Feature Comics #30 - pt. 1

It's been a long time since we last checked in with Quality Comics' flagship title. Here, the Clock (sans mask) investigates how a car was tricked into careening off the road, and anticipates the movie Goldfinger by 24 years.

That the Clock wakes up after 30 minutes suggests that he was simply stunned and recovers 1-6 turns later, but the Editor has decided to make those 10-minute exploration turns (which the Editor can do, at his discretion).

Monogrammed cigarettes must have been a novelty item of decades past.

That's also quiet an expose in the newspaper, that the dead man was a FBI man with secret industrial mobilization plans on him. I bet the FBI was wanting to keep that a secret. Industrial mobilization was, of course, a real thing, and had been ongoing since Sept. 1939 in the U.S.

I've seen this in games before, paying kids to run messages for you. In a pre-modern age it can be more reliable than technology for communication, though it could put the kids in danger.

Panel 3 is a good example of how easy it is for Heroes to scale walls, even in dress shoes and tuxedos, while carrying canes in one hand.

This is Lena Pry and we haven't looked in on this comic strip in a dog's age. I include this bit because of the discussion of relief checks, which was another real thing. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land.

The Great Bear Lake is a real lake. It is the largest lake entirely in Canada, the fourth-largest in North America, and the eighth-largest in the world. Moose Creek is also real, running through Ontario.

There really is a Nugget City in the Yukon, but it's a RV park and, I suspect, doesn't date back as far as 1940. It's possible that "Nugget City" is a euphemism for the Town of Dawson, which was at the center of the Klondike Gold Rush.

This is Spin Shaw and Spin is in an unusual gaming situation that I've only seen once before in a Star Wars session; Spin is "grounded" by a captain who doesn't want him involved in the scenario, so part of the scenario becomes finding a way to get into the rest of the scenario. Here, Spin's player wisely finds a use for his plane that nothing else can do, forcing the captain's hand to let him take off. No dice rolls should be needed to judge a situation like this, and the player should certainly be rewarded for ingenuity.

Unlike Reynolds of the Mounted, which was surprisingly easy to place in the real world, San Luray seems to be entirely fictional. There actually is an archipelago called the Barren Islands -- but it's in Alaska, and it's very unlikely that this adventure takes place there. "Barren Islands" was surely meant to sound evocative, but also generic enough that they could be anywhere.

The cliche of the hollow statue that can be made to appear to be talking to its worshipers is as old as racism in adventure fiction. I include this example, though, because of the added details, like the density of the foliage concealing the entrance (find as secret door?), the fact that the entrance is a "queer opening" because it's much smaller than a normal door, and the shots of the interior show that the body has just one hollow column leading up to a small floored room in the head.

Eisner makes a point of showing us that Dollman is a good fighter at full-size to explain how he is still so capable at tiny size. Why I share this particular page, though, is for the use of "tomahawk" to describe a sap/blackjack. This may be purely a joke, as I can find no evidence that tomahawk was ever a slang term for a sap or blackjack.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Feature Comics #29 - pt. 1

Despite having been a lab assistant until recently, Darrel Dane already has a reputation as a private eye. Becoming a private eye is a handy way to get plot hook characters to walk in on you...but shouldn't Darrel have been suspicious that the threatening note was in easily identifiable cursive?

Suave thieves should probably be statted as slick hoodlums.

I'm curious about this, and wonder how typical it would be for a museum to employ five or more security guards for the same shift. It's also worth noting that none of the security guards wear uniforms.

It may also be worth noting this is the first mention of 18th century Spanish painter Francisco Goya in a comic book.

I don't have anything game mechanics-related to say about this page; I just think the set-up of this scene is hilarious. Ugly piece!

I'm including this page of Dixie Dugan for the unusual use of the word "punk," here used as an adjective and simply meaning "bad."

Sir Malcolm Campbell was real and worthy of being a supporting cast member in a Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign someday. You can read more about him here.

The Clock should be suspicious that the gangsters in the car had taken the time to ditch their identifying papers, but left a letter addressed to "The Reaper" in the car with them. Actually, maybe he is suspicious, because he takes the time to question Holt in the hospital about The Reaper, despite the fact that we learn on the next page that The Clock already knows exactly which local crime boss is known as The Reaper.

