrayed as at least as smart as the hero!  Now, science now says octopi are a lot smarter than we ever used to give them credit for, but this author seems to have anticipated a lot of that.

Whirlpools are good traps for underwater lairs. Always a good idea not to get caught in your own traps, though! What's really odd about this trap, though, is that it leads to the whole rest of the adventure. Had the Shark dodged around it, or made a saving throw to resist, this would be a much shorter scenario. To keep the Shark from making that saving throw, without fudging dice rolls, the Editor can assign him a -4 penalty to hsi roll because the whirlpool is just that strong.

The center of the Earth has a lot more open space and giant mushrooms than I would have figured! This is sort of a compromise between hollow world stories and legitimate science. If the pressure is too much for the Shark, then how strong is that monster that it can resist? Or did it just make its saving throw while Shark failed his? It doesn't seem like pressure would be a save to negate situation, but more of a save for half-damage-type thing.

We've got a curious mad scientist here, and not because he wants to trade bodies with the Shark -- that's a pretty common mad science trope already -- but because he can also read minds. ESP is an unusual power to associate with a mad scientist, and I wonder if some device in the room is letting him do that.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Man Comics #10 - pt. 3

Iron Skull is back and so is Igor Raston (I don't recall him, but we're supposed to believe this is a grudge match between the two).

The fisticuff is fairly pedestrian, but I wanted to share this page to point out that it's not too late after a fight starts to have traps in the area activated. Indeed, traps going off can liven up a fight!

It's hard to say how much that platform weighs or how fast it's moving, but a good rule of thumb might be 1 die of damage for 180 lbs, +1 die each time that weight is doubled.

We've seen the annod-comptod machine before (I even statted it for H&H already). It normally allows anyone to use the Wreck at Range power freely, but here is an unusual use of wrecking, simply short-circuiting electronics.

Here we also get another trap, a simple one with a tripwire and four spear-holes, with the only unusual wrinkle here being that the four spears are somehow all aimed at the same spot.

It's possible that I.S. is using a defensive buffing power to protect himself from the spears, but it's also possible that they "missed," or he made his saves vs. missiles, and them crashing against his skull is merely flavor text.

Your powers of deduction are amazing, Iron Skull!

Here we see wrecking things being used more traditionally, but I point this out because I.S. is concerned enough about melee vs. what looks like five unarmed hoodlums that he takes that drastic an action. Or perhaps he really doesn't want Igor to get away. Shut up, Rensen, I've got to go catch up with Igor!

Iron Skull has to make a conditional threat in that last panel because of the save vs. plot he needs to roll before he can punch a lady.

We're going to all assume I.S. won and jump into the next story, featuring Minimidget (and Ritty, who has the same power but no billing). Ignoring their shrunken state, this is some of the best science I've read in a comic book in awhile. If they were in a rocket going 400 MPH and were thrown to the floor of the ship, I would expect them to take at least 1-4 points of damage and could conceivably be knocked unconscious.

It would take the rocket about 10 hours to get to Africa. I bet they're really hungry for lunch!

Does it make sense for the rocket to go slower? Actually, I think that's pretty good science too. If the rocket had leveled off and all its inertia was horizontal, then when it loses that inertia it will fall into gravity. Gravity wouldn't pull it any faster than 120 MPH (terminal velocity). That all gets scrapped if there was any downward momentum, which would have added to that speed.

I'm going to spare you this part where the superstitious natives see two tiny people and immediately assume they are gods. A LOT of these comic books make the racist assumption that blacks would worship anything they couldn't understand.

No culture ever had a god named Ramu, though there is a river in Papua New Guinea with that name.

Jumping into Chuck Hardy's adventure, we see how a flood can turn any environment into a nautical adventure. I'm not a big fan of this feature, but I definitely want to use natives riding huge turtles someday.

Lots of comic book Heroes have their own Supporting Cast, but you rarely see them fail their loyalty checks. You see that with the princess right here, which is nice.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.) 

