Crackajack Funnies #21 - pt. 1

It feels like forever since I last reviewed a Dell Comic, so it's pretty exciting to come back around to Crackajack Funnies and all the comic strip reprints here.

First up is Don Winslow of the Navy. I always share a page that shows a code in use, but this one also shows that a code stencil is a random item you might pick out of a hoodlum's pockets someday.

 After that stirring anti-war speech, Admiral Warburton uses "scotch" as a verb in a way I'm not familiar with. This use is defined as "decisively put an end to."

It's also real handy, being given an assignment by your commanding officer, and finding out the hard work of getting started has already been done for him. This makes a lot of sense in a comic strip format, when things have to move quickly, or a home campaign when you don't have many hours to play per session.

Innocent soul that I am, I had to look up "half-caste" to see if that was an actual thing. It's just another way of saying "half-breed," or "a person whose parents are of different races." Yeah, it's pretty racist.

The main reason you're seeing this page, though, is for the idea of tucking your secret notes into the visor of your hat. Noticing the thickness of the visor and thinking that's suspicious enough to investigate is like rolling a 1 for a secret door.

I'm not going to make you look at very much of Looney Luke this time, as it's really insulting towards American Indians.

There are some peculiar features to this page worth pointing out. One is Luke going all the way back to the 14th century to meet Indians; I wonder how Wingsmith happened to choose that century.

Despite these appearing to be Plains Indians, they have a mix of teepee and pueblo housing.

I don't think this is right, Indians practicing mummification. Indian mummies have been found, but mummified through natural processes. The most famous may be the Spirit Cave Mummy found in Nevada -- but that was in 1940, and these reprints usually run two years behind their original newspaper runs. So I wonder what earlier mummy was found that inspired this strip.

Interrupting the melodrama of Myra North is this explanation of a verbal code between mobsters. Myra was even nice enough to write out the explanation for us!

For a feature with "stratosphere" in the title, it's surprising to find them exploring caves this month.

In Hideouts & Hoodlums, you don't have to be a dwarf or gnome to detect sloping passages (I would make it a basic skill check).

The science here isn't terrible -- it is most likely that the Native Americans originated in Asia, maybe 20,000 years ago. The big question is, would primitive people from the stone age have been able to carve out a tunnel that smooth and carve idols like that? Probably not.

It takes them a few days to build a shack (how handy that their plane was full of nails!). It takes them almost a week to repair a radio transmitter. Useful to know if I ever revise my inventing things rules.

This feature went from cave exploring to an aerial dogfight so fast I think I have whiplash!

A cowling is the removable covering of a vehicle's engine, most often found on automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, and on outboard boat motors. On planes, cowlings are used to reduce drag and to cool the engine.

Ah, Roy Crane, how I've missed you!

Here we learn that Flo's skirt is just the right length. I mean -- we learn that it's a good idea, if you're a hero running a business, or just staffing your secret lair with ordinary people, to wire-tap your own phones in case one of your own people turns disloyal. Boy, that Roy Crane art is distracting!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 6

We're going to spend one more post on Zip Comics #2, not because this Zambini story is so good, but because there's a lot going on here that still bears observing.

Here is a new spell -- maybe a 3rd level spell? -- that I'd call Ice Sheathe. It creates a flexible sheathe of ice around you that makes you temporarily immune to all fire damage.

In tier 3, we see Zambini has another new spell that I'd call Fist of Iron, which lets him temporarily wreck things like a superhero.

The more I see these Inferians, the more I like them. They are somewhat Dalek-like, in that they have a simple geometric body shape, appear to be robots, but are living, hateful beings. They can be encountered in large numbers, I think I see 18 of them there in that last panel. And, ooo - they have energy lances!

Well, flaming spears, but energy lances sounds cooler.

