Famous Funnies #68 - pt. 1

We haven't seen Roy Powers in a while! Here he's on a cruise to Africa (the previous page smartly talked about how much school he was going to miss because of this, but he has a tutor on the trip) where there's going to be some big game hunting (booo!). More interestingly, here's the beginning of some mystery on the ship. What do they want in Roy's room? When laying clues, remember to leave olfactory ones too.

Uashin? I think this is referring to Uasin Gishu County, and it is located on a plateau, in Kenya. Interestingly, "Jambo Bwana" is a Kenyan pop song that will come out 42 years later. 
  

Skyroads surprises me occasionally; there is some interesting chemistry between these two characters, and I laughed out loud at "I was born quite young." Also, salt horse is slang for salted beef. 

Sure, we could talk here about how "fagged out" means exhausted, or how "I feel as though I'd been spanked by a trip hammer" reads like innuendo, but what really grabs me on this page is -- how is that record player working? Is it hand-cranked? Battery powered? I know they had the former back then, but I'm not sure about the latter.

Also note the "Wing Tip" about how 1st-level aviators would need to certify their transport rating, in addition to carrying a transport license.

Senor and senorita? That's interesting because, while Spain in its prime was one of the first countries to have U-boats in their navies, by 1940 Spain's military was in tatters from its civil war and did not have many submarines left. This is a good time to remind ourselves, though, that these are all reprints from earlier comic strips, these ones specifically from 1937 (according to comics.org), and -- according to this Wikipedia page -- Spain still had eight U-boats at that time. 

This page is a reminder, if mystery bad guys have been shooting at you, to search the ground for spent cartridges. With a skill check, you can identify which kinds of guns were being used to shoot at you, which could help you plan for your next encounter with them.

It might be easy to overlook this word through all that heavy dialect, but a yawl is that boat; a yawl is a two-masted fore-and-aft-rigged sailboat with the mizzenmast stepped far aft so that the mizzen boom overhangs the stern.

Oaky Doaks has stumbled across a wizard who lived in a cave for 20 years perfecting this flying carpet (giving us some indication for how long we can expect magic item creation to take?). The flying carpet has an incredible weight allowance, probably carrying 1,750 lbs. as it is here. Being able to reach cumulonimbus clouds suggests a ceiling height over 2,000 feet, and possibly much higher than that. There's no sense of how fast it is from this page.

How would you tell if someone is faking delirium? Perhaps a skill check at first aid. Or a Wisdom check. Or both, so characters with high WIS have a good chance of seeing through the deception, but mysterymen can also cash in a stunt for an automatic success on that skill check.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Master Comics #1 - pt. 4

I was too quick in my review of El Carim last time and missed pointing out its most unique feature -- the conceit that El Carim is using science that looks like magic and not actually magic. We are meant to believe that his toaster and monocle combination, the spectrograph, actually gives him the ability of clairvoyance. We are meant to believe that his magnet is actually paralyzing people. Given this, it doesn't seem so unusual at the end when he relies on a rifle when his "spells" run out. 

Now, we all know that magic-users can't use rifles, but he never actually uses it except to threaten with it and no one ever calls his bluff.

It appears El Carim is only using escape artist skills to get out of that chair, not any kind of "spell." 

One possible plot hole in this story: a previous page called that a "phantom castle." Why? Had it appeared out of nowhere,

 or was it just spooky looking? I was expecting more from that.

As we speed towards the end of this issue, we're going to jump into the last feature in progress, Rick O'Shay (ricochet, get it? Har har...). There's a lot of typical colonial racism here, with the French ("Fraconian") occupiers being presented as the "good" victims and the native Arabs are the "evil" bandits and saboteurs. Oh, and there's the master/servant relationship between Rick and Mekki to disturb you -- although at least Mekki is a real ethnic name! 

The scale also seems to be a little off in this adventure. Rick has to fly 1,000 miles to find the saboteurs? If we were to assume that the French colony was, oh, let's say Lebanon, that puts the bandit lair in ...the middle of Iran? What a strange launching point for attacks on Lebanon! The encounter with a leopard, likely a Persian leopard, seems to only support my theory that these are the mountains of Iran. 

From that last page, I don't get why there would be a tripwire to trigger a landmine, when it would be much more effective if buried - except to make it easier for the players to spot, of course.

It appears that Rick and Mekki are outnumbered four-to-one.