Amazing-Man Comics #10 - pt. 2

Today we'll be looking at two features from this issue -- The Magician of Mars and Iron Skull.

When we saw Jane yesterday, she had just arrived at an airport on...Earth? Mars? Even after reading the whole story I'm not sure which it's supposed to be. I do see that she's hit with perhaps the weirdest weapon yet in comics, incoherent music strong enough to knock her unconscious (and that's something, because we know that Jane has some brevet ranks and extra hit points!).

What happens to make her hair stand up like that when she's startled? Is that a Martian thing?

Suddenly, Magician from Mars is a pole-vaulter! Or, judging from that crotch shot, maybe a pole dancer? Now, stunts are no longer the province of just mystery men -- In the still-unreleased AH&H Heroes Handbook I planned to reveal that other classes above 6th level get stunts too, just a lot more slowly. Anyway, what she does to get to the top of the building certainly looks like a mysteryman's stunt, but then it could also be a Leap I use with some flavor text added, or the Spider Climb spell with a lot of flavor text/reinterpretation!

I'm also going to point out this brief dogfight and the relevance of abstract combat to H&H combat. That "fatal hit" Jane makes is very clearly to the wing of the plane and would not be fatal under most circumstances, yet with abstract game mechanics, a combat could end after just such a hit, either from loss of hit points or a chance of random complication per hit.

There's that weird hair flip again!

I like how the entire building has nothing to do with the hideout, other than hiding the secret tunnel underneath it. So dungeon-y!

I hate to do this since it's such low-hanging fruit, but...man, this artwork is terrible! The proportions on figures are just terribly amateurish. Look at those midgets in the tunnel in panel 7 here, or in the top panel on the next page...

 I like how she calls him "sweetheart."

The explanation for "sound bombs" is right up there with the worst garbage science of the comic books we've gone over.

Jane uses Wreck at Range in that last panel. Note that she hasn't really cast anything like a traditional spell this entire adventure so far.

I'm not sure what to make of The Hood being able to go immaterial. If they had the concept of holograms back in 1940, I would have guessed he was only a hologram. Is he a magician too, like Jane? In that case, this could be some Etherealness spell, or maybe even a Gaseous Form spell.

As for her force ray, I think she means the Wall of Force spell here.

If Jane is a magician, why does she have a plane with bombs on it? Or did she steal the bombs from the hideout before it caved in?

And now it's off to the far-flung future of 1970! Hmm, which five countries would profit by the splitting up of the United States in 1970? If this was based on who owns the most U.S. debt, and would hence benefit from the largest payoffs if the U.S. defaulted -- well, I don't have numbers for 1970, but if it was based on today's numbers then these nations would be Luxembourg, Brazil, the UK, China, and Japan. Not your usual list of suspects!

Other 1940 authors might have underestimated inflation in the next 30 years, but Carl overestimated it. This $10 billion fee would have made Hawkins the richest man in the world, since oil magnate J. Paul Getty only had $6 billion in 1970.

I think it's interesting how Carl thought subways would be ancient history by 1970. I wonder what he thought we were going to replace them with.

As for the rest of this page...I really do not understand what the X-ray machine is for, or why the subway train is being supported by cables in a glass tube, or why the glass tubes are suspended so high above a cement floor. It's more like a subway museum in there.

Should a superhero be able to wreck spikes at the very moment of landing on them? On one hand, I would say no, wrecking things should not be an instantaneous action. On the other hand, doing it to save the other person falling with you is a perfect superhero action and should be encouraged. I guess, in the end, I might allow it, but insist that the superhero still takes damage from the spikes at the same time as wrecking them.

