Crackajack Funnies #21 - pt. 3

I had a page of Boots I wanted to share, but for some reason I couldn't download it. Anyway, the joke at the end was that a cab fare was $25 and change, which was a surprisingly large amount to the character told that, but not out of the realm of the possible. I'll have to remember not to treat cab rides as freebies in my next campaign!

Here's a rare instance of Our Boarding House turning up here, and again it's to remind me of prices. $2 for moving men is reasonable, $5 seems a rip-off. Storage houses make house calls. You reading this, Public Storage? It's also worth remembering that, despite how cheap everything seems to us today in 1940 prices, they still expected quality from their merchandise.

 It should shock no one that the Iconi Indian tribe is made-up.

42' is really impressive for an anaconda, which usually top out at 30' long.

According to Wikipedia, "the large South American characins of the family Erythrinidae have also sometimes been called 'tigerfish'," but most tigerfish are found in Africa.

Poisonous reptiles has got to refer to snakes. There are pit vipers in the Amazon and...and...oh heck, there are plenty of sites you can look at yourself for this information, but I'm not looking at more pictures of real snakes to share them with you.

It's unclear if the crocodiles capsized the boat or simply took advantage of an accident.

One can't deny that swinging from vines, ropes, etc. into a battle is very cinematic. But is there any real advantage to it? He gains some momentum in the swing, but he also loses his ability to accurately target his kicks, while needing to maintain his balance and hold on the vine/rope/etc. at the same time.

If I had a precedent of using ability score checks in my campaign, I would ask for a STR and a DEX check, and only both are successful would I give a +1 to damage for the swing-kick.

From the outside of the fence, we can't tell if that is a professional hockey game, but 50 cents seems awful high for a non-professional game in 1940. The question then becomes, which hockey league is this? The Pro Hockey League was the earliest of its kind, started in Michigan in 1904. The National Hockey League, the one that's still around, began in Canada in 1917 but quickly spread to the United States. I suppose it depends on where Freckles takes place, but I don't think we've ever been given a clue. Heck, I don't even have a clue, after all these years, what that circle is in the middle of Freckle's face. A parrot beak?

But the real reason I shared this page is for the detector. I don't know if that's a real thing like the others, but it seems like it would be a really useful trophy item for mobsters to have, able to detect cars or planes approaching their hideout.

Dan Dunn gives us a detailed schematic of how to make your own buoy and use it to surreptitously drop off packages.

And here's a useful clue that you're dealing with a spy -- portable radios with inoperative tuning dials, so they can always pick up secret wave lengths.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Famous Funnies #21

Now, bear in mind that Captain Easy is in water only 58' deep (revealed on a previous page), but there seems to be an awful lot of deep ocean critters around this lost city!

Jewfish are also known as Atlantic goliath groupers, can weigh in at up to 790 lbs., and should warrant 4 Hit Dice in Hideouts & Hoodlums stats.  H&H is oddly missing giant fish, so something like this should be in the next edition.

Sharks are already statted for H&H, as has already been mentioned.

Swordfish can get even bigger than jewfish (Wikipedia tells me they reach a maximum of 1,430 lbs.).  I would give them 8 HD.  In fact, swordfish are more likely to be in the next edition than goliath groupers.

Giant squids were statted in Supplement II: All-American.

The Alley Oop dinosaur of the day was actually -- appropriate to this post-- a giant prehistoric fish once known as dinichthys, but Wikipedia now tells me is more properly known as dunkleosteus.

Boots and her friends demonstrate the smart tactic of using soft cover so they can take it with them.  One of her admirers also demonstrates wearing blackface as a disguise. It is up to each Editor to decide if this should be allowed to work, or rejected out of hand.

Herky, a bizarre little strip about a super-strong baby, is not likely to see a lot of exposure here.  I thought it worth mentioning, though, that kangaroos are about to be statted in the next big H&H project. The trope of kangaroos as fierce boxers warrants their inclusion in the game.

Dan Dunn's experience here with the villain Eviloff demonstrates the double-edged sword that is planes as trophies. Just an ordinary plane is an extremely useful trophy, allowing the ability to fly without the benefit of a 3rd level Magic-User spell, and faster than a Flying Carpet to boot. Load a plane up with machine guns and bombs and you have a challenge for even high-level Heroes -- and a nightmare in campaign balance if low-level Heroes should acquire it.  The Trophy Case no. 8 has a whole article about this.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum at http://www.digitalcomicmuseum.org/index.php?dlid=24146)

Famous Funnies #20

This issue's installment of Alley Oop highlights the pteranodon. Statted in Hideouts & Hoodlums Supplement II: All-American, the pteranodon, at "only" 2+1 Hit Dice, is the dinosaur you're most likely to walk away from a fight with at lower levels.

Captain Easy continues to make it easy for me to stock H&H with giant animal mobster-types. Here we get giant lizards (statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies) and a 30' long shark.  In the schema of ordinary/large/huge/giant that some animals get, the 6+1 HD shark in Book II would be a "large" shark, which would make this a "huge" shark at 12+2 HD (this is even corroborated on the next page, which calls it a "huge shark").  

