Slam-Bang Comics #1 - pt. 5

I just can't seem to let Mark Swift go. There are only three pages left that I didn't get to in the last post that I want to get to today.  

Being thrown into a cage with an animal you have to kill is an okay trap. Being sporting enough to send you in with a sword is just offering you XP. 

Eagles is a really unusual choice; I can't say I've ever heard of eagles being called "vicious" before and think wild turkeys might have made a better choice. It's also unclear if these are meant to be huge eagles, or the narrator is saying eagles are huge birds. Huge eagles might be worth up to 1+1 HD...

If you didn't think this story was gonzo-crazy enough -- now the Indians have a pet dragon. It's big, it's fearsome-looking, and more importantly it should have some impressive Hit Dice given its size and mass -- but one of the most annoying tropes of golden age comics for me is the "dead in one hit" I keep seeing in so many stories. 

Hey Indians, if this guy can kill a dragon in one thrust, you really think you can take him with spears...?

The next time I run Hideouts & Hoodlums, if/when my players try something just off-the-wall crazy, before I say "that could never work," I need to recall this page and how a Viking rode a dragon like a bronco.

It's actually consistent with how dragons are pretty much uniformly treated in the early comics as unintelligent animals. Be cautious, Editors, about giving your players the opportunity to domesticate some of these and start a dragon breeding farm.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Daring Mystery Comics #2 - pt. 1

It's been some time since we last checked in on the fledgling company of Timely Comics.

It starts with Zephyr Jones and His Rocket Ship, firmly in the science fiction genre. Zephyr and his friend Corky are heading to Mars in a privately built rocket ship. Zephyr is right about how far it is to Mars, but either his calculations for travel time are off or mine are, because at the 300,000 MPH speed he claims he's going I think it would take five days to reach Mars instead of one. That speed is, incidentally, eight times faster than the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth up to the present day.

When the ship veers off course, it lands on a "lost planet" -- as if there could be an unnoticed planet between Earth and Mars. Actually, since the theory is floated later that this "planet" broke off of Earth ages ago, it's more factually a moon -- just one much smaller and in a far wider orbit. The moon is called Sunev (yes, Venus backwards, har har), and it not only has normal gravity and a breathable atmosphere, but it is inhabited by human-like aliens with feathery wings who call themselves the Birdmen and speak English. The birdmen live in a 19th century-like monarchy, but gunpowder was never discovered and the only science they are advanced in is chemistry. They have discovered an elixir that expands lifespan, so that the birdmen can live 300-400 years (there is no explanation given for how they have solved the overpopulation problem that would cause). There is a separate race/culture on the Sunev called (I'm not kidding either) the Parrotmen.  The Parrotmen are more muscular and brutish-looking, preferring to go shirtless in combat and fight with maces.

Zephyr and Corky, perhaps having not expected a safe journey into space, came armed with two automatic pistols and a Tommy gun, make short work of the parrotmen with their maces. After stopping the Parrotman uprising, Zephyr and Corky return to Earth before heading to Mars, which makes sense -- they would need all new calculations to change their trajectory from Senuv, and likely the Birdmen are not advanced enough mathematically to help them.

The Phantom Bullet, Scourge of the Underworld, is next.  Nearly washed-up and cynical newspaper reporter Allen Lewis works for the Daily Bulletin, a name just too generic to be able to trace to a particular real city.

Despite the fact that at least five people have examined a crime scene before him, Allen is the first person to find a bird feather clutched in the dead man's hand -- proof that it always pays to examine the scene of the crime for clues, no matter how much later. A police officer at the scene also gives him a freebie, telling him what might have been a randomly rolled rumor, that hand prints have been found at the scene of three crimes that seemed to belong to a seven-fingered person. 

Players often pay little or no attention to the private lives of their characters when not adventuring; seldom is that more on display than when Allen's player calls his boss an idiot and tells him to write the story himself, before running off to do hero work.

The first indication that Allen may be a mysteryman comes pages later, when Allen makes a spectacular -- though still far from superhuman -- leap between rooftops. But Allen is still 1st level -- indeed, still in his origin story -- and is handily beaten in his first turn of combat when ambushed by "birdmen" (see a theme developing between stories...?).

