Weird Comics #1 - pt. 2

We're still looking at the Sorceress of Zoom -- well, not too much of her on this page; this is still focused on Tom like this guy is the most important person in the world. I still don't get what the Sorceress sees in Tom, except that this is Tom's story, and I suppose if I met Tom in person maybe I'd be wowed by his 18 Charisma. 

This stranger interests me - I like the idea of the heroes having a magic-user benefactor, but one who is not acting out of altruism, but to use the heroes as pawns against the villain. It's also worth pointing out that this stranger only has to make eye contact to cast spells. Are his eyes his wand?

If I really wanted to apply science to this story, this would need to be a more powerful version of the Levitate spell that also protects the beneficiary from cold and lack of oxygen. That city is up really high! Better hope the spell duration doesn't end before you get up there, Tom!  

Spoilers: the Sorceress' spells require her concentration, including keeping the floating city in the sky (which makes you wonder how she ever sleeps...), so all Tom has to do is distract her and they all win.

So let's move on to Blast Bennett, because I think there's something interesting going on here despite these largely empty panels. Although Blast and his pal are interested in the meteor, neither is, understandably, interested in landing on it. Here's a little spoiler from the next page: the scenario requires them to land on the meteor. So what is a poor Editor to do if his players won't go where the adventure is waiting for them? You have four mysterious spaceships show up and push the location directly into the heroes' path, so they can't evade it!

The X-Men would sure like to have an anti-Magneto gun laying around! 

I was Googling "transverse valve" and the first hits were about rectums. I don't think I've ever stopped searching for something faster.

Let's talk briefly about "universe explorers," because that really seems like an all-encompassing job title. Unless they can access the multiverse in this future? 

The last caption we get just says "Later", with no indication how long it really took to build the gun. This is one of several reasons I've never been able to come up with inventing things rules for Hideouts & Hoodlums that satisfy me. Because, as easy as it is find examples of heroes kit-bashing things together, I seldom have any sense of time for how long it should take.

Now here's an interesting new mobster. I just wish it had a name! It's called "horrible monster" on the next page, so I'll probably have to go with that. Weird how this seemingly aquatic monster -- with its webbed hands and feet and sail, not wings, on its back - is on a waterless meteor, and it makes me think the space pirates either imprisoned it here, or planted it here expressly to kill Blast if he survived the crash. 

Although this page gives us a very poor sense of scale, the next page makes it clear the horrible monster is no more than 9' tall -- and strong -- as it clobbers Blast with one blow. The first panel on this page makes me think it can camouflage itself too, since Blast and Red don't notice it until it steps away from the wall. 

This page leaves the reader with way too many questions. Are they pirates or Canadian Mounties? Blast drops the monster on the pirate-Mounties? Is Blast super strong? Actually, they should all be near weightless on a meteor (there shouldn't be air either, but let's keep ignoring that), but if the monster is easy to pick up and drop because it's near-weightless, then it won't fall on anyone very hard either. And how does it happen to fall on all four of them at once? And how lucky are they that there were only four pirates on board when they confiscate the ship? And whatever happened to the other three pirate ships??

We're going to jump into the next story about Dr. Mortal, a character in the vein of Landor Maker of Monsters. The hero is Mr. Brent, who already knows something is amiss because Dr. Mortal, his girlfriend's father, has weird, malformed manservants with double thumbs. The scenario could go in several directions at the point where Mortal asks him to leave. Mr. Brent could have belligerently insisted he wasn't going anywhere until he got some answers. He could have decided Marlene wasn't worth this and started ghosting her. But I like this middle option he chose, of snooping around. At that point, it could have gone from roleplaying to exploration, with Mortal's house becoming a hideout.

However, this is just an 8-page story, so to move things along Mr. Brent just happens to see Dr. Mortal revealing all his nefariousness through the window.

Four mostly empty panels is really disappointing and tells me this was hastily made filler. 