I'll say this, appearing to be able to shrink your prisoners down and store them in crystal balls has got to be pretty intimidating to your new prisoners. In Hideouts & Hoodlums, effects like shrinking always have a duration, so eventually they would return to normal size unless they Reduce spells are recast on them, or some scientific equivalent is reapplied. It seems like a lot of hassle to go to when a normal prison cell would do just as effectively -- unless he plans on taking so many prisoners that space is at a premium, of course.

Snoopy friends? Aw, they're bonding over a mutual love for The Peanuts! Oops, it's 15 years too early for that; he must mean they were snooping around.

I like how panel 3 says they were subjected to "minor tortures" after showing us the rack and the iron maiden in panel 2. Would being hung by your wrists over a fire pit actually be more painful? They weren't even hung by their thumbs. 

I do not get where two things are going on this page. Why is that guy chopping down a cabin and what does that have to do with anything? And what's the point in bringing growth serum in for the cat? Is confusing the prisoners part of the torture?

I think this whole scene gets only more confusing. So...the prisoners are kept in a remote cabin to be tortured -- and that part makes sense; who wants to hear all those screams in the palace? But what was all the torture for if you only plan to kill them? Why destroy your cabin to kill them rather than shoot them? Why bring your shrunken prisoners there and the antidote and your cat there?

And how exactly did Rick escape? If his "strong muscles" broke only the rope on one of his wrists, did he swing on the other rope until he wasn't over the fire pit anymore? How did that help him get Mekki down? 

A "horde" of bandits is apparently eight or more.

 

Now this page I like because a lot of players would not bother switching from a rifle butt to a sword because, in terms of game mechanics, they are identical. Picking up the sword is probably just for the flavor text -- unless Rick's player is hoping to find a magic sword this way!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

   

 

Master Comics #1 - pt. 3

 This is still Frontier Marshal, and we're being told that every type of criminal -- every mobstertype -- is heading towards Big Savage. Bandits, we've had stats for those in Hideouts & Hoodlums since ...well, not Day 1, but close. Do we need stats for rustlers and fugitives from justice, at least for some future cowboy genre-only supplement (an idea I've toyed with for years now...)? 

I don't know...rustlers shouldn't be especially good at anything other than stealing livestock. Well...a cowboy's horse is livestock. What if a rustler could fight for control of a cowboy's steed, in some variation of the contest of wills mechanic for magic-users? 

Fugitives aren't especially good at anything other than escaping, so...maybe fugitives should have a higher chance of evasion? Maybe a higher skill chance at hiding in shadows?

Mr. Clue is a story I thought I was going to enjoy, about a detective who focuses on solving mysteries solely from the clues left behind at the scene. But this story takes it to ridiculous extremes; by this page, Mr. Clue has been attacked for times -- shot at, flowerpot dropped at him (well....maybe that one is more like a point of damage missed), a rockslide targeting his car as he drives past, and now a safe dropped at him. Mr. Clue could easily stop following his clue and just go after the person dropping things at him (how hard could it be to find someone who dropped a safe?).

Also, I'm going to spare you from the following page, where Mr. Clue reveals how he solved it from a clue that shouldn't have really proven anything.

Streak Sloom? Oh...Streak Sloan! The new comic book feature with the worst title font ever teaches us that whale oil was still extremely valuable in 1940, and that one ship could carry a half-million dollars' worth of it.

The island hideout idea isn't new, or that Sloom -- sorry, Sloan simply has to patrol randomly until he finds it. What's unusual here is that the main villain is the first encounter inside the hideout. It reminds me of the classic D&D module, G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King, where the king's hall is up front in the palace and, if you managed to kill him, the whole rest of the fire giants are thrown into chaos. Like anyone running G3, a lot of reinforcements should, and do, show up quickly here. 

It's disappointing that a super-submarine just means that it has extra storage capacity for transporting whale oil and salmon...though, I suppose if you stocked it with more soldiers, maybe you'd be able to fight back against a coast guard patrol. 

I think the best thing about this story is Black Jack Bannon. He wears the furs of a back woodsman, but thinks of himself as classy, so he smokes a cigarette in a long holder. And that's one intense, smoldering stare in panel 5!

Can you cause a gun to jam just by hitting it? We've seen plenty of evidence of guns being knocked out of people's hands by thrown objects of every size, shape, and weight, but this could be a first for forced jamming. Unless the gun jam is just a coincidence afterwards? 

The realistic-looking telegram at the end is a nice touch.

El Carim is a bit of a trickster. While Jane Grey comes to him in tears about her missing father, El Carim slips some paper into a toaster and then casts Phantasmal Image on his monocle. Or can he really invent magic items? Whatever mechanic you decide to use for scientists, you need to decide if you're going to give that to magic-users too and if you think they need the extra ability.