Is a 1 ft.-thick glass door still count as a door for wrecking things? At what point is a barrier thick enough that it counts as a wall and not a door? The average interior wall is about 5" wide. Let's round up to 6", though, and get to a half-foot. For every extra 6" of thickness, the wrecking things category can go up one. At least this works for doors, and maybe machines and generators. By the time we get to robots and cars, we might need some other metric, such as weight.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing-Man Comics #10 - pt. 1

For my 800th post (!), we're back to Centaur Comics and this issue of Amazing-Man Comics has a theme of getting places. Particularly since Bill Everett's lead feature is all about getting Amazing Man to his next adventure.

Two things about this page -- one is that John Aman, the Amazing Man, is "unaffected by intense heat," suggesting he's activated the 2nd-level Fire Resistance power.

The other is that "the pilot is unaware that flames have seared and damaged his parachute." Does that mean John is aware of it? And he still threw the man out of the plane?

There's some reallly curious physics going on here. Now, if John had assumed a proper diving position and reduced his wind resistance, there was a chance of him falling faster and catching up to the pilot. But if he's transformed into green mist, there's no way he should be falling faster than a solid object.

In the final panel, John is using the Feather Landing power. The expanded explanation for that power in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums even accounts for this use (it's the 2nd function under the power).

Smothering Cloud might need to be a new power, as I can't think of any game mechanic I currently have in H&H that would handle this, other than Control Fire, a 3rd-level power.

I'm not sure if we need a power that handles protection from rare air/high altitude...but I'll consider it.

Usually it's the villains who unerringly find the Heroes' weaknesses, but here John just stumbles onto the fact that his mist form can be frozen!

 ...but he isn't totally vulnerable in this state, as he can still control his movement completely, just as he could when his mist form was gaseous. What we can gather from this, though, is that he can't change back to human form from a different solid state.

Now, I'm wondering here if we can pin down anymore closely where this super-isolated village is. It's not a very big plateau if it only has the one village on it. Otherwise, it really sounds like Tibet, with how it's encircled by seemingly impassable mountains. Perhaps this is just one corner of Tibet.

If John already is in Tibet, that would explain how this secret passage gets him back to the Tibetan monastery so quickly.

I'm not sure how strong 100 elephants are, but if this means he could lift 100 elephants, that would be 600 tons, making him by far the strongest superhero yet (Superman and Captain Marvel are still years away from being able to lift 600 tons). In fact, that would currently be like an 8th-level Raise power. But I suspect an unreliable narrator again, as those boulders don't look nearly that heavy.

I wasn't impressed with this western story, hastily drawn and supposedly by Joe Simon (though he had to have really hacked this out fast!), and will only share this one page from "Ranch Dude." I share this because counting to 2 or 3 in a gunfight makes no difference by H&H rules; both sides still roll randomly, with highest roll going first.

We'll probably come back and look at The Magician from Mars more next time, but two things about this page -- yes, it really does say she got her powers from being exposed to a cathode ray, and cathode rays really are just the beam of electrons you'd find in a (now) old-fashioned television set.

The other thing is the Moderni Airport. There is no real Moderni Airport that I can find evidence of, but this is likely a Mars location anyway.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Mystic Comics #1 - pt. 3

In part 3, we finally get to our first mystic!

Dakor seems to have limited spells; he can't use magic to get onto Tom Denver's trans-Atlantic steamer, so he has to take the next one and arrives in Paris after Tom has already joined the Foreign Legion. Dakor, with no ability to magically persuade the Legion to give Tom up, joins the Legion to look for evidence against Tom. Tom makes it easy for him, openly admitting to have the dead man's cursed gem. To protect Tom, Dakor casts a Phantasmal Image of two lions, this being his first spell. Later, he uses this spell to make someone think their gun has turned into a snake so he drops it.

Dakor hypnotizes Tom later, but in Hideouts & Hoodlums hypnotism can be a skill and not just a spell. Hypnotism is not the same as mind control; Dakor can't make Tom stay and fight later when he turns chicken and deserts.

Dakor supposedly has "super-sensitive hearing," but you know how suspicious I am of those caption narrators, and indeed the panel showing a guard easily sneaking up on him from the side doesn't back up that claim.

