Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 2

Here we have Dr. Strange using wrecking things, only to find his great strength "sapped." This actually happens just like that in Hideouts & Hoodlums, when activated powers run out and you're out of powers to activate. By waiting until the next day for his deathtrap, the villains have actually given him time to regain all his powers from the previous day.

I'm tempted to stat wild hill warriors as berserkers. I could also make them 2nd level fighters, using the level title of warrior from That Other Game.  I could also just use natives, since that's the broad stereotype being used here. 

I've never seen elephants in an arena before! Too bad Doc has Raise Elephant prepared. And a Leap power (looks like II or better) that makes escaping from an arena super-easy. 

As unstoppable as Dr. Strange seems to be, you have to wonder why he doesn't stay at the arena and take out Kong then, and sneaks back in disguise later. Maybe because there's more pages to fill...?

"You're fighting for freedom, men! Don't waste your shots! Keep dropping like flies - even though I could have wrecked my way through that wall for you at any time!"

Or could he? Dr. Strange has to be at least level 3, the bare minimum for wrecking stone walls, but he could also just be rolling poorly and failing to wreck the walls the whole fight so far. 

Or..maybe he really did not try wrecking through the wall until now. This is an early precedent for a trope of the superhero genre to come, that says superheroes try to stay neutral in the course of events until something occurs that ordinary people can't deal with on their own, like a deathray. Of course, not every superhero respects this trope - like Superman himself, who almost exclusively dealt with mundane crime despite being able to do so much more. 

Is this our first evidence that Doc is Neutral in Alignment? Hmm...

Interestingly, the deathray can only affect a single target at a time. So, even though it is killing them like a deathray, it is also, game mechanics-wise, perhaps no different than a Magic Missile spell (with cool flavor text). 

And here we've got a line-up of standard cliches - the big cat (a panther, this time) in the cage, the damsel in distress...and somehow Doc gets to the panther before it gets to the damsel? Now, I've covered many times before in this blog that random initiative needs to trump common sense when it comes to who goes first in a comic book story, but, Doc is wrecking things in the same turn that the panther is first attacking. So, we can only assume, then, that the panther missed with every attack on Virginia, even though it didn't even need to roll very high (reminds me of my rolls when I'm playing!). 

So, we also get the cliches of a big cat being killed (SIGH), and the villain threatening to blow himself up to take out the Hero. I bet it doesn't work...

Hmm...now, if I was running this scenario, I would have let Kong drop the potion as a free action; that is too easily done, and not a direct attack, for it to be trumped by initiative. 

Also, why not use Kong's raygun to revive the men, instead of experimenting with Alosun in a totally untested way (though, I suppose, Doc could argue that they're already dead, what worse could happen to them?)?

Here's a new character and an interesting twist on Tarzan and the Jungle Book. Instead of the infant being raised by animals, he's raised by yogis in India. They teach him potent spells like Rope Trick and ...Wall of Force, to stop mad dogs with? That seems a bit like overkill.

*SIGH* ...what I wouldn't give to read a magic-user story that doesn't throw around ridiculously overpowered spells all the time. Causing a submarine to rise into space ...well, that's got to be a Wish spell. So we've already given The Ghost 17 brevet ranks! Just to get him through a wandering encounter!

Here we get a dose of more insanely powerful magic being tossed about haphazardly -- a Telekinesis spell as powerful as the Raise Trolley Car power, and a Teleport Sandwich spell able to reach around the world. 

Chance's only interest in fighting crime is when the man who just hired him to entertain at parties was murdered. Had the man not been murdered, would Chance have been content to be a party magician instead?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 1

It's no Multiverse of Madness, but on this Dr. Strange adventure we get a trip to the Orient. Or at least as far as Chinatown, so far. Is this page worth sharing? I thought it noteworthy for three things. One, "plans for canal fortifications" felt like such a welcome relief from the upteenth adventure to revolve around a stratoplane or a new type of torpedo. Two, there's the interesting distinction between Chinese and Manchurian. Although we think of Manchuria as part of China today, and it was pretty much assimilated by China long before 1940, throughout most of the 1930s Manchuria had been conquered and "liberated" by Japan. Three, most heroes' contacts in Chinatown are "respectable" businessmen who turn out to be criminals, but this story skips over all that and reveals this guy Fang as a gang leader from the start. This is better (and less racist), as it frees up the rest of Chinatown to be represented by real respectable businessmen. 

