Fight Comics #4 - pt. 1

If you'd asked me this morning what I planned to do with my day, writing about George Tuska's Shark Brodie boxing a kangaroo probably wouldn't have been any of my guesses. 

Not that he's actually boxing the kangaroo yet; at first, he's just sailing along, minding his own business, when he gets his first wandering encounter (spoiler: there will be more of these). The encounter is a chance for a good deed and some easy experience points, so Shark leaps at the chance. 

A dory is a small boat with pointed ends and high, flaring sides, like a large rowboat, only it can also support a sail or a motor. 

Here's a clever tip for Editors; when the players aren't spoiling for a fight, but you want to make a fight happen, have the bad guys make this mistake. 

I'm honestly surprised that players have never actively sought this out in one of my H&H campaigns yet, but fighting for gamblers seems like an easy way to make both xp and $, though Lawful Heroes should not be considering this option. 

Ten to one odds is very good odds. I would probably sink some levels in the fighter class into that kangaroo if I wanted it to be that challenging.

I like how there's no overarching plot to this installment, but just a series of random encounters that are made to overlap thanks to Stubby and Fritz motivating each encounter.

I hope I'm not reading too much into this page to think Susie and Dolly are prostitutes, but since Susie is a pickpocket we can always stat them as thieves instead of vamps. 

We're going to jump from there into the next feature, Kinks Mason. 

A 100-lb. swordfish is average size, so at 300 lbs. would be a large swordfish, at 900 lbs. a huge swordfish, and ...well, luckily giant swordfish don't exist in real life, and I would call this a huge swordfish. 

Huge swordfish can overturn small boats.  

I'm interested in how treasure can be concealed on a fish and be hook enough for an underwater adventure.  Treasure is always a good adventure hook, but don't forget that treasure should usually be guarded.

Sometimes it isn't enough to dangle plot hooks and Editor's can get impatient. When the Editor wants to get a character to an adventure locale so badly that he takes extraordinary measures to move the character there against his will that's usually called railroading, but here we can call it swordfishing.

Ooo, nice surprise encounter at the end here!

At first I thought he was going to be a ghost pirate, but that he's got a Potion of Water Breathing with a really impressive duration is a novel wrinkle. Since he's a captain, level titles tell me that he's probably a 5th level fighter. Having trained huge swordfish instead of a pirate crew is another interesting wrinkle. Did he have a Potion of Animal Control as well?

I'm not sure what's going on in panel 5. Either Kink is knocking over the table to serve as cover (which is sensible), or he knocked it over so he can jump off of it and lunge for the sword, burning a stunt and essentially wasting a turn of combat. 

If he managed to keep the sword maybe the extra damage over punching would be worth it, but Sneely (a terrible name for a villain, by the way, other than the villain's sidekick) manages to break the sword. This could be a non-superhero wrecking things roll, or the Editor had simply decided in advance that the sword was rusted and useless and just there to inconvenience the Hero. 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Man Comic #11 - pt. 4

Wrapping up this comic, we return to The Shark. We find the Shark has buffed himself with the Super-Tough Skin power, almost correctly identified by name by the narrator. 

Spoiler: The Shark wins.

Now we'll jump right into Mighty Man.  Here is what finding a secret door in the game looks like. 

Comic book fans are expected to be familiar with Hollow World settings, so the reader is meant to be no more shocked by sunlight in an underground setting than Mighty Man is.

Okay now, if you can look past the implied racism of these black men, the idea of coal giants itself is pretty good and not that different from stone giants in D&D. 

I appreciate that, even know after taking his blows, Mighty Man still doesn't think of them as the enemy and wants to make peace.

Again, if you look past the "White Savior" cliche...and the suggestion of black cannibals, you'll find that this is a surprisingly dark scenario (especially given the Filchock cartoony art), with the 12 missing people having already been eaten and beyond rescue.

The origin of coal giants - that they have to eat chemically altered coal - is ridiculous, but it's not that out of line with golden age comic book origins; we're about a year away from a speedster getting his powers from a transfusion of mongoose blood. 

"Making every blow count" sounds to me like Mighty is buffing his damage rolls. 

This is maybe the first time a trap has been triggered to aid a Hero. It looks like that pit trap really hurt him too, though he could have already taken a lot of damage in the fight. 

So far we don't really learn much about the coal giants, physically, other than they are tough and they are not faster than Mighty Man.

We are told, but do not see the dozen coal giants here. It's interesting that this is the same number as the missing people and it would have been a nice twist if the coal giants were actually the 12 missing people.

