Smash Comics #8 - pt. 3

Panels like this first one are so useful for figuring out how fast Heroes move. He's flying from New York City to Washington, D.C. -- about 220 miles as the crow flies -- and makes it in 22 minutes. That makes it really easy to figure out Bozo can fly at a staggering 600 MPH -- that's the 3rd-level Race the Bullet power.

Lifting the car is the 1st-level Raise Car power. Coupling that with a flying power makes it even more deadly. Since Bozo seems to have reached cloud altitiude, that puts him at approximately 16,000'.  Now, the Fly powers, as written, have no maximum altitude, so the only distinction is how long it takes to reach cloud level. Even at Fly I, this would only take about 4 1/2 minutes. At Fly II, this would take just over 2 minutes.

Taking no damage from a car exploding probably requires the 4th-level Invulnerability power.

If Bozo has returned to New York City, there is no Bird Airport there, nor even a name close to that.

Traps are usually ineffective if the Heroes have to touch something they have no reason to touch. I can't imagine what Hugh is hoping to accomplish by having Bozo lift the cable. Adolph is clearly inside the shack, not behind the cable!

20,000 volts is not going to melt Bozo, guys. That's a fairly standard amount of volts; your car's spark plug can take it. Now, interestingly, in a more hi-tech setting, Bozo would be full of electronics and 20,000 volts might mess with his systems. But in 1940, robots are chiefly mechanical contrivances, like clockwork automatons. So this trap isn't really doing anything but giving him electrified lariats to kill people with.

Let's jump ahead into Chic Carter. Chic's adventures in Moldavia are finally over and he's back in New York City trying to catch murderers.  Now, by all rights, this scenario should be over before it begins. Chic decides to beat up someone acting like a security guard of the professor he needs to talk to. Now, had Brenda screamed first, Chic could be trying to get in faster to save her, but since she screams after, Chic is just punching anyone who touches his arm.

More seriously, Hideouts & Hoodlums currently has no mechanic for making an attack roll miss against someone else. It doesn't seem like we can ascribe this to flavor text, since saving Lansing's life is vital to the story and why Lansing trusts Chic to take over the investigation. It's possible we could use the parry rules to slightly modify someone else's Armor Class from missile attacks.

Now, this is not a tactic I recommend most players using. Chic has a hunch thieves will come for the valuables in the safe room that night, so he remains locked in the safe room to ambush them. Is that safe room air tight? That's something Chic's player should ask first, in case he's wrong and the thieves wait another night. 

Redundancies are a good way to slow Heroes down, if not discourage them from getting to where they want to get into (players tend to be stubborn like that). Here, we have a wall safe, inside a safe room, each with its own combination.

Dousing the lights gives everyone a penalty to hit, but the open window means positioning is very important in this combat.

That is one amazing hunch Kent gets. Based only on Jenkins' testimony that he didn't know why he pulled the lever, Kent decides he must have been controlled by a VOODOO MASTER!! Instead of a garden-variety hypnotism. Or, you know, lying and being bribed to pull the lever. Somehow, looking at blueprints helped Kent reach this conclusion too, though I suspect the Editor fed this hint to Kent's player during setting up the scenario.

The Invisible Hood remembers to bring a rope and grappling hook on jobs where he thinks he'll need them...though if he's invisible, and the gate is open, I don't know why he takes the time to scale the wall...

I like the trap of the crystal ball next to the throne that casts blinding light at the flip of a switch. But, how does this make him visible? If bright light foils his invisibility, then he's not really invisible so much as camouflaged.

How stupid does a villain have to be to, in the middle of monologing, point out the very switch that can blow up his hideout?

The battle axe is a good choice to help with wrecking things. I might be inclined to give him a +1 bonus with the axe. Though, maybe that should come with a 2 in 6 chance of taking 1-4 points of damage when smashing something electrical...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #8 - pt. 2

I don't care for any other features in Smash Comics as much as Espionage, but that doesn't mean we can't glean anything useful from them. Let's start with Abdul the Arab, our "hero"/traitor to his people, who helps the British steal his nation's oil...