That's got to be pretty embarrassing, falling for the ol' go-in-first-while-I-lock-the-door-behind-you trick. Almost as embarrassing as the collection of racist cliches in panel 3! But even that may pale in comparison to how incredibly dorky Doc looks in panel 4, with his incredibly misshapen shoulder, Don King hairstyle, and his short pants that barely reach his socks.   

That is a lot of attackers coming at Doc, but he does have a tactical advantage of bottlenecking them on the same side of the railing. 

More interesting to me is the last panel, with all the hideout dressing in the corner. There's a box, a pail, a coffer, a barrel, a chest, a...couch? A drip pan for oil changes? It's harder to tell with the smaller objects.

Trap doors with slides to lower levels? How D&D-like! A room filled with coffins? Also D&D-like! We only differ when the action moves away from the hideout to a new locale -- though cargo ships can also be hideouts!

I'm pretty sure Doc just killed four men with his Raise Elephant power. 

He could have wrapped up the adventure right there by capturing the men on the ship and learning from them who they worked for, but instead he inexplicably leaves the scene to go talk to someone, so the ship can slip away in his absence, and then has to get lucky trying to find it again. He can't track over water, so this is just a question of a lucky wandering encounter, and/or the Editor just being nice. 

Doc is pretty rich, owning a yacht and a plane already. We've talked many times about brevet ranks for this game. Do we need to start talking about ...brevet starting money?

Doc is lucky that plane isn't a rental!

There isn't any mechanic that would determine if your foot catches in something, so that's simply Editor's Fiat.

Kicking a plane out of the water...hmm. I'm tempted to say that's Extend Missile Range with several Roman numerals after it...but since it isn't used for combat, this could just be flavor text. 

More important is the following panel. How far can a superhero swim? Non-superhumans have swam over 100 miles without stopping, so the fact that Doc swam 30 isn't that impressive. Maybe it's the speed that he swam it? But that could be measured easily with a Race the- power. Anyway, back to my original question...I'm going to say that H&H Heroes can swim 1-6 miles per point of Constitution they have.

Hoo-hum, the old cliche of the warship disguised as a tramp! 

Shielding himself from fire is easy, that's just the power Fire Resistance at work. But shielding or blocking someone else with his own body...that requires a different mechanic, one that is universal in application and not specific to a certain power -- since there are many circumstances in a H&H game when the Heroes might need to shield people.

I am reminded of a recent time I ran Monsters!Monsters!, the Tunnels & Trolls variant where you play the monsters. In it, the only game mechanic outside of combat was saving throws. Need to hide? Make a saving throw! Trying to duck behind cover? Make a saving throw! Shield someone with your body? Oh! Hmm...

There's some insidious history alteration going on here I should point out. Kachukuo isn't a real place, but it looks like it's based on Manchukuo. Yes, Manchukuo had a ruthless dictator, but that dictator was Japanese, not Manchurian, and he was Hirohito -- Manchukuo was a puppet state created in Manchuria by their Japanese "liberator"/conquerors, as I alluded to at the beginning of this post. Suggesting that the Manchurians themselves were the bad guys suggests Japanese sympathies which surely evaporated in December 1941.

 

Besides that, there's a rare (at this point) example of a superhero punching a villain upwards into the air. The H&H mechanics deal with converting damage into feet pushed at a 1:1' ratio, but if that should be modified to account for gravity, I haven't done so yet - nor will likely do, honestly; sometimes realism just robs us of chances to have fun.  

The old man being attacked feels like a wandering encounter, while the twist of the "main bad guy" being so civil is refreshing, even if he's just being civil in a Bond villain-way.

Doing random good deeds have a way of coming back to help Heroes later, like how the old man knows a secret entrance. It would have been nice to see how the secret door operated! We do get some nice hideout dressing, with the carved pillars, and the closing walls trap is a classic. 

 

I think it's interesting how there's guards stationed at the secret entrance. I guess Kong doesn't like to take any chances? Or perhaps they too were just wandering encounters, heading back to their guard station.