Amazingly, Allen still has his job the next day and gets assigned to talk to an inventor, who just randomly decides to hand off his "invention" to Allen -- a gun that shoots ice bullets. This is what Allen needs to complete his origin story; armed with the gun, wearing make-up on his face instead of a mask, and wearing a bright-colored shirt and red cape -- because, you know, he'll need to sneak around and stuff -- he sets out to stop more murders. Off-panel, the Phantom Bullet uses his skills to move silently and climb walls to get around the police cordoning off a threatened man's home.

This time Allen shoots and kills one of the bad guys when they show up again, but there is no sign that the man has feathers; he just seems to be an ordinary black man. We also learn the plot finally -- the bad guys are killing rich men who refuse to hand over $500,000 to help fund a new government. The other two make off with the money and Allen has to move on to the next would-be victim.

This time, the man doesn't refuse and the money is picked up by a bum Allen recognizes. Cornering the bum, Allen recovers the undelivered money and finds out where it was supposed to go, the address being a local cemetery. Now, it would be great if this was the bad guys' hideout -- a nice, atmospheric location. But the cemetery is empty. Allen goes back to the bum and re-examines the envelope with the address on it; the correct address is in invisible ink and the first address was a phony clue.

The real hideout is an African explorer's house, or more precisely the caverns under the house (the Phantom Bullet finds the caverns off-panel). *sigh* ... in a decidedly racist twist, the "bird men" turn out to be half-black men/half-ape mutants wearing feathered headdresses as if they were American Indians. This resembles the beast men race we talked about adding to Hideouts & Hoodlums a long time ago, but I think I would just stat them as ape men. There are not two more of them, but five more of them, and they're dumb enough that PB can trick them into following him back upstairs to a window and then all jumping out after him like lemmings. PB had swung himself up to the top of the window ledge, and then comes down to shoot the evil explorer, ending the story (and saving a kidnapped young woman who just happened to be in the caverns).
 
Next up is Trojak the Tiger Man, a Tarzan clone. Normally, Tarzan clones have to be raised by animals to speak to animals, but Trojak was raised by an African tribe of humans and just happens to know how to talk to animals anyway. He also gets a tiger for a starting companion. His tiger, Balu (showing this feature steals from The Jungle Book as well as Tarzan), is shot, but is only lightly injured by it.

Trojak himself is shown to be able to bend a gun barrel, which is either a really lucky roll for a non-superhero at wrecking things, or maybe Trojak is a multi-class fighter/superhero. Further, subtle evidence of Trojak being a superhero might be the strange case of the unnamed woman in the white hunting party Trojak encounters and follows. At first, the woman is fine with her companions and their quest for gold, but over the course of days of observing Trojak following them, she starts to show disgust with her fellow travelers and an admiration for Trojak that can only be explained as sexual attraction -- or maybe use of the power, Turn Good.

(read at fullcomic.pro)

Jungle Comics #1 - pt. 3

This is what happens when you make your subjects wax their chests and go around shirtless all day instead of explaining to them how electrodes work.

After running Hideouts & Hoodlums for a long time now, I've noticed that using a d6 for mobster hit points, instead of the d8 I used to be accustomed to using when running AD&D, really makes a difference in finishing fights faster. And, while I sometimes regret when a fight ends faster when my sense of drama tells me it should have ran longer, pages like this with their "killed in one shot" fights remind me that stretched-out battles have little place in H&H.

I'm guessing the secret formula in the ring is for the longevity potions. But if they were such a bad idea, why is she sharing it...?

What? Okay, Dale, we get that you're not getting along with the locals, but maybe you can sit down and discuss your differences with them, look for common ground. Wait, what are you doing with that torch, Dale? Why are you -- FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DALE, YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO KILL ALL OF THEM!!

I think Jon Dale's player just saw this whole scenario as a quick XP grab.

That fortress looks real tiny, but I like the 3-D layout, with its multiple levels. Make those skeletons undead and you've got a cool adventure locale from that one picture!

If H&H had more outdoor survival rules, there would probably be something about a 1 in 6 chance of mishap while fording rivers.

