Keen Detective Funnies #19 (v. 3 #3) - pt. 2

Yes, Centaur still couldn't afford to color every page! This is still Dan Dennis, FBI, and he's been really slow to get suspicious of the little old lady selling flowers outside the tenement building with a female spy in it he's been watching -- even though it set off red flags for every reader immediately.

Here, at least, he shows good tactics, out-bribing the old lady to get information. 

Invisible ink written on flower petals? Hmm...it seems like petals are too easily destroyed for that to be effective, but it passes comic book logic, I guess. I leave this here for your consideration, when developing coded messages for your own games.

Apparently just holding a gun in the open is cause for a G-Man to belt you in the chops. Works for me! TNT Todd takes down a thug with one punch; the thug must have had very low hit points!

Gee, Todd is pretty brutal. Is he one of the good guys or a D&D murder-hobo? He's also just not very good at anything. He attacked that one guy just for being suspicious, he got himself captured (between pages, I didn't show you that one), instead of ingeniously escaping he has to use threat of force to escape, and then gets caught again right away.

Though, to be fair, that reminds me a lot of my very first Hideouts & Hoodlums playtest. Those poor 1st-level Heroes kept getting knocked down and recaptured left and right. I've tended to go easier on my 1st-level Heroes ever since then.

I have three things to point out about this crudely-drawn page (okay, four, counting that). One, this is not a KKK meeting; these hooded criminals have 1001 written on top of their sheets because they have 1,001 members (we learned this on the previous page I didn't bother sharing). So, every time they recruit or lose a member, they have to all have new monographed sheets made for themselves.

The tiny skull on the desk seems like odd random room dressing, but of course skull decor denotes a bad guy in comics. It would be funny if, based on its position on the desk, if it was just a skull-shaped stapler.

"Give him the gong" took me by surprise, as this is way before I grew up watching The Gong Show on TV. Somehow I'm having trouble finding out how old this saying is, but it seems to predate Chuck Barris.

It's been so long, I had forgotten that we've already seen The Eye several times on this blog already! Here, he's coming to the aid of this paperboy, taken prisoner by three anarchists (they aren't called that, but their cliched behavior indicates it). The Eye either uses Telekinesis or Wreck at Range to destroy the rope -- it really seems unlikely that he/it wastes a powerful Disintegrate just on some rope. 

It's unclear why the Eye is shining light on the boy in panel 5. Is it just a Light spell because the room is dark, or is he/it hypnotizing/charming the boy to make him follow his/its instructions?

Here, The Eye uses Hold Person, which can affect up to three targets, and we see the effect is limp instead of rigid paralysis -- the spell can cause either, as long as the use is consistent. 

We'll jump now into the next story, which stars an old friend of mine (and currently featuring in my Funny Picture Stories anthology!), Dean Denton. This story takes place some months after the most recent one I've republished and -- ah, Harry Francis Campbell, I see you still have a problem with drawing arms that are too short.

The captain is mostly right; the average person cannot dive safely to 500 feet deep underwater. The world record currently stands at 1,082 feet, but that is next to impossible without extensive training for deep sea diving. Indeed, it's dangerous for the average person to dive more than 60' deep. I would say, then, that water pressure can do up to 1 point of damage per 60' past 60' deep, so that at 180' deep a diver takes 1-2 points of damage per melee turn, 1-4 points at 360' deep, and so on.

Compagnie Belgique threw me at first; it looks like a proper name for a company and I looked to see if it was real, but all it means is that Dean went to a Belgian company. 

Harry's work is always full of racism, and Absalom's dialogue here is no exception, but I'm going to give Harry props for at least trying on panel 4. It seems like he put a lot of effort into trying to draw a black man's profile, realistically, perhaps even from a model, instead of the usual caricature. It still came out looking really weird, but that's partly because all the faces around it look rushed and cartoony. In fact, the art overall is just sub-par for Harry. He must have been really rushing towards the deadline on this one.

The end of the story is missing from the copy I have access to, so I never do find out what the helium was for...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Keen Detective Funnies v. 3 #1 - pt. 2

No, this isn't a black and white reprint; Centaur was still having financial difficulty at the beginning of 1940 and could not afford to put color on every page.

Dan Dennis shows you that G-Men did not have to observe rules or laws in comic books. Here, rather than getting a warrant for an autopsy in a sterile medical lab, Dan sneaks a complicit medical examiner into a private funeral home and has the examiner perform one in the dark. Interesting verdict on that autopsy -- unless it was skin cancer, there would be no outwardly visible sign of cancer. I wonder how much cutting up the examiner did.