The last thing we learn about the coal giants is that seeing fire triggers morale saves for them, and we can presume that they take additional damage from fire (+1 point per die?). 

Didn't the old man tell us that he found the hidden kingdom by a different method? So they're not hidden forever.

 

Jumping ahead into Magician from Mars, we have a rare instance of authority figures not doing whatever it is the Hero asks them to do. Could it be because she's a woman? 

Jane uses pyschic paper!  Or is it a Phantasmal Image spell, cast on the paper...?

500,000 MPH seems fast, except in space travel, where it would still take almost six days to reach Mars from Earth.

Jane casts Wall of Force.

Martian tanks look pretty much like normal Earth tanks, except they have windows? And better shielding around the treads. 

The king's city has a force field, but the generator must be enormous and costly; they don't have the technology for smaller forcefields until Jane teaches them how to make them. Or she just gives them the idea, because they never thought of it...?

Yet another bad guy with a television.

Gravity shoes allow them to fly. They must be wearing some other device that creates the personal force field. 

Jane uses the ...well, there's no Raise Tank power, but the Raise Bridge power should be more than strong enough to let her toss tanks around.  If we didn't know she was a Magic-User/Superhero, we do now!

There's an interesting little subplot building with Taal - you'll have to read the comic to see what happens!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Man Comics #11 - pt. 3

We're still on Minimidget, so today we're going to talk about the trouble with shrinking and game mechanics. I have proposed before on this blog the radical idea of using no new game mechanics at all -- that shrinking is entirely flavor text. The benefit is that you are -4 to be hit, the same as if your opponent couldn't see you (in this case, because you're so small).  But that ignored one critical issue with being small, and that's getting from point A to point B when any common sense ruling at normal size would say you could not pass through that opening.  You could hand wave the common sense ruling, but that could be granting more power through handwaving then I am generally comfortable with, particularly in a scenario like this where escaping from a locked room is critical. 

Where that leaves us is that the shrinking Hero must be a Magic-User with the Poof! spell. The flavor text of the spell has been replaced with shrinking, but the spell effect - of getting from point A to point B over a short distance - is still there.

Ugh, Google isn't letting me wrap text around the images today. Thanks so much, Google!

I shared this second page for more evidence of the importance of random initiative rolls for each combat turn. Even as I've turned away from random initiative rolls when running D&D and back towards Old School common sense order, it's clear that common sense has nothing to do with who gets to attack first in a comic book panel. Here, the hoodlum has three guns trained on him, yet he's still able to rush up and punch Minimidget before anyone can make a move to stop him.

What you just looked at was Zardi the Eternal Man, a brand new character, and an interesting spin on the Mandrake clone. You'll notice in the following pages that Zardi sometimes appears to be using real magic, like when he makes himself young again, and other times his wand seems to be more like a scientific tool akin to the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. The last panel even seems to allude to this when it refers to what Zardi does as "tricks," instead of spells.

Now the question is, do I need a spell that de-ages someone? I would say probably not, since there are no game mechanics attached to age in H&H (except between minors and adults, and even then just for mobsters). More on this shortly.

"Conquering gravity" is a Levitate spell. 

And, of course, it's ridiculousy racist to make your ethnic manservant dress in period clothing and not let him even wear a shirt.

For a magic cane, it sure looks like it's just a trick cane with a retractable silk line reeled up inside it. The only magic I'm seeing here is that Zardi is strong enough to lift Jeffry aloft with one hand - but then, we can chalk this up to flavor text, since Zardi isn't using his other hand for anything important.

Here we can see that Zardi's age actually does figure into the scenario, as a disguise. Since that is the only purpose it is serving, this could simply be a Change Self spell. 

He also casts Invisibility on Jeffrey.

There is no explanation for how Silky faked that photo, but Silky is a great nickname for a Slick Hoodlum. 

Zardi is either casting Knock, or his cane has some electronic door-opening feature -- which it looks more like. 

The magic cane "works" because he's using it as a whip and actively whipping them. No magic here.

Chaldean illusions are the Phantasmal Image spell. 

I think it's refreshing that Zardi seems to be no more than a 5th level magic-user. 

I'm jumping into the Shark story in progress. 

There's not really a good in-game rational for how Shark just happens to find this going on with his "magic" television just in the nick of time...except....the Shark's TV probably has a certain chance of finding bad guys per turn, which were measured in rest turns, until the moment a combat happened, and then his turns became melee turns. This explanation is a little dodgy because the Shark is not in her combat until after he already benefits from being slowed down to her turn speed.