We always pause to examine maps. Kuwait is not drawn by accident inside Iraq's borders; Kuwait had been annexed back into Iraq in 1938. Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia.









  
This is an unusual scenario for a RPG, since it can't be solved by violence. Abdul has to prove Holden is stealing Rice's oil (in a Western setting, you could substitute cows for oil and run the same scenario) by getting a confession or finding the hidden pipeline, and by diving the work between himself and his sidekick, he gets both.













I can't verify that there is such a thing as a Cambridge Arsenal, let alone one holding 20,000 tons of high explosives. That seems like a really dangerous building to put that close to London.

Transatlantic flights did not fly every day in 1940, which can delay a scenario that takes place across the ocean. 
 









 
Here's an image of what appears to be a briefcase-sized short wave radio. 1940 Heroes can't easily carry these on them, but if they keep them in their cars they can split up and still communicate.

Heroes can often be notoriously hard to trap when they travel overly cautious, with all their gear and trophy items with them. The trick, then, is to get them to lower their guard and feel safe. Trap them while they don't yet know they've reached the hideout.

Yeah...that is one unconvincing ghost, what with his legs sticking out under the sheet. I know I've always said disguise needs to be really easy in comic books, but I might give the mobsters a +2 bonus to their saves vs. plot to see through this one.

We're going to skip ahead into the Hugh Hazard and His Iron Man adventure that follows. All the backstory you need to know here is that the Batzis are Nazis, Hugh knows they are responsible for sabotage here in the U.S., and he figured out they are keeping in touch via radio. He lucks onto their short wave -- I can't see that being a skill check; perhaps he just has a random 1 in 6 chance of catching one of their messages per rest turn, like a wandering encounter on the radio.

Now, I don't exactly get how this works, but if you connect a super-seper iconoscope to a teleradio, you can get a visual image of the person speaking, even if that person was only recorded with sound. Who knew?

"Krautville" sounds like a racist name for any town with a large German population in it...

Bozo has the Dig power, so that means he functions as at least a 6th-level superhero. And yet...we are treated to Bozo using the "Look behind you!" trick like a grade school prankster. I would say it's amazing that the old guy doesn't hear the propeller right over his head and know that Bozo is still there, only...well, then we also have to overlook that this tiny propeller can make a large robot fly.  I guess you could give the guy a save vs. plot to see if he falls for it or not, but I think a +4 bonus seems reasonable too.

This page kind of undersells this tactic, but a time-tested method of keeping the Hero from capturing the villain until later in the scenario is to have something happen that the Hero has to leave right now to stop. A Lawful or Neutral Hero should then have to save vs. plot to stay and defeat the villain early (maybe Chaotic too, depending on how much is at stake).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #7 - pt. 4

We're back to John Law, Scientective, and last post I had wrongly assumed he was going to use the broken hose as an improvised rope and grappling hook, but more cleverly he had used it to siphon water out of the trap and keep his head above water.

If you can choke down the racism of Wun Cloo, there's an interesting story about foiling an extortion racket with minimal fighting skills.

$50 a week doesn't seem that unreasonable; I wonder if that was something racketeers would have charged in 1940 or if this was meant to be humor.

And here is an intriguing use of invisible ink, though I doubt wearing a confession on the back of your shirt would carry much legal weight.

Hugh Hazzard goes big this month with Hitler, robbing Fort Knox. Well, the story says it's not him, but you see that mustache and you just know better, just like you know "Fort Adam" is really Fort Knox. In the hands of a better writer, this "Goldfinger, but with Hitler" story could be awesome...but "Wayne Reid" was George Brenner, so...

There actually had not been a "public enemy no. 1", officially recognized by the FBI, since 1936, but the concept was clearly still popular in the public consciousness and with comic book writers. Public enemies will be a step above master criminals in the hoodlum hierarchy.