This is Ed Colton. It's interesting how many similarities there are between this scenario and the Masked Marvel story I shared from yesterday, despite that being a mysteryman story and this being a cowboy story.

Ed lays out a good series of clues that can be gathered at a crime scene.

In order to pull off this bluff, Ed took a deliberate 10' fall into a gulch in order to look injured.

I guess there were not too many ranches with plane hangars in the area, so solving the "who done it" part of this mystery was relatively easy. Finding one of them conveniently holding the murder weapon in the hangar certainly helps.

By making it a tripod-mounted weapon, the Editor has made it virtually impossible to use in melee range, to Ed's benefit.

I laughed at first when confronted with the term "liquid oxygen," but it is a real thing and has apparently been used in rocket fuel in the past.

Of course, the caption is way too long, taking up an entire panel, and includes a lot of detail we just do not need to understand the story.

This is Dean Masters, D.A. There are three ways to handle that trick where he sneaks the tear gas grenade out of his pocket. The player could either make a sleight of hand check (basic skill check) to palm the grenade, rely on surprise rolls, or even just rely on initiative rolls to see if he could set it off before Louie could take an action.

Dean tricks Sam into going out into the hallway and getting shot. My first inclination was to say Sam had to save vs. plot to resist fast-talk, but there's not really anything here to resist. Instead, I would say this is an encounter reaction check situation.

Dean wisely doesn't fire into the crowd -- if he rolls low, he runs a risk of hitting a civilian (there's no game mechanic penalty, by the way, for shooting a civilian, but there could be in-game repercussions, like him losing his job.

Sam takes three bullets before he goes down. With those hit points, he must be a master criminal!

Scenario map (though, admittedly, not very detailed).

This is Captain Forsyth & Sergeant Maclean, Spy Hunters -- a title almost longer than its own feature. Here, we see bandits. We are told they are Arab bandits, but counter to typical racism of the day, there are no visual cues to the bandit leader being an Arab, other than a caption telling us.

$50,000 is a fortune in 1940 money.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 3 #1 - pt. 1

We return now to The Masked Marvel, from Centaur. Originally, we had to decide if The Masked Marvel was a mysteryman or a superhero, but by now his skills have grown so mundane that he appears to be just an aviator.

Although, he does display excellent investigation and math skills, which might suggest he is a mysteryman (with their advanced skill checks).

I don't know if I should be sad or glad that my players don't take the time to leave scenarios in progress to go home to their base and check the rifling on bullets recovered for clues. It doesn't even seem to wind up to be that important a clue in this plot.

 "Ach" is our clue that the unnamed saboteur is German.

The way the Masked Marvel really figures out where the killer came from is by tracing the angle of the bullet holes, and this is legitimate forensic science coupled with trigonometry. One could use skill checks for mathematics, but if time is not a big factor, you could just keep making checks until your numbers work out (i.e., you rolled well enough).

That's a big clue to leave behind on the roof (and apparently it never gets too windy up there!). Remember, if you want your players to be able to finish your scenarios, sometimes the clues have to be really big and obvious.

That's a pretty vague and unintimidating silhouette cast on the clouds. Mysterymen are supposed to trigger morale saves when they do stuff like that, but I might give a +1 bonus because I have trouble accepting that is "feared."

That stunt at the end...I would require a to hit roll first to snag the parachute, followed by burning a stunt to make the parachute wrap around the wing like that.

Modern day pirates need a chance to carry firearms as deadly as sub-machine guns.

I'm not a big Spark O'Leary fan, but I have to admit, that's a fairly clever scheme the pirates had to capture a patrol boat. It's also sort of like how H&H play works for players, always trading up one trophy item for a better, more useful one.

Spark's encounter with the half-pints could be a wandering encounter, or could be a fixed encounter planned by the Editor to make sure Spark gets that clue.

Spotting the concealed hinges on those piles was the result of a secret door check (expert skill check).

There is no reason for Spark, a radio news reporter, to be leading a police raid, except that he must be leveling as a fighter and his level title is higher than beat cops' levels.

There is no reason for Spark to have a cold just then, except to stretch out the story -- or to explain a botched surprise roll with flavor text.

A "high-powered car" is a trophy item, the equivalent of a Car +1.

