Keen Detective Funnies #19 (v. 3 #3) - pt. 2

Yes, Centaur still couldn't afford to color every page! This is still Dan Dennis, FBI, and he's been really slow to get suspicious of the little old lady selling flowers outside the tenement building with a female spy in it he's been watching -- even though it set off red flags for every reader immediately.

Here, at least, he shows good tactics, out-bribing the old lady to get information. 

Invisible ink written on flower petals? Hmm...it seems like petals are too easily destroyed for that to be effective, but it passes comic book logic, I guess. I leave this here for your consideration, when developing coded messages for your own games.

Apparently just holding a gun in the open is cause for a G-Man to belt you in the chops. Works for me! TNT Todd takes down a thug with one punch; the thug must have had very low hit points!

Gee, Todd is pretty brutal. Is he one of the good guys or a D&D murder-hobo? He's also just not very good at anything. He attacked that one guy just for being suspicious, he got himself captured (between pages, I didn't show you that one), instead of ingeniously escaping he has to use threat of force to escape, and then gets caught again right away.

Though, to be fair, that reminds me a lot of my very first Hideouts & Hoodlums playtest. Those poor 1st-level Heroes kept getting knocked down and recaptured left and right. I've tended to go easier on my 1st-level Heroes ever since then.

I have three things to point out about this crudely-drawn page (okay, four, counting that). One, this is not a KKK meeting; these hooded criminals have 1001 written on top of their sheets because they have 1,001 members (we learned this on the previous page I didn't bother sharing). So, every time they recruit or lose a member, they have to all have new monographed sheets made for themselves.

The tiny skull on the desk seems like odd random room dressing, but of course skull decor denotes a bad guy in comics. It would be funny if, based on its position on the desk, if it was just a skull-shaped stapler.

"Give him the gong" took me by surprise, as this is way before I grew up watching The Gong Show on TV. Somehow I'm having trouble finding out how old this saying is, but it seems to predate Chuck Barris.

It's been so long, I had forgotten that we've already seen The Eye several times on this blog already! Here, he's coming to the aid of this paperboy, taken prisoner by three anarchists (they aren't called that, but their cliched behavior indicates it). The Eye either uses Telekinesis or Wreck at Range to destroy the rope -- it really seems unlikely that he/it wastes a powerful Disintegrate just on some rope. 

It's unclear why the Eye is shining light on the boy in panel 5. Is it just a Light spell because the room is dark, or is he/it hypnotizing/charming the boy to make him follow his/its instructions?

Here, The Eye uses Hold Person, which can affect up to three targets, and we see the effect is limp instead of rigid paralysis -- the spell can cause either, as long as the use is consistent. 

We'll jump now into the next story, which stars an old friend of mine (and currently featuring in my Funny Picture Stories anthology!), Dean Denton. This story takes place some months after the most recent one I've republished and -- ah, Harry Francis Campbell, I see you still have a problem with drawing arms that are too short.

The captain is mostly right; the average person cannot dive safely to 500 feet deep underwater. The world record currently stands at 1,082 feet, but that is next to impossible without extensive training for deep sea diving. Indeed, it's dangerous for the average person to dive more than 60' deep. I would say, then, that water pressure can do up to 1 point of damage per 60' past 60' deep, so that at 180' deep a diver takes 1-2 points of damage per melee turn, 1-4 points at 360' deep, and so on.

Compagnie Belgique threw me at first; it looks like a proper name for a company and I looked to see if it was real, but all it means is that Dean went to a Belgian company. 

Harry's work is always full of racism, and Absalom's dialogue here is no exception, but I'm going to give Harry props for at least trying on panel 4. It seems like he put a lot of effort into trying to draw a black man's profile, realistically, perhaps even from a model, instead of the usual caricature. It still came out looking really weird, but that's partly because all the faces around it look rushed and cartoony. In fact, the art overall is just sub-par for Harry. He must have been really rushing towards the deadline on this one.

The end of the story is missing from the copy I have access to, so I never do find out what the helium was for...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)