Famous Funnies #62

Opening with a joke...

Jack Kirby's Lightning and the Lone Rider reminds us that silencers existed for guns in the 1930s, though here it is called a "muffler". I would think everyone in a hideout would want a silencer, because gun shots echo so loud.

$2 for an airplane ride.

Dickie Dare's Editor needs to stop having his supporting cast do all the hard work for him, or he's going to get over-reliant on them. If Joe had missed a loyalty check, they would have been done for.

And here's a good lesson about smoking. If you smoke, you'll eventually discard a match in a pile of wood shavings and almost burn down the boat you need to get off a deserted island.

I have a write-up for nobles ready for 2nd edition, because evil counts show up so often in comics...but I can't help but wonder if this guy isn't an evil mysteryman, or even just a really capable slick hoodlum...

Oaky Doaks is a great example of Lawful Alignment. I admire his convictions.

From Babe Bunting -- a map!

From Connie -- a good size comparison of a yacht, a sloop, and a rowboat.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #56 - pt. 2

Treasure is often a useful lure for getting players to do something or go somewhere -- the carrot by which the Editor leads them. But eventually the players catch up to the carrot and then they wind up with all that treasure and all its worth (both in terms of $ amount and xp value).

What happened in The Adventures of Patsy, here, is that they thought they were going to get treasure out of this cabin raid, but it turned out the villain was crazy and just thought he was collecting gold all this time.  It's a clever idea you can "trick" your players with once. Of course, you can't do this to your players too often, or they'll balk at being cheated.

The first Transformer?  Allowing robots to fly is not something I've put into stats for H&H yet.

Unlike the fool's gold in the previous example, the billion dollar bill is unlikely to fool any H&H player older than a kindergartner.

I've heard of Dungeon Masters who draw, or otherwise provide, a picture of a Sword +1, or maybe a note card with a short history of the weapon on it. Details make the trophy item seem more real and of value to the player than just telling him, in a general sense, what it does.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Famous Funnies #54

Here's a fun item to throw into a hideout -- a bucket with a glass bottom. What's it for? For seeing underwater, of course, as any eagle scout can apparently tell you.

This is from Skyroads, and I've done this too. Your players want to know exactly how many gold coins are in that sack, but you cut corners preparing for the game and only worked out what the dollar value of the whole contents are. Who has time to go check the price of gold in 1940, divide the total dollar sum by it, and get a number of coins? So you tell them, "it's a sack of 50,000 bucks in gold" and, if they ask for details, you add "don't worry about it..."

From the gag filler Life's Like That, here's something I thought was funny.

This is from War on Crime.  It seems that hoodlums always have a chance of identifying "dicks" -- or good guys in general, on sight. A 1 in 6 chance, perhaps?

I am not a fan of Jitter, a pretty humorless gag strip, but this page has some mini-history lessons for us -- specifically what a street-cleaning wagon looked like in the 1930s, and the fact that gas stations also had water hoses.

It's rare that the entire hideout turns out to be one big trap, but in this case the entrance is rigged so that, if someone pulls out some of the support stones, the entrance slides shut and traps you inside.

There's two interesting things to point out from this page of Dickie Dare.  One is the clue, mysterious words written on a piece of paper, meaningless without context, which turns out to be the last name of a villain to be met later (and will be recognized then as foreshadowing).  Two -- and this has come up before -- is that every hideout should have more than one entrance, even if you need a crowbar to break into the secondary entrance.

This is from The Adventures of Patsy.  Animals won't cross a line of fire unless they make a morale save. This might apply to ordinary hoodlums as well, since the line of fire could do 1-6 points of damage to the crosser.

Seaweed Sam is back because of the iron robot he encounters this month. It's far stronger than the version found in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies, though maybe it could use an upgrade -- give it the Raise Elephant power?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #52

One is not likely to encounter wandering mobsters as frequently as seen here in Hairbreadth Harry, but combining different mobster types is fair game so long as the combinations make sense in the context of the encounter, or the nonsense of fitting "wa-hoo birds", giant porcupine fish, alligators, and wildcats together matches the tone of the campaign.

This is from gag filler called Life's Like That, and -- like the page above -- I appreciate the absurdity of this.

This month's installment of War on Crime includes this tip: bent license plates are suspicious!