Another example of a gun being disarmed with a thrown knife.

I don't recall if any other Shark stories feature this weakness, but it's a good idea and makes the last two panels of the previous page all the more heroic. 

I don't get how Fritz is able to tell just by looking at him that he's helpless, or manages so quickly to tie it to the thrown knife. 

I'm also surprised that belt buckles can do that kind of damage. Were belt buckles made sharper in 1940? I would think they would each do 1-3 points of damage, at best. 

Pretty good art, though! 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Amazing Man Comics #11 - pt. 2

Welcome back! Let's pick up where we left off last time with Chuck Hardy. Chuck has met a new species in his Hollow World setting and, no, it's not lobstermen, it's pygmy lobstermen. That implies that there are "normal"-sized lobstermen out there somewhere too. We don't learn anything about the pygmy lobstermen other than they use a monarchical system of government, are matriarchal, extremely friendly, and technologically primitive. We never once see them fight, so they could have 12 HD for all we know, but I think it's a safer bet that they have a 1/2 HD, or 1-1 HD at best.

I wish we had a sense of scale for that curious lizard, as it looks more fearsome than pygmy lobstermen and frogmen. 

I'm going to spare you the next page and the results of Chuck's trap. Here's a hint: had it been drawn realistically, there would be blood flying everywhere. So how do I stat this trap? A catapult-launched spear is going to be pretty powerful - I'd even be willing to say 3-18 points of damage worth - but it's also going to be an impractical, poorly-aimed weapon. Despite the number of spears, they would each have a chance to hit equal to just a 1 HD mobster. 

Incidentally, missing from this story is any explanation for how people with pincers for hands were able to make rope ladders.

If panel 3 makes you think of the Ewok Dance...then we think alike.

The only real reason I shared this page is the peculiar wording of "knock him kicking!" Google that phrase and the only thing that comes up is a sports article from a 1965 newspaper, and it's behind a paywall so I can't tell what the context is. I can only imagine that Chuck's dialogue is being written intentionally silly.

Moving on to Iron Skull...

I was confused at first by the term "pet suspects," never having heard it before. Apparently it's a real term meaning the same thing as "most likely" suspects, though my first thought was that the Chief had a pet that suspected them.

It's incredible that the Chief is unable to see the two dead men both belonging to the same cult as a clue. Or perhaps I should say it's suspicious... coincidentally, Drago hears that the Skull is after him right after the Skull leaves the police station. 

This episode of Pinky & Jim, Slave Cultists is interrupted by Iron Skull, climbing up the bricks instead of the easier drainpipe right next to him. To be fair, the Editor could rule that a drainpipe isn't strong enough to support an android's weight (there is no game mechanic behind that; it would just be a common sense ruling by the Editor). It's also possible that Iron Skull is so strong that he's pinching fingerholds into the bricks (which would be handled by a wrecking things roll). 

Here we have a new type of robot - grotesque robots. What's special about these is that Iron Skull's annod comptod machine doesn't work on them. Now, no one knows what "annod comptod" means, but we know from past issues that this machine is what Iron Skull uses to Wreck at Range (the power). It seems that grotesque robots are immune, or greatly resistant, to being wrecked. The Skull has to defeat them the old-fashioned way with punches. 

In the future (or maybe because this is a comic book?), you don't have to smother someone for 10 minutes with a chloroform-soaked rag to knock him unconscious, you just toss the rag on his face and if it lands he is knocked out. 

Both the art and the caption in panel 3 are confusing. The rod must run through the center of the sphere and spins it. The "pyramids" would more properly be called spikes. Being scraped against the spikes wile being rotated past them seems like it would do at least 4-24 points of damage to me. Good thing that the Skull is being held with nothing but rope - easily wrecked as if a door. 

Now this is interesting - Yagani is a Hindu name. In Iron Skull's future, he has to watch out for spies from India! (Unless Burgos just mistakenly assumes this is a Japanese name, since otherwise his WWIII is awfully similar to WWII). 

The bald guy is an assassin, as detailed in the Mobster Manual.  

I think this is the first time I've ever seen a comic book character actually swallow a key; this is usually a cartoon thing.

"Dragon has a time bomb hidden here!"

"We have no time to look for it! In a 10' x 10' cell with almost no furnishings!"

We can see it makes no difference whether Iron Skull wrecks with his head or his fists, so that's all flavor text.

I've never been impressed with Burgos' artwork, but that last panel is particularly rushed. That "BOOM!" going off a few feet away looks like it was set off by a firecracker instead of a bomb.