I'm not sure what makes this guy a monster, other than having no hair, a super-long nose, and no memory of who he was until Mr. Brent, or Gary, does ...whatever it is he does here. Is he hypnotizing the monster to make him remember? 

That is one eloquent ex-monster there. 

What is up with how Dr. Mortal wants all his monsters in Speedos behind closed doors? 

Stray bullet, or intentional shot? If I was looking to make a fast escape, and I had, oh, let's say, consumed a potion of fire resistance recently, then filling the room with fire seems like a good way to safely cover my escape. 

On the other hand...if it's a pistol with six bullets, and there's only four monsters, why not use the last two on Gary and Marlene and skip escaping altogether?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

 

Speed Comics #6 pt. 3

We're still looking at this month's Crash, Cork, and the Baron adventure and, as always, talking about comic book stories and how to emulate them using the game Hideouts & Hoodlums.  If you don't play H&H, you're still welcome to stick around and look at the pretty pictures.

Under most circumstances, and as we've talked about many times on this blog, H&H makes no distinction between subdual damage and lethal damage; the only time injuries kill is when the character is already unconscious or in a deathtrap. So the question here is, is Crash in a deathtrap?

No, the natives' intentions are to torture Crash, not kill him, so this cannot be a deathtrap. Indeed, rather than full damage, it appears that the natives are being careful to do less than full damage.




I hesitate to allow either side, players or Editor, to have such control over their damage that they can specify an exact number of points of damage they want to inflict, but misusing or under-utilizing a weapon should make it work like an improvised weapon, which do half weapon damage.

I really hate how this story ends. They threaten the chief, feed him a baloney story about how oil pipes leaking into their drinking water isn't bad for them, and then apparently get him addicted to cigarettes to force compliance. I just...ugh.

So let's move along and look at Ted Parrish, Man of 1,000 Faces.

Right off the bat, I'm wondering about that fall. Is Ted -- disguised here as Pedro -- really knocked unconscious by that, or just pretending? Ted is a 2nd level mysteryman by now, so it seems awfully humiliating to have a 10' fall knock him out. On one hand, maybe he's feigning unconsciousness, so no one can ask him any probing questions about where Pedro had got off to, but on the other hand, maybe the Editor wanted him unconscious so he couldn't do anything that would derail the story before the sub reaches Central America.

So, the next question I have is -- where is this? What Central American country was producing oil circa 1940? With some effort, I was able to find that Mexico started drilling for oil back in 1916, but I can't verify any other countries were drilling that early.

Even this page, which talks about a jungle, does not invalidate Mexico as a likely suspect. Though one normally thinks of Brazil both in terms of jungle and oil, Mexico has the smaller Lacandon Jungle within it.

And look, the ol' stick in the mouth trick!

Moving on, this is Dick Briefer doing Biff Bannon. For humor, the superhero-soldier turns out to have a fear of public speaking. But what does that mean, in terms of game mechanics? Is this evidence that Biff has a low Charisma score? Perhaps Biff's player really wants Miss Lee for his supporting cast, and is afraid of messing up the recruitment roll?

This first tier is rather remarkable. Firstly, it's a stirring mini-speech about the value of integrated public education to combat racism. I think that was Dick's genuine intention, as the second remarkable thing about this tier is panel 2, and the black boy who is drawn completely normal (or as normal as Briefer's highly stylized art allows). Remember, this is a time when even artists as progressive as Will Eisner were drawing black people in minstrel show style.

I'll spare you from the strange subplot that gets Biff put in a dress and wig. The important thing here is the sheer mass of improvised weapons half-pints can use, including things I never thought of, like B-B guns, firecrackers, blowguns, and inkwells. The inkwells come with a little something extra, the chance of producing a blinding attack, but I would say that's pretty unlikely; maybe if the inkwell hits on a natural 20.