Note the combination of on land and underwater locations in the lost city, and that the best trophies seem to be hidden in the underwater locations.


Turtles have never been statted for H&H.  These are 300 lb. turtles and, since a leatherback sea turtle can grow as heavy as 1 ton, these don't come close to being giant animals.  At best, these would warrant an entry for ordinary turtles, weigh in at 2 Hit Dice, and perhaps with just a note that giant turtles are much, much bigger.

The giant stingray was statted in Book II: All-American.  

Boots continues to toy with being an action-adventure strip.  Check out this multi-level hideout, concealed in a hill, accessible through an ordinary-looking house on the top.  On the back side of the hill is a machine gun nest/look-out point, and two concealed hangar bays. The bad guys were capable of launching a small air force of 11 planes into the air!






Here, Dan Dunn continues to enter superhero territory, as he takes on a mad scientist with a blimp, and an electric raygun (all three -- scientists, blimps, and electric rayguns -- were statted in Book II).  

(Scans courtesy of the Digital Comic Museum at http://www.digitalcomicmuseum.org/index.php?dlid=23784)

Famous Funnies #19

Several new features debut in Famous Funnies with this issue, including reprints of Alley Oop. Alley Oop is one of those features, like Dick Tracy, where some hosting sites are comfortably sure they are in the public domain.  I'm not so sure, so I'm just going to link to it and talk about it here.

One of the most useful things about Alley Oop is that V.T. Hamlin did some research on dinosaurs instead of just making them all up, and many pages of Alley Oop bear an informative non-fiction panel showing an example. The lead page here shows Tyrannosaurus -- so synonymous with dinosaurs in popular culture that it was statted for Hideouts & Hoodlums as soon as Supplement I: National.  The page also shows an interesting trap for caging large dinosaurs, with cut trees rigged to fall into a cage pattern.  Too bad mobsters as massively large as Tyrannosaurs are automatically given the ability of wrecking things, as if Superheroes.

And the other big addition to Famous Funnies this issue is Captain Easy. Now, granted, this inaugural page is crazy racist by today's standards. And maybe, as a game Editor, you might not want to have natives make their morale saves just because of hearing a radio. But it does illustrate the handiness of carrying a few smoke bombs on one's person.  Smoke bombs are not on the starting equipment list, but are considered minor hi-tech trophies, so they should be fairly common in hideouts.

Now, confession time.  As any long-time H&H follower might know, this roleplaying game began as a superhero role-playing game.  Sure, there were rules for making fighters and magic-users as well, but the first draft of the rules were written specifically for emulating the earliest adventures of Superman.  H&H has been expanding ever since, but for a long time the rule was, comic books only. I was tempted to write-up Joe Palooka, a character I enjoy reading, for Supplement IV: Captains, Magicians, and Incredible Men, but he was a comic strip character, so I considered him off-limits. And, for the longest time, I considered June 1938 (cover date for Action Comics #1) as the chronological starting point for H&H.

It was Captain Easy who changed my mind, and specifically pages like this one.  Capt. Easy, and a single Supporting Cast Member, exploring the ruins of a lost city.  Danger around every corner.  Tigers picking off their pack animals (tigers are unfortunately missing from the selection of mobster types statted so far; something that will be resolved in the next edition).  Not just crocodiles, but gigantic 22' long crocodiles (actually, that's just large for a crocodile; I would modify their Hit Dice only up to 5).  Now this is adventure!

Another "new" reprint is Boots.  Boots is normally a romantic comedy, not an adventure strip, but the arsenal is sure to make any H&H player drool!  Knives, swords, rifles, bombs, a machine gun, and a gas mask are all on display in the gun room (knives, swords, and rifles are all considered starting equipment; machine guns and gas masks are common hi-tech trophies, statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies; this type of bomb is statted under the Anarchist entry in the mobsters section of Supplement I).  And, in the adjoining hangar, four planes for the taking!



Secret doors are normally assumed to be the size of standard hideout doors, but this secret door is a full-sized hangar door! Note that the Heroes can here either roll 1d6 for a random chance to find the secret door, or choose to try the big, obvious lever in the middle of the room.  Also note how the hangar entrance is concealed to look like the side of a hill from the outside.  Hideout concealment helps with placing them closer to populated areas.

Flying to Fame -- also not normally an adventure strip -- again features some great ideas.  Note how all three Heroes wear flashlights mounted on headbands -- not an item specifically for sale as starting equipment, but still something too readily available to be considered a trophy item. Nice Editors might allow their starting Heroes to wear these, to leave both hands free.

Also, there's a nice trick here for Editors, describing a pair of "glowing eyes in the dark" to players, that only turn out to be valuable rubies upon inspection.  Of course, just lying xp-worthy valuables around unguarded is something that should only be done sparingly.

And this page of Dan Dunn is full of clues to look for at crime scenes. Also note that, in the pre-Internet days, if you wanted to find out all the dirt on a public figure quickly, you needed a contact at the newspaper who could get you their file on that figure.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum at  http://www.digitalcomicmuseum.org/index.php?dlid=23783)