Champion Comics #5 - pt. 1

After a long time away we come back to the first Harvey Comic and the continuing adventures of The Champ. This is a nice first page, with just a little recap, and launches us right into some action where the last chapter left off -- but I'm not sharing this page for any of that. I'm sharing it share with you the unusual word "wetting." It means the act of making something wet, and usually applies to urination, but not always and clearly doesn't here.

The guy with the motorboat is just a handy wandering encounter.

This is the first and, as far as I know, the last mention of La Grange, Illinois in any comic book.Curiously, there was never an airport in La Grange, so why this relatively obscure town got name-dropped, when there were plenty of towns with airports near Chicago, like Evanston, Park Ridge, and Wheeling, that could have been named instead, is a mystery to me.

Hideouts & Hoodlums has no guidelines for learning skills; all Heroes are meant to be naturals in any subject the moment they make their first successful skill check.

I'm amused by this comic book logic. "It's okay that the Army is giving me a fighter plane to use over U.S. soil, because I'll have an Army Reserve pilot with me and I've been deputized by a local police chief." This is so crazy, and yet so perfectly encapsulates the "anything-can-happen" feel of the Golden Age of Comics.

I wish I could identify this fighter plane. It looks realistic enough that it probably based on a photo reference.

We never do get an explanation for why the Champ's hunch turns out to be right. I would have thought that, 24 hours later, the blimp would be miles away instead of sitting there, hoping for a rematch.

Rays that can stop motors are a dime a dozen in these early comics and should have the best chance of being encountered of any mad science invention. But the real icing on the cake here is being able to broadcast onto your enemy's radio to taunt them as you're killing their motor. And then have your men take potshots at them before they plummet to their deaths, just to rub it in!

I particularly like this page. Rescuing people off a mountain in a blizzard might seem like a subplot that takes The Champ in a totally different direction, but put the scientist he needs to talk to in that blizzard and suddenly it becomes an important complication in the main plot. The Editor, just like a good writer, needs to carefully plan the placement of his characters.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but The Champ is an interesting bridge between the sports genre and the superhero genre. The Champ seems to be able to do anything he sets his mind to, but within the confines of sports (and aviation also, apparently).

Game mechanically, though, the easiest way to explain super-skiing is with the stunts of the Mysteryman class. Another possibility is a Strength check to ski while holding someone, followed by Dexterity check for each crevasse and gully.

Searching for concealed things in the sky is more difficult than you'd think. It seems like they get a new roll to spot the blimp every 1,000 feet.

How does The Champ know the "infernal ray" will set off grenades? Wouldn't they more likely not function, like motors?

Climbing the dangling cable isn't anymore difficult because of how high they are, but it certainly would end the campaign for him if he fell. I do think there needs to be a common sense maximum possible damage limit, if you take this much damage you're dead even if it's not a deathtrap scenario, though rather than having a set amount in the rules I'd rather that be left to the Editor's discretion.

This first panel makes me wonder if it should be an optional rule to let the player decide if he wants to take physical damage or be moved back a number of feet from the combat. I would very rarely allow this, but I could see it being a good thing for keeping a solo game going.

Panel 2 has me confused, though. How exactly is The Champ trapped in the flaming gondola? It looks like the fire is mostly in front of him, licking a little bit at his flanks, but not keeping him from running out onto the catwalk at all.

Should explosives do more damage on a direct hit? Something to consider.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Champion Comics #4 - pt. 1

Time to revisit the only comic book published by Worth Publishing, before being absorbed by Harvey. And the first feature is still The Champ.

I'm already intrigued by this first panel, and the suggestion that the helping hand helps the "dwarf" win the foot race. I've just recently talked about offering assistance in combat, but what if you could assist any roll in the game, like a skill check in a chase scene?

The traffic cop is an obstacle in a vehicular chase, even though only one party in the chase is using a vehicle.

The flying tackle is an attack roll, but desperately clinging is a skill check and not a grappling attack because the spare tire can't attack Champ back. 

By hitting the hedge, the driver introduces a chase obstacle; this means the chase rules are still in effect, even though Champ seems to have won the chase by catching up to the car. Because Champ is on foot vs. in a car, he is going to have to make his roll to overcome this obstacle at a severe penalty.

The Yellow Spider is Champ's first named villain.

The theta-ray is a new name for a raygun so cliched that I should just assign a 1 in 4 chance for every mad scientist to have one.

I'm much more interested in whatever device the Yellow Spider is using to make untraceable phone calls and, presumedly, monitor conversations in the room using the same phone while it's not in use.

Here's an unusual entrance to a hideout -- a cylinder suspended on a single cable that is lowered from and hoisted back up to an airship (blimp?) concealed in the clouds. The sleeping gas in the cylinder makes it difficult for guests to get the drop on the guards up top.

The ominous curtain, and talking from right behind the image of the huge yellow spider, are good details for a hideout.

The lie-detector chair is a good invention for both bad guys and good guys to have.

The midget has been called both a dwarf and an imp up to this point, but to be fair he does turn out to be the main villain, so I guess it's more fair to have made fun of him.

The Champ beats 7-to-1 odds -- pretty good for a fighter who would only be 2nd-level so far.

I really like the detail of how the airship has a catwalk around it and sections of it can be made to drop away by pulling levers. Sounds really dangerous for Heroes without parachutes!

This is from the next feature, Yaqui Gold. The Aztec sculptures look suitably authentic and were probably taken from photo references, but what I'm really interested in is the feel of the discovery of an underground passage and slowly exploring it with a flashlight -- this is what Hideouts & Hoodlums is all about!

I've talked on here long ago about how splashing water doesn't revive people at zero hit points, game mechanics-wise. I might, however, be willing to hand wave that if the victim was only stunned and about to wake up anyway.