This page is noteworthy because the mobster in panel 2 acknowledges that they live in the same world with Shock Gibson. So many characters lived in their own isolated universes before this, even in the same anthology title.

This is Lt. Jim Cannon of the British Navy. By "15-inch guns" it probably means the BL 15-inch Mk I naval gun. "It was the first British 15-inch (381 mm) gun design and the most widely used and longest lasting of any British designs, and arguably the most efficient heavy gun ever developed by the Royal Navy. It was deployed on capital ships from 1915 until 1959, and was a key Royal Navy gun in both World Wars," according to Wikipedia.

Leaving your big, protective ship, and putting yourself in harm's way in a shot-range plane or a torpedo launch seems like a terribly unsound tactic, and yet what else can a Hero do? Share XP with everyone on board the Hood? Not likely!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 3 #1 - pt. 2

And we're back to The Inner Circle, where we see the players have figured out that, if they pool all their supporting cast members together, they can form a military force of 30 men -- or more (depending on how high their Charisma scores are)!

But then this page shows us the disadvantage of having too large a fighting force on your side, as they easily take the "Mafio" island without any challenge or suspense. The Editor could always up the challenge level they encounter to match -- maybe give the Mafio some heavy artillery of their own -- while other Editors might feel that is cheating and run their scenarios as-is.

This is the first I've ever seen of Tippy Taylor, which is odd because it seems so tailor-made for Hideouts & Hoodlums conversion.

First we get a lot of establishing of a real world setting, with references to place (Metropolis, California, Mt. Arrowhead) and time (topical reference to Amelia Earhart's disappearance).  This is the first mention of a city named Metropolis in comic books and, while Mt. Arrowhead is fictional, there is a Lake Arrowhead in California.

The scenario really starts when Tippy and Hunk wash up on the island -- everything before it could be backstory read to the player at the start of the game. The dinosaur gains surprise on them, but has a neutral encounter reaction to them and does not attack.

Here we see more sauropods, apparently of different species, all socializing together. The dinosaur chasing Tippy seems to be more curious about him than hostile -- which is very good since Tippy is probably no more than a 1st-level fighter!  We also see that dinosaurs -- or at least sauropods -- do not run faster than humans (but not slower either).

This is interesting because we don't often see Heroes failing skill checks. It's so necessary for the plot that he fall in that pit, though, that it makes me wonder if the Editor did not fudge the results against him -- bad form, I say, favoring story over the dice. Or perhaps there are multiple ways to reach the underground lair, and Tippy just fell into the first one.

Wax statues of guardians seems like a good trick to put in your hideouts.

Well, it turns out they aren't just wax dummies after all, but androids waiting to be turned on!

The old man's recipe for activating androids is a quest worthy of an entire mini-campaign.

Tippy gets a free ride to the next destination on his quest on the back of a gryphon! I'll have to include a note that there's a chance they can talk.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Action Comics #17

I have a surprising lack of information about this issue.

In Superman's adventure, Superman's "commanding voice" could be some use of a power, or it could mean that he gets a bonus to encounter reaction rolls because of his high Charisma score. Since Charisma always does this, I don't see the need to duplicate it with a power.

Superman demonstrates Resist Fire and Push Ocean Liner as powers in this story. We also see he can leap while using the Raise Car power at the same time. At another point, though, he listens in to a phone conversation via an extension phone because, presumedly, he didn't prepare the Super-Senses power for that day. At another point the narrator claims that Superman is using "super-hearing", but he's only eavesdropping from outside a window, and I'd allow a skill check for that.

Superman, still dressed as Clark Kent, gets mad and lifts a man over his head in this story. More evidence that I was wrong to require superheroes to be in costume to use their powers.

Ultra-Humanite demands $5 million in extortion money in this story, possibly the highest monetary sum featured in a comic book to date. Ultra -- as he's referred to in this story -- uses an acid gun, a transparent metal wall, and an image projector against Superman.