Dickie Dare returns home after a long adventure and immediately seeks out his family and friends. It seems a natural response, but it makes good game sense too. When touching home base after wide-ranging adventures, every Hero would do well to meet up with all their Supporting Cast, check to see if any of them have fresh plot hooks, or just collect the Experience Points from including their SCMs in the game session.

Also note that Dickie, like so many superheroes to follow, is from New York City.

This is from The Adventures of Patsy, and "Can I tell which direction the shot came from?" is a surprisingly tricky question to consider. There is a hear noise mechanic, but gun shots are notoriously echo-y and could well come with a penalty. Plus, there is forensic evidence on the scene to consider -- which side of the cat is the gunshot wound on? At worst, I would probably assign this a flat 50-50 chance for Patsy's friend to answer correctly, and at best I would just hand-wave it and say they can just tell.

Goat joke #18!

Oaky Doaks is going up against a giant! It's hard to say just how tall this stooped-over giant is. Twelve feet tall? That would make him too large for a hill giant. I wonder if I'll keep the distinction between sub-groups of giants...

This is from gag filler called Punky, but I could see a whole boys' adventure scenario built around them getting lost in the woods.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #47

The theme of the day is maps! This is from a page of Roy Powers, Eagle Scout. The scenario is about whose property the scout cabin sits on and, while I'm hard pressed at the moment to think of a good idea for one, I'm sure there's something exciting you could do with a cabin by a remote lake!

This is from Life's Like That, a gag filler page, with a particularly still-relevant today gag here.

This map is slightly better, though still not as detailed as most RPGs require for careful exploration. It would be interesting, though, to see someone flesh out this map and stock it with Dr. Sting's Indian watchmen!

For Lawful Heroes, taking trophies from bad guys is harder (by the book, requiring a save vs. plot to do so). The flip side is that Lawful Heroes should be the ones most likely to get to stick around afterwards and receive rewards for their good deeds. Here, Patsy, Thimble, and the Phantom Magician get $20,000 for solving a mystery from a generous railroad tycoon.That's a huge chunk of XP.
To keep this from leveling up Heroes too quickly, there needs to be an official leveling cap in place (either what you need for the next level, or halfway to the level past that), which H&H does not have now (only discussion of the need in The Trophy Case).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #42

Back to Eastern's Famous Funnies!

We don't see much of Napoleon here on the blog, but this page reminds us that hot dogs and hamburgers could be purchased for just a dime in the late 1930s.

Skyroads has a history lesson for us today - this page is taking place during the little-known (today) Second Italo-Ethiopian War!

Hairbreadth Hairy continues its bizarre space epic. Here, they are terrorized by a giant named Gwuncho.  Gwuncho seems to be between 40-60' tall, making him a titan in H&H terms (statted in Supplement I: National).

What Hero doesn't want a box of dynamite? The Heroes in my Home Campaign of H&H recently acquired 12 sticks of dynamite and it will be interesting to see what they do with them. They'd best be careful, though, as dynamite has a habit of going off prematurely in the comics!

Motor launches would also make good transport-trophies.

Is this another new spell? The Phantom Magician seems to be protected by a spell that turns all impaling weapons into rubber...or is this just flavor text for the Shield spell (this spell is from Supplement I)?

The Phantom Magician's Cloak of Flying is only a slight variation on the traditional Flying Carpet. It can even, apparently, carry more passengers like a flying carpet, without choking the wearer to death.

Ride a street car for just a dime, according to Connie.

According to Homer Hoopee, an average doctor can whip up a powder from an ordinary medicine cabinet that can put someone to sleep for 12 hours. More likely, though, this doctor has a level or two in the Scientist class (as found in Supplement III: Better Quality).






(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #40

Skyroads was an aviator strip that enjoyed genre mash-ups and, here, is tackling the spy genre. The plot hook SCM here is the woman with the refreshingly unfeminine name Dagmar Collingway. Either that's her code name, or her parents were really bitter about having a daughter. 

Speaking of spy stuff, I'm tempted by this to, if I ever revisit the Spy class again, to give them a chance to know passwords -- a small percentage chance that goes up each level.

Hidden all the way down in the last panel of this page of War on Crime is a great idea that I've never seen tried before in 33 years of gaming. We all think to look for footprints on dusty floors, but why don't we think about the dust on the walls? There's the chance to leave notes written in dust on the walls, as seen here, plus looking for fingerprints.