Lena Pry makes a surprise return to the blog. Here, Jane Arden's hillbilly counterpart encounters the IRS, and we learn that farm relief has a very old history in this country. I can almost envision a campaign of super-powered IRS agents, having to tour the country handing out checks...

I haven't included an Off the Record in some time. I shared this one, not only because I thought these two gags were funny, but the woman in the dentist's chair with Spike seems like she would be a good character to run into in someone's game. Spike would always be around, growling and threatening the Heroes.

Should half-pints need to save vs. plot to attack anyone with glasses?

Reynolds of the Mounted offers a surprisingly practical explanation for how Reynolds wasn't fooled by the fake clue left for him, but then includes shakier material like a peace pipe that can double as a blowgun, and a hollow wooden pipe being strong enough to be used as a club without breaking.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Feature Comics #28

Phew! Some of the copy of this issue from Quality is of, well, poor quality!

From this page of Joe Palooka that I can read, I see some prices listed. Now, I am highly skeptical of the $3 offer for a used camper -- I suspect Ham Fisher had a really bad experience with campers -- but more interesting to me is Knobby's accepted offer of $10 for car repairs. So much cheaper than today!

I started out thinking that Porto Bello was a joke about mushrooms, but it turns out that Porto Bello is/was a real place in Panama. Panama was controlled by Spain when this took place, but note how not only does everyone there talk in English, but even the signs are written in English.

The phrase "pike ye the dandy" is an unusual one, as I've never seen "pike" used to mean trip before, but it clearly does here.

Ripping right through this issue, we're on Rance Keane already. And speaking of tripping....Even braced, I have trouble believing that Rance could trip a horse like that; surely, the horse's strength and mass would just pull Rance off the roof. In this instance, I would treat it as an opposed grappling attack, even though Rance is not in melee range. If the horse wins, Rance gets pulled off the roof and lands for 1-6 points of damage; if Rance wins, the horse gets pulled over and is prone. I might even give the horse a +2 situational modifier.

I haven't featured The Bungle Family in a while. Here we see George Bungle taking two good smacks to the kisser, each of which should be doing 1-3 points of damage, and walking away from them. He must be a bit of a scrapper; possibly a 1st level fighter with max (or near-max) hit points.

The ineffectiveness of bare knuckle punching in Hideouts & Hoodlums' current edition bothers me. It's realistic, but leads to no one wanting to fight without weapons. I've been thinking about introducing graduated punching damage, so that they do 1-4 points of damage starting at 2nd level, 1-6 points starting at 4th level, 1-8 points starting at 6th level, and so on.

This is The Clock.  We've seen Heroes be able to boss around beat cops before, but never with an excuse this flimsy -- based purely on having been Captain Kane's driver, The Clock is able to wander around the crime scene and pocket evidence.

With little confidence in their new feature Dollman, we find this installment pushed towards the back of the book. The "monsterous machine" is an aquatic tank.

This is why I don't like rats -- you never know when they might have dynamite strapped to them. This would also make for a really dangerous encounter!

This is Reynolds of the Mountains. The bright light blinds them during a surprise attack. Then they lose initiative and receive lucky head blows. Had they won initiative, they could have still tried to attack first, but would have done so at a penalty.

Most of this checks out. The floor board is an improvised club, so that does 1-3 points of damage, but that's enough to trigger a disarm check. More curious is how Reynolds misses Sam. Even assuming Sam is at medium range (that's -2), Sam is wearing no armor, has no cover, and isn't moving fast enough in an accelerating speedboat to get more bonuses -- that gives Sam only slightly worse than 50/50 chances of hitting, better if he's higher level already. I guess he just really got an unlucky die roll!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Feature Comics #26

I've talked before about how easy disguise needs to be in Hideouts & Hoodlums, and how easy it should be for Heroes to disguise themselves as mobsters. But here we see how easy it is for mobsters to disguise themselves as mobsters too!

Captain Fortune stops to woo a maiden in the street. Because he's such a lady's man? No, so she'll be moved to lie about seeing him! Given the conventions of the genre, it should only take a positive encounter reaction result to get a fair maiden to do that for you.

