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.)

Amazing-Man Comics #10 - pt. 1

For my 800th post (!), we're back to Centaur Comics and this issue of Amazing-Man Comics has a theme of getting places. Particularly since Bill Everett's lead feature is all about getting Amazing Man to his next adventure.

Two things about this page -- one is that John Aman, the Amazing Man, is "unaffected by intense heat," suggesting he's activated the 2nd-level Fire Resistance power.

The other is that "the pilot is unaware that flames have seared and damaged his parachute." Does that mean John is aware of it? And he still threw the man out of the plane?

There's some reallly curious physics going on here. Now, if John had assumed a proper diving position and reduced his wind resistance, there was a chance of him falling faster and catching up to the pilot. But if he's transformed into green mist, there's no way he should be falling faster than a solid object.

In the final panel, John is using the Feather Landing power. The expanded explanation for that power in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums even accounts for this use (it's the 2nd function under the power).

Smothering Cloud might need to be a new power, as I can't think of any game mechanic I currently have in H&H that would handle this, other than Control Fire, a 3rd-level power.

I'm not sure if we need a power that handles protection from rare air/high altitude...but I'll consider it.

Usually it's the villains who unerringly find the Heroes' weaknesses, but here John just stumbles onto the fact that his mist form can be frozen!

 ...but he isn't totally vulnerable in this state, as he can still control his movement completely, just as he could when his mist form was gaseous. What we can gather from this, though, is that he can't change back to human form from a different solid state.

Now, I'm wondering here if we can pin down anymore closely where this super-isolated village is. It's not a very big plateau if it only has the one village on it. Otherwise, it really sounds like Tibet, with how it's encircled by seemingly impassable mountains. Perhaps this is just one corner of Tibet.

If John already is in Tibet, that would explain how this secret passage gets him back to the Tibetan monastery so quickly.

I'm not sure how strong 100 elephants are, but if this means he could lift 100 elephants, that would be 600 tons, making him by far the strongest superhero yet (Superman and Captain Marvel are still years away from being able to lift 600 tons). In fact, that would currently be like an 8th-level Raise power. But I suspect an unreliable narrator again, as those boulders don't look nearly that heavy.

I wasn't impressed with this western story, hastily drawn and supposedly by Joe Simon (though he had to have really hacked this out fast!), and will only share this one page from "Ranch Dude." I share this because counting to 2 or 3 in a gunfight makes no difference by H&H rules; both sides still roll randomly, with highest roll going first.

We'll probably come back and look at The Magician from Mars more next time, but two things about this page -- yes, it really does say she got her powers from being exposed to a cathode ray, and cathode rays really are just the beam of electrons you'd find in a (now) old-fashioned television set.

The other thing is the Moderni Airport. There is no real Moderni Airport that I can find evidence of, but this is likely a Mars location anyway.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Man Comics #9 - pt. 1

I don't know if 2019 is going to be an amazing year or not, but it's going to start amazing -- with Amazing Man!

It's been a while since we last checked in on Amazing Man (almost a whole year ago!), so you might need to pop back for a refresher course on how AM stole a German bomber and what fiendish plans he had for it. Geez, AM, even in wartime you're supposed to keep civilian casualties to a minimum!

As John Aman steers closer towards Chaotic Evil, two German pilots steer an intercept course. But only two? If John is as close to Berlin as he thinks, surely a whole squadron of ships would have scrambled to intercept him by now. Biplanes might seem antiquated, but Germany's air force did not see advancements in fighter plane design until 1941.

Now, John likely has no more than 30 hit points max, so there was little chance of him walking away from that crash. The fall itself, though, can't have done worse than knock him unconscious. The greater threat is the fire damage from the burning wreckage, as any additional harm once unconscious means death. Really, John would have been better off bailing out of the plane and landing separately (game mechanics-wise).

This may be the first and last time we read of John being Asian instead of Caucasian. He's certainly drawn as if Caucasian.

Surprise! John was only stunned and recovers, but with just 1-6 hp he is quickly brought back down again. Interestingly, it is not weight of numbers that takes him down, but the last one to hit him (the first two do not fare well in combat with John).

It's unclear if the Great Question can really will someone to recuperate faster over a distance of hundreds of miles, or if he's just making that up to get John out of bed. His TV does appear to have allowed him to watch John's fight, but this "crystal ball" mentality associated with television was so hard for people to break away from that we still saw it in the 1960s with Star Trek.

When I added weaknesses to Heroes in 2nd edition, I made them race-based because that worked, up until this point, in comic book history. We've previously seen Shock Gibson temporarily lose his powers in what seems like a freak accident (stepping on an electric eel, no less), but Amazing Man is the first human superhero (aside from Popeye) to sport a weakness that will consistently affect him.

It should come as no shock that hetrocoryn is not a real thing. Hence, Bill Everett could have AM encounter it virtually anywhere.

