Wonderworld Comics #11 - pt. 1

Ah, the early Fox Comics were gorgeous! This installment of The Flame was written by Eisner and drawn by Fine, which is about as good as it gets here in (cover date) March 1940.

It scarcely requires explaining that "Kalnar" is Germany and "Rodend" is Hitler, especially not when you see "Rodend" on the last page below.

"Dorna" is a little trickier. It seems most likely Poland, given this time in the War, but the capital of "Dorna" is not yet captured in this story, while Warsaw was taken four months earlier than this was published.


For those mathematically impaired, The Flame was born in 1915. Ichang, or Yichang, is a prefecture-level city located in western Hubei province, China. It is the second largest city in the province after the capital, Wuhan.



This is surprisingly credible; the Yangzte ("Yangtse" here) is responsible for 70-75% of China's floods, flooding nearly every monsoon season.

Just like Siegel and Superman, Eisner borrows from the story of Moses here.

This seems to be Tibet, though the geography is a bit off. The Yangtze River begins in Tibet, so the flood waters would have had to somehow sweep the basket upstream.

It's interesting to wonder if the "grand high lama" is the dalai lama, or a fictional lama that supersedes the dalai and panchen lamas.

It's also worth noting that this nested origin story is being told to us by a character in the main story, who may well be an unreliable narrator.

We're given no clue how messages are sent to the Flame. Radio? Telegram? Write a note and burn it with fire?

"Quick, let's ignore the anti-aircraft guns around us (I see three) and bring him down with our small fire guns! I'm feeling like a challenge today!"

I was really surprised by how much this page reminds me of Walt Simonson's art. The layout is great, if awfully background-less, but the perspective in that final panel makes up for any imagined deficiencies.

Continuity glitch: the Flame is clearly leaping from his plane in the third panel of the previous page, but is back in his plane in panel 2 of this page, and then back on the ground by panel 4. It seems that Lou Fine had intended the plane to be immune to the fire gun and demolish the gun, but Will Eisner wanted the Flame to be responsible for destroying it and gives him credit in the caption.

Despite having only destroyed one gun and beaten up about seven soldiers, the entire army surrenders at that point. Personally, I would have made separate morale saves for each squad, three saves per platoon. But I understand this was a scenario with a short time limit.

Let's also talk about the effectiveness of a giant flame gun. I get that, thematically, it fits the title, but there's no way it could shoot fire as far as it could shoot a shell. I fail to see how this

weapon would be very effective.

I don't have much to say about this page except -- see? Hitler. Great "punch to the face" panel there, well before the famous Captain America cover of punching Hitler.















For this installment of Yarko the Great, "Anthony Brooks", aka Will Eisner, starts us off in faraway India, but how accurate is that geography? The Kabul River does empty into the Indus River near the city of Attock, in what is now Pakistan, but would have then been India. Far from isolated frontier, Attock would have been, I think, a metropolis of about 400,000 people at this time. It's typical racism of the times, though, to make other cultures look more primitive than they were.

All I have to say about this page is that the men from India must be statted as mysterymen (burning stunts), superheroes (using the Wall Climbing power), or magic-users (using the Spider Climb spell) to be able to scale a sheer wall like that.

(Spoiler: they're mysterymen; on a page I won't be showing, they use a mysteryman's weapon, a garotte.)

And that this is an awful long build-up to Yarko showing up in the story...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Wonderworld Comics #10 - pt. 1

I certainly like it when Hideouts & Hoodlums perfectly emulates the look and feel of comic books from the golden age...but there are certain stories that make me go, hmm, maybe strict emulation could be taken too far. Case in point: should tanks be allowed to burrow through the center of the Earth, as a "shortcut" from Mongolia to Florida? Not only is that completely impossible, but it's so impossible that air dropping tanks from above would be relatively easy in comparison.

That said, I like that we get our invasion started in Florida for a change. The story imagines a Fort Blane in southern Florida, near the Everglades, but southern Florida only has Navy and Coast Guard bases in it for real.

A superhero using his wrecking things ability would not be unbelievable, except that we just saw (on a page I skipped over) the tanks shrugging off bombs dropped from airplanes like they were nothing. Is there some special vulnerability to fire to these tanks, and if so, how did they ever make it through the heat as they drew closer to the Earth's core?

And yet, there must be a known vulnerability to fire in the design, or there would be no reason for the men to have asbestos suits with them (unless they were anticipating the Flame showing up?).

10-to-1 odds seems too much for the Flame, though he uses Get Tough on at least four of them before taking off.

Oh, come on, Flame! What did that poor huge (5 HD?) alligator ever do to you? It looks like it was only trying to give you a hug to me, you murdering bum! And why do you only afterwards get the idea to use your flame to drive off the others? (Common sense morale check, at the Editor's discretion.)