Unfortunately, because magic-users are always ridiculously overpowered, Zambini easily shields himself with a Polymorph Aura-like spell that turns anything approaching him harmless (that's got to be a 7th-level spell). Although, actually, why can't thrown icicles hurt him? I wouldn't agree that is harmless. Maybe the spell only transforms things into something less harmful, which could be a lower level spell (4th?).

Zambini's Vibration spell seems awfully specific, most useful on glass men. Perhaps it's an Earthquake spell, which would also create vibrations, and affects a large area of effect.

And lastly, Zambini uses a Move Earth spell to imprison their king.

If you've managed to swallow the rest of this story, including the glass tree stretching the entire length of the solar system, and you can accept that the tree is still there, that the planet hasn't revolved away from this position; see if you can wrap your head around Zambini using a Missile Reflection spell on Prof. Stargaze, turning him to ash. Then Reincarnating him as a rat. Then polymorphing the rat back into the Professor's form when they get back to Earth. So...the Professor has the mind of a rat now? Does Zambini see this as an improvement? Bit of a jerk move...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 5

Mr. Satan returns and, expectations aside, he's still a good guy! Ed Ashe's artwork here is growing on me. I love the cryptic letter-plot hook and the use of shadows on this page. There's a real sense of menace here, despite the fact it looks suspiciously like the monster has a periscope. Can this story live up to the art...?

Actually, things are going great halfway through page 2. They start to go weird when Mr. Satan, wondering why Mrs. Heaslip locked Blake's door, decides he'll get the answer by investigating at the pond, rather than following her, or just saying, "Hey, Mrs. Heaslip! Why did you lock Blake's door?"

Satan is lured out onto the lake by a scream. First his canoe is capsized (I skipped showing you that page) and then the Monster tries to grapple him and misses. Rather than surface right away, Satan dives deeper to escape the Monster...in its natural element. That's a creepy third panel, with the three corpses floating in the whirlpool. Satan either makes a save vs science or a Strength check to pull free from the whirlpool (I would accept either mechanic).

It seems curious to me that he can see the three scientists clearly underwater, at night, but he can't see the Monster, but I suppose this is bound to happen sometimes from random search rolls.

The "bomb" looked like a grenade (I skipped that page too) and while it isn't explained to us why it went off too soon, the implication is that his wife rigged it to happen to kill him.

I think this is the first mention of the radium ray, unless I missed it in there somewhere. It's hard to believe that monster costume would fool anyone; Scooby Doo villains get more convincing monster costumes than that.

The motive of the affair is surprisingly adult.

It may seem ridiculous to suggest there can be a newly discovered planet, but remember that Pluto was not discovered until 1930, and for many years afterwards people wondered if there might not be more planets further out. The Mount Wilson Observatory in California was the largest telescope in the world in 1940, unless this is a fictional rival.

It's pretty hard to take "Stargaze" seriously as a surname; it must be a nickname?

Every time someone calls out for help anywhere, Zambini's "radioscopic" mind picks it up? Is he hearing voices constantly, then? Although, it actually says "any" distress calls, not "all." So maybe it's random or, more likely, happens whenever the Editor wants to drop him a plot hook.

His first cast spell must be a reverse of Word of Recall, where the spell teleports you from home to where ever you sense danger.

Some sort of low-level Untying spell, or simply Unseen Servant?

Oh boy...now, magic-user comic books tend to always err on the side of the ridiculous...but the magic tree that grows over 3 billion miles tall overnight is waaaaay crazy. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the tree is made of glass? That's not even flexible! How did this make sense to the people who made this?

The best part of this story is the glass men, living robots made of glass, hard to surprise because of their telescopic eyes, and immune to heat and fire.

Maybe the second best part is the name Zambini's Shower Ring, which seems like a great name for a spell. It may be a unique spell too, as I can't think of any Resist Fire 5' Radius spells out there -- which this seems to be, with some flavor text added.

It almost goes without saying that Zambini casts a Polymorph any Object spell in this story. H&H really needs a low-level version.

