Top-Notch Comics #4 - pt. 3

We're still reading Streak Chandler of Mars here, but it's Professor Finlay speaking first. "I might as well tell you now, the landing gear on this ship is not finished! And...while things are getting real, I might as well fess up, there isn't enough air and food on this ship for five of us. Oops!"

The science is typically terrible for a comic book story here. Granted, we didn't know for sure Mars had no breathable atmosphere back in 1940, but we did know the distance to Mars, and there would be no way to fly there in what seems to take only a few hours -- and even if you could, there would be no way to brake hard enough to not be atomized on contact with the surface. 

Streak's player must have rolled pretty low for his Intelligence score. "Is that Mars?" "Gee, Einstein, how many other planets do you think are in this area?"

And things don't get better on the next page, when they are attacked by Martians that look like demonic Elmer Fudds wearing women's bathing suits. As comical as they look, they can shoot heat rays out of their fingertips and that seems impressive, even if they can only hit one out of three targets with them (they are not rays or cones so much as "Magic Missile" spells, from the earliest editions when you had to roll to hit for them). 

Oh Streak. Yep, your plan worked to perfection -- if your plan was to shoot all the oxygen you needed for a return trip out of the ship. 

More impressive are the strange, winged green men (you know, the blue ones) who fight with gas guns and can communicate telepathically.  

 

Oh boy...it looks like I have to add three new mobstertypes to the Mobster Manual, but these are not winners. The green men who are blue are the lokis. The Elmer Fudds are ferrugas. The octopus with a horse head is called a brontauris, which is a terribly unimaginative name. 

So far I haven't seen enough of what the lokis can do to stat them. I haven't seen the ferrugas do much either, other than shoot magic missiles. 

Now, normally, you'd think, of course you're not going to have much luck fighting with just a pocket knife against a horse-headed octopus. But this is a golden age comic book, and almost all animals get killed with a single stab. So these brontaurises must be really tough! I'm thinking at least 4, maybe up to 9 Hit Dice. It obviously attacks by constricting with its tentacles, but it isn't very strong and doesn't seem to do a lot of damage per turn.

Moving on to Wings Johnson of the Air Patrol, we see that wandering encounters can occur with unexpected frequency, Even in the middle of the English Channel you apparently need to roll once per turn. It's also possible to have a house rule that, after 1 wandering encounter, you immediately roll once in the next turn only.

 

Wings is one unlucky guy -- there's not even a game mechanic for accidental wind shear. I'm imagining a scenario playing out like this -- 

Editor: "Welcome to our first solo session of H&H!"

Player: "I want to play an aviator!"

Editor: "...You're sure? You don't want to be a mysteryman? Or superhero?"

Player: "Nope, I want an aviator campaign, and I'm naming him Wings Johnson?"

Editor: "Wings Johnson?"

Player: "Yeah, why?"

Editor: "Well, it's just that your last character was named Dick Storm. And the one before that was Spurt Hammond..."

Player: "I don't see where you're going with this."

Editor: "Fine. You know...fine! You want an aviator campaign? Wings Johnson is flying home over the English Channel in a German plane when...two British planes try to shoot him down!"

Player: "Don't I have some kind of pass code I can radio to them...?"

Editor: "There's no time! Because...As you fly low to evade them...a sub surfaces right in front of you!"

Player: "What die do I roll to--"

Editor: "And then your wing falls off!"

Player (excited): "Whoa!"

[After 3 hours of successful dice rolls]

Player: "Best session ever!"

Editor: *sighs*

Back to the comic (I think that was my longest digression ever)!

We pick up with Wings climbing his tangled parachute and we're told it's cutting up his hands really bad. Okay, I guess I can believe that would happen, but how do we handle that in-game? It seems too important to wave off as flavor text, as it could make him lose his grip and plunge to his death. I'm thinking the pain should cause a save vs. science to avoid losing his grip, but should the pain itself be flavor text, or 1 point of damage? It's got to be the Editor's call.

The bottom tier of panels does make me wish I had a Popularity or Reputation mechanic in H&H. I know I've talked about it and toyed with it before, but I don't think I have ever worked out anything concrete yet.

 

Not having any military experience, I had to look up to see if "officer of the day" was a real thing. According to Wikipedia, "a duty officer or officer of the day is a position that is assigned to a worker on a regularly rotational basis. While on duty, duty officers attend to administrative tasks and incidents that require attention regardless of the time of day, in addition to the officer's normal duties."

Which, I suppose, now makes it seem odd to me that the officer of the day who is responsible largely for administrative tasks is being put in charge of the arrest here.

Wings isn't wrong; the Spitfire was the fastest plane on the Allied side and would remain so for the next few years. The Germans would soon have a faster plane, the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket plane, but that's a year from "now."

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)