 

It's interesting that Kong is so sure this cage will work when he knows Doc just busted through a stone wall. I wonder what the bars are made out of/what they were treated with? 

I also like the prismatic raygun, each color having a different power. This one is quite powerful - not for the charm ray, but the raise dead ray.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)
 

 

Thrilling Comics #2 - pt. 3

Saving the Wayne Girl is worth 100 XP for the good deed. Capturing the Mask is worth $25,000 and almost guarantees a level up.

And yet...letting the villain slip away once he's underwater is a staple of the genre, so he would have had to make a save vs. plot to dive for the Mask.

Now we'll jump into Tom Niles, Undersea Raider. This strip is even harder to read, with smaller font and gray captions. I could read enough for this part to jump out at me, about Berlin being a seaport. That can't be right, can it? I thought. Apparently, Berlin is linked to the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and the Rhine River by a network of rivers, lakes, and canals.

There are a lot of ways this encounter at the bottom could have gone without violence. I mean, don't be so jumpy, Tom! They probably just wanted to check your papers. But in fairness, the soldiers seem to jump the gun too for no reason. It's a good idea to always come up with an idea for your encounter and a motive for the mobsters to work for.

The ol' impersonate-an-officer trick backfires because the commanding officer makes his save vs. plot. The guards at the door fail their saves and fall for such an obvious bluff.

I'm not sure how you would use a bayonet to bend iron bars, but apparently it was easy enough for Tom that it happened off-panel.

I honestly don't know how difficult a zip line is to ride, and if it should be treated as a skill or not.

I wonder if there is really a single lever on a submarine that would let water in. That doesn't seem like good design to me.

I really wanted to share this page because the U-boat is the U-46, and that was the name of my school district!

Tom's strategy seems sound, but I'm not sure how those tactics would play out mechanically in Hideouts & Hoodlums. I'm not liking the idea of fast-moving opponents being able to move into range, attack, and move out without counter-attack, as it seems grossly unfair the way the combat system is set up now. I may have to come back to thinking about that, particularly later when we start looking at more speedster superheroes.

Mobsters can punch women without a save vs. plot!

Despite only being halfway ready for second level, Tom is already given a captaincy at the end, as a special reward for his mission. Special rewards and titles can be worth XP as well.














There's trouble at the hospital and the police are called in. Naturally, a policewoman is put on the case and...immediately dresses up like a vigilante? Does she not think being a policewoman would give her enough pull with the hospital to let her talk to the staff? Or is this some subtle social commentary, that as a woman she feels unsupported by the establishment and has to go outside the boundaries to do what needs doing?

She lucks onto that mobster way too easily in the hospital, like a really lucky wandering encounter roll, or maybe a set encounter.

The assassin is a good one, offing the mobster before he can get out any clue.

The Woman in Red also loses the fight quickly, as a 1st-level Hero most likely would.

Typical of the mysteryman convention, everyone who sees her thinks she's one of the bad guys. You'd think she would just give up and show them her badge...

There's no such thing as an automatic hit in H&H, even when you're firing with a gun and your target is standing less than 10' away from you.

Implied in panel 3 is that the Woman in Red killed those mobsters, or else she could have questioned them when they woke up.

The caption in panel 5 tells us that the assassin we saw earlier is also classed as a mysteryman. Probably at least 2nd level, since he worked over WiR so quickly.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Thrilling Comics #2 - pt. 2

We're picking up where we left off with the Golden Age Dr. Strange -- though I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the microfiche scans. These are the best copies I know of out on the Internet.

The turning letter that unlocks a secret door is worth remembering. Though, if a superhero suspected there was a door there and wanted to get through badly enough, there is always a Raise power or wrecking things to get through the statue. I would treat this particular secret door as the machines category, one better than door, since the statue adds a non-door element to it.

The ol' "sarcophagus that's full of real diamonds but opens pit traps around the sarcophagus if you disturb it" trap. It looks like the pit has five crocodiles in it, but it's really hard to tell with the quality of this scan.

Dr. Strange's ability to punch boulders away strikes me as flavor text; all we really need for this is his save vs. missiles mechanic to make sure he's not taking damage.

There's no game mechanic that would account for how the boulders break the ledges apart; that seems like Editor fiat.

