Prize Comics #2 - pt. 4

Things don't get better in the following Secret Agent M-11 story. The Secret Service want to know who this spy works for so they let him escape, but they do so in a really obvious way, letting him bolt past three people for the exit and having no one block the exits. The spy should be suspicious, but instead goes straight to his bosses working for the "Hugonian" -- Hungarian? -- government. The question is, why wasn't the spy followed? Or did they try and he eluded them?

The bad guys have a familiar tactic here, but M-11 uses an unusual one, so unusual that I'm not entirely sure what I'm seeing. Does M-11 carry a pouch of sugar with him to use as a blinding weapon? And why sugar? There are so many more irritating irritants he could be carrying. 

M-11's sugar fixation just gets weirder. Sugar is way too soluble

to be left on the road and expect anyone to be able to see it later. 

Then there's the carrier pigeon. If M-11 just followed them inside, when did the ambassador have time to attach the papers to a pigeon?

I'm just going to jump into the Black Owl story that follows and, nope, it doesn't get better. This is the Black Owl's debut story and it's not off to a good start. Beyond the silly mask and the horrible racism here, we have the Black Owl beating a suspect to get information instead of using his brains to find where the woman he was following went, and then when two yellow peril hoodlums start attacking him, instead of fighting back right away, he knocks over a shelf first. Why this would distract them from fighting him escapes me, unless the Black Owl figured something on the shelf was sacred to them and would upset them? But that seems unlikely, since not that much thought is being put to anything else in this story.

I include it mainly for the appearance of a copper. Coppers debuted in an early issue of The Trophy Case in order to explain how police officers sometimes make things worse for the heroes in comic books, and this is a perfect example. Black Owl was about to have everything wrapped up, but the copper comes 

along and, to escape his bad luck, Black Owl has to flee.

Observing from outside is a tactic you would think Black Owl would have tried first, and yet the secret gambling den doesn't seem to be on high alert despite the fact that there had just been a vigilante break-in and a police raid 30 minutes earlier. One guard at the door, with one more for back-up, isn't very secure for all those rich guests to gamble in secret. 

I have problems with this page too. I know, when have you liked any page in this issue, Scott? Good point, reader.

First of all, I disapprove of the use of torture by heroes. At least it's clear that all the information is questionable, as the hoodlum seems to be rambling intentionally until Black Owl is standing right over that pit trap.

About that pit trap, it seems odd to me that Black Owl and the hoodlum were standing so far apart that only Black Owl is now close to it. I suppose there should be a random chance of falling into a trap and the hoodlum was just luckier at his roll.

It gets really confusing past that. How did Black Owl avoid getting hurt in the fall (or was it just a really lucky die roll for damage)? How is no one else aware of the trap door opening and just go on about their torturing business? I know, I know, it

could just be lucky dice rolls again (this time for surprise), but there have got to be times when common sense should overrule dice rolls.

I tried to look up if "wire vest torture" was a real thing, but kept getting nothing but BDSM hits...

Next up is Buck Brady of the FBI. It's a pretty standard "hunt down the escaped convicts" scenario. Danford Prison seems as made-up as "The Daily Blurb" for a newspaper (though not that generic, at least). Which is odd because the action then swings to real-life Wichita, Kansas instead of, you know, Cityville, Kansas, or something like that.

Gosh, no investigation skills required for this mission. They're just walking down the street and a plot hook jumps out at them!

The art on this strip is terribly amateurish, but the layout work is sometimes inspired, particularly panels 2 and 4 on this page. 

Unless the law was really different back in 1940, I would think Buck would have to show a badge or something before commandeering that car. 

Apparently the chase goes on for so long that they are in Oklahoma by now, as this area looks way too mountainous to be around Wichita. Next page makes this geography even more suspicious, when the mobsters' hideout is in a box canyon. 

Buck's plan of parachuting into the canyon either depended on the mobsters sleeping during the daytime, having their radio up so loud that they couldn't hear a plane overhead, or getting a lucky surprise roll.

The mobsters blame the wind for all their missed bullets, but I think this is an excellent example of the "save vs. missiles" mechanic from Hideouts & Hoodlums in action.

This is also an excellent example of grappling attempted by multiple combatants, which is explained in the 2nd edition grapping rules (though it's been awhile, so I had to re-read it to make sure just now!). 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Prize Comics #1 - pt. 5

I haven't tackled a five-parter in a long time, but I had a lot to say about this issue.

We're going to pick up not long after where I left off with K the Unknown and we will, as usual, discuss it in terms of RPG game mechanics. As anyone who's ever read a previous post knows, I wrote the RPG Hideouts & Hoodlums and feel it does a spectacular job of  emulating the early history of comic books -- which I prove post after post on this blog.

And yet...K, getting stunned on the first hit by a thrown paperweight just doesn't match up with the hit point model of incremental defeat that H&H uses. It seems more like every hit has a random chance of delivering a stun. And, as I think about it, I see this all the time against bad guys and animals; only Heroes are usually incrementally defeated. And it does give me pause.

This page also highlights the importance of checking every mobster you defeat for disguises.

I'll give K this, the finale is worthy of a James Bond movie, with the hero and villain struggling upright on a speeding bobsled -- in fact, it predates the bobsled chase in On Her Majesty's Secret Service by 23 years!

I would think that two men grappling on a moving bobsled would wind up getting thrown off almost immediately, but in-game would be fine with giving each a save vs. science each turn to stay put, with a penalty to their save on the hairpin curve.

If Buck Brady of the F.B.I. seems science fictional, it's because of the absence of 1,000-dollar bills out there today. The U.S. government stopped making the bills by 1946, and finally recalled them all in 1969, so I've never seen one in my life.

I decided to share this page to talk about players choosing the direction of the scenario, because I read this I couldn't help but think, if this was a game I was playing, I would have had Buck follow the car rather than search her room. Now, if I was the Editor instead, I could leave a clue in the room telling the player where the old lady was going, and hopefully the player will get the hint that it's important to go to that location...

In this case, the Editor seems to have decided to move the planned encounter back to the hotel room. On one hand, it makes the villain seem smarter, guessing Buck was coming, but on the other hand it makes the Editor seem like he's unfairly using his knowledge of the player's actions against them. A way around that might be to let the player attempt to save vs. plot to find the hotel room abandoned.

Here is the oddly-already-a-cliche of the man dressed as an old woman, but with the switcheroo that the Hero then uses the same disguise.

I'm impressed by the daring involved in piloting your boat into a police boat just to get their attention. A mean Editor could well give you a chance of sinking the police boat, and then where will you be?

The final story we're going to look at is Storm Curtis of the U.S. Coast Guard. I'm showing you this page for two reasons: one, it's more fun playing a character with interests other than crime-fighting 24/7. Give your Hero a hobby, either one you already know about, or one you're willing to research.

And two, check out that grappling hook gun! This is much closer to what a real grapple gun looks like than what Batman has carried since the 1980s, though I'm not convinced grapple guns were that small and handheld in 1940; there could still be some artistic license at play here.

Paper and pencils are good things to find on a defeated mobster, as are cigarettes.

Note the use of "espy" in panel 2, a word I don't think was even in common usage then!

Those are really convenient clues to find in someone's pocket!

Personally, I find the chief spy encounter anticlimactic, but it's certainly surprising and good to pull on your players once.

I think it's amusing how Curtis sort of bumbled into this whole spy ring, like a player getting a lot of railroading help from his Editor.

Comics.org doesn't say who the artist is here, but I suspect Dick Briefer. What do you think?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)