From Mickey Finn we learn that you could make up to $10 a day selling brushes door to door.

The Clock and this thug/robber tell us that this lone mobster managed to net $250,000 over three robberies. That's an awful lot of money to leave in a hideout as recoverable loot. I've tried before to deal with a solid demarcation between recoverable loot and claimable treasure, but the line remains frustratingly blurry, particularly with Heroes of different Alignments.

Back when I first read this story, I thought "Oh, how unusual -- a mysteryman knows hypnotism!" It was the first indication (there will be more) that The Clock doesn't fit just the mysteryman class. It was also an early example that the mysteryman class was varied enough and led to my adopting the concept of stunts for them instead of set skills.

By now, though, I've read every kind of character practice hypnotism and it's not so big a deal anymore...

This is Rance Kean's strip, but the real star of this page is the sharpshooting outlaw Dirk Purdue who managed to shoot half the mustache off a man through an open window.

Now, there is the fact that this only happened to a supporting cast member, was not crucial to a combat or a life-or-death situation, and so the Editor could choose to hand-wave game mechanics in instances like these and just say that happened. However, doing this sets a precedent for "impossible shots" being possible in your game and players will ask to try the same things eventually.

I would require a natural 20 on the attack roll for an impossible shot like that (giving a generous 5% chance of success).

This is from a filler page called Off-Side.  I include it mainly for the gag on the right, which is what I feel like whenever people around me are talking about sports.

This is a well-equipped Charlie Chan, with a miner's helmet and gas mask, but even those aren't enough to save him from a cave-in. Cave-ins are tricky, mechanics-wise. The damage from the falling weight alone should be enough to render Charlie unconscious, and then the continuing damage from having that weight on top of him should kill him. Perhaps a generous Editor would allow two saves here -- a save vs. missiles to avoid the initial falling damage and a save vs. science to avoid the continuing damage (assuming the rubble all became miraculously balanced over him).

Here, Charlie beats a dynamite stick in initiative and gets the chance to toss it away; dynamite sticks get thrown at the end of the turn, ignoring normal procedure for missiles, and don't go off until their opportunity in the next turn.

It's unclear what Kirk is doing, but it seems he's shooting the second dynamite stick in mid-air. While not an impossible shot, I'd be inclined to make a dynamite stick thrown in the dark to be AC 2 or even 1...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Feature Comics #25

Feature Comics is still pretty adventure-lite at this point, so I don't have a lot to go over.

This is from Off the Record, my favorite gag filler. When I was growing up these were called shadow puppets; note how they're called "hand shadow tricks" here.

This is from The Clock. None of the original Heroes I've ran Hideouts & Hoodlums for so far have had secret lairs, per se, though one has a secret hangar for his planes. A secret lair is like a hideout for the good guys. When designing their own lairs, players will want to consider security, like being able to lock and bar the place, and whether it should be soundproof or not.

We know these as sunglasses. They're also known as polarized glasses, but they're called smoked glasses here in Dixie Dugan.

Jane Arden is posing as a thief -- highly appropriate considering my making a case earlier on this blog that Jane was one of the first Mysterymen.

The bracelet here is worth $60,000 -- which seems to be about a mid-range value for jewelry in the comics.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Feature Comics #24

Today, I lap myself, sort of. Back in the Winter of 2012, I did a lengthy review of this very issue in the sixth issue of my ezine, The Trophy Case -- and that article was in many ways the prototype for what I've been doing here on this blog for almost two years now. So, rather than re-read this issue and try to glean new insights from it, I'm going to share what I wrote then in my "Comic Book World" column.

Over 68 pages, Feature Comics #24 gave you a whopping 22 features between 1 and 9 pages long. And, reading it, it gives me a bunch of ideas about how I could use this stuff in an H&H game.

The first feature, the longest of the bunch, is a Charlie Chan, complete-in-9-pages mystery.  Charlie Chan is drawn to resemble Warner Oland, the original actor to portray Charlie Chan in the movies. It seems a little creepy, actually, since this issue came out 13 months after Oland died, but given  Quality’s reputation of reprinting never- or obscurely-published comic strips, it is likely that this strip was done before Oland’s death.