El Carim casts Protection from Missiles and Rope Trick here. Or perhaps the monocle is a magic item, a Monocle of Bullet Attraction?

By this page I think it's clear that El Carim doesn't actually carry magic items, but these items are flavor text for his spells, like Telekinesis and Hold Person. 

It's so refreshing to see a magic-user getting defeated by a pair of mobsters, just like a normal low-level magic-user would be.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.) 

Master Comics #1 - pt. 2

Although we haven't been told yet, I'd bet good money that Ken is secretly the Devil's Dagger. This is twice now that he's openly clobbered hoodlums as Ken so I'm not sure why he even feels he needs a double identity.

Letting the mobsters go so they can be followed back to their hideout has got to be one of the oldest tricks in the book. What's interesting here is that the hideout is a gas station, converted from an abandoned hotel. I never would have thought of that in a hundred years. It's actually kind of brilliant; he would suspect it was a criminal hideout, when they let any stranger who asks go inside their front door to use the phone. What's not brilliant is that there are zero guards inside stopping Ken from exploring the place.

Without special permission from your Editor, your starting SCM should not have levels above 1 (as an "ex-prize-fighter," the implication is that Pat is above 1st level).

The highlight of this page is panel 6 -- I see so many comics in this project with minimal backgrounds that I treasure ones that a lot of planning seemed to go into, that show us a glimpse into the real lives of our heroes. From here, we can infer that Devil's Dagger is well-read (books on his desk), a fisherman, and a marksman. 

Bullet-proof glass is listed as a special add-on for transportation trophies, but tinted windows should be on that list as well. 

It's worth mentioning, I think, that if Ken hadn't taken the time to change clothes at home, he would have got there in time to stop the villains from nearly escaping.

It's also worth mentioning that it was a good idea to have a SCM waiting outside with directions to call the police after X minutes -- though, in a Hideouts & Hoodlums scenario, you probably want to leave yourself more time than that to explore a hideout.

Throwing a dagger so that it snatches sheets of paper and pins them to the far wall is definitely a stunt.

It looks like Devil's Dagger has a clear headshot in that third panel, but we're told Jeff (and what kind of master criminal name is Jeff?) escapes. Maybe it was just a flesh wound (1 point of damage)?

This is from Morton Murch the Hillbilly Hero. It is...really awful. Morton is a weird cross of comic hillbilly and serious action hero. The science is ridiculous. His hot-air balloon is stitched from quilts and full of methane. The floating island has a volcano on it. The island that isn't attached to the ground has a working volcano on it. 

The island people take Morton as a leader and he modernizes them by teaching them how to build anti-aircraft guns -- bear in mind, he is supposedly an uneducated hillbilly. He also must have precognition because he has them do this just before enemy aircraft arrive. Oh, he also builds a flexible glass net, flies over the enemy fleet in a slow-moving hot-air balloon, and nets all the planes. This campaign world would be perfect for players who want to be able to do anything, no matter how impossible.

 

Although it's hard to take Shipwreck Roberts and Doodle seriously (isn't "Shipwreck" a nickname you would give someone who causes shipwrecks?), Dr. Drown is such a great name for a villain I'm shocked it hasn't been recycled since. Dr. Drown has a French assistant who looks like Igor and sounds like Batroc and, best of all, new mobstertypes! Yes, he creates his own sea monsters, like Dr. Demonicus at Marvel in the 1970s-80s. 

I would like to call these first ones sea dragons, but...

...the assistant Romez, who quickly loses his French accent as soon as Dr. Drown reminds him he's Spanish, calls them brontosauruses. Which is an odd thing to call them since they're much smaller than brontosaurs, don't look like brontosaurs, and breathe underwater unlike brontosaurs. So sea dragons it is! They aren't very big, but they are trainable, so they could in theory be trained to fight. I'd put them somewhere in the range of 3-4 HD. 

The next new mobster is a giantocrab. That's right, not a giant crab, but a giantocrab. You can tell it's not a giant crab because the artist didn't reference any real life crab and just made up something goofy, a rock monster with human-like arms. It's both goofy and creepy at the same time! I would also give it up to three grapple attacks per turn. The giantocrab proves to be too much for Roberts and Doodle to handle, so I'd make it at least 6 HD, maybe 7...

...and give it a really low AC (maybe 3 or 2?) since it appears to be made of rock. It's unclear if this is supposed to be a naturally occurring sea monster or if it's one of Dr. Drown's creations. Drown is able to shoo it away rather easily.