It would be highly unusual for that to happen in H&H, where the slavers get a surprise attack, but then are still unseen afterwards. For the sake of fairness, anyone who attacks is visible to retaliatory attacks in combat.

Slavers, incidentally, are going to be a mobster type in the AH&H Mobster Manual.

It's worth noting that Terry never actually finds the secret entrance. Instead he just stumbles on a pit trap that happens to lead into the secret underground tunnel.

The snake might be a set or a wandering encounter in the tunnel. Wrapping it in a shirt might be a bit of a stretch for the grappling rules and is more of an entangling attack, like dropping a net on someone. I think the real stretch, though, is that he held it in his shirt all that time until the slavers showed up, hours later?

Lots of things to cover on this page. First, the slavers are working with thugs, apparently.

It might make sense to give a morale bonus if the bad guys outnumber the good guys (say, +2 for 3 to 1 odds?). I don't like to include a lot of formulas for modifiers in the rules, leaving it to the Editor to decide on what the situation warrants.

Cover sure comes in handy.

We solved the mystery of how all those soldiers kept dying -- they died of boredom, having to play Solitaire with only five cards.

I guess the trap door was a secret door from the top side, since you can't find a secret door without looking for it. Even a concealed door you would figure a guard would have stumbled across eventually.

I call shenanigans on that rock attack, and not on a rock rolling down a slope being an effective weapon. I question why the three thugs would be running up the slope in such tight formation that the rock could hit all three of them. It would have made more sense to spread out and try to flank him, even before figuring out what he planned to do with that rock.

This is Sabu -- I mean, Wambi the Jungle Boy, who is an Indian boy, in Africa? It's a confusing mash-up (on the previous page we had gold miners panning for gold in a stream in Africa -- was that ever a thing in Africa?).

The clearest thing is that I'd never allow a low-level hero to have an elephant as supporting cast. Because they can trample all over an entire village.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Jungle Comics #1 - pt. 2

We return to check on Tabu today. We see him perform some tree climbing so uncanny that I hesitate to say that could even be done in Hideouts & Hoodlums as an expert-level skill; that is more likely the power Wall-Crawling in action.

Jungle Torment might be a magic-user spell in the making here. For the duration, up to 7 targets cannot rest and must make morale saves each turn. Seems like a good 1st level spell to soften up opponents.

Still going easy on them at first, Tabu decides to use Gust of Wind on their torches. Then he starts to get serious and lets loose with Insect Plague, a 4th level spell. Insect Plague hasn't made its way into any H&H product yet, but you can bet it'll be in the AH&H Heroes Handbook whenever I'm done with that. It will do continuous damage to whoever is caught in the swarm, so either these explorers have really good hit points or they escape from the swarm pretty quickly.

Since that pool of slime looks like green slime, I'm very tempted to include green slime now in the AH&H Mobster Manual (now in progress!).

It's unclear if this tiger is huge, in the sense that it has extra Hit Dice, or it just looks huge to someone when it's advancing menacingly on you in the wild (I'd probably think it was huge too!). Apes and tigers have both already been statted for H&H.

It's harder to say what's going on here, since we can't see where these paralyzing thorns are coming from. Is there some monstrous form of plant life that should fire paralyzing thorns? Or should this be a new spell? Or are the thorns simply flavor text for a Mass Paralysis spell? I'm leaning towards the first option, simply because there is not a lot of plant life you can fight in H&H compared to animals and people.

I'm going to have to call shenanigans here. Yes, I'm all for making Gust of Wind a more useful spell (and feel I did more to increase its effectiveness in H&H already), making it strong enough to bend over trees so that they can knock over people seems like it would be way too powerful, almost on par with an Earthquake spell (which, frankly, is where I thought Fletcher was going with that at the bottom of the last page).

Oh, it's not green slime after all! They climb out unharmed.

I cheated and used that illustration of the giant snakes as a hydra in Supplement I: National, but I'm pretty sure that's meant to be two giant snakes.The next page reveals that they are constrictor snakes.

Here we see evidence that the Leap powers allow for safe downward movement, though a controlled leap is different from a fall and I'm not sure if I'd allow this to protect heroes from falling damage (I've gone both ways in game play).