The page layout and story pacing suggests this might once have been intended as a three-panel comic strip – perhaps a blessing in disguise for the short story, as it forces a slight advancement in the plot to happen every three panels. It is also fortunate that the plot is fairly simple and straightforward, as Chan has to decide which of the passengers around him on a ship is actually a master jewel thief named Grissac (which is not also the name of a Captain Marvel villain, but so should be).

The plot is straightforward in that there are few complications (Number One Son is conveniently
indisposed with sea-sickness for the whole story so we are never treated to a comic sub-plot) and
simple in that Chan makes several assumptions that just luckily turn out to be true (like how the
friends that he last met two years ago are beyond suspicion). It’s still a true mystery story, though,
with a satisfying resolution. The main clue did escape my attention as it whizzed past at the
rapid pace of the story. And, better still, it charmingly evokes the feel of the Charlie Chan films.

If I was running this scenario as an H&H adventure (I’ve seldom, in 28 years of gaming,
been lucky enough to have players who enjoy a mystery scenario, but hypothetically), I would
make a list of assumptions the players could make that are true and roll for one assumption for
each Hero -- like a rumor table, but with all true ones. Nothing bogs down a mystery scenario
more than players who are afraid of spending too much time on a dead end and, I suspect, this
approach would help narrow their options without making the scenario feel railroaded. I would also
take from this story the effect of its pacing and be prepared to have a character around the Heroes
voice a clue or helpful suggestion – or just have something happen around the Heroes, like a
knife thrown from the dark – at frequent intervals.

For a longer scenario, I might also take an old time movie, like a Charlie Chan film that my
players are unlikely to have seen or recall accurately, and steal from it like crazy.

Following the longest story in the issue is a one-page feature called “Off Side” that consists of
four, one-panel jokes. The jokes aren’t funny, but I suspect they aren’t meant to be. Instead of an
abrupt transition between features, these one-pagers serve as a sort of pallet cleanser, getting
you ready for the next story. Perhaps one reason there are no successful anthology comic books
anymore is that this technique has been forgotten. The abrupt transition forces the reader
to either ‘switch gears’ quickly or put down the comic book for a while and come back to it later,
while a successful comic book is devoured in one sitting.

That said, the next feature was not worth the pallet cleansing, being instead another three pages
of pallet cleansers bearing the name and character of Lala Palooza. Lala is an upper class society girl plagued by her comic relief, good-for-nothing, Wimpy-like, live-in brother Vincent.  Indeed, if Lala was ever actually the star of these one-pagers, she has long-since been eclipsed by Vincent’s shenanigans. Vincent fights and gambles when he’s not being idle and avoiding work, making it impossible to understand why Lala would put up with him – but I suppose that’s more thought than you’re supposed to invest in this. The past page of the three is the last, with the semi-clever notion of contrasting Vincent’s classy-sounding diary entries with how he really spends his day.

Rance Keane is Feature Comics’ resident cowboy. The plot is nothing original – a conman is pretending to be the inheritor of a ranch so he can sell it, but Rance can tell he’s a phony because the conman is dumb enough to use the wrong hand. What makes this story worth studying is that every character -- the sheriff, the old Indian, the cowhand -- has a history with Rance and we even learn who long he has known them. Every H&H Editor needs to put at least this much effort into planning how Supporting Cast Members know each other and how they figure into the Heroes’ back stories.
Rance would enjoy some better than average artwork in future issues, but none of it is on display yet in issue #24.

The following two pages are more pallet-cleaning comic strip reprints. ‘Toddy’ is about a Dennis the Menace-like young scrapper who clearly makes his mother miserable. ‘Mortimer Mum’ is less clear. In one half-page installment, Mortimer becomes a ‘mum’ when he finds a baby in a basket on his doorstep, but the following installment is a short joke at Mortimer’s expense with no baby in sight.