It's also worth mentioning that Drown's hideout is a submerged yacht with all the comforts of home, including this nice-looking study with desk, bookshelves, and a safe just right for Heroes to break into.

Sea dragons only have flippers, so they lack claw attacks, but they can grapple instead. 

If Dr. Dream is firing torpedoes, then what is the Radar gun? Do they mean the torpedoes are Radar-guided? 

The colostopus must be bigger than a giant octopus, so...maybe 10 HD? 

Frontier Marshal is one of those cowboy stories that is hard to place in time, here thanks to the anachronistic look of Helen Wright. I spent a lot of time writing about the Mythic West in Supplement III, a sort of "demi-plane" where time flows differently and the "wild West" continues to modern times.  

I can find no evidence that "pipe" was ever slang for "look," but "pipe th' duds" doesn't seem like it could mean anything different. Plus I can find on Google other people who have been posting the same question online, so this is surely not the only instance out there of pipe being used this way.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

   

Master Comics #1 - pt. 1

Another new title! The disturbingly named Master Comics is home to the disturbingly named Master Man! In addition to having mastered being a man, he can also do all the things shown on this page. Maybe! Comic book narrators are notorious for exaggeration. This particular origin story goes surprisingly well, considering that most people don't get superpowers when a stranger gives them pills. 

Master Man builds his castle on the highest peak...where? The highest peak on Earth would be Mount Everest, but the rest of this story sure doesn't look like it takes place in Tibet. The highest peak in the United States is Mount Whitney -- making Master Man the first confirmed Californian superhero. 

He can see all evil in the world...from 14,500 feet? Okaayyy, crazy narrator person!

Does that say Ecaldon or Ecalpon? Ecalpon is from Discworld! Unsurprisingly, this is a made-up name either way. 

Master Man's ability to run 100 MPH is the Race the Train power. He also uses Leap II at rivers and, it looks like, Imperviousness when he reaches town. Obviously, he is the superhero class.

It's interesting that he bares his chest. Is his shirt not bulletproof? The power description intentionally doesn't specify if items worn are protected by this power; this is something the player and Editor should work out between themselves and aim to be consistent thereafter.

The bad guys are a mixed group of four gangsters and thugs, probably half of each. 

I like the phrase "he scatters them like raindrops in a gale." Speaking of that, I like that Master Man can fail; he tries to catch that thrown torch and just misses, and the consequence is the building burns.

However, there is a lot to dislike here too. Why are the bad guys dropping a bomb on an orphanage? Are they terrorists? Why is Master Man smiling when he catches the bomb, when he knows he could have missed? How are the thugs strong enough to hurl a lit torch through an upper-story window that looks like it's 30' high? How on Earth does one lit torch immediately catch the entire building on fire? 

About that one question, "when he knows he could have missed?"

....it occurs to me that if Master Man is high enough in level to get a stunt -- and I have thought about letting all classes have stunts at some eventual level -- then one should be able to use a stunt for an attack roll in non-combat situations, like when you're trying to grab something out of the air. 

Master Man uses the powers Resist Fire and Raise Car here. There's a wrinkle here that the car is barreling down on Master Man at the same time, so both sides would roll for initiative. If Master Man wins, then he can raise the car before he takes ramming damage. He uses wrecking things on the car and the bomber. He's still using Leap II from earlier, as the duration hasn't ended.

It seems odd, from a Hideouts & Hoodlums perspective of mobstertypes, but the leader of gangsters and thugs is a bandit. There was originally going to be hierarchical trees of mobstertypes in the 1.5 edition books that I wound up eliminating. On those trees, bandits would be low on the pecking order. 

You can tell the scenario was too easy and the players still have more time to play, so the Editor has to create a new threat to overcome and the mayor turns up to reveal the kidnapping. 

Dragging a car to a stop is another use for the Raise Car power. 

We never did get any clue as to what the bad guys' motives were.

We're going to jump ahead to The Jeweled Crown of Ramistan, a starring a Tarzan/Mowgli mash-up called White Rajah (just not yet, as this is his origin story).   
 

I can't find any evidence that there are or were headhunters in India. 

Not even Sikhs wear their head wraps in their sleep like this.

This animal summoning power is why I keep leaning towards keeping the explorer class, since this seems beyond what a fighter should be able to do.
 

So, a "black jungle" is right next to India? Riiight. This page is pretty unbearable, not just for that, but for Sin-Gee falling into a trap and David just leaves her there! 

