Amazing Mystery Funnies v.2 #9

We rejoin the Fantom of the Fair as he's chillin', just watching a circus act, when ...well, let's think about what's happening here.

The Fantom somehow senses that something is amiss, but we don't know how. Perhaps he was using Super-Hearing for some reason and overheard the man at the tank, far below, over the din of the crowd. Perhaps the Fantom just has a really good sense of volume and figured out that the water was low from looking at it. Or maybe he was using some kind of heretofore unknown Detect Danger power/spell (or would Find Traps duplicate that?).

Then The Fantom defies physics by leaping after Jane, and less aerodynamically than Jane (and with the drag of the cape no less), and still manages to hit the water before her. Some new power called Fall Faster?

There's more going on, unsaid, here too. The Fantom claims this man looked suspicious because he was standing around nearby. But this is the 1939 World's Fair -- there should be hundreds of people standing around nearby! So this has to be The Fantom using Detect Evil to sense the wrongdoer.

And then there's The Fantom throwing the guy and him landing dead. In Hideouts & Hoodlums you cannot kill in one hit, no matter how much damage it does. I could change that rule -- say, adding an amendment where if you do 10 or 20 points of damage more than what would drop you to zero hit points, then it can be an instant kill, but this is a throw attack that shouldn't possibly do that much damage. Unless The Fantom is using some new power called Super-Throw (with increased grappling damage), or Killing Blow (that gets around the not killed at "zero hp" rule).

This page I include for trivia. From Jane's comments at the end, coupled with the clear outline of a face on The Fantom -- I'm beginning to suspect that The Fantom isn't wearing a mask at all. Rather, his face is always masked in shadow, thanks to magic, and we're just seeing him in silhouette.

A prototype for Marvel Comics' High Evolutionary. More proof that Carl Burgos invented the Silver Age of Marvel Comics back in 1939...?

Now I'm trying to decide if rocket cars needs to be a trophy item. A commonplace rocket car might seem futuristic, but a rocket car held the land speed record (345 MPH) as of 1938. Maybe the Thunderbolt (#7 on this list) will get a stat.

I think I've just solved my problem of how to justify keeping the acetylene torch on the trophy list. A "blue ray" acetylene torch makes it seem more exotic, and could maybe justify boosting the damage it causes a little.

A note to myself that a large transport plane can be a trophy item. A large transport plane has several benefits for a group of Heroes -- it can easily transport them all in one trip, as well as storing all the supplies they might need on adventures (you can see how the interior side of this plane is set up like an armory).

This is Don Dixon. Don't drink was apparently drugged with a Potion of Madness. It makes him gibber and sound like an egomaniac.  Hmm...did someone slip this to Donald Trump?

Oh, Speed Centaur, you goofy feature! I guess Speed cut off his arms in order to fit his torso into that fake horse head? The lesson here is that you don't have to think too hard about disguise for it to work in H&H.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #8 - pt. 2

Air-Sub DX raises the issue again of giant robots. Should the basic H&H book include a mobster type that is impossible to beat in straight-on combat (discounting wrecking things for a moment), just to properly emulate the comic books of the time?

Should this be a giant robot, or is this too big for giant? Is this a gargantuan robot instead? Also note that Gargantuan robots have a chance of being armed with magnetic ray beams.

Ah, Carl Burgos, how you're giving me weird stuff to stat for H&H! Living diamonds turned out to be exactly what it said -- diamonds with faces that can talk and float in the area. Or is it flying on a little soap dish-shaped aircraft? It's hard to say. The living diamonds have a breath weapon consisting of molten glass. Yeah...weird stuff...

The Fantom of the Fair is less weird in comparison. We have the familiar story of a prehistoric ape brought back to civilization and runs amok, though this ape is far smaller than King Kong. This is more in keeping with Gigantopithecus, an actual prehistoric ape that was 9 1/2' tall and weighed around 1,100 lbs. It would be a 6 HD ape .

Curiously, The Fantom fought this exact same prehistoric ape only thousands of years ago, long after prehistoric apes like this would have died off.

The ape can wreck things, at least as well as a 2nd level superhero.

Perhaps more curiously, the police at the world's fair seem remarkably well-equipped, with gas masks, sleep gas bombs, and (on this page), anti-aircraft guns.

Once The Fantom gets the ape in a choke hold, the ape's low saves keep him from reversing the hold, and it can't use wrecking things to break the hold because The Fantom is a higher level superhero. The grappling attack renders the ape unconscious first, which is how it is able to take lethal damage from the fall (normally falling damage only makes you unconscious).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #7 - pt. 2

We return to this extra-special issue of Amazing Mystery Funnies. I had thought that the most special part of this issue was going to be seeing the first appearance of The Fantom of the Fair, but it was actually this installment of "Air-Sub DX" that was the big find.

And what's so special about this installment? Note the storyline. Tim and his friends are concerned about a "Montan", who found "the living diamonds" on "Mystery Isle"...

Here, Tim and his friends are traveling through the upper atmosphere in their rocket when they are caught in a "cosmic storm".