Gold is not really a good substance for chains; I would give Jose a +1 bonus to wreck his way out of them.

Here at the beginning of 1940, it's interesting that Paris is still a city for espionage and not for open warfare.

Here we see thugs working for spies (I'm guessing I would stat Nina as a spy and not as a palm reader).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Champion Comics #3 - pt. 1

We return to the adventures of The Champ. A wrinkle on the cliche of "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" is that the walking stick with the treasure hidden inside is missing (it turns up later in a secret compartment; a second compartment inside a secret compartment).

Here we see a shadow figure, which was a mobstertype introduced in Supplement V: Big Bang and will be returning in 2nd edition.

The Champ laid a trap for the missing assistant by pretending to already have the formula.

Pointing a gun and delaying still means that you have to roll for initiative to see who goes first, at least if your opponent is withing charging distance.

Chloroforming your opponent should be an automatic action if you already have an ally pinning him down. The Champ still gets a save vs. poison for each turn he is pinned, though. Looks like he rolled poorly on the first try.

This may be the first time a length of chain is used as a whip in comics.

I have serious reservations about this supporting post and how easily the champ broke it. Now, if it was not a supporting post, and just ornamental, then maybe I could see The Champ wrecking it as a door (or as a machine, as a penalty for being tied to it and lacking leverage). This has to be at least wrecked as a generator, which a fighter has no chance to do (even in 2nd edition) until at least 3rd level.

 

The Champ takes 1 point of damage from the fire, but it burns his bonds alright.

Again showing wrecking abilities, the Champ makes mincemeat out of that door, but that is something a 1st level fighter can do. By the end of this adventure, the Champ will likely be 2nd level.

He shows he is Lawful by going back in to save the bad guys.

At last, we have a clue that several of these orientals are thugs. In the past, I would have statted them as yellow peril hoodlums, but I'm thinking it's time to lose that mobstertype. I wanted them, initially, as a way to build something like the monk class into Hideouts & Hoodlums, but orientals in the Golden Age are rarely martial artists. Instead, they are usually wimpy hoodlums or bloodthirsty hoodlums.

You would think Katsu would have learned by now not to try firing a missile weapon while in melee range.

Katsu, incidentally, is an actual word, a word shouted out in Zen Buddhism. It's not an authentic Asian name, but it's closer to being one than the usual fare, like Fang Gow.

It's an interesting tactic to have reinforcements riding in the car behind you, in this case a "horde" of five "yellow men."

The Champ has been in a lot of fights so far in quick succession in this story, suggesting that he has an awful lot of hit points. At 1st level, he could have a maximum of 9.

In Neptina, we learn that the fish men have the ability to surgically remove human lungs and install gills. They must have high Intelligence (and be of Evil Alignment).

The fish men have a fog-making machine that they can use on the surface (it would, understandably, be pretty useless underwater).

It's not clear, but it seems to be implied that all fish men are male, and the mermaids are all the females, of the same species. Or did the fish men just capture human women and convert them into mermaids?

Fish men (and their merwomen) are telepathic, but they have the technology to block telepathy. Not only to block it, but apparently to make people forget they can read minds -- since Neptina doesn't seem the least but suspicious when she cannot read Brad's mind.

This is Penny Wright, Feature Writer. Penny wanted to find stories in South America to write about, but winds up getting kidnapped by an unnamed country's rebel leader. Santos is, curious, not a fighter but a robber -- a strange position for leadership.

Penny tries for a surprise attack but fails. She loses initiative and Santos delivers a grappling attack. Now Penny can't attack with her knife; she can only defend herself from the grappling attack and try to escape it or reverse it.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Champion Comics #2

This is The Champ.  It's squarely in the sports genre and reads like Ned Bryant, but with better art. What amuses me on this page, though, is the commercial-like description of the Champ's tonic. If it is responsible for his top physical condition, then maybe it is a potion that bestows a +1 bonus to all physical skills.

This is from Neptina, Queen of the Deep.  As often as sharks get defeated with knives in comic books, I wonder if knives should do +1 damage against them...

These fish-men might be another variation of mermen...but they do look an awful lot like kuo-toa from That Other Game. There are at least seven of them.  One of them seems to have a paralysis raygun. And if that encounter wasn't dangerous enough, there's a giant eel too!

There is apparently an entire city of fish-men down here, so...10,000+ of them? They have advanced science, capable of producing trophy items like a bubble helmet that allows underwater breathing and a paste that makes his skin waterproof and resistant to water pressure. That last part is odd because pressure never seems to be a problem in underwater comic book adventures, or all these underwater encounters occur within 1,000' of the surface.

We learn the fish-men are telepathic too -- something neither mermen nor kuo-toa can do!

This is from The Blazing Scarab.  Yes, a Rochester-like manservant called Snowball is blatantly racist -- but, what I'd like to know is, what's that weapon he's holding? It looks like he's attacking that other man with a shaving razor. As an improvised weapon it would do 1-3 points of damage -- maybe 1-4, since I think getting sliced by a shaving razor sounds pretty nasty.

Okay, if you can choke your way past the racism on this page, there's a really neat teleport trap here, with a glowing scarab being the lure.

This is Jungleman.  The text calls that a huge viper, but it looks like an ordinary-sized poisonous snake to me. What's unusual about this Tarzan rip-off is that it takes place in Cambodia (full of ruins -- good for hideouts!), and Jungleman's animal companion is an albino tiger.

Here we see mobsters burying their treasure under the ruins -- a perfect explanation for where there is so much treasure and trophy items hidden in hideouts.

Not only does Jungleman have a tiger companion, but he has an elephant companion as well. That's a lot of cumulative Hit Dice for a 1st level fighter or explorer to have with him. I would probably not allow either, myself.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)