I think we've been able to establish before that Hugh Hazzard is based out of NYC. So, Bozo would need to be able to fly at 390 MPH to get to Fort Knox in 2 hours.

This scene anticipates the end of The Rocketeer movie, when the mobsters turn on the Nazis, by 51 years. Pipalle punches Hitler in the face one year before Captain America famously does.

If you thought Hitler only used gas chambers, you'd be wrong; apparently he had a love for the cliched and also used rooms where the walls close in on you too.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #4 - pt. 2

On this page of Invisible Justice (starring the Invisible Hood), we get a) a reminder about an easy way to counter invisibility, b) a decent trap for hideouts (dynamite-lined walls and a timing device), and c) a reminder that hideouts need secret exits and entrances besides the more obvious main entrance. Of course, this means that Heroes who search the area thoroughly enough may find the secret entrances first!

We haven't seen much of anarchists in comic books, but in this story we get a whole secret society of hooded anarchists.

Note how this "disreputable-looking man" is simply disheveled, has a hole in his pants, and is missing a tie and some buttons on his shirt. And this was what a disreputable person looked like in 1939.

Also note that Hugh hangs out at home in a smoking jacket, waiting for plot hook characters to come calling on him ala Sherlock Holmes.

Bozo is likely using the power Extend Missile Range II in that last panel.

We haven't talked about this yet, but...if Bozo is a superhero, then his race must be android. It's a little strange thinking of Bozo as a Hero since he isn't even autonomous -- but it would be possible to play a Hero completely dependent on another Hero to make the decisions, and a unique role-playing challenge too.

Players in Hideouts & Hoodlums always have control of their Heroes (unless magic or other extraordinary circumstances intervene), so torture won't work on a Hero unless the player chooses for it to work.

Hoodlums are meant to be played fairly stupid in H&H, but failing to spot a remote control hidden under a jacket lapel has got to be the biggest boner I've ever seen a hoodlum pull in a comic book.

Chic Carter, Ace Reporter, is on a high-stakes adventure in Singapore where a half-million dollars in gold bullion has been stolen. I don't know why that much gold would have been in Singapore in 1939, but I suppose it's possible.

The pirates here are unusual in that they're using tugboats and are heavily armed with sub-machine guns. Weirdly, these are the same pirates who are already rich with gold, but they seem to be just killing time on one last job before they can fence the gold.

Flash Fulton, Ace Newsreel Cameraman has an assignment to go to Germany and get action shots of Hitler -- or "Rudolph" in "Cerania," since some publishers were still wary about ...offending Germans, I guess.

Professionally employed Heroes could ask for a cash advance before going on missions. It seems that $500 is the most any middle class income-earner should expect to get.

Okay...maybe in 1939 it was still forgivable for Americans to think Hitler's war machine was actually fighting on horseback. This is actually such a departure from reality that I'm glad the story doesn't really use the names Hitler and Germany.

This is John Law, Scientective. The passing reference to Sing Sing Prison shows that John is based out of New York.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Smash Comics #1 - pt. 3

I can't resist talking about the last feature in Smash Comics #1 -- George Brunner's Hugh Hazzard and His Iron Man (renamed Bozo the Robot by story's end).

Hugh Hazzard is the first Hero in comic books to be summoned by the police using a special signal device (before the Bat Signal and way before the Fantastic Four's signal flares).

The iron robot is operated by remote-control and cannot function independently. It also, laughably, has very few interior parts, allowing a full grown man to climb inside it without hindering the operation of the man-sized robot!

And then, instead of holding onto the robot as -- oh, I don't know, evidence for court? -- the police just decide to dispose of it by dumping it out to sea. This would make it very easy for Heroes to lay claim to trophy items from bad guys, if the police don't ever hold onto them, or treat them as the alleged criminal's legal property.

It's all very laughable, of course, but this is a comic book universe, and one that's very Hero-friendly!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)