Fantastic Comics #3 - pt. 2

Moving on from Samson, this is Flick Falcon's feature.

"I must do it, Flick."

"Now, hold on, Adele," Flick should say. "We're 12 times the size of these jokers; we don't have to go along with any crazy scheme they come up with!"

As outlandish as it is to build a scenario around putting your supporting cast members in danger, Flick goes along with it.

That dress is the real reason Flick went along with this crazy scheme.

The carnicantileia is definitely going in the Mobster Manual. It appears to be a snake with a crocodile head.

Make that a giant snake with a crocodile head! That sucker must be 30' long, and possibly able to swallow humans whole.

This is Golden Knight, a feature that here decides that historical accuracy is boring and turns into a mix of Arthurian Grail myth and John Carter of Mars.

Kara the Magician, who has a girl name and poses suggestively towards Sir Richard in a short skirt, teleports him to an alien world to recover the Golden Chalice, that sounds remarkably like the Holy Grail. For just agreeing to go, he already gets a magic ring, but not what most players would consider a very powerful one. The Ring of Light sheds illumination like a lantern and can be used once per exploration turn to blind an opponent (saving throw allowed).

It's nice of the inhabitants of this other world to write in English (though, since magic is involved, perhaps it's just magically translated for Sir Richard).

It's also interesting that, aside from this fortress, there are no signs of intelligent life on this other world. The intelligent life must have been killed off (there are a lot of skeletons around).

Although not called such, this is the first hydra in comic books. It shows that hydras can start with as little as 3 heads, and that all but the main head grow back (I guess there's a random chance of lucking on the main head).

We've seen a lot of octopi in comics so far, but this is the first that has used its ink cloud offensively before entering combat.

Swimming in the magic pool triples one's strength. Tripling a Strength score doesn't work mechanically in Hideouts & Hoodlums; it makes more sense to have the pool magically bestow the Get Tougher power for an unknown duration.

Man, Sir Richard is really hungry! His first time seeing a giant bird, and his first thought is to eat it!

Now, I got excited when I saw those "birds" in panels 5-6 -- in silhouette they look like stirges!

Actually, they turn out to be "wild poison bats" (which I'll also be adding to the Mobster Manual). I'll be giving them 1 HD, poisonous bites, and horn damage. They also seem to be particularly vulnerable to fire and heat, since they just fly over the lava and die (+1 damage per die from heat or fire?).

That magical pool must have turned Sir Richard into a full-fledged superhero, as here he wrecks the wall to create his own secret door!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #2 - pt. 5

Flick Falcon in the Fourth Dimension is one crazy acid trip of a comic strip. His fourth-dimensional machine allows him to travel between planets, like a really-long range teleporter.

I thought slave giants were only 30' tall last time, but this guy is crazy tall, unless those are really tiny mountains. Maybe 10,000' tall?

These are much shorter than dwarfs, and even midget men, we've seen before in comics. In fact, the only thing that's come close are gnomes.

Flip and his girlfriend, Adele, were both knocked out at the same time with sleeping drug, so this demonstrates that you should roll separately for random duration. This might be a magical mickey, since even dragging Adele across the ground long distance doesn't wake her up.

Yeah. I really didn't see this coming.

This is Mars; does that mean dancing girl here is a Red Martian?

On Mars, gnomes apparently live in cities. So thousands of gnomes might be encountered at a time there?

So this takes place in the 30th century -- just like the Legion of Superheroes! You can tell it's the future because submarines can fly and cities have lots of tall overpasses in them.

20,000 men? That seems like overkill, Sub. Note to all future Hideouts & Hoodlums players: if you ask for 20,000 men to help you in any of my scenarios, the answer is no.

Speaking of overkill, Sub shows up at Atlantis with his 20,000 men, and finds 3 frog-men guarding the entrance to the city. Between panels, Sub's lieutenant asks, "We've taken the city gate, sir. What would you like our other 19,997 men to do now?"

Then Sub says, "The gate wasn't the hard part. We have to still breach the citadel. It'll be well-defended too, by frog-men armed with hydro-ray guns."

"Hydro-ray guns? Doesn't that mean fire hoses?"

Seriously, I do like the exotic architecture on that citadel.

"See? Hydro-ray guns are serious weapons! They just killed 11 men in 1 shot!"

"Um...I hate to sound crass or anything, Captain Saunders, but we do still have 19,986 more men, and that's not even counting the three we left guarding the frog-men at the gate we could go back and get. If we lose 10-20 crossing the courtyard to the citadel doors, isn't that acceptable losses in warfare?  And we do have a legitimate reason for overthrowing Atlantis, right sir? It's not just because of that cleavage you keep staring at...?"

I was going to write in-character "Why don't we use the disintegrator on the parapets of the citadel and take out those ray guns, sir?" But I think the disintegrator is clearly shown to have no range here, making it a nice way to wreck things without superheroes, but with no ability of turning it into much of a weapon.

I am not giving frog-men good stats. Look how quickly they go down, just from being grappled!  I'm thinking 1-1 Hit Dice.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Fantastic Comics #1 - pt. 4

Yank Wilson is an odd duck; there's no indication that this is some future scenario, so this is a present in some alternate timeline where the U.S.'s greatest enemy is a tiny kingdom at the North Pole and both sides have ridiculously large military forces backed with super-science.  For a clue as to how super-sciency this feature is, the airspeed record in 1939 was 469 MPH, almost half what these strat-bombers can do.

More evidence of not only super-science, but impossible super-science, as "2,000 degrees below zero" can't happen.  A freezing gas would be useful for hideout traps, though.

We're given no explanation for how 5,000 tanks managed to cross the Arctic Sea, but judging from the rest of this feature, I wouldn't be surprised if they grew wings and flew.

A long distance atom separator sounds an awful lot like an atomic bomb. It would take something like that to destroy 5,000 tanks at once too.  For such a goofy feature, it's scarily prescient here.

Interestingly, the writer had to come up with electro-vibrographs because, as discussed before, the term RADAR was not in common parlance yet in 1939.  Note how super-sciency Radar seems to be at the time.

The freezing gas, in sufficient quantities, can be used to affect entire cities.

This is, I believe, the first instance of a heat ray being used to counter a cold effect.

Other than the feature being named after him, I really can't see how Yank Wilson was granted a hero's reward and not, you know, the scientists who came up with the heat ray and the other super-science.

This is Captain Kidd, Explorer.  When you meet a mad scientist, don't attack right away, and get a good encounter reaction roll, they want to show you all their trophy items and explain how they work to you.

When I put a mechanical hand on the trophy list for 1st edition, I didn't actually have a good example of one in mind. Here's one, though it is better for attacking and giving a human a claw attack than for wrecking.

He doesn't look like one, but Von Haupt was a supervillain, buffed with Nigh-Invulnerable Skin. Kept him safe from bullets, but not from falling damage or heat damage.

As if this issue hadn't already hit its weird quota, this is from Flick Falcon in the Fourth Dimension.  Flick is a scientist who's 4th dimension machine flings him onto Mars. The slave giant appears to be at least 30' tall, which would stat him as a titan (from Supplement I: National).

Not sure what to make of this other guy. He must be some kind of mutant Green Martian, missing his fourth arm, and apparently having tiny hooves for feet. Only, the next page shows dozens of them...

Having escaped the mutant Green Martians through their own time machine, Flick discovers -- as so many others have on Mars -- that *humans* are the aliens on Mars and gain the same leaping, speed, and (presumedly) bulletproof skin that aliens have on Earth.

The fourth dimensional ray takes Flick back and forth, much like a "future" Adam Strange.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)