Tabu, still just showing off, demonstrates Polymorph Self and Transmute Mud to Rock (the latter spell has not debuted in H&H yet.) The jungle tree-vine was statted in Supplement I: National (I believe), based on this very picture.

I'll have to review my stats and make sure I gave the tree-vine the ability to stretch out its vines before entangling.

Tabu levels up!

So many animals in old comics are killed in one shot that it's refreshing to see an elephant just take the hit and keep moving.

I don't think any game mechanics are behind this accidental entangling; more likely, this is set-up for the scenario instead of part of the scenario.

Here's more evidence that Jon Dale's player isn't in control of his actions yet -- just what is the rationale for climbing to the top of the plateau? In his shape, after being dragged, you would think he would choose the easier journey of going around it.

This is the second story in the same comic about a hidden land of secret white people in Africa. I'm guessing the authors were inspired by the Prester John legend, although it might be just good old-fashioned racism.

600 years would put these Norsemen as coming from the 15th century, which is really late for Thor-worshipping Norsemen. Of course, maybe this is not the first generation of them isolated in Africa, which may explain how they got their own religion wrong and think Thor takes human sacrifices.

Still no idea how a Norsewoman manages to go by the name of Camilla.

Potions of longevity belong in H&H. But if it's that volatile, how is it safe to drink...?

Daily sacrifices? These people make the Mayans seem mild-mannered.

The reference to electrodes tells us that these Norsemen have had enough contact with the outside world to at least catch them up to 19th century science. They probably also heard that modern society doesn't approve of human sacrifice, but just didn't care.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Popular Comics #46 - pt. 1

We rejoin Toby here, and Toby and Oomog are not having fun on a tropical aisle. The appearance of the natives is clearly being played for laughs, but the fact that they're willing to drug their visitors with fruit that makes you doze off to sleep (unless you make a save vs. poison) makes exploring this island a dangerous adventure.

This is all world-building for Martan the Marvel Man. The year is 5000 on the planet Antaclea -- but that's by their calendar, not ours. The people of Antaclea look like Earthlings, but it seems like that's just a coincidence, given the extreme distance between worlds. Antaclea is more advanced than Earth and looks down on Earth, but at least Earth isn't bad like Mars -- those nasty Martians were at war with Antaclea in 3900 AD and wiped out 90% of the Antacleans. Only now has Antaclea rebuilt and is a restored utopia. Antaclea isn't unprotected any longer; those electric guns can wreck like an 11th level superhero with a range of the 40,000 miles, and I presume the flame rayguns are for shorter range, in case some gets past the electrical barrage. The problem with a "utopia" founded on guns, though...guns have a nasty habit of going off accidentally, and I bet a lot of people have been incinerated by planetary defenses just for not displaying their IPASS badges fast enough.

If the Martians did that to Antaclea, in a completely different

solar system, I do wonder how Earth endured. Perhaps Earth was seen as too primitive to bother with?

I'm already having problems with this story philosophically, but now the science starts getting super-shaky too. Antaclea has no oceans? Antaclea is 45 times the size of Earth? Jupiter is only 11 times the size of Earth, which makes Antaclea impossibly large for a non-gaseous planet. And what are "light miles" If the author means miles traveled at the speed of light, then Antaclea is closer than the moon and travel to Earth is near-instantaneous. If he means light years, then Antaclea is almost as far as the Andromeda Galaxy.

Economics-wise, we see that technology seems available to everyone, with interplanetary spacecraft being as common as cars.

There comes a point where the flavor text is so beyond simply wrecking something that you must be dealing with disintegration (save or be destroyed). In 1st edition, item saving throws were still a thing. In 2nd edition, if I really wanted to avoid using the wrecking things mechanic, I might let the pilot roll.

But what's all this nonsense, Martan? Are you saying that Earth would have a stronger gravity, despite being 1/45th Antaclea's size? Are you pulling Vana's leg?

Ah, the ultra-rare jungle-dwelling lions....I'm starting to wonder if this is some alternate Earth...

I like how their rayguns can be set to specific points of damage, with "x003" apparently being the setting for 1 point of damage. The question is, how high do those settings go? And is x999 really 333 points of damage?