Two pages of comic strip reprints of ‘Jane Arden’ follow, spread out over four pages. It’s hard to say what Jane is. Each page of her strip ends in a paper doll of Jane or one her friends with some outfits to dress them up in (go on, kids, cut up your comic books!) so it would seem she’s a model, but the police are asking her to go undercover for them at the beginning of this adventure. The plot is similar to the Charlie Chan story, but this time Jane needs to find a jewel thief by locating his fence, rather than picking him out from a crowd of suspects. There’s not much to recommend about Jane Arden for H&H, though perhaps one could make an argument for using paper dolls as miniatures. The artwork on Jane Arden is quite good and usually the best work in Feature Comics since Will Eisner’s Black X
moved to Smash Comics.

At the bottom of each page of Jane Arden is a shorter strip called Lena Pry, a very poor quality Li’l Abner clone. The less said about it the better.  The two-page ‘Big Top’ is a straightforward soap opera, but with all the visual appeal of the circus. It anticipates the movie The Greatest Show on Earth by 14 years, but is otherwise of little use to gamers.

Another page of ‘Off Side’ follows with one good visual joke out of five attempts. This time the pallet cleanser is there to get you ready for ‘The Clock Strikes’. This was Feature Comics’ big draw until Doll Man debuted. Bought from his previous publisher, Centaur, The Clock is not only widely credited for being the first original masked character in comic books and for being the “missing link” between the pulp heroes and the superhero genre, but also must hold a record for the sheer number of titles he jumped around between two companies. That said, it is also easy to see how The Clock would up languishing in obscurity, with the fault almost entirely being in the hands of his creator, George Brenner. A subpar artist, Brenner would seldom draw any kind of action scene, would trace old panels as often as he could, and one time committed the unpardonable sin of reusing the entire art from an earlier issue with only the word balloons changing.

In this installment, Brian O’Brian (usually spelled O’Brien) drops in on his friend, Police Captain Kane (hint for H&H players: police contacts are great for picking up plot hooks!), and learns of a swindler who is about to get away scott free because the witness against him has been murdered. The police have nothing other than circumstantial evidence linking the swindler to the crime, who has an alibi to boot. Still, that doesn’t keep Brian from suspecting him and he mails him one of The Clock’s business cards with the threat that he will show up at midnight. The swindler, frightened, summons all his accomplices to help protect him. This is all the proof The Clock was waiting for, as he needed to catch the swindler and the real killer in the same room to prove their collusion. He then paralyzes
all three mobsters present with nerve pinches so the police will find them together. How a good
lawyer wouldn’t manage to get them off on evidence like that is never explained, but in a five-page story you can’t expect an episode of Law & Order.

The best lesson the H&H Editor can take from this is not to get too hung-up on the reality of how the law works. Flimsy evidence and the admissibility of evidence gathered by vigilantes are staples of the genre. And in most cases, that’s all it takes. Except for a few popular supervillains, most bad guys who get arrested are never heard from again.

The following pallet cleanser is a half-page of ‘Rude Goldberg’s Side Show’, a quarter-page of
‘Candid Cartoons’ and a quarter-page of rhyming ‘Twisted Tales’. Rude Goldberg’s witty inventions
are rightfully famous and this issue’s mosquito killer is no exception (the mosquito, having dulled
the tip of its proboscis on a false leg, will surely head to the nearest emery wheel to re-sharpen it…).

The next four pages are dedicated to the ‘Joe Palooka’ syndicated comic strip. Joe is a boxer from Brooklyn(though we never see him boxing in this issue) who isn’t well-educated, but his innocence highlights the hypocrisy of everyone smarter around him. It’s a charming strip.

‘They’re Still Talking’ is a one-page pallet cleanser drawn in the ‘Ripley’s Believe It Or Not’
style, but with a sports theme.

The next four-page feature is ‘Gallant Knight’, a Prince Valiant-lite story of the paladins of
Charlemagne. Sir Raymond of Navaria has just won a duel with a Tartar spy, but is still lost in the
Enchanted Forest until he comes across a lone maiden at a bridge who offers him water. The maiden is an “enchantress”, but only in the magic-lite sense that the water is drugged. Easily subdued by soldiers who were hiding nearby, Raymond is dragged off to the court of the unimaginatively named Land of Shadows where he is made a slave.

