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 #18 - pt. 4

Only because I'm a Harry Campbell fan, I'm going to devote one more blog post to this issue, devoted entirely to Dean Denton...despite Dean not being my favorite of Campbell's characters, and this installment in particular being terribly racist.

At least Campbell, as usual, had done his homework. "Bomba" is Boma, capital city of the Belgian Congo, and is still an important city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today.

The text makes it sound like Katanga is a city, but it is a province in the southeast corner of the Congo. The narrator's assertion that Katanga is 700 miles away is pretty accurate.

"Compagnie Belgique" is not a real thing, but seems very plausible, even though  the correct way to say it would be "Compagnie de la Belgique," or Belgium Company.

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Here we see a rare example of kit-bashing hi-tech trophy items during an adventure instead of during downtime. This is how a scientist class would use powers, which would here include a new power, Detect Radiation.  It's a weird sort of power and not how, I think, Geiger counters actually work. It's functioning here more like a long-range Locate Object spell, or a Find the Path spell, rather than detecting something's presence in a certain radius.

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Oh look, Dean is sexist now too. Sigh...

You're going to have to choke down some really terrible dialogue on this page, but one interesting piece of dialogue is the unusual phrase from Dean, "you're like money from home!" While certainly rare today, I wonder if this was a more common saying circa 1940.

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And check out that sleight of hand! Has Absalom been carrying rabbits and canaries around in his pockets all this time, just hoping for an opportunity to do a magic act? Or is there more than even simple cantrips going on here? It almost seems more like an Animal Summoning spell!

This page is troubling to me, from a game mechanics perspective. We have an aerial dogfight and, the way I have the mechanics for this working out in my head, you make attack rolls each turn you are facing your opponent's plane and the more hits you get, the more a percentage chance of a random complication happens. I see this all the time in dogfight scenes -- but not this one, where the plane simply goes down without explanation, almost as if it had simply run out of hit points.

I guess I will need to watch for more examples.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

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

This is still Spy Hunters. They may be out in the middle of the Arab world, but I can imagine my players wanting that combat car no matter where they are.

The old man would be called a stool pigeon in an urban campaign. Either way, characters who can share rumors are valuable supporting cast.

Hmm,that's not a very useful map. The markings down in the lower left hand corner look like marsh, but it's highly unlikely there are marshes near this terrain. An oasis, maybe? I also can't find Hardet on a map. I suspect it's a fictional city.

The story isn't very clear on what gave away the ambush. Maybe they were too hasty? Moving at full movement rate is something that might make you lose your surprise turn.

We rejoin The Eye Sees now.  Floating eyes -- based loosely on this feature -- have been in Hideouts & Hoodlums since the beginning. But we can examine those stories more closely now and see what else we can add to them.

The Eye can either use a Disintegrate spell, or can wreck things very thoroughly.

There are several possibilities for this first panel. Floating eyes either have low Armor Class and are hard to hit, have some kind of defensive buffing power, or can use the spell Protection from Normal Missiles.

A car is beyond the limit of the Telekinesis spell for all but high-level magic-users, so this is either proof that they are high-level magic-users, or an example of the Raise Car power, which any low-level superhero can do.

Our last feature is Dean Denton. Doppelgangers were shape-changing mobsters in 1st edition, and were changed in 2nd edition to be the more common archetype of the evil double of one of the Heroes. Here we get the reverse of that -- a good double for one of the villains.

We also get a modified car with a gun slot in the back, and a report of paralytic gas with a remarkable area of effect -- the entire prison!

If you're baffled by how the good double for The Conqueror managed to survive a room pumped full of hydrocyanide gas (hydrocyanide would be hydrogen cyanide, also known as prussic acid), it's because Dean slipped him an antidote in a syringe on the previous page. Dean's antidote seems to deliver immunity for at least 10 minutes.

Dean's list of Supporting Cast Members includes the governor!

And that's it for Keen Detective Funnies. Good bye!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #12 - pt. 3

The Eye apparently also can be invisible and use Phantasmal Image, at least once per day each.

This is Dean Denton, the guy who's gimmick is being a scientific ventriloquist. Here, he's investigating murder via poisoned dart, but the real interesting thing here is the "no electric connections; must be one of the new self-energizing units!" Was that a thing in the 1930s?

Although the feature refers to them as both units and "cells," I think what we're talking about is batteries. Batteries have been around forever. Recharging (what I think "self-energizing" means) have been around since 1859, but they used lead instead of sodium. In fact, I can't find any evidence of sodium-based batteries before the 1960s. So where did this idea come from? I'm stumped, gentle reader!

I had to research this. Light that can translate into sounds has come up before in the early comics, but the technology being referenced had always eluded me -- until now. What is being referenced is the technology of the photophone, which Alexander Bell apparently considered his greatest invention. An actual photophone had a short range of 700 feet, but in comic books a photophone seems much more effective than that.