The Tuareg people of the Sahara sure get shot at a lot in old comics; here, the Foreign Legion spends hours shooting at them. We're told the Tuareg are ferocious raiders, but we see no evidence of this. Maybe they were riding up to the fort to say hi? Anyway, the Tuareg capture Tom. Dakor follows invisibly. He polymorphs a sword into a dagger (an Alter Weapon spell?) to keep Tom from getting killed, then uses Poof! to move across the room when swordsmen rush him. It looks like he plans to use Rope Trick to escape, but the spell fails when a swordsman gets in the rope's way. Or, he cast Rope Trick just so the rope would lift the man into the air, which seems like a waste of a 2nd-level spell. Surprisingly, Dakor fails to rescue Tom -- a guard kills him! Something happens to the guard in the next panel, but it is so confusing I can't even tell what it is.

Later, Dakor reveals that he had earlier used telepathy (ESP/Detect Thoughts) to discover where Tom buried in the cursed gem, back in his cell. In a pretty insulting/bigoted second-to-last panel, the Tuareg allegedly tell Dakor that Allah would fear him. And to top it off, in the final panel Dakor casts a high-level Control Weather spell and creates a snowstorm. Surprise! He was actually powerful enough to stop this adventure way back before it ever left New York. Double surprise, there's actually one more page! In a sort of epilogue to this story, Dakor travels to China to return the cursed gem to a statue of "Kung," a deity worshiped by millions of Orientals, which is of course nonsense. In a final insult, Dakor fools the Chinese with ventriloquism from the statue, as if they were stupid natives.

In all, Dakor reveals enough magical firepower to need 11 brevet ranks to pull all this off.

The final feature is Dynamic Man, a feature with another android superhero, and one who's introduction is very Frankenstein-like (substitute Prof. Goettler for Dr. Frankenstein, and Dynamic Man is made from synthetic materials instead of human parts). In a twist, Goettler dies of a heart attack immediately, denying our hero a parent/supporting cast member/potential future enemy. Dynamic Man, we are told, has X-Ray Vision (a 3rd-level power), can Change Self (a 1st-level power, but he really uses it just to alter his clothes), and can fly because of his magnetic field (we aren't told how fast, but later he outpaces a train, putting him at Fly III, a 4th-level power!).

Dynamic Man soon takes the identity of Curt Cowan and applies for the FBI. The FBI, apparently not suspicious of his lack of a birth certificate or naturalization papers, takes him in, but he intends to work as Dynamic Man in secret while performing his field work.

The mobsters DM goes after are causing a drought by generating lightning -- which isn't how you would cause a drought -- and they do it to buy up some farmland cheap. Though, after building a mountain retreat and a giant electrical generator, you would think their profits would be a wash. DM has to lift a boulder blocking the entrance to their hideout with the Raise Car power. Then Nigh-Invulnerable Skin protects him from bullets. Then he uses magnetism to disarm two gunmen at once, and that's a little trickier; he may be using Gust of Wind to disarm them with a lot of flavor text covering up the wind part. He throws lightning bolts, but not to wreck the generators, not harm people, so this is actually Wreck at Range. 

King Bascom, the millionaire financier for this scheme, has super-science at his disposal like -- a two-way television! And a hose that sprays liquid "lantholum," a fictional element that is both insulating (blocks electricity-based powers) and corrosive (does damage to DM while also paralyzing him). He also has a deathtrap room that can be flooded with liquid nitrogen and the ceiling lowers to crush occupants because -- hey, he's rich, so why not? Turns out, Bascom is working for the "Richonians," which sounds like Russians a little when you say it out loud. Bascom sics a dozen hoodlums on DM, but he beats them all up. When Bascom tries to escape by plane, DM uses Wreck at Range to destroy it.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Mystic Comics #1 - pt. 2

When we last left Zephyr Jones and Corky on the surface of the sun Cygni 61 the Mad Astronomer had a machine that sprays his secret formula on Zephyr and Corky. He tells them that this will protect them from the heat on the surface of the star, and apparently the blinding light and the crushing gravitational pull as well). Our boys are so gullible, or so smitten with his daughter, that they immediately go outside to see if it worked. Instead of walking on super-heated plasma, this seems to be a rocky place, inhabited by dwarfs that live in caves.