It doesn't need to be said that superheroes have leaping powers; the distance pictured here looks like one that even non-superheroes might be able to bridge.

Strange beats Crewe in initiative, letting him act before the drugs can be thrown away.

Speaking of thrown away...we know Strange could likely have leapt after Crewe and saved him, but he chose not to. Strange has already demonstrated that he's comfortable with letting villains fall to their deaths.

Interesting how we never hear about this miraculous wonder drug again. Maybe it didn't work as well as advertised.

We're going to jump into the next adventure, this being the debut of The Three Comrades. It's the first story I've seen drawn by Howard Sherman, who will later co-create Dr. Fate!

Newspapers are handy for dropping plot hooks!

Reading shorthand, like decoding a code, is a basic skill and not something automatic, like speaking to Germans or aliens.

A rare instance of a smell-based clue!

I like the little detail of, not just seeing a light, but a reflection of light in the plant tipping them off. I also like how every entrance has a guard on it, even on the roof.

That looks more like a necktie than a carat to me. Regardless, I have to pause now and consider what game mechanic in Hideouts & Hoodlums would emulate this scene? Grappling, with the result of throw? The actual tie grabbing is an irrelevant detail, as H&H focuses on the results, not how you get there.

The same here; it doesn't really matter how much the bullet touches the head or just "parts the hair," as the damage is just an abstraction.

The beat cop is a wandering encounter.

The kicked barrel is an improvised weapon...but a barrel can pick up a lot of speed rolling down a stairwell. I'd be inclined to assign it normal damage.

Did The Mask change his mask since we last saw him...?










This is the first time I've ever seen someone take damage from jumping into a car before! I guess the best way to handle this is to give the jumper a save vs. science, with no damage if successful, and regular damage if it fails.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

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Thrilling Comics #2 - pt. 1

Mike's Amazing World of Comics tells me that the next comic book I should be reviewing, in order, is War Comics #1. But I accidentally reviewed that early, a year ago. Oops! So let's skip another ahead to Better's Thrilling Comics and the original Dr. Strange.

Our adventure begins with a mysterious death and the easy plot hook of Strange being asked to investigate it by the police. Strange looks for clues and, in an unusual move that I want to call your attention to, appears to be using scissors to cut into the dead man's clothing (unless, of course, he's also planning on performing an autopsy...). This is how he finds a secretive pin sewn into the seam of the clothing.

Note how Strange now has dark hair. Does he, instead of wearing a costume or uniform, just darken his hair before going into action?

Really, Fleming? The only place in the world you would find a three-headed serpent is an ancient lost city? I decided to do a quick Internet search on three-headed serpents to see if he was right. Besides an awful lot of hits for the video game Hitman 2, there was an article about a pillar depicting a three-headed serpent that came from Delphi. Good thing Strange didn't go there instead!

I wouldn't put much stock in what that assistant's telling you either, Strange. And you, Richard Hughes, writer of this story, if you knew you were going to base this story in Tibet, how hard would it have been in 1940 to do a little research and learn the real name of the desert there (which is the Gobi)?

One of the nice things about that last page is the fallibility of the assassin, who allows the assistant to get one vital word out before offing him. This makes it pretty easy to follow from one plot character right to the next -- and then risk killing him by punching him through a wall.

The game mechanics of Hideouts & Hoodlums (remember, this blog is also about a game!) don't currently support punching villains through walls, and would either need a modification to the pushing rules, or a new power that combines damage with wrecking things. I would definitely need to consider this as we move ahead, as I can think of quite a few later comic books that combine violence with such a flagrant disregard for property.

This third page, to the right, makes no sense to me...

Strange seems to have Crewe dead to rights already, yet after beating up his henchmen and showing off his Nigh-Invulnerable Skin, he just leaves so he can tail Crewe instead. You would think Crewe would be extra-cautious now about Strange and not act so brazenly criminal.

As stupid as Crewe is, his henchmen must be even stupider to nab a girl and bring her to their boss, just for loitering around a giant skyscraper. Strange isn't happy with them either, as he's perfectly willing to toss one of them out the window, knowing it's a lethal fall from that height.