More evidence of how easy disguise is in comic books: despite the fact these are see-thru helmets, no one questions the fact that one of the men is wearing the Flame's mask under his helmet.

The Flame can now wreck dams, which means he is at least 6th level -- not a surprise, since we've already seen him use the high-level Teleport through Focus power. He's only been published in enough pages to warrant being 3rd level by now, so there are plenty of brevet ranks in play here (if not for the teleport power, it would be possible that his flame-gun is a trophy item that wrecks at a higher level, and that the gun is not itself just flavor text describing how he uses his powers).

As loony as this story has been...that is one gorgeous page of art.

Here's that Teleport through Focus power we were just talking about! It would appear that we are talking about a range that can take him halfway around the world...but we also don't have to assume that the Flame made this trip in just one jump. Perhaps it took him days to teleport from open flame to open flame until he got to Mongolia.

Genghis Khan villains are apparently high kickers. I'm not sure how that makes a game mechanics difference, but it sure looks impressive!

 A very rare example of a sword being used as a missile weapon.

Despite being a relatively inexperienced superhero, the Flame already commands the respect of the U.S. Army.

It should not surprise you to learn that Evergreen Chasm is not a real place. Florida is relatively free of chasms. Sinkholes, on the other hand...

Not the first time we've seen plot hook characters literally crash into the Heroes.

Nor is the first time we've seen Heroes feel they have to escape bad weather by heading indoors, no matter how spooky the building looks (save vs. plot required).

That still looks like Eisner to me, but comics.org tells me this is Bob Powell doing a good Eisner impersonation.  I'm impressed by the sense of space in the castle interior. The door knocker, the height of the door and ceilings, the rafters, and the blazing chandelier are all dressing details for a good hideout.

Yarko, despite having gone spell-to-spell with the Devil already, can't overcome this one guard. Granted, the grappling rules are not kind towards magic-users (with their low attack bonuses), and perhaps we've finally discovered Yarko's weakness here, that he needs his hands free to cast spells.

Poof! is a 1st-level spell in 2nd ed. H&H. It only works on one person, so this is perhaps a higher-level version (Poof II?) that allows multiple people to disappear. It's also possible that more pf them than just the baron is casting versions of this spell.

 (Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Wonderworld Comics #9 - pt. 1

Our return to Fox begins with The Flame and something that I would never let players do at the beginning of a scenario -- locking themselves in a laboratory and trying to invent the most powerful explosive ever. Come on, this is game night! Try the scenario and leave this for downtime. You've got cool superpowers at your disposal (I even let you have all those brevet ranks; see previous posts about the Flame); try using those.

Not a map, per se, but an interesting cut-away of the interior of a submarine. Submarine design is very linear, making for a pretty boring hideout to explore.

Teleport through Focus is a great, high-level power for getting the Hero straight to the trouble, without having to do any slow investigation first. Maybe I'm not an expert on torpedo strikes, but I don't think they set fires in most cases -- seeing as how they punch holes into ships that quickly fill up with water. I wonder if there should be something like a 1 in 6 chance of vehicles sustaining damage catching on fire.

Now this is interesting...apparently the Flame isn't just immune to fire, but can interact with fire like it was a solid object. This is flavor text for the spell Water Walking.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just put all powers and spells in the same pool and let players pick from both...but then, some powers are very un-spell-like (the Get Tough, Raise, and "Race the" powers, for examples). Maybe there needs to be a rule for researching ways to transfer a spell into a power, and vice versa.

This can happen in Hideouts & Hoodlums. Superheroes are deliberately not good at fighting without buffing themselves with offensive and/or defensive powers, so if you want your power slots for other things, nine low-level fighters could conceivably take out a mid-level superhero just by doing enough damage.

Interestingly, steam is harmful to the Flame, even though fire and, presumedly, heat is not as well.

The Flame uses his explosive to blow up the hideout, which is also odd because usually hideouts blow up on their own just as the Hero is escaping.

Our villain, Doyoff (not a real name), reminds us that it pays to have more than one escape route.

And we're on to Yarko the Great, here reading a lot like that early Superman story of the con man posing as Superman. Like that story, these con men have no special abilities and are so generic as to be practically mobstertype-less. We do learn, however, that $300 watches were a thing in 1940.

This is a really curious Yarko story. After fighting vampires, the Devil, and Death itself, Yarko seems content to use his ventriloquism spells to play pranks on the con men -- even though they may have shot and killed a woman (though that scene seems out of place and really out of character for them). So far, Yarko hasn't cast a single spell.

Now we get into the spell-casting! First there's Hold Person, and then Yarko...well, he casts some kind of spell that summons stolen items and makes them float in the air in front of him. Maybe something called Thief's Bane? But it would have to be a 5th or 6th level spell, being a combination of Locate Object (for multiple objects) and Telekinesis.

