Popular Comics #22

Our coverage of November 1937 begins with another issue from Dell Comics, which begins with some pages of Dick Tracy I'm choosing not to show here. For those who want to go down to the bottom of this post and follow a link to where you can read them, you'll see Dick talking about poisoned chewing gum (trophy or trap?), and a hot playing tip -- you can write secret messages in butter with a toothpick, which will show up under ultraviolet light, or scratch a message onto paper with a pin and you can read the impressions if the light hits it just the right way.

Of course, we're also asked to believe that a bed mattress can serve as safe cover from a sub-machine gun, so the whole veracity of those tips feels up in the air to me now...

Speaking of questionable things, Don Winslow is shown hollow ice cubes holding poison gas. I guess that could work, but if you're really concerned about not leaving bomb fragments behind, why not just rain the poison down on the island in liquid form? Oh well. At least you could leave a freezer-full of poison gas-filled ice cubes in a walk-in freezer in a hideout, to catch Heroes who habitually try to break everything.

Bos'n Hal learns that incendiary bullets and whale oil are a bad mix -- but should incendiary bullets do additional damage if they hit living targets? Because Hideouts & Hoodlums uses an abstract combat system and one-time damage assignment, it largely ignores continuing effects like bleeding and burning. In Book II: Mobsters & Trophies, I assigned incendiary bullets an additional +1d4 damage because I figured players would expect it, and yet the anticipated demand hasn't been there; my players get more excited about armor-piercing rounds. More to ponder...

Smilin' Jack teaches us that radio compasses on planes were once a luxury, not a necessity!

Did I say before that the Skull Valley strip was getting out there? I didn't know the half of it! Here, we get flying plants, giant tumbleweeds, intelligent cavemen, gas cacti that shoot their needles like darts, and "nameless monsters" that have triceratops-like heads, but backwards-bending legs with clawed feet! I'm not even sure where to start statting!

...Seriously, the flying plants and the giant tumbleweeds are noncombatants, the gas cacti are more like a trap than a mobster-type, cavemen were already statted in Book II, and I can't tell the size of the nameless monster to help me place a HD value on it.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Popular Comics #13

Nebbs reminds me that, when I statted half-pints for Hideouts & Hoodlums Book II: Mobsters & Trophies, I should have given them some natural climbing ability.

Maw Green's pearls of "wisdom" usually just annoy me, but this installment has some useful 1930s pricing information:  prunes – 10 cents a can, bananas – 15 cents a bunch, soup – 7 cents a can.

Dick Tracy runs into more "gangland trickery" -- a car with a concealed machine gun under the hood that shoots through the radiator grill. This is a good example of combining two hi-tech trophy items to create a new item.

Gasoline Alley features a map to a gold mine that you can read over Mr. Bat's shoulder and use in your home campaign.

This page of Tom Mix would take some explanation to fit H&H. First, he is hearing noise, as if at a door (with the same 2 in 6 chance of success).

The chance of the floor crumbling is a trap (perhaps a 2 in 6 chance of crumbling each turn 180+ lbs. remains on it).

Falling and landing on an opponent and damaging the opponent has been covered previously. Falling and landing on two opponents -- that's just a freebie from the Editor.

Here's another freebie -- apparently, the Editor rolled for surprise after Tom fell and gave him a free surprise turn to act. Normally, if the Editor felt the situation warranted a surprise roll, the mobsters could only be surprised long enough for Tom to get back on his feet, not to move as well.

The firefight in the dark is tricky too. Tom is in complete darkness, so the gunmen are at a -4 to hit penalty against him. But, the gunmen are in dim light -- a charitable assumption by muzzle flashes alone -- so Tom still has a -2 to hit them. That Tom hits them all with rocks before they shoot him is quite lucky.



I'm not sure, but remain skeptical that H&H needs a game mechanic to cover pinning someone's clothes to the wall. It seems more like flavor text to me...








Now, Don Winslow might be making sense -- I helped you against a rampaging jaguar, now you help me -- right? For a one-time favor, an Editor could easily hand-wave the encounter reaction roll and rule by common sense. However, if Don was looking to recruit those natives long-term, or to put them in mortal danger, then the Editor would still be right in rolling randomly for an encounter reaction.



Bos'n Hal learns that the U.S. Navy decided in the 1930s that dirigibles were obsolete, so they became available for sale (the police dirigibles on Batman: The Animated Series were probably Navy surplus dirigibles). However, given their limited availability and a presumedly high price, I still plan to keep them off the starting equipment list.

And, lastly, Skippy makes me think I may have underestimated how many hit points half-pints have. Or are these 3rd-level half-pint fighters?









(Scans courtesy Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #4 - pt. 2

Don Winslow U.S.N continues to fight "The Scorpion" -- actually just a colorful name for a South American dictator.  Two-seat fighter planes were statted in Hideouts & Hoodlums Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.  Heavy artillery was not statted until Supplement I: National, but the closest thing to these heavy cannons in that book is the howitzer (in a pinch, I would use those same stats).

Luckily, "the canon-fire has uncovered an ancient underground passage".  Now these Navy boys can do some hideout delving!

Bos'n Hal continues to learn about the lost world in the Arctic and what would, before modern times, be considered hi-tech trophies -- solar-powered motorboats and solar-powered cars!

Little Joe is going to grow up to think all Mexicans are bandits.  If the roles were reversed and the bandit was the Hero and Little Joe was just a half-pint, the bandit's $10 bill would have entitled him to a new encounter reaction roll, to see if he could get a better result.  Also note the reference to the Foil Tracking stunt in the second-to-last panel.