Now this page has some tricky geometry to it. I'm not sure how Strange twists his body to land on the roof across the street, but it definitely appears that he is still leaping instead of flying. And, the fact that he needs to land on the roof instead suggests there is an upper limit to how far he feels he can fall safely.

In game mechanics-terms, maybe an upper limit needs to be put on the Feather Landing power. 

A herb that cures diseases like the spell would be a very valuable item in any campaign, and probably one best to keep out of the Heroes' grasp so it doesn't change the campaign world too dramatically.

Mongols are just wandering around Tibet? Mongolia is about 1,400 miles from Tibet. Seems like more writing done without research to me. Though the artist, Alexander Kostuk, at least looked at some old references for how Mongolians once dressed.

Strange uses his wrecking things ability on a stone wall, a door, and a cage here, demonstrating that a superhero needs the ability to use that game mechanic in quick succession.

What's going on with the guards being drawn like primitive African natives, hurling spears? How does that make sense in Tibet?

Rescuing prisoners is always a good idea, for the "good deed" XP award, the useful information they may have about the hideout, and their Supporting Cast recruitment potential.

Animals never fare well against Golden Age comic book Heroes and the fights are usually over in a single panel. This one, with Strange fighting two lions, occurs largely off-panel!

Once again, Hughes gets his geography wrong. The "Mountains of the Moon" are a legendary mountain range in east Africa, once thought to be the source of the Nile River.

More evidence that ordinary people can make push attacks on superheroes.

Strange wisely carries a flashlight.

Finding a secret door usually includes finding the means of opening it. But, if you just suspect a secret door is there, but you're getting impatient waiting for that successful "find secret doors" check, you can always wreck the wall. If you're right, you will only be wrecking against the door category, even if you can't actually see the door.

Millions of dollars' worth of treasure is usually a campaign-busting find and should be avoided doling out in actual play.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Thrilling Comics #1 - pt. 4

So, instead of tracking down the Faceless Phantom, Dr. Strange takes Jerry to the circus. Apparently, it was not ridiculous in 1940 to have a boxing ring in a circus tent, or for a circus to have $5,000 to put up on a publicity stunt?

The gorilla, at least, seems to hold out longer than the tiger and the octopus did. Despite the fact that the circus ringmaster just tried to kill him to get the $5,000 back, Strange lets this slide so Jerry can get to a bank. By random (?) coincidence, Faceless just happens to show up to rob the bank right then.

 Here we see another example of why it's important for a superhero to keep a Raise power prepared; Strange doesn't have it so, even though he has superhuman strength, he can't get out of the rubble without help.

Strange says his amnesia is gone, but he seems to have forgotten all about his Supporting Cast Members Jerry and Parker (remember Parker, the pilot?).

Now, at this point, Strange has maybe 3,000 xp under his belt, yet when he goes to talk to these guys, who I'm guessing are the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Armed Forces, given their authority, they agree to give Strange carte blanche (or are they only humoring him?).

The trophy armor Strange has invented here is Ray-Proof armor (AC 3, immune to rayguns). With Army financial backing and enough time I suppose he could make a dozen suits like this...but isn't Faceless taking over the East Coast while he's kicking back in this down time activity...?

If Strange's gun shoots Alosun-negating gas into the air, shouldn't he be worried about entering its area of effect? Once it's in the air, he's going to have to be very careful where he moves.

This page just reminds us that even a smell can be a clue the Editor means for you to follow up on.

So now we're finally told that Faceless is only turning invisible after all. I guess Strange's player just didn't know that he could still try to attack invisible opponents!

It seems highly unlikely that Strange knows of an ancient society that had invisibility chemicals and reagents to counteract them, but okay.

After all Strange has been seen doing, you'd think seven hoodlums would not be this confident against him. Maybe we need a new mobstertype -- overconfident hoodlums!

Alosun or no Alosun, the Editor has decided to bump up the main bad guy's level to match the Hero's, just for a climactic final battle -- which is within the Editor's purview to do.

Really only included this page in case you were interested to find out who Faceless was. Surprise!

This is from another feature in this issue, Nickie Norton, Secret Service Agent. It reminds us that Heroes can hire lookouts too, hideouts don't have to be entered by the front door, and it's always a good idea to bring a flashlight.

The idea of pressing a statue's eye to open a secret panel is interesting hideout dressing.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)