Also note that, because fire extinguishers were not common yet, the theater has a fire bucket on the wall by Yarko.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Wonderworld Comics #8 - pt. 1

Ah, Fox in the early days -- when the quality was so good! 


This month's installment of The Flame begins with a little history lesson. It seems to me to be a common misbelief that no one knew about atomic energy until the atom bomb was invented. It was 1932, though, when science first discovered that splitting protons off an atom would release huge amounts of energy, 10 years before the Manhattan Project began. So any early comic book adventures with atomic energy as their Macguffin, like this one, are historically plausible.


I also just think it's funny that a water cooler with a bell on top is what they're using as a proton accelerator...unless that's a miniature accelerator inside the cooler, and the water is just there to keep the temperature low, in which case it now seems scarily prescient.

I think our scientist, in his excitement, has mixed up volts with watts.

The artwork is confusing in this story. These early pages look like Lou Fine to my eyes, but by the last page it looks like a Will Eisner page. Perhaps they worked on it together.

According to this, the going rate for atomic energy secrets is $100,000 in 1939.

It's going to be challenging to stat this machine. Despite being piloted, it seems very robot-like and should probably be statted as one. The implication seems to be that the robots are atomic-powered, which should make them stronger than the average robot. And, size-wise, it looks like we're already going to be statting these as huge robots. But...those long, spider-like legs are going to make the robots ridiculously top-heavy and unbalanced, lowering their Hit Dice potential. So...for now, let's say 8 HD. It looks like the robot is armed with two machine guns, fired by gunners inside and attack at the level of the gunner. The attack of the feet would be by the HD of the robot.


We can hand-wave The Flame's surprise roll in this situation, since this is just flavor text and not a potential combat situation.

The Flame fights 3 thugs here. It looks like he won initiative, if not surprise. The thugs choose to grapple. Because none of them establish holds that keep The Flame from attacking back, he leads with punching. Then they must have succeeded in a grappling attack, because he pauses to reverse the hold. In the final panel, he throws a bad guy into other bad guys. Although you see this all the time in comics, I'm still opposed to allowing this as a regular combat tactic, as it cheats the rules and allows multiple attacks -- unless this is treated as flavor text for a multi-attack power, perhaps.

Our thugs are well-equipped, having an atomic-powered plane. It is unclear if the plane goes faster than normal (it is, after all, still a propeller-driven plane and not a jet) or if it is special for not needing refueling. And I do have to wonder how the Flame's plane keeps up while needing to stop for refueling.

The desert hideout is already starting to take shape. We can tell that the hangar is concealed in the cliff side (a common cliche), but those two storage tank on the surface were likely housing the robots until they were needed and then popped out.

The range on mad science devices tends to be a little ridiculous sometimes. Anywhere in the world? Really? At least the device seems to just shut down atomic engines that follow Dr. Harvey's specific design and not just any atomic power (much more powerful in a post-1945 campaign). Also note that the rifles, surely much too small to have atomic engines inside them, must be receiving broadcast power from an outside source -- a technological idea I don't think we'll see much of in the Golden Age. I'm not sure how much damage an atomic rifle would do, but 5-50 points of damage does not seem unreasonable.

The Flame beats up four bad guys and there are five bad guys remaining, who all miss their morale saves and surrender -- evidence that you don't have to wait until at least half the enemy forces are gone before checking for morale (which I often see as a house rule in That Other Game).

Speaking of powerful trophy items...an amulet that lets you give commands to Death himself is ridiculously powerful, like being able to cast Death spells with (again) unlimited range. I think the closest to this I would allow in a campaign would be an amulet that lets you cast a limited number of Finger of Death spells with normal range.

Hags are a statted mobster type in second edition. I'm hesitant to assign stats to Death, but you just know he's got to be (there's that term again) ridiculously powerful -- a magic-user of at least 25th level.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Wonderworld Comics #7 - pt. 1

The scene opens with a lone thug (a 2 HD mobster) being visited by spooks (a new mobster type in 2nd ed.).

These spooks are sometimes like the write-up I'd already done for them. Both are bulletproof, though these are bulletproof from being tough instead of intangible. These spooks aren't undead, though. Maybe these are fake spooks? I have an entry written up for fake undead too.

That's a big crowd. I can't quite count them all, but it seems like there's 100 fake spooks there. That would be a tough encounter for anybody!

This page tells more of the background of the Kikoos. They had also been called living spectres earlier in the story. I could stat them separately, but...that name "Kikoos"...it's really hard to take that seriously. I could stat them as fake spectres, but that would make them so tough we didn't need 100 of them earlier.

The fake spooks are particularly vulnerable to fire, perhaps taking double damage from it. An Editor can always add a vulnerability to a mobster type.