In Pep Morgan's story, one of the reasons Pep is able to defeat Pedro is because Pedro's gun jams. There is now a chance of this happening in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums.

In Clip Carson's adventure, he's on safari in India when he kills a tiger, rescues a plot hook character (one of those "old friends" you've never seen before, but ties into a character's backstory), and investigates a cult. Next installment we're likely to see cultists actually show up -- just like they are as a mobster type in 2nd edition H&H.

Tex Thompson is a high-Charisma Hero too, as evidenced by his growing number of supporting cast members. In addition to regular SCMs Bob Daley and Gargantua T. Potts, Tex picks up a temporary SCM, Ali-Baba, while adventuring in Turkey. We also see the return of The Gorrah, which appears to be a bogeyman (a new mobster that will be in the Mobster Manual when it's done). The Gorrah demonstrates his hypnosis ability. Tex displays a knack for disguises, but The Gorrah seems to easily see through it (even though it's better than most comic book disguises). The Gorrah's hideout is well-trapped: an electric eye at the entrance alerts The Gorrah in his main chamber, then The Gorrah has television cameras set up to show him the hallways, and he can raise inverted portcullises from the floor to trap intruders.

In Zatara's story, we learn that Zatara takes a yearly cruise to Europe. En route, he picks up two temporary SCMs, "old friends" John and Beth Jordan on the cruise ship. Also on board is someone out to get one of them, as they are "attacked" by a thrown net. For some reason, Zatara is worried enough about this that he burns a high-level spell to polymorph the net into gold coins (or maybe he thought the other passengers looked poor...or was looking to destabilize the gold market in Europe...).

Somehow, the three of them wind up in the Lost City of Ophir, where the ancient queen Setap is kept alive by Potions of Immortality (they keep her alive, but over time the leave her old and frail). Somehow, Beth has "purer" Ophir blood than all the people of Ophir around her, so she wants Beth's fresh blood for more potions. Then, as if we didn't already guess from this that Setap is evil, she shows them the poison gas she plans to use to kill every non-Ophir citizen in the world. She also gives away her connection to Atlantis, which will become relevant in the next story.

When Zatara tries to intervene, he is temporarily stopped when Setap throws a blinding fluid into Zatara's eyes. This is, coincidentally, very effective on Zatara because he needs to make eye contact for his spells. The deathtrap she placed him in is being slowly lowered by rope into a roaring firepit, but the heat causes him to sweat and the sweat clears his eyes of the blinding fluid in time (save vs. plot successful?).

Zatara uses Phantasmal Image to steal into the city past the guards (they are distracted), and he casts Dispel Magic to reverse the magical blood transfusion that turns Setap young and Beth old. As flavor text, Zatara summons the Flame of Life from the Temple of Atlantis and it reverts them to their true ages.

Setap and Ophir are clearly stolen from Tarzan's Queen La of the Lost City of Opar.

(Superman story read in Superman: Action Comics Archives v. 1, select pages also read at the Babbling about DC Comics blog, and then summaries of the rest read at DC Wikia and Mike's Amazing World of Comics.)

Amazing Man Comics #5 - pt. 1

No, I haven't skipped any issues; Amazing Man Comics really did start with issue #5. It was, after Superman, the second comic book named after its lead character.

We know from the caption that Amazing Man is over 25 years old. Hideouts & Hoodlums doesn't worry about character age or aging, but it was generally true in the Golden Age that Heroes were college-educated, which meant being at least 22 years old when they started.

John Aman is known both as Amazing Man and as The Green Mist, depending on who you ask, I guess. It would not be unsuitable for H&H Heroes to have more than one superhero name.

The Council uses a sleep-ray on John, I guess so he can't hear their deliberations. It seems to have a very short range, but is fairly portable.

Amazing Man is showing off his powers in the first test. This could be the power Raise Elephant at play -- though, since he isn't technically raising it, maybe he only needs Raise Car to stop it.