The trap requires the Editor and the players to agree on interpreting the situation -- would a tripwire make a car crash, or would it just drive through it? The situation is somewhat similar to yesterday's post, where The Owl covered a windshield and made bad guys crash, though here I think the chances of a tripwire making a car skid are so low that the save vs. plot to avoid should be at +4.

The drunk is surely a wandering encounter (unless just a freebie from the Editor?).  If the player had wanted to contest the drunk driver getting ahead of him, they could have rolled driving skill checks (basic skill) until one of them failed to see who reached the curve first (or which one came closest to succeeding). It's a simple race and doesn't need a complex mechanical resolution.

Dan Dennis' "danger sense" is not a real thing, in the sense that he has to actively roll for something. If the assassin fails a surprise roll, then Dan's "danger sense" is what warned him of the attack.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #12 - pt. 1

How sad if I wind up having to end out the year on such mediocre fare from Centaur!




Here we have the return of "The Masked Marvel." If some of this art looks familiar, it is because it was featured prominently in Books II and III of 1st edition Hideouts & Hoodlums. We see a master criminal at work with a high number of thugs working for him; I may have to up the "number appearing" range to 1-12 for thugs.




Note how most of them have Tommy guns, except for that one guy who only brought a pistol. Don't bring a pistol to a Tommy gun fight, Muggsy! In hoodlum descriptions, I tend to present a random range of likely weapons. If the Editor has time, he should determine weapons individually instead of having every mobster fight with the same thing.

Or are they all thugs? One or two of them may be gangsters instead, including the lone guy armed with a revolver. Gangsters are a new mobster type in 2nd edition H&H who have a skill for coercing people to get into cars, not unlike what we're seeing in that last panel.

Master criminals are 3+1 HD hoodlums, but I'm wondering if public enemy number one's need to be an even more powerful type of hoodlum. Maybe 4+1?

Here we see how high the bounty can get on a public enemy number one, at least in the comic books. The sum of $100,000 is rather incredible, considering that the bounty on John Dillinger was only $10,000.


I'm also amused by the phrase "that's a lot of sugar," instead of the more familiar to our ears phrase "that's a lot of dough." I wonder how interchangeable these terms were in common parlance of the time.

That Zr, Zy, and Zl can be put in charge of a squad of policemen each, despite having really goofy code names, tells me they must be at least third-level fighters, which makes them the equivalent of sergeants.

It's almost worth mentioning that this story is the first time a sidekick character dies in a comic book. But then, it's just Zl, so no one was ever shaken up over this.

This is Spark O'Leary, Radio Newshawk. The scenario is that he has to prove the Countess is a phony. Now, some players might just choose to beat her up and then frighten a confession out of her, but Spark goes out of his way to collect lots of evidence.

I point out the fingerprint collecting in particular because this is a go-to for my players, despite the limitations on it at the time. They have to remember that there is no national database of fingerprints they can scan for a match in; the local police station can try to match them against the ones they have on file. They can then try contacting other agencies, but it will be a slow process. At best, I would let you have a save vs. plot to try and get results back as fast as Spark gets them here.

What, I wonder, is the origin of the "organ that can create destructive sound"? It's not quite common enough to be a cliche, but it surely didn't originate in this obscure comic book and this Dan Dennis, FBI story. It's worth pointing out that the villain here is called The Fiend.

The organ sure seems versatile; it can not only wreck, but it can "paralize." My first thought that The Fiend was a mad scientist is giving way to a new theory that he is a magic-user and the organ serves as his wand (since he seems to be casting Hold Person here). Too bad The Fiend is such a poor speller...

Players finding trophies may often wish that they were all properly labeled with instructions, like potion bottles clearly (and honestly!) marked with their contents. At least the Editor, in this case, only gave the player a clue as to which button to press on the organ.

Of course, there goes my magic-user theory, as Dan would not be able to use a wand unless he was also a magic-user. It seems the organ is, instead, a powerful trophy item with a range of, at first, random effects Heroes could trigger -- sort of like a Wand of Wonder, until they figure out how to play it.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #11

Back at Centaur, we rejoin the Masked Marvel as he climbs the side of a building and leaps from one building to another. They're pretty mild as superpowers go, not all that different from what a mysteryman could do with stunts.

Despite looking like an ordinary plane, the Masked Marvel's plane has VTOL capabilities.

Again, the Masked Marvel seems de-powered here, as he finishes a fantastic leap with a swing on a rope, as if he needed that to land safely (though maybe he just does it for a flourish to look cool).