Meanwhile, Sir Neville goes in search of Raymond only to encounter the same maiden, but luckily thinks he’s too busy to drink the water and has to be dragged down by greater numbers by the soldiers in hiding. Later, Raymond passes Neville’s cell and warns him that all the food and drink is drugged to keep the slaves weak. By not eating, Neville is able to stay strong enough to overcome the guards until he finds someone with a whole pot-full of “potion” that will serve as an antidote to the drug.

With the rest of the slaves freed, the King of the Land of Shadows is quickly overthrown. Raymond stays behind and Neville rides away as this serial draws to its not-too satisfying conclusion, with a note at the bottom that next month will feature the new adventures of Captain Fortune.   No explanation is given as to why these Frenchmen have such English names.


The following pallet cleanser is another page of ‘Rude Goldberg’s Side Show’, ‘Candid Cartoons’, and ‘Twisted Tales’, with the first of the three being the only reason to pause on this page.

The next three pages come from another syndicated comic strip called ‘Dixie Dugan’.  ‘Dixie Dugan’ seems to be a soap opera with a strong vein of comedy thanks to her Pa, a sort of domesticated Captain Haddock. The art is on par with ‘Jane Arden’. At the top of each page is a short strip staring “Good Deed” Dotty, done in an entirely different style. Sort of a homely Little Audrey, Dotty is about as whimsical as you can get in three panels.

‘Slim and Tubby’ is an unusual two-page feature. It’s set on a dude ranch and you’d think
it’s a Western, but it’s really a soap opera. Slim and Tubby are ranch hands, but they’re more like
spectators to the drama going on between the guests on the ranch. The theme of this issue’s installment is boxing, with two guests at the ranch being boxers; one is a bully and the other wants
to teach the first one a lesson by training one of the cowhands (not Slim or Tubby, but a tougher
hand named Benton) to box him.


“Wind screamed through the taut rigging like angry ghouls,” begins the two-page text story “Devil’s Head”. All comic books had a couple of pages of text story back then so they could be sold at cheaper magazine rates. This is a simple, but heartwarming tale about two brothers, one tough and one timid, and the inner strength the former learns of too late from the latter. However, what really makes this story stand out is the overblown prose which, if taken literally, would make for an exciting H&H adventure about a ship beset by ghouls and demons during a storm.

The next syndicated feature is four pages of ‘Ned Brant’ comic strips. Ned is a high school/college football coach who takes some of his players along with him adventures. Because the art is pretty sketchy, it is hard to say what exact age the players are supposed to be. One of them has a rich father who believes mobsters are looting one of his gold mines. He is right, but the coach and players find the secret tunnel to where the gold is being kept and ambush the mobsters.

What makes this H&H-relevant is the temporary Supporting Cast Members – for this adventure only, the regular cast is accompanied by two unnamed government agents. The author uses them exactly right, keeping them around to eliminate false leads while keeping them away from the action until the heroes have had a chance to shine. In this case, had the government agents not been there to check out the tire tracks, the heroes might have followed them and wound up being miles away when the
mobsters doubled back for their gold.

Two pages of ‘The Bungle Family’ follows, a syndicated comic strip about George Bungle and
his domestic adventures of getting so into a radio program that he literally sticks his head inside the
radio, or catching so many fish he sinks his boat and then no one will believe him. It’s light-weight
comedy done in a cartoony style, but the imaginary radio show, “Daggers of Doom” actually sounds more interesting. The artist has a gift for drawing clothing patterns. Each page of ‘The Bungle Family’ is accompanied by a cute two-panel strip called ‘Little Brother’ and a one-panel strip called ‘Another Day Shot’ that misses two chances to be funny.

The next feature is the four-page ‘Reynolds of the Mounted’. This installment is unusual for starting in medias res, jumping into the action without even an explanatory caption. A killer is out for revenge against a village of fur traders.  The effort to bring the killer to justice requires an ensemble cast, with Reynolds assisted by fellow Mounties Bob and Tom and pilot Bert. 