The glass men are called Inferians here, which does seem like a better name.

It's ...interesting how Zambini chooses to polymorph the Inferian into a hunky guy in short shorts. Is this for his benefit or the girl's? We never do learn the girl's name. Apparently the radius of Zambini's Shower Ring is so narrow that there was no room for their prisoner, and Zambini had no problem with handing out a death sentence, even though the Inferian cooperated.

Is that a fern in the king's chamber? How would any vegetation grow on this planet?

Will Zambini survive the lava flow? Of course he will. He's a golden age magic-user; he'll probably turn all the lava into butterflies or something.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 4

We're still on the War Eagles feature of this issue. This is the first guy named Kermit to ever appear in comics and, curiously, we never see him again past panel 4.

Tom's big plan is to gamble on a good encounter reaction roll from General Worth. He gets a great roll too, since Worth gives them a promotion and carte blanche freedom to act without supervision. It's a sweet deal, but perhaps a necessary one -- I've never had players interested in a military-themed campaign where they have to take orders all the time.









The Supermarine Spitfire, or Vickers Spitfire, was a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after WWII, and was produced in greater numbers than any other British aircraft. Beside them are the Hawker Hurricane, a British single-seat fighter aircraft of the 1930s–'40s. It was overshadowed in the public consciousness by the Supermarine Spitfire's role during the Battle of Britain in 1940, but the Hurricane inflicted 60% of the losses sustained by the Luftwaffe in the engagement, and fought in all the major theatres of the Second World War, all according to Wikipedia.

I love the composition and art on this page and wonder what Ed Smalle had for photo references.

There are two "stunts" in play on this page. One is luring a plane into an ambush. Normally, your allies have no chance to surprise an opponent if they've already seen one of you, but that's assuming normal on-the-ground conditions where someone can turn and look in any direction. Visibility in aerial combat is really restricted to your facing, so I would roll for surprise for each individual plane.

The other stunt is forcing one plane to crash into another. This could conceivably happen on the ground too, as ramming damage with a vehicle should automatically force a morale save. If you keep getting "run away" results, and box the person in so he has nowhere else to go, he's going to run into someone from his own side. Although, on the ground, you might get a surrender result too -- something someone in a plane can't easily do.

Panel 1 reminds us Editors of something important: if the bad guys see you use smart tactics, they will try to use those same tactics too.

"Prop shattered" is an aerial combat complication.

My final observation from this page is that Tom's chances don't look too good...

Mort Meskin's Captain Valor returns this month and, while Mort still isn't up to his full artistic powers, there is still a lot to like about this Terry and the Pirates clone. You just have to get past some really bright yellow skin to get to it.

Hop-Lung's party on top of the ledge looks even in number to Valor's down below, but still has three advantages: height advantage gives them a +1 bonus to hit, the rocks along the top of the ledge give them hard cover, -2 to be hit, and the loose boulders give them potent missile weapons. The advantage Valor's party has is they are armed with rifles, with a longer short range, while it looks like Hop-Lung's party is only armed with pistols.

Anyway, what I like about this is that Occupied China is a dangerous place for low-level Heroes, where any act of defiance (like stealing an officer's car) has dangerous consequences. It also inverts how Alignment works; under these circumstances, a Lawful Hero can work with a pirate, because the pirate is an outlaw for defending his homeland. The Lawful Hero can steal an officer's car, because is strikes a blow against the invaders. The Chaotic guys aren't the only ones who get to have fun and go crazy in this setting.

I also like how Valor gets a fresh plot hook immediately upon finishing his first one, in panel 5. That's efficient storytelling/game play!

Are the sentries good shots? Based on what, exactly? Two of them are shooting at the car at short range, before it's had a chance to accelerate very fast, and are still missing.

In a bit of meta-gaming, Valor's player has already won over Angie and Ronny as loyal supporting cast members thanks to good recruitment dice rolls, but in-game is still pretending Valor wants to drop them off at the consulate.