Bereft of other weapons, John uses his teeth on a poisonous snake. Although biting is not a particularly effective attack, he might have buffed it up with Get Tough or a similar power.

We know that Amazing Man has enough hit points to take two knife wounds and still be only lightly wounded. So...8-15 hit points? At least they're nice enough to bandage him up afterwards.

 I've no idea why the head of the Council is green.

The invisibility formula is like a potion meant to be taken intravenously. There is a side effect that not all invisibility potions have, but (as explained on the next page) the duration of this potion is a full week.

John's first case is solving railroad sabotage in Wyoming (you'd think there would be plenty to keep him busy in Asia, what with the Japanese occupation of China going on).

John finds his first clue, a monogrammed pencil -- with silver lead. I wonder if that would poke werewolves?

Also note that John has an airplane as a starting item. This is not commonly the case in H&H -- though an Editor could choose to hand out trophy items at the start of a campaign.

I'm not sure how John saves this train in such a way that no one else could have done it. The really amazing thing is that he just tells the engineer to let him take over before the crash -- and the engineer goes along with it!  John must have a high Charisma, and/or a lucky encounter reaction roll.

There's no power for superheroes to do this yet. Psychic Auto Writing? It seems too specific a trick to be useful often. Object Reading might be do-able (perhaps the "automatic writing" part is flavor text?). I would think that this is just a trick with telekinesis to flush a confession out of the villain, except that John seems genuinely surprised.

This is the bizarre last page of the bizarre first and only appearance of the very first Cat Man in comics. He's a man who dresses up like a crazy old cat lady, then has his trained cat scratch people with poisoned claws. The poison must be something that smells bad to the cat so it knows not to try and lick it off. The Cat Man's only superpower is somehow keeping from getting scratched himself, and his cat's only power seems to be that weird ability to smile it has.

No real bearing on H&H, except for the idea that you could have Heroes run into poisonous pets.

This story is the debut of the Iron Skull, but these are just robot bank robbers we see here. They are a pretty good match for the copper robots found in Book II, except for the added ability to shoot poison gas (save or die) out of their chests.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Funnies #19

Dan Dunn is a funny one, and by that I mean curious-funny. Why does a G-Man bring a bow and arrows to a hideout siege? Why, to set the roof on fire, of course (or because his Editor is being a stickler with the save vs. plot to resort to gunplay, which used to apply to all classes).

Lions are statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies, but lion followers seem to be very rare.  The Explorer class (as seen in The Trophy Case v. 1 no. 2) did not allow animal followers until 9th level (!), but a later issue of TTC clarified that animals could be recruited as Supporting Cast Members (the distinction, for Explorers, being that followers are automatic and do not count against the number of SCMs determined by their Charisma score).

Interesting, that we just learned about Easy's previous plane costing $16,000, and this one being worth $20,000. It seems Easy isn't a soldier of fortune for the fun of it, but because he keeps going through planes so quickly!


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Funnies #1 - pt. 1

A new title from Dell Comics joins our revue this time, and it was full of good stuff!

First up is Tailspin Tommy, which illustrates several useful points for us Hideouts & Hoodlums players.  One, Betty grabs hold of the passing plane with a "simple" roll to hit. I put simple in quotation marks because determining an Armor Class for a moving plane is not so simple. A good rule of thumb can be found, though, in the vehicular combat section of Book III: Underworld and Metropolis Adventures, which recommends penalties to hit based on the speed of your target.

But once Betty has grabbed on, what is the chance of her slipping? An Editor, looking to squeeze a little more drama out of the scene, could ask of her a saving throw vs. science to resist the wind resistance pulling her loose.

And lastly, this is the origin of the Wing Walking stunt for the Aviator class!