Also note that, instead of being cut off immediately to his powers, John only gradually weakens over a number of melee turns. What that means, game mechanics-wise, is less clear. Perhaps he loses access to one random prepared power per turn, and then wrecking things last once the others are gone.

AM is brought down this time with grappling.

Enough time has passed for his weakness to go away, but we don't know how much time.

Nazis are not normally shown to be conscientious about who they shoot, which is refreshingly nice.

Amazingly, this issue was on newstands around the same time as Germany and the Soviet Union entered into the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement, but Everett couldn't have known about that specifically, months earlier, when he was creating this story.

And we'll wrap up today with just one page from the second feature in this issue, The King of the South Seas. The story isn't clear how Doris lost consciousness just from being in a river with fast current. Perhaps she bumped her head on a rock, though you know how women were always portrayed as chronic fainters back then.

It's unlikely that saving people from drowning is what King feels like he was missing his whole life.

Only thousands, King? Not even tens of thousands? Doris could convince him to go straight right now if she just explained inflation to him.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Man Comics #8 - pt. 1

We come back around to Bill Everett's second best creation of the Golden Age, Amazing Man. John Aman is seen here, making the same decision one of my earlier H&H groups did -- wouldn't it be fun to go take on the Nazis?

We also see that he's not exactly a green mist when he's "The Green Mist"; he's actually invisible.

We also learn that John smokes (boo!), but looks really slick in a suit. I sure like this look more than the nearly naked look they'd give him in the comics later.

While my players took a steamer across the Atlantic, John steals onto an Army Air Corps base (if this is New York, it could be Mitchel Field, but we have no idea where John is now), steals his personal plane (looks like a flivver to me), but also two machine guns ad lots of ammo. It's a chancy, but effective method of upgrading a hero's weaponry without waiting to take mobsters' weapons as trophies.

In 1927, Charles Lindbergh showed the world that a solo pilot could reach France from New York in 33 1/2 hours.

Let's assume that John either stole synchronization gear for his front-mounted machine gun (which the narrator neglected to mention) or, being really smart, he was able to improvise one (which makes me wonder -- could inventing things become a skill check?).

This is something I've gone back and forth on about vehicular combat. How would the Editor know when to have bullets make a plane burst into flame?  It seems that there has to be a chance of a random complication per hit.

Parachuting is a potentially dangerous business. Should it grant a saving throw to avoid falling damage, rather than automatically spare the hero from falling damage?

It's unusual to see characters actually speaking in German, instead of German accents.

Speaking of unusual, this is an unusual variation of the "take me to your leader" tactic.

It's hard to believe John somehow forgot to prepare his most potent power before landing himself in Germany, but players do this sort of thing all the time when they're playing games where they have to prepare their characters' powers, spells, or what have you.

Here we see John demonstrating wrecking things and the Leap I power. He describes his powers as "the strength of a hundred men," (that means he can lift 5-10 tons, or the equivalent of the Raise Trolley Car power), "the brains of a hundred scientists" (I have no idea how to quantify that one in game terms), and "the physical alertness of a hundred antelope" -- and I'm not even sure what that last one means! Should being immune to surprise be a power?

The coloring is off, of course, but that is what armored cars looked like, circa 1939.

It's interesting that both the German and the French forces are wearing gas masks. Apparently they are both expecting chemical attacks from each other? John grabs a rifle, but doesn't bother with a gas mask. He is apparently very confident about his saving throws vs. poison, which makes it odd that he even feels he needs the gun. Perhaps the rifle, like the uniform, are just for identification.

This looks a lot like the 4th level superhero power Turn Gun on Bad Guy, which I'm thinking of giving the even more generic name of Missile Deflection.

The ability to wreck tanks means that John is at least 4th level. If he has access to 4th level powers, though, then we know he's at least 6th level.

Howitzers are artillery weapon/trophies in both editions of Hideouts & Hoodlums.

Normally, attacking while invisible dispels that invisibility. One could make a case that wrecking things is not, technically, an attack.

As a reminder of how ruthless Amazing Man can be, he killed the pilot before commandeering the bomber. Granted, it was a Nazi pilot.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Man Comics #7 - pt. 1

I suppose this bears sharing just for being such an innovative splash page for its time, but the other reason for inclusion is the date on the newspaper. This issue was cover dated November 1939, but on sale in October. This is the first time a comic book story has conclusively taken place at the time of the cover date.

Note how Amazing Man has no vision-related powers, relying on ordinary binoculars to see from his plane. I suspect he's buffed himself with a power like Get Tough before engaging the mountain lions.

That's also very un-mountain lion-like behavior, by the way...

Amazing Man still has no costume, confounding my game rules that says all superheroes have to be in costume. Stop it, Aman!

Amazing Man's bruised cheek and bloody elbow suggest that he did not bother with defensive buffing before the fight.

If John is still in Arizona, then this state capital must be Phoenix. The most famous dam in Arizona would be Hoover Dam, but it was not the newest one in 1939; that would be the lesser known Bartlett Dam.