There's some dressing detail for a modern cult temple here, but mainly I'm just liking this page because the layout is great. I was slow to warm up to Dean Denton, but when the ventriloquism angle is underplayed, I'm really enjoying this feature now.

It's disappointing that Dean doesn't use something more scientific to find the light beam, but at least he smartly tests his hypothesis with one of the photophone receivers before barging in on the hideout.

Cultists are now a mobster type in second edition Hideouts & Hoodlums.

That second panel is such good storytelling. "Another illusion shattered" hints at a tragic backstory and makes you feel for that poor woman, even though you're never going to see her in a comic book again for as long as you live.

(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 #10

The Masked Marvel seems to have forgotten he has superpowers in this installment. Instead he does things like creep on others with his "raudion-detector" -- yet another TV set that can see anything like a crystal ball.

I'm including this page because this ordinary mob boss has 500 lbs. of dynamite at his disposal. Sometimes, you can just go crazy outfitting the bad guys with resources. Plus, it makes for a more level playing field once the Heroes are higher level and still facing mobsters.

This is from Spy Hunters. I like to include any maps I find on this blog. This one is more of a tactical map than a terrain map, but maybe it would be useful for someone planning a battle scenario in India.

The guy rolling around shirtless is Gabby Flynn. I share this page because tripping attacks seem unusually potent at knocking people out in two different fights here. Could a trip do as much damage as a weapon?

I'm not sure what to make of this. Bellows with a red pepper attachment, as a stunning weapon? If it's that potent, I'm not sure why Heroes would ever rely on anything else. I could see maybe allowing this as a blinding weapon, but not incapacitating.

The reference to an "ogre" shouldn't be taken literal; Gabby's opponent barely qualified for a thug, let alone ogre stats.

This is from "Foggy Night", a serial with Officer O'Keefe as the hero. Somehow, O'Keefe is stunned by a bullet, is dropped from a height, and still manages to come around a little later (on the next page). If the bullet had knocked him unconscious, by H&H rules he should have been killed by the fall.

Dean Denton may be a scientific detective, but he can't seem to figure out a way around a smokescreen. H&H will have evasion rules for chase scenes...but maybe the real issue here is Dean being afraid of hitting pedestrians in the smokescreen. In that case, Dean's Alignment stops him, not the smokescreen itself.

Stunts have come a long way already since they were first introduced in 1st edition. Here we see Out of the Sun, a relic from the Aviator class and its stunt list. Though these are going to be absent from the 2nd ed. Basic Book, they will likely have a place in an Advanced Hideouts & Hoodlums Heroes Handbook, which should come out...someday.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #9

The Masked Marvel is slumming on this adventure, tackling stamp counterfeiters. He apparently has a power that allows him to translate codes super fast. A Read Codes power?

As a superhero, MM should be able to rip open that wall safe with brute strength, but instead opts to play safecracker and hope for a lucky skill check.

Here we have a rare example of a disguise failing. A small printing press probably still weights just over a ton, meaning The Masked Marvel had to use Raise Car to lift that.

This is from Spy Hunters and it demonstrates some of the challenging solutions players have to come up with in a low-level campaign, or even a solo mid-level campaign. A more powerful group of Heroes would have just stormed in there and fought their way to the prisoners, not coordinate with the prisoners via thrown note and stage a diversion for them.

And I share this page because these continue to be good tactics. Again, bear in mind that these must be low-level fighters -- because mid-level Heroes can usually take out low-level/Hit Die opponents in large numbers -- so they are using sneakier tactics like hit-and-run raids to steal better weapons from the enemy. They also use the terrain to their advantage, not only using the height advantage of the hill, but seeking out a cave to bottleneck combatants into.

One good thing you can say about cultists -- they know to change their passwords often. There's now a stat entry for cultists in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums.

This interesting wrinkle turns out to be a good history lesson. 3-D film was first shown in 1915, but it either didn't work very well or just failed to catch the public's interest.  Most people wouldn't have even heard of 3-D film until 1936, when a 3-D short won an Oscar, and it would not be until 1939 when millions first witnessed 3-D at the New York World's Fair. Out here in California, though, it is conceivable that many of these cultists had not made the trip to New York yet and could be fooled by their first exposure to 3-D film.

It takes Dean Denton all day to invent something, and it's not even anything major (spoilers: it's a calcium chloride bomb with an external trigger).

What I really like here is the multi-tiered cave complex, where one can lower oneself from the ledge of one level down to a lower level, without having to look for stairs or sloping tunnels to get down.

From a filler page called Detectionotes! -- this note about the FBI not being able to arrest people before 1934 is another useful history lesson for any H&H campaign set pre-1934 (or a later campaign with a very detailed backstory, or a time travel adventure...).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)