Wait..where was all that dynamite and hand grenades? Sitting in the trunk of the officer's car?? No wonder the sentries didn't want to hit the car while it was still too close!

Valor throws that smoke bomb awfully close to himself. Good thing he's really sure it's a smoke bomb and not an incendiary bomb (skill check to identify, or is it written on the bomb?)!

If you're confused by the sides in this conflict, the bandits are still bad guys because they're attacking white people. The pirates are considered neutral because they only attack other Chinese people. The Japanese are the main bad guys, and every Chinaman is either a bandit, pirate, or working for the Japanese.

It really looks like Ronny's not going to survive that second tier of panels, but it must be a longer fuse on it than it appeared.

It's pretty dramatic, having to surrender the outer walls and retreat into a wooden cabin. If reinforcements had not arrived, I don't think they would have held out long in there. Once the invading bandits get up to the windows, the people inside lose all their cover bonuses (unless there's enough furniture inside to hide behind too).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 3

We're going to spend some more time on this issue even though, let's face it, it was really only worth reading for Steel Sterling.

We're still on Nevada Jones and...Dice is okay with serving a masked man in his saloon, but it's the "halfbreed" he has trouble with? And this is doubly weird because this is the only time in the story Little Joe is referred to as a half-breed. Is he really only half-Hispanic, or was the author so racist he assumed Hispanics were all half-breeds?

But perhaps the toughest question I have about this page is what an "alkali eater" is. I had to do some reading for this one and, apparently, "alkali" is a term for baking powder, and at least until the 1920s, people thought you should eat baking powder for an upset stomach. I'm so glad someone invented Tums!





I skipped a few pages about the fire and how it was used to cover up a double murder. The clue at the scene was a big piece of ripped fabric. Thank goodness the villain didn't bother changing his vest, despite it having a big and obviously incriminating tear in it.

Again, that's not my real issue with this page. The more troubling thing is that Little Joe murders the villain in cold blood, and only gets a scolding for it. Instead of standing trial he gets a free pass for being the Hero's supporting cast...but that's some messed up ethics there.

We're going to have to swallow hard on some racism for this story too. There's also a lot of almost-nudity on display here. But your takeaway for this page should be that elephants can make grappling attacks, as long as their opponent is also larger than man-sized.

Of all the pages on this post I have problems with, I think I have the most with this one. Kalthar wakes up and says Mano the Elephant "has been slain." Then he gets up and says, "I shall avenge you, Mano!" ...to Mano, "leader of the herd, and only survivor." So...Kalthar only thought Mano was slain? Is this Mano's ghost before him? If all the other elephants are dead, why is it only Mano Kalthar gets upset about? Were all the other elephants jerks and had it coming to them?

Speaking of jerks...Kalthar captures this one native working for the white raiders, questions him (on the previous page I skipped), and after pumping him for information carefully ties up to a tree branch so Kaa the Snake, or some other jungle critter, can come along and feast on him later.

I think the one saving grace of this story is the idea of the bad guys casually chucking dynamite around, which raises this from a low-level scenario to a challenging scenario for mid-level Heroes. At least until the Heroes get their hands on the dynamite.

This is very Hideouts & Hoodlums-like, with the superhero vulnerable until he's had a chance to activate a defensive buffing power (by swallowing certain grains, though that is likely just flavor text). To protect him from dynamite, the buffing power has to at least be Imperviousness, if not Invulnerability, meaning Kalthar is yet another superhero with brevet ranks boosting him past where a superhero should be, experience-wise, after just two appearances.

Hmm...I'm dubious that polo tactics would translate well to air warfare, but I'm not Mike Carr so I'll just let that go as being outside my area of expertise.

The most useful thing about this feature so far has been the captions that explain what planes we're seeing, but we only get this once in this issue, for the Nazi Messerschmitt Pursuit planes. Despite the Germans having the advantage of surprise, it looks like the British have superior numbers -- I count 12 to 9 - so this could be anyone's victory.