I'm only sharing this page because I want to spend a little time on this death trap. The theory behind it is, by binding one of David's hands, he can't dodge during the knife fight. I wouldn't necessarily call him prone, because he still has some range of movement, so maybe he's +2 to be hit, plus this can kill him because it still qualifies as a deathtrap. 

 

Wrecking things is the obvious way out of this trap, and I would let him wreck his way out of the rope knots as if it was a door.

 

I don't have game mechanics to discuss from this page. I just want to vent. Despite being left behind to die, Sin-Gee gets himself out of the pit without any help, sprints to David's rescue, saves the day and the crown, and then David not only gets all the rewards, but Sin-Gee still has to carry him around! Poor Sin-Gee. As far as I'm concerned, this feature should be called White Elephant!

 

 

 

There is a Carterville in Illinois, but it's only a city in the academic sense since there were less than 3,000 people there in 1940. No, this must represent a larger metropolis, though which city it's representing escapes me. The only clues here is the neighboring mountain, but that still leaves dozens of possibilities.

 

The rivalry with a Moriarty-like villain is appealing, but what made Moriarty so sinister is that only Sherlock Holmes knew he was a criminal. Jeff isn't much of a criminal mastermind if the local newspapermen are already onto him. 

 

I am half tempted to stat a street loafer, but I suspect a wimpy hoodlum would suffice. 

 

And we'll probably pick up with this feature next time! 

 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)
 

 

 

 
 

 

Comics on Parade #24

Happy February! We're back and revisiting Comics on Parade and, for the first time in a long time, Tailspin Tommy.  Boy, it feels like Tommy and company have been stuck in that valley forever! 

Here we have a remarkably rare occurrence of an animal not being dropped by a single bullet. Cougars need to be really tough in Hideouts & Hoodlums; I'll have to review the stats and see if I should raise them.

It appears our Hero plans to act as a living shield for the damsel in distress, but since he is the only threat present it makes sense that all attacks would go towards him anyway.

We have an unusual use of "cookie" as slang here, but the real reason I shared this page is the tip about following tracks back to the lair. I have mixed feelings about this. There have been times when I had a lair all prepared and was frustrated that the players didn't want to follow the tracks back to it, and other times when it was a completely random encounter, and I was frustrated when they did follow the tracks!

The concern about an animal having a mate nearby is a sound one too. When rolling for number encountered, bear in mind that the total number doesn't have to be encountered all at the same time.

Detailed plane information for your next transportation trophy.

Oops, don't have a lot to say about this page. Keep scrolling down...

Hi again! So Abbie an' Slats is obviously not an adventure strip, but there is a strong moral dilemma here that I think would be delicious to explore in a game session at some point. A rich girl will save the town for you if you're willing to get rid of your most important supporting cast member. Is that 100 XP for a good deed worth it to you?

There are three things that stand out from this page for me. One is the uncommon term "soup strainer" for mustache. Two is the amount of money would could expect to find on someone of, let's assume middle class. Three, and perhaps the most unusual thing here is the exact height of her husband. Cartoony men are often drawn short, but in this case it is not exaggeration for comic effect. Yeah, and there's some racist depictions here too.

Yes, I'm obsessed enough on little details that I checked to see if the Bowery Lifter Upper Society was a real thing. This is almost surely a reference to the Salvation Army. 

A $150 purse seems really good for a boxing match in the 1930s, or even the 1920s (this story was first published in 1936, and the scene within it is a flashback to some years earlier). 

I'm not sure what the crime was here. Prizefighting without a license? Or was it illegal to be a female boxer? I can't figure this one out. I know it was legal for women to box in the 1950s, but I can't find anything about the earlier half of the century.

I had to look up "demi-tasse;" it's a small coffee cup, so this is an insult about his short height.

Lochinvar is a very obscure reference today, and I can't help but wonder how often this went over the readers' heads in the 1930s. Lochinvar was the fictional, romantic hero of the ballad "Marmion" by Sir Walter Scott (1808).

 

Even Fish Cake Fannie maybe isn't a throwaway line - "Fish Cake Fanny" was a 1923 play. 

This feature continues to educate! "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" was one of the most popular songs of 1900, reportedly selling more than 2 million copies in sheet music at the time.

Drinking champagne from a lady's slipper became a symbol of decadence in the early 20th century, possibly before 1910. 

"Skiddoo" meant "go quickly," later shorted to "shoo!"

And I'm tossing this gag filler in because I thought it was funny!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)