Note that we never did find out who Drago's informant was - my money is still on the Chief!

Before we go, let's peek in on just one page of Minimidget. All I have to say about this page is that Boma is a real city, in the Congo - and also that ordinary people seem to be really cool about tiny shrunken people in this strip.

(Scans courtesy of Comicbookplus.)

 

Amazing Man Comics #11 - part 1

Now that I'm finally publishing Amazing Man (see Funny Picture Stories #7 - on sale now!), covering this story might not only seem biased, but posting pages seems like it might hurt future sales - but oh well!

There are some big changes this issue, starting with how Aman seems to have dropped his first name, John. Gone also is the interesting struggle in John Aman between hero and antihero; the Council of Seven has decided these stories need to be a lot more straightforward from now on. 

Aman is "purified" by fire, but what this would mean game mechanically isn't clear. Is it simply a magical effect of Alignment correction? Is Aman taking damage from the fire? Given that his initial tests involved stabbing him with knives, I'm guessing he's taking damage. Aman is a really good sport about this, as I'm guessing they would not allow him to buff himself with the Resist Fire power. 

We begin to get some explanation here about why Aman is being dressed up like John Carter of Mars. Having an indestructible costume would normally be some comfort, but maybe Aman is secretly wishing it covered up enough of him to offer more protection? For that matter, how much should an indesctruble costume protect him?  In the 2nd edition rulebook, I have indestructible costumes being statted as Armor Class 2 (and remember, lower is better). My description wisely does not describe how much of the body needs to be covered by the costume, so maybe these straps and sternum hield are enough? Is what a costume looks like really no more than flavor text?

Has the purification ritual protected Aman from the Great Question's influence, or did Aman make his saving throw vs. charm?

It's just as well that Everett doesn't give us an exact number of days it takes to get from Tibet to Louisiana by plane. Even Google Maps can't tell me this today! What I can't figure out, which is probably more important, is where Aman was heading before he wound up near Louisiana. It certainly isn't on the way to Chicago or New York City from Tibet. Maybe he was planning on vacationing in Florida before fighting evil?

As far as I can tell, the "lost" in the "lost bayous of Louisiana" means that they have disappeared due to landscaping the terrain, as opposed to unmapped "lost world"-type areas. Still, this first interpretation is definitely more interesting and lends itself to adventure fiction.

This page attempts to explain away Amazing Man's John Carter rip-off togs as a "Tibetan uniform." Could this be the Great Question's final laugh at Aman, convincing him that this was the latest in Tibetan fashion?

I appreciate that Amazing Man has the subtlety, that you don't see often in superheroes, to climb a wall and oberve the bad guys unnoticed. Because he's climbing vines, I would probably still make the player roll a skill check, but at a large bonus. 

I like this hideout set-up, where the prison cells are behind a cell with three panthers in it (we'll see there are three of them on the next page). How Aman circumvents the panthers to get to the prisoner is great too, showcasing the versatility of this power. 

I've probably talked about this before, but I haven't posted in a long time and I can't remember. The issue is, how would Amazing Man have this power in H&H? Because Green Mist is not a 1st-level superhero power, or even a low-level one. It does bear some resemblance to the 1st-level magic-user spell, Poof! Could that be all it is - just an exception of allowing a Superhero to prepare a Magic-User spell as a power, and everything about it that isn't movement is flavor text?  

Three panthers is actually a pretty tough encounter in H&H, so it's disappointing that Aman takes them each out in one punch. It is more likely than them being knocked out that they have each failed their morale saves after taking damage and they choose to stop fighting. 

These bayou pirates have a lot of personality to them. We even get help with statting them. One is a brute (a variant of thug) and another is a slick hoodlum. Garlock, their leader, doesn't seem the master criminal type, but might be a mid-level fighter, since he can subdue panthers.

The brute gets upgraded on this page to pseudo-giant, a mobstertype that appears in the recently released Mobster Manual.  The throw is a very effective grappling move in the 2nd edition grappling rules - probably not enough on its own to take out a pseudo-giant, but Amazing Man may be buffed with one of the Get Tough powers to boost his damage. We also learn there are thugs present in the room (I see two of them, not counting Slick and Garlock).

Aman can be casual about what happens to the treasure because his Editor awards xp for treasure just for taking it out of the hideout. What happens to it after that doesn't matter if you don't have personal expenses!