Perhaps most interesting on this particular page is a Hero giving advice to a non-Hero, and the non-Hero just choosing to completely ignore it. Sure, this is exactly what would happen in real life if some kid tried to tell his commanding officer what they should do, but it's very rare for comic books.

The casualties are surprisingly high in this story, with eight dead men on the good guy's side, and this has everyone on edge. The two Heroes aren't getting along and, even though they are quickly promoted to squadron commanders, their colonel tells them the news like it's a punishment.

It's also surprising when the boys try to turn down becoming squadron commanders, and it made me wonder what I would do in a H&H campaign if a player refused the level title associated with their next level ("But I don't want to be a commander!"). Do I hand-wave the level title away, or do they reject the new level and stay where they were? I did elude in the 2nd edition basic book that, at higher levels, there would be more than just meeting XP requirements that would need to be met to level...though I haven't actually worked those out yet.

Whoa...Tim went out with Tom's girlfriend, pretending to be Tom the whole time? That's pretty risque; I remember some direct-to-video movies in the 1990s that were like that...

(Scans courtesy of ComicBookPlus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 2

When we left off on this story the other day, I was talking about how, game mechanically, Steel Sterling could get out of these chains without wrecking them. And yet, for some reason, he doesn't. He doesn't for a very long time, even allowing himself to be dropped out of the plane. It's a very odd sequence in an otherwise very enjoyable story. There is no reason Steel's magnetism-based powers wouldn't make escaping this very easy. I can almost believe that he is playing possum, thinking the Black Knight is taking him somewhere important to give more of his plot away. Then he can't escape during the villain's monologing because he blows his saves vs. plot and can't interrupt the monolog (this is officially in the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules!). A 3,000-foot drop would do 30d6 damage, which would still only render unconscious if this was not clearly a deathtrap, and that changes how damage works.

Magnetism is really just a label pasted over Steel's Superman-like powers; there's no reason I can think of why magnetism should make it easier to fall onto an iceberg, or how he's pushing two icebergs apart, unless there's a lot of iron content in that ice.

An iceberg can easily weigh 100,000 tons, so tipping one over is going to require a high-level Raise power buffing his strength. I'm still tinkering with a more uniform structure to the Raise powers, now leaning towards something like this:

Level 1 - 1 ton
Level 2 - 10 tons
Level 3 - 100 tons
Level 4 - 1,000 tons
Level 5 - 10,000 tons
Level 6 - 100,000 tons

It's rare when a henchman looks cooler than the main villain, but we have another example of that here. This supervillain, let's call him Liquid Fire after his weapon of choice, looks plenty intimidating! I'm not even sure what this stuff he's squirting is, as we're still two years away from Napalm being invented (I had no idea it was so early). The concept for Napalm has been around since antiquity, with Greek Fire, but I wonder if that was where Biro got the idea here, or if the concept for a modern version was floating around before Napalm...

Anyway, it's worth mentioning that any defensive powers that buff you from hit point loss do not protect you from other attack forms, like blinding attacks -- which is precisely why Steel has to dive in the water.

A yacht like that probably weighs about 35 tons, putting it in the level 3 Raise power category, or Raise Trolley Car. The description for Raise Trolley Car even mentions being able to shake out occupants.

The end of that story is confusing...how is Steel's job finished, if he just leaves Black Knight standing there with his anti-aircraft gun? Did he use Turn Gun on Bad Guy between panels? Or did Biro simply run out of panels to tell his story?

Speaking of stories, we're going to jump into the Scarlet Avenger's story in progress. SA, aka Jim Kendall, is kinda all over the place, stylistically. He keeps skulls around him to seem scary, then keeps electrical equipment around him to look nerdy. He uses "phono-vis" -- yet another television-radio trophy item -- to contact some of his operatives, but he also uses carrier pigeons to reach other ones.