They find that at least nine star-dwarfs had captured the astronomer and his daughter from their ship. Most of them chase after Zephyr and Corky. The dwarves have super-tough skin (like the power, because the heat of the sun has hardened them), but are vulnerable to fire extinguishers because...ah, let's stop pretending any of this makes sense! These aliens remind me of the game Awful Green Things from Outer Space, where you're supposed to try everything on your ship on the aliens, because only one random item will kill them.

To top it off, Zephyr and Corky go back below ground to save the prisoners from eight more dwarfs. They defeat the dwarfs by throwing rope around a group of them and then pulling the rope off the cliff the dwarfs are on. Not sure why none of the dwarfs think to grab onto the rope and pull Zephyr and Corky down first, or with them. If the star-dwarfs are just too dumb, then a fair Editor would make some kind of intelligence check for them (trying to roll under a low INT score) before letting them fight too cleverly. They are very primitive, fighting only with clubs and darts from blowguns.

We've seen Heroes start avalanches to bury or block adversaries before, but Zephyr takes the cake by knowing just where to throw a rock to start an avalanche. That would take some kind of expert skill level in geology, I would think, followed by a successful attack roll vs. a low Armor Class.

The next feature is the 3Xs. The three "Xs" are private detectives, all working anonymously (although they wear no masks to conceal their identities, so it should take too long for people to figure them out), but go by 1X, 2X, and 3X. Each has an area of specialization; 1X does the detective work (high Wisdom score), 2X is a "walking encyclopedia" (high Intelligence score), and 3X is the strong-arm (high Strength score). A later caption explains that 1X is in charge and the other two are his aides (Supporting Cast Members). The 3Xs are good scrapers, but not great, as 13 hoodlums break into 1X's home to retrieve the glove and the hoodlums only fail a morale save and leave after beating all three of our good guys almost to unconscious. None of them use weapons other than blackjack/saps, during this battle. Later, 2X has a disintegrating pistol, a trophy weapon that does extra damage.

A taxi driver tells the 3Xs that his taxi cannot go over 70 MPH.

The Green Terror is a mob responsible for a rash of brazenly public kidnappings, covering their escapes with a smokescreen of green smoke. A clue left behind at the scene of their latest kidnapping yields a clue that requires an expert skill check in botany to identify -- a lost glove on the scene was permeated with the pollen of a rare orchid. Because the orchid is imported, they use freight records to figure out that when the mob came into the country, and when it plans on leaving. Of course, there are some holes in that theory -- what if only one member of the mob worked with orchids? What if the mobsters were on the ship coming, but not on the next boat going? What if an unregistered grower has the same orchids in their greenhouse and they weren't imported at all?

Their leader is also known as The Green Terror. One of the earliest supervillains in comics, The Green Terror is a green-skinned African with the vampiric power to live forever so long as he keeps drinking human blood. However, he's a real pushover in a fight and folds after getting punched by 3X once.

Next up is "Deep Sea Demon," but if you want my impressions on that story you can read here, because this is a barely modified reprint of Fred Guardineer's "Devil of the Deep" from Funny Pages v. 2 #1.

Dakor the Magician is the next feature, and like some other magicians we've seen he's light on actual magic and more of a detective. We also see, like in the 3Xs story, that travel out of the country seems to be public information, as Dakor's assistant Williams is quickly able to learn that their prime suspect in a murder is leaving the country for France.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Mystic Comics #1 - pt. 1

We're back to Timely Comics and their newest title in 1940. But don't expect any Bill Everett, Jack Kirby, or Joe Simon goodness in this one; this is pure 2nd rate-Chesler shop filler, cranked out because Martin Goodman wanted another Timely title on the shelves to capitalize on this new superhero craze.