Reynolds is a low-level Fighter; the only time he goes solo, he is knocked out right away. The story has a randomness to it that makes it seem like it was a RPG transcript as well; you would expect Reynolds to deliver the final blow to the bad guy since it is his strip, but Bob is the one who hits the bad guy – with a crashing plane. It’s like Bob blew a saving throw, but the Editor took pity on him and turned his fail into a win. Also worth pointing out to H&H Editors is the role weather plays in the story. Reynolds wants to play it safe and wait for Tom and Bob to come back to him with dynamite, but no Editor would want the low-level Heroes having over-kill like that. So the weather just happens to turn dangerously cold, forcing Reynolds to act rashly or take cold damage.

A one-page pallet cleanser of six panels of mildly amusing ‘Off the Record’ follows.

The last feature is four pages of the syndicated humor strip ‘Mickey Finn’. Mickey is a cop, but this is as much a police procedural as Car 54, Where Are You? half the time, he is just watching his dim-witted Uncle Phil getting into trouble. At the top of each page is a three-panel strip called ‘Nippie’. Nippie is a boy who always does things wrong, but not in a particularly funny way.

One thing the old anthology books apparently did not always do was leave off with something
exciting. I can appreciate the difficulty of balancing humor and adventure, as well as the more important need of hooking the reader with a strong first story. Indeed, this too would be a lesson for the H&H Editor. Each scene in his scenario should be like a Golden Age anthology title, with a strong opening scene to hook them, a good balance of adventure and humor, and scenes that move through the scenario briskly.

(You can read the issue yourself here!)

Feature Comics #23 - pt. 2

It's little uses like this -- ventriloquism for a non-serious diversion - that led me to rethink one-use stunts and expand it to include a skill system.

Used cigarettes, an empty matchbook, and broken glasses are all good clues to leave behind at a crime scene.

This seems pretty clever -- trick kidnappers into coming out of hiding by pretending you're trying to undercut them.

I also think more good guys should call the bad guys "suckers".

The first mobster clearly fails his morale save upon seeing The Clock. But later, when circumstances change, the same mobster is given a second morale save and gets a different result.

This is Rance Keane. It's unlikely that the rattlesnake is just a wandering encounter; more likely, the Editor has set encounter areas around the waterhole, like an open-air hideout, and the rattlesnake is just in one of them and the bandits in another. It's certainly unusual to set up encounter areas like this that are within line of sight with each other, but would make for a challenging scenario.

A pretty funny Off the Record panel.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Feature Comics #23 - pt. 1

My poor eyes! The Charlie Chan feature debuting in this issue has 20+ small panels per page.

Searching a small room normally takes 10 minutes for one search check, so Charlie is being quite thorough here.

Heroes can apparently try to force a lock however many times they need to.

A dark light camera -- able to take pictures in the dark, or through opaque objects -- would be a trophy item.

I thought the solution to the puzzle was clever, and not impossible to solve (though I'd probably have

to give my players a clue or two).

I was also unaware of that trivia about how the Bank of England is said as if plural in England. A curious people, the English.

This puzzle just isn't obvious enough -- players would need some clue that there's a message hidden in the letter, if not actually told to think of it as a word find puzzle.

Here's something you don't see every day -- an exciting stunt being performed entirely off-panel. The deadstick stunt is good for silent landings.

If you're playing a Detective -- or a non-combat-oriented character concept -- make sure you have a fighter among your loyal supporting cast.

If Heroes find a plane sitting out, they should probably have to save vs. plot to find the distributor head not removed (apparently this was the equivalent of leaving your car doors locked).

This is Gallant Knight, and this is a trick best used sparingly by the Editor, or players won't trust guides anymore.

The Gallant Knight is either an amazing tracker or supremely confident -- he can find one man's tracks among all those hoof prints, and knows exactly who they belong to?

I do like the idea that the forest is so maze-like that the Heroes need a guide to get them through it quickly.

$29 for a boy's bicycle (I assume a very nice one).

The Clock Strikes illustrates that, just because someone is in your supporting cast, doesn't mean they'll do everything you want them to. Here, Brian (The Clock) has to try to convince the police chief to let him come along to see a crime scene, but botches his reaction roll and gets told no.

This could be a deliberate reaction to the first Bat-Man story, and how easily Bruce Wayne got to go along with Commissioner Gordon to a crime scene. George Brunner did keep his eye on the emerging superhero genre and tended to be fairly critical of its authors (wait until we get to his Superman parody story).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)