The rocket loses power and lands on the island, where they encounter giants. Not giant monsters, but still giants.

By now, I shouldn't need a road map for you to catch the parallels to a famous 1961 story.

Interestingly, rocket ships do not need pressurizing and you can open side doors to shoot electric cannons out of them, as if it was just a helicopter.

Now this is a different story, one of the many one-shots Centaur would publish. And the clue about "C-20" is one of those terrible clues no player would ever guess. No one would ever hear that and go "Gee, I wonder what all the boats down at the dock are named. Could one of them be C-20?" It would have to be a clue that a non-Hero character at the scene would give away, but then there's little point in using clues if your Heroes have no chance to figure them out.

I'm a bit surprised by this one. Though the correct spelling is benzene, not "benzine", the author is actually pretty spot-on for how dangerous a large quantity of benzene is in a poorly ventilated room. I had to look it up, but that stuff would make a good trap.

A subtle feature here is how the concept of hideout is tipped on its head. There's a suspicious-looking warehouse right there on the pier that turns out to be completely innocent; the gang is small enough that they work entirely out of the scow, using a separate motorboat nearby as their getaway vehicle.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comics Museum)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #5

It's kind of a given that the science in science fiction strips of the 1930s was going to be pretty weak, but I'm still surprised that Sari can hear the hum of the pursuit ships, from a long distance away, through the vacuum of space. One can either try to hide this in their Hideouts & Hoodlums games as if it were a bug, or treat it as a feature and go full-on gonzo the science. The H&H rules try to walk a middle road between the two, like making other planets inhospitable environments, but not as inhospitable as they really are in real life.

We also get some sense of the geography of Venus from this. There is Meteor Plains to go visit, or the Bendozi Spur, which can be reached through an underground tunnel.

Sari suffers complications from injuries, as she now can't use that arm. Paul overbears Skyrocket by making a successful attack roll, followed by Skyrocket failing his save vs. science. Since Skyrocket was already prone, he should save at -2.

This giant underground tunnel actually leads to Vendex Valley instead of Bendozi Spur. Why one would need to navigate underground, and why it wouldn't be easier to reach these locations flying above ground, has me a little perplexed.

This is clearly a Potion of Invisibility being given to Skyrocket, even though it's called a "chemical" and that makes it hi-tech. I'm thinking I made a mistake in separating trophy items into hi-tech and magical. They should all work the same, and the tech/magic distinction should be largely flavor text only.

I don't have anything really constructive to say about this page, but it reminds me of D&D games I've played (or ran!) where the DM prepares a consistent naming scheme for the campaign -- with NPCs like Batow, Redon, Morten, and Klawger -- and then someone introduces a character into the campaign called...Tim.

At least Tim gets a lightning gun!

And then there's these guys. They're batmen. The Batmen of Kordano. So this can be a thing in H&H now. They live to alternate between daggers and lightning guns, apparently.

Batmen don't stand much of a chance against giant flame guns that can create walls of fire.  Tim's dissolving gun can wreck like crazy too.

Daredevil Barry Finn encounters a distinctly different merman, one created with science instead of naturally.

I should have thought of this one a lot sooner -- a Potion of Explosives. This can't be the first time I've seen a vial of chemicals that can explode. It's clearly meant to be thrown...woe to the Hero who drinks it...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #3 - pt. 1

This is from Carl Burgos' Air-Sub DX.  What can we learn here for "futuristic" Hideouts & Hoodlums scenarios?  Besides the fact that air force officers wear short shorts and have buns of steel in the future, we know that the availability of hi-tech makes life in the future very dangerous. Get on a ruler's bad side and he can sic tank planes on you!

Dissolving guns would likely use wrecking things as a mechanic.

60 knots is actually really fast for underwater travel; the fastest submarines today can go up to 44 knots per hour. That seems to be a good metric, though, for futuristic hi-tech. You improve performance by 30%, cross it with another similar invention (like an air-sub), and -- presto! -- instant future tech.

Or, combine something we have now, like bathyspheres, with features of an animal, and you get crab-subs!  I have to say, crab-subs look pretty cool. If I were to use them, I'd probably have a Captain Kwalish piloting one as an inside joke.

This is Bill Everett's Dirk the Demon, a half-pint fighter with the ability to pick pockets (another skill I plan to move into general applicability).

Dirk, the little scamp, trips one of the guards with a simple attack roll and a missed saving throw. Then, to knock him unconscious, he hits his head on the floor. How many hit points does the guard have?

The trip attack does no damage, but it set up Dirk for his next attack so he could use the floor as a club. That did 1-6 damage instead of the 1-4 Dirk would have done with his stolen dagger, or 1-3 from his bare fists. So the guard has 6 hit points or less.

That unassuming and, frankly, dorky-looking cowboy with the handkerchief on his face is Phantom o' the Hills, and he must be tougher than he looks because he's using the third level Cowboy stunt Raise Posse here. Though, in 2nd edition, I'll be using the term stunt differently, so if I ever get back to the cowboy class I might have to call these something different!

The detective here is Chic Farrel. Maybe brain transplants should be a skill all ultra-mad scientists should have?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)