His invention is an everlasting fire extinguisher (a handy trophy item, if not a tad bulky).

This is Dan Dennis, FBI.  Dan's plan is to shut off all power in the city -- including to hospitals -- on the off chance that his hunch is right and the mad scientist is using his own power source. Asking the power company to do something like that for you is one of those things that should require a very high encounter reaction roll -- maybe an 11 or 12 on 2 dice.

This is from Dean Masters, D.A. -- though he's not actually here right now, as this is a long flashback scene involving the bad guy, here called a mad man. I've wrestled with how to stat madmen in Hideouts & Hoodlums, giving them multiple attacks in Supplement V.  Here, madmen appear to just have better carrying capacity.

This is A Russell Granville Adventure, though it's not the adventure I'm interested in here, but that last panel and the discussion of air control in mines. Finally, I have an explanation for why multi-level hideouts will need pit traps, and furnaces and electric fans as well. These will need to be part of the dressing of large underground hideouts.

There's a surprising amount of interesting features on this page. There's the shaft to the surface with baskets of burning coal in them. There's the mystery of the odd crank piece and how it fits to a crane disguised in a chimney. There's the idle speculation about murderers using asbestos suits and gas masks -- well-equipped mobsters, as both have been trophy items on the lists since Book II.

There's a good amount of detection work in this story, and I'm not going to show you all of it, but I'm particularly impressed with Russell Granville here when the questions whether the reporters are real. Because, as a player, I might have suspected as well that this was a perfect opportunity for the Editor to introduce a twist in the story. Also, it's just a good idea for Heroes to fact check things they learn in-game -- not every character they meet is going to tell them honest information.

Pirates steal $15 million in gold from this ship -- pirates seem to be the most successful criminals in early comics.

The naval destroyer has a "sonic detector" on board -- another term that would have predated Radar.

This is Dean Denton, by the way.

Language, Dean!  But, really, did you fail to search your arch-nemesis upon capturing him? Did you let your Editor have his own characters do it, knowing that he could have fudged search dice rolls, or hand-waved rolling altogether?

And just how did the Conqueror have paralyzing gas concealed on his person? Concealed capsules? There's a paralyzing raygun in the trophy section, and sleeping gas capsules, but nothing yet that combines the two...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #6 - pt. 1

I don't really want to like scientist/ventriloquist/adventurer Dean Denton as much as I do, but he's just such a good RPG gamer. In last night's Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign, triangulating to find the source of a radio signal came up. We just winged the science of it, but this what you'd have to do in order to triangulate a signal over a large area.

Dean knows where to go, but like a smart gamer, he stops along the way and talks to characters he meets to pick up rumors (no doubt "Ain't nothin' on it but a bunch of old Indian ruins" came right off the Editor's random rumor table).

This is from Spy Hunters.  One of the biggest challenges to running H&H is the perennial question -- could technology do that, circa 1940? In this instance, I now have confirmation that you could hook up a mechanical alarm system to a desk drawer.

I also like the Cinderella motif here. If the sandal fits, you've found your intruder!

I like how this army captain, instead of delegating the reconnaissance task to an underling, puts himself at risk by checking out the west hill. He knows you can't delegate and still earn XP!

I also appreciate that this page not only shows me what a helio-graph set looks like, but gives me a good sense of scale as well.

You know your Editor is going easy on you when there's breakable bottles and big wooden clubs just lying around your jail cell, plus a conveniently labeled box of TNT just outside your cell.

Hillmen could be statted as nomads (see Book II).

As new hero Dan Dennis learns, smart mobsters use more than one secret password in their hideouts.

Comic book writers, always prone to exaggeration, may be too quick sometimes to use the word "giant". This is clearly more of a thug than a giant Dan is about to fight.

This strip is Crane of Scotland Yard, but it's the trap I want you to look at. The victim is tied to a tree, a lion is chained up nearby. It's hungry so it lunges and lunges, always pulling the stake on its chain a little more loose until...

For a lower level version, you can replace the lion with a dog. For a higher level version, you could replace the lion with a dinosaur...

As common a tool as dictaphones are in comic books, it's rare to see a good picture of one. This might be the clearest visual of one I've seen yet, in this Dan Dix story.

Although...after seeing this bus, I'm concerned that maybe Dan Dix might not be a good source for historical accuracy. Did buses ever look like that?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)