At a higher setting, the raygun can even create fire -- a Wall of Fire, to be exact.

Evidence that the "number of appearing" for natives needs to be set pretty high.

This might look like a continuation of the same story, since this is by the same art team, but this is the Hurricane Kids. Here, we see how adventurous going fishing is off a time-lost prehistoric island and that they have to shoot at sharks (they must think they have a lot of bullets to spare) to protect their lunch.

I like the detail of the mud flow from the river, and how the inland river is concealed; the kids have to use their skills (i.e., concealed door check) to spot the river ingress.

That last panel gives us an understandably poor sense of scale, since a 20-ton sauropod tended to be 50' long, tip to tail, and would be hard to squeeze in a panel with the kids' boat.

Like I found with statting other dinosaurs, animals weighing in the range of tons don't stat easily when size and mass figure into Hit Dice. I would have to give this mommy 9 20-sided Hit Dice, which means those kids had better get out of there fast!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Mystery Men Comics #5 - pt. 5

As much as I'm repulsed by this Captain Denny Scott story, I have to say this tiger is a really impressive fighter. How many bullets has it taken, and it keeps on fighting? I think I'm going to have to revisit my tiger stats and up the HD and lower the morale save.

Zanzibar came a long way to find out if a rumor he'd heard about walrus men in Antarctica was true. Walrus Men look like cavemen, but with tusks, and apparently are immune to cold. As common as the "frozen caveman thawed in modern times" cliche is, maybe I should have always made cavemen immune to cold.

Zanzibar seems to be temporarily unconscious after taking a single arrow, proving that magic-users are right to have the smallest hit die of all the classes.

Apparently, Antarctica is unusually warm...

Zanzibar has a spell identical to the Turn Gun on Bad Guy/Turn Missiles power.

The monster looks like a giant lizard to me.  An odd thing to find on Antarctica, but so are nearly naked cavemen. It makes me wonder if this issue was remembered years later when Stan Lee created the Savage Land.

It's unclear what spell Zanzibar is casting on the lizard and the caveman chief -- it could be as simple as Poof!, a new spell that teleports an opponent a short distance away.

It seems odd that Zanzibar, with all his spells, has to run from the walrus men, but he must feel vulnerable with his hit points still being so low.

My first thought was that the "snow avalanche" was an Ice Storm spell, but this is Antarctica -- he doesn't need to create snow there. Maybe he cast Stone Shape to start the snow avalanche.

Really, Zanzibar? She almost suffered a fate worse than death from a walrus man this same day, and you think it's appropriate to hit on her?  *sighs*

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Smash Comics #4 - pt. 1

And we're back to Will Eisner's Espionage, still featuring Black Ace instead of Black X.  This installment is the debut of Madame Doom, one of the best femme fatales invented for comic books and the precursor to, well, every femme fatale in The Spirit later.

From this page, we learn that a map of the California Coast's military defenses would be worth about $10,000.

200 MPH was certainly doable for a plane circa 1939. Pursuit planes, transport planes, and bombers all moved at about that speed.

In Chicago, in 1939, they would have likely landed at Midway Airport. But the city looks too far away in the background for this to be Midway. They might have landed at a smaller airport out in the near suburbs to evade notice; this could conceivably be the Pal-Waukee Municipal Airport (in Wheeling).

In Supplement IV, I spent a little while discussing Bantu and if he was a magic-user or psionic. Here, he seems to be casting the spell Phantasmal Image. There is no equivalent psionic power in Supplement III, where the psionics rules are.

When I cataloged various aviator stunts for Hideouts & Hoodlums (for The Trophy Case no. 6), I neglected the Immelmann Turn. Putting it in simplest game mechanic terms, the Immelmann stunt would be used immediately after attacking, and it gets you into position to go first in the following turn (you cannot lose the initiative for that turn).

The Immelmann is a popular maneuver from my limited experience playing Dawn Patrol; I may have to investigate that game more deeply.

This is likely Salt Lake City Municipal Airport.

Black Ace makes his save vs. plot to see through Madame Doom's disguise.

I am not a fan of Clip Chance at Cliffside, and you'll probably never see it here again. But it's worth pointing out that Ray Snort has got to be one of the worst names in all of comicdom. If you meet a character in a comic book story with a name like that, it should send up all kinds of red flags that you're dealing with a bad guy. Names like that, they scar a young man...