Continuing Hairbreadth Harry's outer space adventure, we here see the trope of regressive culture in a technologically advanced setting. This way, the author/Editor can have his cake and eat it too -- hi-tech trophies like floating elevators and pneumatic cars lying around, but the people around them backwards and superstitious, and less challenging to overcome.

It's important to remember that robots in the Golden Age are purely mechanical, not electronic. You can't overload its circuits with electricity, but you can thump it on the head and knock some cogs and gears out of whack.

This huge robot is actually pretty fearsome, and a slight upgrade on the two huge robots statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies (the bronze and silver robots). Note the impaling spikes for hands, and the way it sprays fire out of its nose!

The Phantom Magician's new spell should be called Cold Shower. It causes a liquid to become so cold that, if spilled on a single target (living or non-living), that target will have to save vs. magic or become frozen and rendered brittle. The liquid and any container holding it are not frozen. The liquid can be splashed up to 10 ft. away. I suspect this would have to be a 3rd level spell.

Well before Bozo the Robot would debut in the comic books, this huge robot turns out to be hollow, with space for a live pilot!  In The Trophy Case v. 1 no. 2 was the only time I allowed for a robot with a living pilot (the vampiric robots of Mercury), but I think I should allow for this possibility from Earth robots too in the next edition.

Magical growth berries, just sitting on a bush waiting to be eaten? Sure, Seaweed Sam!  Remember, if you're stuck for what should happen next, just insert something random and crazy into the game and watch what happens next. You can always go back in and try to rationalize it later (or better yet, let your players come up with rationales for you!).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #39

One of the challenges Editors like to put in Heroes' way, when running Hideouts & Hoodlums, is environmental challenges. Can the Heroes navigate safely from one side to the other of a treacherous creek? True, an alien could just leap over it, an aviator might fly over it, but there are other races and classes that, with limited resources, might be challenged by even so simple a scenario.

Here we see that the best route for non-powered, non-magical Heroes is to only risk one Hero in the crossing and have him post a guide rope for the others following. The first Hero would still need to make a save vs. plot or science (depending on which is easier, or harder, which in turn depends on how treacherous that stream really is), but the Heroes who follow would not need to roll.

Tetra-nitro-cellulose, as we see here in Skyroads, is one of those nonsense-word explosives so common in comics. It's apparently intensely powerful -- able to vaporize a man who's clearly missed his saving throw vs. science. But note the small size of the blast crater; bear in mind that, in comics, the intensity of an explosion tends to have little bearing on its blast radius.

We haven't spent as much time with Hairbreadth Harry lately as we used to spend in the early days of this blog, but here his outer space adventure continues. Aliens were, until this point, usually drawn to look like ordinary humans in just funny clothes. This might be the first distinctly nonhuman, though still humanoid, alien I've yet seen in the early comics.

Sarians are, apparently, potbellied dwarfs with pointy ears and advanced technology; the ray-rod is capable of making any object it hits disappear.

Dickie Dare's climatic battle with the Black Panther ends with the pearl everyone's been fighting over winding up in the maw of a giant devil ray (that is, a giant manta ray). This is a story trope I've used in my own games, where the "macguffin" item the Heroes are questing for is actually too valuable or too powerful for you to want them to be able to keep it, so it's lost to a bigger and badder adversary the Heroes should not be able to beat (or catch). Of course, that might not stop them from trying and -- if Dickie and Dan's players are that dead set on hunting down the ray...maybe the Editor should just relent and let them catch it.

Giant sting rays were statted in Supplement II: All-American. I daresay, now, that I was a tad conservative. I would likely put a giant devil ray at 7 Hit Dice, of the d8 variety.

Meanwhile, it's a good idea to have a Supporting Cast Member around to tie up the bad guys for you, while you're busy beating up still more bad guys.

By the size of them, these should be "ordinary" 2 HD robots, but the scenario calls for some dressing to be added to these robots. They've been given the ability to wreck things (probably as a 2nd level Superhero), and they seem intelligent (though not too intelligent).

An upgraded mobster should always be worth more Experience Points, probably as if 1 Hit Die higher in this case.

For a strip about aviators, we've seen Scorchy Smith engage in very little dogfighting, until now. Here we see him using the stunt Tight Circle to counter the stunt Find Blind Spot, exactly as they are described in The Trophy Case v. 1 no. 7.

Scorchy Smith's player might have a case for his Editor being out to get his Hero. The armored cars pictured here are close to the light tanks statted in Supplement I: National. Let's hope Scorchy makes lots of saves vs. missiles!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)