For a mysteryman who should only be 1st level this far into his published career, SA sure has a lot of powerful trophy items at his disposal. Here he is, driving his rocket car, with a "super-solaric heat ray" apparently attached to his windshield (or maybe it pops up out of the hood, we really can't see it). The heat ray uses wrecking things, and can wreck at least up to the cars category.

It's usually the main villains who wear hooded robes, but this guy in panel 2 talks like he's just a lieutenant. This guy's no dummy, though, he bought a robe with pockets!

Yeah, that's not how a bullet-proof cloaks would work, unless it's got some mad science inertia dampening field around it. This is far from the first time armor has defied physics in a comic book, nor the first time bullets have.

I've never treated racketeers as a separate mobstertype,

and I probably still won't since I don't see them doing anything here ordinary hoodlums can't do.

The chief looks suspiciously like a KKK member who left something yellow in the white wash.

Hoodlums don't have a very good chance of carrying trophy items, but when they do it makes them much more dangerous. Note how the hoodlums divide their tactics; two are grappling, one is clubbing from behind, and the fourth is using the sleeping gas spray can.

I still don't like the Scarlet Avenger feature very much, but I have to say I like panels 6-8 here. The door in the extreme foreground gives a subtle sense of place, and the panel compositions on the next two are above average too.

At 1940, mustard gas was probably still the most deadly gas known to man -- unless this was a fictitious chemical agent.

One million volts sounds like a lot, but we can make Tasers that can discharge more than that these days. I don't think it's the electricity that lets SA bust through that glass.

A million volts could, I suppose, kill someone, but I think it's more likely to just knock them out.

That last panel makes me think the chief is hiding, but he passed gas and that's how SA is going to find him...

As your last resort you pull out your magnetic ray that can wreck through walls? That wasn't your first choice when you were put into the glass cage with mustard gas? There's something very comic book-y about that, though...enough that I feel like maybe Heroes should need to save vs. plot to use their most effective attack mode first.

How long can SA hold a million volt charge, when he keeps discharging it on people? And what about when he climbed in his car, wouldn't that ground his charge? The science here is a bit beyond me.

I get deja vu reading a lot of these Western stories, but none as much as this issue. Every facet of Nevada Jones' transformation into a Lone Ranger clone seems calculated for maximum rip-offidity.

All these Western tropes, despite their commonness, don't necessarily make much sense. If you're an outlaw trying to look less suspicious, it seems like a wearing a mask is the exact opposite direction you should take.

My favorite part of this page is the arrow pointing to the final panel, foreshadowing the arrow that strikes the dying man in the back.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 1

I'm pleased today to return to another of my favorite golden age heroes, Charles Biro's Steel Sterling. We're probably not going to skip a page of this story -- mostly because there's good content for Hideouts & Hoodlums-related discussion here, but also because it's a good adventure yarn.

And it starts fast! After a one-panel summary of Steel's origin (and a chance to see him naked), we launch straight into a prison break! But which prison? Can we find a specific prison by a river with housing nearby? It would seem a near-impossible task if I was looking at the whole country. However, in #1 I grabbed onto a tiny clue that Steel is based out of Texas. There is only one river, the Trinity River, that I can find in Texas that had jails near it. Of those four jails, are any of them near housing? Of them, Ellis County Jail looks closest to Riverside, Texas. That Riverside is 270 miles from Beeville, Texas, where I think Steel's first adventure took place, would only be an issue if Steel could not fly fast -- and we'll see that

happen very soon in this story.

We've seen Heroes pushing instead of doing damage before, but Steel pushing nine men at once is probably a first. It's certainly possible by the rules, if Steel is using the Flurry of Blows power, and choosing to make each hit a pushing attack. Normally, you would only be able to hit people in melee range with you, but for pushing, it makes sense that you could push people behind the people you're pushing.