Two things here: one, The Green Lizard is not a fearsome name for a master criminal; and two, hiding a radio in a globe is a great detail for hideout dressing.

Invisible Justice calls this a giant crocodile, but it really doesn't look as big as some other crocodiles we've seen in the comics -- this is a large one at best.

It seems IJ only has to shoot it twice to either kill it or chase it off. Indeed, there are a lot of examples in comics of really big, fearsome monsters going down in one or two hits. I'll continue to ignore that for H&H, to keep big battles longer and more exciting.

Invisible Justice looks for tracks, which is now an option for all classes in H&H 2nd ed.

Despite being an underground hideout in a swamp, it seems the hideout is nice and dry. For convenience, and RPG tradition, underground hideouts will seldom have to worry about the local water table.

Concealing the door inside a tree is a nice hideout feature, as is the alarm on the door.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Man Comics #6 - pt. 2

Wrapping up our Shark story that I started talking about last year (don't you love how you can always make that joke on New Year's Day?), here we see The Shark using one of the higher level Leap powers, followed by his Speak with Animals power. It's unclear if he's speaking to the sharks in some sort of language or communicating with them telepathically.

This is from a short, one-shot filler story called "Forbidden Island," so I probably shouldn't let it get to me. And I know that combat in a RPG as random as Hideouts & Hoodlums could always go one way or another...but the implication here is that a single man with a club is more than a match for a bear. Now, maybe I was a little generous when I first gave bears 7 Hit Dice in Book II, but a bear should -- realistically -- still be more than a match for any one person to fight.

The one advantage this guy has that maybe explains how he won was having a missile weapon. Had he kept backing away from the bear and firing arrows as it charged him, this win would make complete sense to me.

And, lastly, just what is this guy supposed to be? A caveman? A madman? I've statted both (Book II and Supplement V respectively). The caveman stats seem to be the better fit, though there's no explanation given for how a caveman is on this island...

Here's the page that makes me think our caveman might be a madman instead. Also note how our Hero, Lew, decks a guy with one punch who just won a fight with a bear. Is Lew some kind of superhero? Not if our caveman/madman is at low hit points after his bear fight. More evidence that I shouldn't allow for rapid hit point recovery after fights.

This is Carl Burgos' Iron Skull. Now, normally, as game Editor, it would be your job not to leave a single hoodlum guarding a trophy weapon as valuable as a death raygun, even one that looks like an ordinary heat lamp. Of course, if you really want your players to have a captured death ray at their disposal, that's your call. And expect them to balk if it just happens to run out of charges or breaks down as soon as they have it.

Not sure why this hoodlum keeps shooting at Iron Skull's head instead of looking for a more vulnerable spot. Likely, though, Iron Skull is using a power that gives his whole body the same AC, though (like Nigh-Invulnerable Skin?).

That Iron Skull is vulnerable to sleeping gas shows that, like Burgos' other android hero, the Human Torch, Iron Skull is more of a synthetic human than a robot.

Next time, maybe Decor won't make a deathtrap that burns away the bonds before doing much damage to the Hero trapped in them.

I'm pretty sure you have to inject chlorotone to put people to sleep, but this is a huge amount of chlorotone, so maybe it also works by immersion?

It's kind of neat how big vats of chemicals are just lying around this hideout for Heroes to try and figure out uses for.

We learn that a 10-gallon vat of acid is strong enough to corrode a steel door (though we don't know what kind of acid it is).

The range on rayguns is disturbingly long sometimes, but on the other hand, you need a room-sized deathray machine to get a range like that, so it's not like a Hero can cart this baby around with him.

Silly Decor -- didn't you know Iron Skull would get a save vs. science for half damage from that explosion?

This is from the serial The Congo War-Drum. Normally, the Editor would roll for surprise once for each side in a combat, but in a mix of different mobster types it could make sense to roll for each type -- particularly if some have better chances to achieve or avoid surprise than others. Labu, for instance, is the one native on the good guy side, so here he gets a different surprise roll than everyone else on the good guy side.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)