So what does it give us first? Flexo the Rubber Man. Yes, Will Harr and Jack Binder took one look around the burgeoning crowd of superheroes in the field and said...Bozo the Iron Man looks like a winner; let's take that concept and make it even sillier. In a decision that would make for a hundred off-color jokes if this wasn't a family blog, the narrator tells us that Flexo is made of "living rubber" and filled with "secret gas." This rubber/gas combo somehow allows Flexo to outrun bullets (in Hideouts & Hoodlums, the Race the Bullet power), gives it the strength of an ox (wrecking things and Raise Car power?), and the ability to zoom through the air like a bird (Fly II power?). But narrators often exaggerate for new superheroes, so let's see if the story follows up on any of that.

Oh, and to make matters worse, the scientists who invented Flexo had to steal the supplies from the cancer hospital they work in. Nice job, leaving those cancer patients without the treatment equipment they need, jerks. It's almost a pleasure to see these two tied up by a mobster and his vamp/moll, who then steal radium from the two men. The mobster works for a mad scientist who need the radium for his death ray, of course. In one informative panel, the mobster explains that he would bump them off with a gun, but "the professor likes to wipe out his victims in fancy, scientific style," which basically explains every supervillain's deathtrap ever.

After activating Flexo to rescue them, we are told Flexo is running at the speed of a bullet, but that's our suspicious narrator again without any real proof. Flexo does leap -- very clearly leaping instead of flying -- and given the height of his leaps I would call this a very clear example of the Leap I power. When shot at, his rubbery hide provides the Nigh-Invulnerable Skin power. Then he uses Multi-Attack to grapple three mobsters at once. It takes a little bit more of a (ahem) stretch to see how stretching himself between the car and a telephone pole counts as a power, but since the purpose is to stop the car from moving, that seems to be the same as using the Raise Car power.

To find their missing radium, the unnamed scientists borrow a radium detector, or what we might call a Geiger counter, from the hospital. This Geiger counter has a really good range on it, though, because it can sense radiation from an airplane.

At the hideout, Flexo has to fight two electrically-charged robots. Flexo does really well at his wrecking things rolls vs. the robots, and demonstrates Electrical Resistance, his first level 3 power. In fact, since he hasn't even demonstrated a level 2 power yet, I'm wondering if he isn't demonstrating a power at all, but simply had enough hit points to take the hits from their electrical fields.

The hideout has a simple portcullis trap, but Flexo's solution to it, squeezing through the bars, might be our first instance of him breaking the H&H rules. Normally, I would call this flavor text for wrecking things, except that the bars are still intact and trapping the scientists even after Flexo squeezes through. For this, then, we would need a new power, perhaps some weaker version of Passwall, like a 2nd-level power called Pass through Small Openings.

Flexo defeats the mad scientist and his three hoodlums by spurting gas at them, which either does damage or puts them to sleep -- the story isn't clear. However, giving this robot a "breath weapon" is just like how I handled robots in 1st edition H&H, suggesting to me that maybe Flexo should be statted as a mobster, and a Supporting Cast Member, to the scientists, instead of a Hero with a race and class. This would eliminate any difficulties in statting him as an android superhero. But if Flexo is an android superhero, what level? One of his 1st level powers demonstrated could be his android ability, meaning he's demonstrated two 1st level powers and 1 2nd level power -- Flexo must have two brevet ranks, allowing him to start as a level 3 superhero, an extraordinary man.

Next up is Blue Blaze. This story starts in 1852 at Midwest College. It was difficult to pin down a specific college with so generic a name, but then my first assumption would be that Midwest College would be in the Midwest. What gets the story moving, though, is the tornado that sweeps through the campus and kills 85% of the people there. Finding out when major tornado touchdowns happened is easily done on the Internet these days and, possibly not by coincidence, a deadly tornado had ripped through downtown Arlington, Massachusetts only the previous year. I have commented before (see Whiz Comics #3) about comic book writers taking inspiration from headlines in the recent news.