But Aman is clearly gaming the system; there was no reason for him to kill those three alligators (he calls them crocodiles, but it makes sense that he did; he hasn't been in the U.S. more than six months). He obviously did it for the experience points!

What I like here is that Everett gives us almost a whole page of chemistry-building between Aman and Zona. Unlike Lois' attraction to Superman's animal magnetism, it looks like Zona is going to be attracted to how thoughtful Aman is (offering her his jacket for modesty) as much as for his rippling muscles. 

This next bit of research I had done back in November for the Public Domain Heroes Facebook group, but I'll reshare it here. 

I had long assumed that Amazing Man's companion, Zona Henderson, had a made-up first name, or it was a nickname (short for Arizona?). According to SSA.gov's baby names by years list - https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi - Zona was a real name, though a rare one, ranking 712th-820th most common baby name in the span of years I think she was most likely born.

And, of course, we get the familiar trope of televisions being able to function like crystal balls. 

Chuck Hardy has moved up to second feature (which, I understand, was not generally considered the second best position in a comic book; it went first, last, and then alternated in towards the center). 

Frog men last appeared in Fantastic Comics #3. They turn up like bad pennies!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 6

It's hard to believe there is so much we need to go over from this one issue, but here we are, squeezing out a few more pages for a 6th post!

We're still on the Rio Kid. I like this one story detail, where Keller has been trying to legally acquire that land all this time, but when he faces a last minute inconvenience his true nature is revealed and he tries to bully his way past it.

I can't be certain, as I've seen that trick shot stunt in a lot of cowboy stories, but this might be the first time I've seen a pen shot out of someone's hand. Considering that the Rio Kid is maybe five feet away from Keller, at most, and could simpy grab the pen away, makes me think Rio is just showing off. 

Panel 6 is confusing, as Rio appears to be gunning down Keller, but it is just someone else wearing the same shirt as Keller, because Keller shows up again in panel 7. It also looks like Rio is shooting the bad guys in the back as they're fleeing, but it's really just that one guy who has his gun in his hand. Rio "generously" allows the others to escape because they are unarmed. 

Panel 7 has several examples of hard cover. 

I had to look up "cayuse." According to Wikipedia, "Cayuse is an archaic term used in the American West, originally referring to a small landrace horse, often noted for unruly temperament. The name came from the horses of the Cayuse people of the Pacific Northwest."

If I was to do a cowboy-themed supplement someday -- which I've not ever fully ruled out -- I wonder if tough cowhands would need to be statted. They definitely are weaker than deputies.

Panel 6 confuses me. Does Kid Rio have some past with Keller we don't know about? Because it seems like Green has a score to settle with Keller, not Rio.

Bear with me on this -- this final feature is ridiculously racist -- but it is actually the first appearance of a pegasus in a comic book, not counting the pegasus-unicorns in Action Comics #6.

I like the quest - to bring back milk for undernourished children everywhere - and it seems very appropriate for a high fantasy scenario with half-pint protagonists. 

I'm also willing to forgive the racism on this page.  Assuming this is all in Marco's imagination, including Snowball, and Marco's only exposure to black people is from comic books, then it is entirely possible that he would imagine a black person looks like this.

I can't resist commenting on this page. For one thing, Ice Cream Mountains is wonderfully evocative and would be a good addition to a Candyland-themed campaign setting.  While the narrator calls them the Ice Cream Mountains, Snowball calls them the Tutti-Frutti Mountains. My first thought was that Snowball is using the term as a euphemism for an expletive (like "rassum-frassum"), but I see no evidence that tutti-fruitti was ever used as an adjective with negative connotations before the 1970s.  Tutti-frutti, as an ice cream flavor, has been around since the 1860s.

I also had to look up if there had been a particularly bad blizzard in 1899 or if that was a made-up detail. Sure enough, it was real!

I am tempted to stat snowmen as a mobstertype...

5,000 miles is just a fraction of the distance to the Moon. Not that the snowman is wrong; since we are already in the Milky Way Galaxy, you are there whether you go 5,000 miles or 1 mile.

The idea of an alien species that simply chooses not to age is an interesting one, more so than the Libertarian fantasy of a utopia the goat-riding baby alien espouses. Also more interesting is that the alien is riding a goat at all, which makes me think of Thor and his goat-drawn chariot.

Final feature! Now how the robbers think thousands of dollars is "the world's richest haul." This is entirely appropriate for a non-serious scenario.

$1,000 is a very generous reward for the theft of thousands of dollars and quite the xp boost for Buddy Braver. We also learn that a box of candy costs 50 cents. 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)