It's growing increasingly hard to explain away Amazing Man's "green mist" ability as just flavor text for another power. This is really more of an Assume Gaseous Form power, allowing John Aman to pass through barriers without wrecking them, and just generally spook people when they see him as a swirling cloud.

The two mobsters here are Latino males, but refreshingly non-stereotyped.

It's not clear if Amazing Man can cross distances quickly in gaseous form or if he can teleport in that form. He does seem to be able to control whether he is visible or invisible while gaseous.

I'm puzzled by this armored plane. As far as I know, armored planes as a fad that proved unpopular in WWI because the armor slowed the planes down too much. I wonder if Bill Everett meant "fighter plane" instead of armored plane here.

Here we see planes are outfitted with fire extinguishers and we see Amazing Man using a Leap power -- but more interestingly we can see a change of intention. It appears that John is about to try putting out the fire when he goes "Nuts to this -- I'm goin' for broke!" and decides to try something crazy and aggressive instead of rational and defensive. This kind of game play usually makes for more interesting game play, yet players may avoid such gutsy tactics for fear of failure. Here, the Editor does not seem to have penalized John's player at all for changing intentions. Perhaps he's even awarded him a bonus for trying something so bold -- or this success could just be lucky dice rolls. John did have to hit the plane in mid-leap (normal attack roll), followed by a wrecking things roll vs. the plane.

Hitting a plane with a fire extinguisher would not normally give one a bonus, though.

 Amazing Man demonstrates the powers Feather Landing and Resist Fire here.

It takes John 15 minutes to do a search, when searches are usually handled in 10 minute exploration turns in game.

Amazing Man murders two mobsters here in cold blood. He's clearly Chaotic in Alignment, so I also wouldn't be surprised if he stole that motorcycle from the previous page and planned to keep it for a trophy item, rather than just borrow it.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Amazing Man Comics #6 - pt. 1

This is Bill Everett's Amazing Man. Snapping ropes is an easy task for a superhero (I'd treat it as wrecking a door). Amazing Man also shows off a new power -- Infra-vision. But the really interesting thing here is that Amazing Man's nemesis, The Great Question, is like a devil on his shoulder, tempting Amazing Man to do bad things. That resisting is Amazing Man's greatest challenge lends the Amazing Man stories a moral depth lacking in most comic book stories.

In fact, it makes me wonder if the save vs. plot mechanic should be used to make moral decisions, sort of like it is in the game Pendragon.

Amazing Man can Teleport through Focus - the focus being the green mist he creates. So that requires another new power -- Obscuring Mist. And Amazing Man shows off another new power when he demonstrates Greater Invisibility (greater, because it doesn't end when he attacks).

Amazing Man, at least under the compulsion of The Great Question, seems to have no problem with killing.

Phantasmal Image? Really? Okay, now I'm beginning to think Amazing Man can't be statted without making him a Magic-User/Superhero. Too many of these new powers are already on the spell list for Hideouts & Hoodlums.

Amazing Man uses his teleport power so often in this story that it must have a duration instead of being a one-use power.

Here, Amazing Man is overcome by the gun wound and the grappling damage. The narrator says he "permits them" to tie him up, but I wonder if he was actually stunned temporarily after being reduced to zero hit points. He comes to after being tied up and activates the Imperviousness power so the bullwhip can't hurt him. He won't get hit points back during that short period he "rests" while ignoring the whip, but it does buy him time to strategize.

Everett sure loved the anti-heroes. Imagine, both the bad guy and the good guy using living shields during their shoot-out!  Yeah, I'd definitely make a Hero have to save vs. plot before doing something this despicable.

The Shark debuts as the first king of the oceans-type character -- since Namor the Sub-Mariner is, technically, only a prince. We also get a nice laundry list of powers The Shark has at his disposal. "The strength of ten whales" is equal to at least the Raise Bridge power, If he can swim ten times as fast as a whale, that's got to be Race the Plane (a 2nd edition power that fills in a speed gap in the powers list). He must have a Speak with Animals power that's limited to one type. And, for whatever reason, he can Project Image.

By now the crystal ball-like super-television is already a comic book cliche, but notice here how The Shark is just randomly using it and stumbles across a scene of villainy. It's as if it's a One-Way Television of Evil Detection.

I know we've been told The Shark can project his image, but it sure looks like he's using the Teleport through Focus power.

The Shark makes a quick search of the ship, getting a lucky result on his first search roll.

It isn't clear how strong the time bomb is, since it never goes off. I still need a consistent metric for assigning damage to concussive force.

Wrecking an anchor chain should be harder than ordinary chains someone would be tied up with; so maybe wreck as a machine.

It's unclear what country Furvainia is meant to be, but probably Germany.

There's a power called Push Ocean Liner, but I don't think that's needed here for a boat this size. Raise Bridge could accomplish this.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)