While believed dead after the tornado and buried, Spencer is struck with "substrata dermatic rays" during his 88 years of hibernation, which is a term that doesn't really mean anything, but suggests that the rays are striking him under his skin. Is this how the author says radiation? If the narrator is to be believed, his strength increases 1,000-fold, which would make him able to lift/press about 50 tons -- or access to 5th-level Raise powers in H&H terms.  More incredulously, Spencer was supposedly buried in a skin-tight costume with attached cowl and a riveted girdle. and these were the clothes he died in.

Upon digging himself out of his grave, BB immediately encounters two superstitious hoodlums. They both fail their morale saves after he activates his Super-Tough Skin power. One of them "has a heart attack," but you know how those pesky narrators keep exaggerating, and there is a result of "faints" on the morale failure table. The other one simply surrenders.

The hoodlums were digging up bodies for a professor with a super-cool hideout, accessible by a secret elevator in an inn on the edge of town, miles below ground. The elevator lets out in a foyer which accesses a huge entry hall through a Dr. Suess-shaped archway. The hall looks posh at this end with checkerboard tile flooring and thick columns. Either at the far end, or perhaps in a side hall, the columns are thinner and decorated with skull motifs.

There are also traps. Red gems spaced around the hideout activate "tension beams," like a Hold Person spell. Then the rays whisk their prisoners on a high-speed tour of some nearby laboratories (the professor is quite the show-off) to Professor Maluski's audience hall (a "receiving" gem ends the tour here). Near the audience hall is a dungeon where 50 zombies are kept. The zombies are not supernatural, but controlled by ray receptors sewn into their shrouds. Maluski is armed with a "new type automatic," which seems to be a way of saying a Gun +1 to me. The zombies turn on Maluski with the control tube is smashed, which is conveniently keeps in the dungeon with the zombies. There is also an access to an subterranean stream in the dungeon.

The next feature is Zephyr Jones; despite this being a first issue, Zephyr has crossed over from Daring Mystery Comics #2. Zephyr and Corky are now making routine trips to Mars in the near future, when they are hijacked by a mad scientist and his daughter at gunpoint. "The Mad Astronomer" wants them to take him to Cygni, by which we can assume he means Cygni 61, a star 11.4 light years away. This is going to be an extremely long story if not for faster-than-light travel. And when they call him mad, they aren't kidding. He thinks there is stardust on stars that can cure any illness. No explanation for why they have to go to a star so far away to get that instead of our own star.

The science is wonkier than that; apparently the author thinks there are "lesser stars" between Earth and Mars, by which he seems to mean comets. These stars are covered with gasses and Zephyr figures out that if he can combust the atmosphere of a comet, it will propel the ship away at faster-than-light speed. This actually works, devastating the number of known comets in near space and somehow fails to destroy their spaceship every time they try it. En route they almost hit a moon, but are traveling so fast that they pass right through it. This reminds me of the Silver Age Flash vibrating through solid matter at super-fast speeds, but it does beg the question how they are interacting with comets to gain speed from them if they are effectively immaterial.

(Read at readcomicsonline.to)

Jungle Comics #3 - pt. 4

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, we're going to do a fourth look at this issue for its final feature, Fletcher Hanks' Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle.

The makers of this ancient city loved spires, which is interesting because spires didn't appear in architecture until the 12th century. So how "ancient" are we to consider this?












Can we credit Fletcher with combating racism in comics by refusing to color black characters in comic books any differently than whites? Two other possibilities are a) he was just lazy, b) careless, or c) this is one of those racist lost cities in Africa populated by whites, because blacks couldn't be believed to have created civilizations themselves.

