Keen Detective Funnies #19 - pt. 1

WOOOOOO! Finally! Finally, made it to April 1940, after being stuck on March 1940 for the longest time. But will the stories get any better? Uh-oh -- we're back to Centaur Comics...

We're going to start with Spark O'Leary, and the upteenth time someone in comics has invented a method of invisibility! Kudos, at least, to getting the optics of it kind of right, that it would have to bend light around an object instead of reflecting it, though how it makes hands invisible when they're left uncovered is unclear. And is it dangerous to wear the suit? Is that why it needs a built-in gas mask?

There is a lot of plot convenience on this page. One, Spark just happens to leave the press conference early, which seems to be a terrible thing for a "newshawk" to be doing, but otherwise he wouldn't already be on the road to see the kidnappers, who just happen to drive past him. 

The story completely glosses over how Spark manages to sneak into the building unseen, and then how the two men manage to sneak out unseen. But then, these are some pretty nearsighted mobsters, because they completely miss the car just sitting off to the side of the road. Perhaps we can at least give Spark credit for having Prof. Doran lay down in the backseat, rather than visibly sitting shotgun, but it seems a risky move when more careful mobsters might have stopped and checked out the suspicious vehicle.

An old flivver conveniently blocking the road is just the sort of examples of chase complications I need to expand my table, and the owner of the flivver also being an ornery sheriff is just a bonus complication. But how they resolve the problem leaves me very suspicious of who's side this professor is really on. And how impressionable is Spark that he immediately goes along with this plan to run a sheriff off the road into a pond, where he might drown?

It's very rare for early trophy items in comics to have this kind of built-in weakness, like having water short-circuit them. 

In anyone else's hands, having an invisibility suit would be the origin story for a new superhero (indeed, that's precisely the Invisible Hood's origin story!), but Spark simply gives the suit back when he's done with it. 

Spark is, again, unconcerned when he is out-scooped by another reporter, on the same story he should have been on top of, and instead of being concerned about this mysterious-sounding fire, he just shrugs it off like it's no skin off his nose. Way to avoid your next plot hook, player! 

We're going to jump to the end of the next story, Dean Masters, D.A. Dean has apparently gone out and bought this trophy item, a magnetic cane. It allows him to control rigged roulette wheels and, I presume, pick up his dropped keys without bending over. How it cut wires isn't clear; it would be cool if it had a concealed pop-out blade in the foot of it, but such was never shown.

Now we'll jump into Spy Hunters, for a very early, very rare example of breaking the fourth wall in a serious adventure story. Eat your heart out, Deadpool!

Brest is a real city, a port city in the Finistère département in Brittany.

The Maginot Line of defenses had been installed along the German border throughout the 1930s and would be familiar to most American readers. This comic book, though cover dated April 1940, would have come out in January, four months before the Maginot Line became irrelevant. 

I usually share any maps I see in old stories, in case they could be useful later in planning game sessions or published scenarios...but I'm not even sure what I'm looking at in this map. I wouldn't have much confidence in a military campaign relying on such a map. 

Salzwedel is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, so it's optimistic, if not poor forecasting, to assume France would be taking the offensive into Germany soon.

I wouldn't be bragging if I won a fight with 30:4 odds, but this is always possible when you rely on random wandering encounters instead of planned encounters. The dice give you breaks sometimes!

A subaltern is an officer in the British army below the rank of captain, especially a second lieutenant, so this wouldn't be a term you'd be using to describe German soldiers.

This is from Dan Dennis, FBI. Polly spotted Dan and Tick shadowing her because he failed a skill check or a surprise roll (the Editor could handle that either way), and then she tries to throw them off by handing the package to someone else and splitting up, so Dan and Tick have to split up to follow them both. This could work particularly well against H&H players, as not splitting up is so ingrained in their training.

St. James Place may seem familiar to most of us from the Monopoly board, but it's also a fairly common place name. We can't know for sure if this is the St. James Place in Brooklyn, or Chicago, or somewhere else.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)