Myra North, Special Nurse gets her comic book debut here, with the dramatic introduction of being shot down by an anti-aircraft gun!  I would use the autocannon, statted in Supplement I: National for anti-aircraft guns. A ruthless Editor might use the wrecking things table to determine the effect on the plane, but a gentler alternative is to roll on the plane mishap table found in The Trophy Case v. 2 no. 8.

Captain Easy goes to war!  Given H&H's recommended time frame of 1935-1941, it's likely that Heroes in the game will eventually find themselves involved in a war somewhere.  Panel 4 here serves as a great reminder that the front lines are very dangerous for low-level Heroes!

Though it makes for a dramatic page to have Easy abscond a bomber plane so easily, I would be hesitant to allow this in a H&H game. More realistically, a captain -- in other words, a 5th level Fighter -- would have to go up the chain of command level by level, aiming for friendly encounter reactions until such a roll from a general (9+ level Fighter) grants him permission to take the plane.

The number of followers a Hero can have is currently tied to that Hero's Charisma score and not the fame coming from the Hero's exploits. As written, then, there is no accounting for how Easy here becomes the idol of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It's something that needs work...

A vamp and a drunken hoodlum?  You decide!



The Alley Oop dinosaurs of the day are Gorgosaurus and Polacanthus. Gorgosaurus would have been a giant 15 Hit Dice monster, using d12 for its Hit Dice. Polacanthus, a smaller armored herbivore, would have been only 5+1 HD, but also with d12 dice.

Ah, the old chestnut of the thorn in the paw. This makes me want to run a scenario with an evil bear who lures kids in close by pretending to have a thorn in its paw.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #17

This installment of Flight includes information about a flying boat (more like a flying yacht!) that would make an ideal trophy for mid-level Heroes.  The route for the French Trans-Atlantic Service could be handy for Heroes looking to make a quick getaway from Europe, too.

Hairbreadth Harry is shown here to have a Supporting Cast at least as large as seven, which means he must have a Charisma score of 18 (unless he is paying some of these Half-Pints, in which case they do not count against his SCM total).

Harry might have at least one less kid loyal to him after this stunt (interestingly, I once played a game of Dungeons & Dragons where the same thing was done with a halfling, but that was over a body of water instead of a canyon).  To throw the boy just across the canyon to the tree, I would ask for a roll to hit from Harry's player and make a save vs. science for the poor kid.  To throw him hard enough to wrap around both Rudolph and the tree is too fanciful for the kind of game I run, but maybe I would allow it if either of the above two rolls was a 20.

Tightrope walking is normally a skill reserved for Mysterymen (I would use their climb skill). However, in a game with no one playing a Mysteryman, I could see going easy on the players and allowing this after a successful save vs. science.

The serial Flying to Fame is usually too talky to warrant any Hideouts & Hoodlums discussion here, but with this installment the strip takes on some adventure genre elements. It's worth mentioning here because of their healthy respect (and avoidance) of crocodiles. Statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies as alligators, any 1st-level Heroes should know to avoid combat with these 4 Hit Die beasts.

Despite how common rattlesnakes are in comics, they have never been statted for H&H yet. I would give them 1-4 hit points and a mildly poisonous bite, but clearly with the ability to spook other animals and provoke morale saves.

I never thought Seaweed Sam would warrant another mention on this blog, but sure enough this seems to be the very first dragon ever created for the comic books. Metallic dragons were late arrivals to the game H&H was based on, but here we have a purple iron dragon. I would guess a dragon that size must have about 6 Hit Dice, have a bite attack that can do at least 3d4 points of damage (with maybe even a chance of swallowing whole!), plus a hot steam breath weapon.  It has a special vulnerability to pepper.

Note the goat isn't even phased by this.  I might have sold goats short when I statted them before!

Guards were statted in module FS1 Sons of the Feathered Serpent, but these could just as easily be some type of hoodlum (wimpy or cowardly, most likely).  Note how, because Dan's player is playing solo, he uses information learned about the hideout to avoid encounters in it as much as possible.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum at http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=23782)