"Whiteboy" has got to be the worst name for a comic book character ever, though it probably comes from the "Paleface" name that Indians always used to use in the movies.  Here we get to see an elephant (never statted for H&H, but will be in the next book to come out).

We also get to see some trick riding, which might warrant a stunt to do. Should circus animal trainer be a mobster-type...?

Tiny Tim has an interesting encounter with Rip Van Winkle, though Rip is curiously not referred to by name.  Assuming the story is the same, then this is the first appearance of ghosts in a comic book story.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum at 

http://www.digitalcomicmuseum.org/index.php?dlid=3808)

Popular Comics #3

We're up to April 1936 now and this review of Popular Comics #3 starts out with Dick Tracy. This installment of the Boris Arson story has Boris holed up in an ingenious hideout. The bad guys enter through a cave with bars on either side, protecting them from wild bobcats. The bars are set on runners so that, when they get to the end of the tunnel, they can pull the bars back with them, blocking the back of the cave, while leaving the bobcats free to roam the entry cave.

But -- bobcats?  I wouldn't give a bobcat more than 1/2 a Hit Die, not making them much of a threat to anyone but 1st-level Heroes.

This installment also features some suspicious science, with Dick Tracy able to shoot through a stone wall with a machine gun, instead of the bullets just ricocheting...

I've previously showcased some traps here, but Tailspin Tommy this month is all about how to escape them. On display are the twin cliches of breaking glass to cut bonds and the more dangerous route of burning rope off your hands. In the latter case, I would require taking 1 point of damage in order to make sure the rope also took enough harm to burn through.

This page mentions something that should have been a stunt listed when the Aviator class debuted in The Trophy Case -- Loop Plane. This stunt would cause a passenger to save vs. science or fall out of the plane.

I've also talked about stunts a lot previously. Stunts were a mechanic to give Heroes a limited number of automatic successes at skills befitting their genre, but were limited at first to the Aviator and Cowboy classes. This installment of Winnie Winkle demonstates, though, that any kid could have access to stunts like Climb or Tightrope Walk.

But should they?  Stunts are not for comical displays to win over girls so much as to influence the results of combat.  I will stick, then, with my first thought, which was to limit access to stunts, though in the next edition everyone will get a chance to use them at higher levels.

Although Don Winslow and his pal seem to be using sails as weapons here, I would treat this as a normal grappling attack, ignoring the use of the sails in the equation until getting the results. If a successful grapple, then the victims can be assumed to be bound in canvas as well.

Bos n' Hal begins a long story here about a hidden land near the North Pole, a green tropical island surrounded by a curtain of steam clouds. Such hidden land locations are perfect for H&H Heroes to explore.

When to require a stunt is the question.  Does Terry, climbing hand-over-hand under a rope bridge, require some sort of climbing check?  I would be inclined to say no; climbing as a specialized skill would be knowing how to climb sheer surfaces normal people could not. What Terry is doing could be attempted by anyone strong enough. I might require a save vs. science, though, to inject a little suspense into the trip across, but also to determine if gravity or upper arm strength wins out here.

Connie here demonstrates the +1 modifier for attacking with height advantage, as if the machine gun and soft cover from the roof's edge didn't give him enough advantage.

Lastly, Texas Slim reminds us that not all encounters need to be hostile, as this encounter with a black bear could have gone much differently if it saw Slim as a threat!

Popular Comics #1 - pt. 1

We've reached February 1936 and our first Dick Tracy!  I'm not as convinced as the people at Comic Book Plus and Digital Comic Museum that the Dick Tracy pages in Popular Comics are really public domain, so I'll just link to this one here.  The trap -- rigging a firehose so that it sprays down a flight of stairs is more of a "slow you down so I can escape" trap than a lethal trap.  I would say anyone could make a half-move up the stairs safely, but every 5 ft./turn faster than that and you'd have to make a save vs. science with a -1 penalty for each 5 additional ft. or fall on the stairs and take 0-3 (1d4-1) points of damage.

Origin of the dead stick stunt for Aviators that was listed in The Trophy Case v. 1 no. 6 and detailed in no. 7.

Bos'n Hal, Sea Scout is not particularly Hideouts & Hoodlums-specific, but that semaphore guide is pretty handy and could be a great resource for a nautical game session.  H&H hand-waves languages, allowing that everyone everywhere knows and speaks English to varying degrees of success. But -- if I did switch to requiring languages, I would definitely include a semaphore language.

It's interesting that almost this exact same "trick" happened in the Seaweed Sam page we just read a few days ago.  If it's not the "magic cape" that is responsible for Sandy disappearing and Punjab is casting a spell, then it might be a lot like the D&D spell Rope Trick, in that the target is transported to an extra-dimensional space. As of now, it's not written up for the next edition, but it may be...

Definitely a cowardly or superstitious hoodlum.  Cowardly hoodlums were statted in Book II: Mobsters and Trophies.  Superstitious hoodlums had to wait until Supplement II: All-American.  Truthfully, I've never been satisfied with the superstitious hoodlums as I statted them.  Maybe they'll get improved someday.

The combination of cowardly and superstitious hoodlums, of course, comes from Bruce Wayne's famous announcement that criminals were a "cowardly and superstitious lot".

Definitely a magical trophy this time.  Annie's "magic whistle" must be bonded to a guardian who will appear immediately after blowing the whistle, even if located miles away.  I would limit the range to 10 miles and make it useable once per day.

Punjab also seems to be giving the injured man a magic Potion of Healing, though we can't see it so we don't know for sure...

Rattlesnake.  Glad I already statted that on the blog.

(Scans courtesy of the Digital Comic Museum at http://www.digitalcomicmuseum.org/index.php?dlid=1630)