It looks like the archers are enjoying a much better rate of fire than the tommy guns by that last panel -- and that is perfectly appropriate to 2nd ed. Hideouts & Hoodlums, where rate of fire is based off of level/Hit Dice more than weapon choice.

It scarcely is necessary to mention Fantomah is using a Fly spell here.

Okay, assuming the green death plague was a real thing, what are these two big game hunters doing with a sample of it in a syringe? Random trophy selection?

If the green death will kill a man in a few hours, is it really a good idea to be that close to the infected mandrill?

I'm not aware of any culture that holds the mandrill sacred.

This is definitely the first time I've seen a diseased mandrill used to infiltrate a guarded city. Players take note!

Fantomah, still working behind the scenes, casts Cure Disease (for the first time in comics?).

A spell that mysteriously returns things to their places is...Telekinesis? Some kind of Put Things Back Where They Were spell?

Fantomah used Polymorph Other twice on the two men, showing that it doesn't have to be a real species one is polymorphed into -- unless I stat these guys as some kind of asparagus men.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Jungle Comics #3 - pt. 3

We're back and still looking through Fiction House's Jungle Comics #3 and seeing what lessons we can apply to running or playing my RPG Hideouts & Hoodlums from it.

This is Captain Terry Thunder of the Congo Lancers. The geography seems way off here, since the Congo is in central Africa, he desert is in northern Africa, and then they somehow find swamps, followed by more desert, before coming back to the jungles. Did they just make a big circle?

Regardless, the lesson we can take away from this is that the details of travel can be glossed over to get us to the main story.

You might feel as uncomfortable as I do looking at how the Africans are colored on this page. Now, in 4-color coloring, blue highlights often accompany something that is supposed to be interpreted as all-black, but you usually don't see this applied to black people. 

That said, the natives show some clever tactics in the last panel. While Terry can do nothing but try to resist the grappling attack, the other three are all free to try and beat him with their (spiked?) clubs. Now, there is an element of risk for them as well; I would rule that, if you were trying to attack an opponent being grappled, and you miss, you have to roll again to see if you hit the grappler on your side instead. 

"Smitten from ambush?" Are the natives using Cupid's arrows on them? What strange wording.

I also checked; grass rope is a real thing.

This is Wambi the Jungle Boy. I don't think much of Wambi, but these two trappers have a super-inflated idea of his value. Worth a million, in 1940 dollars, for being able to talk to animals? I'm skeptical...

Especially since animals have no problem talking to each other, across species lines.

It's remarkable that, just from word getting through the animal grapevine that Wambi is in trouble, an elephant and at least 11 gorillas show up to rescue him. It seems unlikely that Wambi would have this many support cast member animals, but perhaps his SCMs joined up with a wandering encounter...?

 I like to share unusual disarming attacks; this could be the first time we've ever seen a man disarmed with an orange.

This is from the next story, Roy Lance. "Nyama" is the word for spirit, used by the Dogon people of Africa. Did the author, know that, or was it a lucky guess?

More evidence of natives using poisoned weapons.

You don't often hear about cattle herding in Africa, but that's legit; they do keep cattle herds over there.

The last story we'll look at today is Simba, King of Beasts -- you know, Disney's other source material for The Lion King other than Hamlet. Simba, in turn, seems to have The Jungle Book as some of its source material, so that leaves me wondering if the boy isn't paralyzed with hypnosis instead of fear, ala Kaa. Regardless, not being able to do anything is one of the eight random results of a failed morale save now, in Hideouts & Hoodlums 2nd edition, so maybe it really is fear.

Of course, that reminds us that the boy is not a played Hero in this scenario, but a Supporting Cast Member under the control of the Editor. Simba is the Hero, obviously classed as a Fighter, with the Editor allowing Lion as a playable race. The Lions special abilities are being able to attack with bite and claw attacks, and hopefully a few extra Hit Dice too, or he's toast against this wandering encounter of an angry rhino.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)