There is zero game mechanic difference in H&H between slapping and punching, and Steel's punch would not have killed that guy.

Steel has Imperviousness activated for crossing the courtyard. Or is is Invulnerability? He may be needing that shortly...

Maybe I don't know cars well enough, but I cannot figure out what those things are on the side of the car in panel 1. Giant segmented worms? They're gone by panel 4, so...

Panels 2-3 would be tricky to replicate in H&H. The grenades wrecking the wall is easy enough, but determining where the debris goes is trickier. To be fair, I would position Steel on a map of the courtyard first, and then roll randomly between compass points to see where the majority of the debris falls.

How much damage should tons of brick and debris do when it falls on you? One of the underlying mechanics of H&H is that 30 lbs = 1 hp. If I calculated damage by weight at this rate gradually, 2 tons of debris could do a total of 133 points of damage. If I calculated it exponentially, doubling weight per point, that would be no more than 9 damage for 2 tons, so perhaps a range of 2-9. Anywhere in between those two seems
fair to me, but it seems that Steel took a major beating here if he

was only buffed with Imperviousness.

I love the flavor text in panel 5, that Steel has to use static electricity in his hair to jump start his powers. Here he's clearly using Race the Train.

Falling 300' would have done 30d6 damage, which Steel would have survived while invulnerable, but the prisoner in the car wouldn't. Instead it seems he used Feather Landing.

One nice thing about prison breaks is, you don't have to bother leaving crooks with evidence at the police station, since they already want them back.

This is a real curious first panel. Zooming "across the continent" to Alaska makes me think my Texas guesses were all wrong and Steel was on the East Coast after all.

Did Steel really zoom there with "lightning speed?" He can't arrive too quickly, because the escaped cons got there ahead of him, traveling by conventional means.

Let's still assume Steel is coming from Texas; that means the distance involved is roughly 4,000 miles (if NYC, add 360 miles to that). If he was using the Race the Plane power (which seems to make the most sense, going along with flying), it would need to last for 16 rest turns, meaning Steel would need to be a minimum of 13th level, as the duration on that power currently stands.




Of course, another possibility is that he took conventional travel most of the way to Alaska, and then "zooms" in by his own power only towards the end.

The crew is a mix of pirates and thugs, with that guy holding the harpoon gun under one arm probably being a higher-level fighter/leader. The harpoon gun definitely looks like a trophy weapon, probably doing at least 2-8 damage -- if Steel wasn't buffed with a protective power. Too bad he decides to wreck it!

Wrecking a propeller is treated only as a machine, whereas wrecking the entire boat would have been a tougher category.

In the golden age, if you meet a villain twice, he becomes your arch enemy. Repeat engagements are that rare!





Fake iceberg hideouts is very ingenious by 1940 standards, when most villains were still using warehouses. And having five polar bears in room 1 really sets this as a high-level hideout!
















In actual play, these polar bears would be a lot tougher, but because this is a golden age story, they go down quickly in one hit each. Of all the ways H&H purposely chooses not to emulate the actual practice of golden age comics, this one is probably the most dramatically different.

This page does illustrate, though, that grappling moves can be reversed between turns.

What material is that wall made out of, that it would break away like that? And the wall is so thin...

Most players would, if their Heroes saw that much gold, would immediately start thinking about how much XP all that gold is worth.

Apropos of current events, Steel is tear gassed. No doubt this was intended to show that Steel has weaknesses, but a H&H player knows this only shows he missed a saving throw vs poison.

On taking a look at that pile of chains, one could be forgiven for thinking that's overkill. I'm not sure how heavy a 7' tall pile of chains is, but I'm guessing it would be enough to pin down an ordinary man. A superhero probably doesn't need a Raise power buffing him to get that off, though; I'd either allow it instantly, or require a save vs. science, depending on the superhero concept and how strong we pictured him being. And, for non-superheroes, I would probably go with the saving throw.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)