One last detail we learn about the half-spooks is that they have sharp claws. That's another difference between these things and spooks. Maybe I need to revisit that stat block...

It's long been established (both in Hideouts & Hoodlums and That Other Game) that magic-users suffer a special handicap, that they can't cast their spells if they can't see, or their hands are bound, or they can't talk. In Yarko the Great's case, it's apparently just being able to see. Here, the guy who's already beaten a devil before gets abducted by a couple of nomads who just happen to catch him by surprise.

So it turns out that it was only two nomads who managed to capture this master wizard. If this was from actual play, the Editor would have set this up as just a teaser, or a plot hook encounter. There's no way he could have predicted they would win! Luckily he had the hideout already planned.

The Ruins of Alchaz would be a good name for an adventure module. The art -- typical Eisner -- is evocative. We have a hideout with multiple entry points (since the walls have so many holes in them), a central domed chamber, and a tower that appears to be six stories tall.

Yarko casts Projected Image to get help. The ringing musical note is either flavor text the Editor allowed, or Yarko decided to cast some sort of Audible Glamer spell just for fun.

Note that Burke faces the exact same encounter, under the exact same surprise circumstances, and wins handily. This has to be the advantage of playing a fighter, the ability to take a beating and still win because of all the hit points they have. But -- the nomads are using grappling attacks to subdue, not to knock him out. Maybe I should give fighters a bonus to save vs. grappling attacks...?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Wonderworld Comics #6 - pt. 1

The Flame appears on the scene thanks to the Teleport through Focus power. He shows up here in the middle of an investigation, just courteously turning over evidence he's collected so far to the D.A.

Collecting evidence isn't a requirement in Hideouts & Hoodlums, nor is respecting due process. Rather, they make for additional challenges that a player choosing a Lawful Hero might enjoy.

The Flame makes what looks like a 15' leap downward, apparently without taking 1-6 points of falling damage. I believe I've covered this on the blog before, but leaping down should not be treated as an uncontrolled fall (when the Hero is taken by surprise).

This is Lou Fine at his artistic best. I like this page so much that one panel of it became the cover art to the first H&H module Sons of the Feathered Serpent. Just soak it all in.

Now, this time, The Flame doesn't just leap down, but has to take the extra step of swinging from the wire to land safely. It's unclear which floor he is leaping from, as it looks like the 2nd floor in panel 1, but could be the 7th floor or higher in panel 2. Maybe he doesn't have a leap power prepared for today, so he can't make the leap safely from that height. Or, maybe the power would only protect him, but someone being carried would still take jarring damage from the landing.

The Flame catches a break at the end; instead of having to catch the thug himself, the thug just gets handed over to him. That's moving the pace along!

300 MPH?  That is one fast car, in any age. It was called a super-charged car in 1st edition. I might be making transportation trophies more customize-able in 2nd edition. For example, this would be a Car +2, with each plus representing a bonus feature in the car (or, more specifically, one plus per extra 100 MPH the car goes).

Leaping up or down, easily handled. Leaping sideways into a moving car? That might require an attack roll, or burn a stunt.

The Flame is buffed by Imperviousness here.

The Flame doesn't need to be using a power to get that "heads slammed together" attack. In unarmed combat everyone gets two attacks per turn, so this would count as separate attacks on each head.

It doesn't take one of the raise powers to pick someone up and throw them out of a car; anyone can try to do that too.

Somehow, he ties up Mr. Crass remarkably quickly. It seems like it's less than a turn he spends on it. And how is his car matching speed without anyone's foot on the gas? Autopilot? Maybe this is a Car +3.

The Flame doesn't seem too concerned about blowing up mobsters, so long as he has the boss villain to take into custody. Does that make him Neutral in Alignment?

Should cars be extra susceptible to flame guns? Or could this be an example of Wreck at Range? I suspect the latter.

And now we move on to the Yarko the Great adventure in this issue. Here, Yarko is on a treacherous journey through Devil's Pass in the Himalayas. His encounters along the way are with natural disasters instead of mobsters (though he finds evidence of vampires at his base camp).

A blizzard this fierce might do 1-8 points of damage each exploration turn that the traveler fails a save vs. plot. While the rockslide might do 3-18 points of damage or more if a save vs. science was missed.

The hoshai plant is a strange sort of trophy item. It's really bizarre -- a giant lilly-like plant that grows in molten lava and has blood inside it. But, other than that...it doesn't actually do anything. In this sense, it's more of a trophy to have, like a giant penny, than something to actually use. I plan on having some examples of these sorts of trophies on the 2nd edition trophy list.

After beating the Devil, you would think Yarko wouldn't be scared of three vampires with bows and arrows. Perhaps he's more concerned for the safety of his traveling companion, or just wants to get captured so he can be taken to their leader.

Speaking of which, vampires with bows and arrows is a fairly novel idea.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)