Marvel Mystery Comics #5 - pt. 1

We're heading back to check on Timely Comics today, back in (cover date) March 1940. This month, the Human Torch leaves New York City for the Midwest. It's the old story of a remote Alaskan village that needs urgent medical supplies but is cut off by the weather, only transported to a fictional island in the middle of Lake Superior because...I guess Alaska was too far? This weird island is covered in a glacier...I suspect Carl Burgos never visited Lake Superior and maybe heard some tall tales from Minnesotans about how cold and snowy it is there.

So HT leaves for the Midwest, but using the Newark Airport, which is an interesting choice. That's a real airport in New Jersey, and one New Yorkers still use today. The LaGuardia Airport had just opened months before this comic book would have been written.

HT, or Jim as his friends know him, has a supporting cast member named Johnson, who Jim isn't apparently on a first name basis with, but is still willing to come along on this dangerous flight to Lake Superior.

HT badly fails a skill check to pilot during a storm (probably at a penalty) and crashes their plane. In a rare occurrence, a Hero is knocked unconscious in a crash. The wrinkle here is that two hoodlums just got free from jail on the island (not sure how this island is big enough to have a jail, but okay...), they discover the plane, rob the medical supplies, and then set the plane on fire to get rid of the pilots.

I've never been fond of the Human Torch and reading these old stories make me less fond. It really bothers me how unscientific his powers work, that fire somehow answers to him as if it were alive. Nowhere is it more evident than in this story, where the fire forms a protective circle around HT, even while he's unconscious. So either he can subconsciously control fire in his sleep, which I think is way overpowered, or fire has some sort of collective consciousness, which is really weird and wonky. Now, once he's conscious again, using his Control Fire power to make the fire part for him -- that makes sense to me.

More wonkiness comes a bit later when HT falls into water and, instead of his fire being extinguished, the narrator says he was "ordering his flame out." Now, maybe there is a sensible explanation for that too. Maybe he extinguishes his flame voluntarily before the water extinguishes it because, if he turns it off then he can turn it right back on, while if it's extinguished, then he can't use his powers for a random amount of time.

Still more wonkiness is when HT searches a wooden cabin, while still ablaze, and doesn't combust anything. That Control Fire power really gives you complete control. But what you can't explain away with that power is towards the end when he encircles a pack sled and its dogs completely with fire, and the dogs keep running. That all six of them make their morale saves, at their Hit Dice, is rather incredulous.

There's an interesting wrinkle where HT flames on (he doesn't call it that; that's a Johnny thing) and his heat helps keep Johnson from freezing. Now, an Editor could hand-wave that as a common sense side effect...but it could also be a new power, Resist Cold, that a superhero can confer on someone else. We also see HT do sky-writing with flame, which I think we've seen before and needs to become a power in the Heroes Handbook.

Lastly, the two hoodlums plummet into the icy lake waters and die after HT melts the ice under their feet with a circle of fire. Whether he intended for that to happen is unclear...but he shows no regret, and we already have seen he has total control of his fire, so...

Next up is The Angel. The Angel's strength level is really up in the air in these early stories. Except for one text story that had him at Superman levels, he usually was only a strong human in most of his stories. Here, he can tip over a car with extreme effort (or a little help), so he can maybe lift 1,000 lbs. In Hideouts & Hoodlums terms, this is the Raise Car power, as there is no Can't Raise, But Can Tip Cars power (H&H deals more with abstraction than specific measurements). This isn't just a prank; it's all part of a plan to foil bank robbers by tipping over their getaway vehicle and any other vehicle on the street they can use to escape.

Angel then uses a length of rope (he must carry rope sometimes) to get to the roof and watch for them to come out. Note that he does not simply leap to the roof, so he has great strength, but not great leaping powers, again confirming that H&H is on the right track by making players choose which powers they have for each scenario.

Speaking of Raise Car, later in the scenario he is on top of a speeding taxi and pulls the driver out through an open window (if the taxi had air conditioning, maybe the hoodlum who carjacked it wouldn't have carelessly left his window down). Now, this seems to defy science, because you would think that even with great strength, someone with no way to brace himself would just fall over the side before being able to pull a braced man out the car window. Superpowers, luckily, defy science by their very nature. I might also, on a generous day, allow a Mysteryman using a stunt to do that as well.

For some reason, The Angel isn't wearing pants today.

Soon, when The Angel is swinging on that rope, one of the robbers manages to shoot the rope, and it seems to be merely accidental. There is some precedent for this, with firing into melee giving a chance of hitting a random combatant. For this to apply here, we would have to consider the rope and The Angel in "melee," which is a bit of a stretch. For the Editor to just randomly through in this complication would seem unfair in game play. 

The Angel joins a long line of comic book Heroes willing to use mobsters as living shields, but this might be the first Superhero to do so.

In the end, Angel decides to pummel the last of the hoodlums unconscious and he rains "blow after blow" on him. Now, in most game systems, a superhero's strength remains constant and the damage he would have done after just one blow might have knocked out an ordinary hoodlum. But here, a superhero has to buff his strength first before doing additional damage, so if he wanted the satisfaction of punching out a bad guy slowly with normal blows, that's very easy to do.

Next up is The Sub-Mariner, called the "Ultra-Man of the Deep" on the first page of his feature here. Demonstrating the difference in pace of Golden Age stories, the Angel story took place all in 10 minutes, while Namor accompanies a cargo ship to protect it for 3 days before the scenario even gets started.

Remarkably, Namor is said to communicate telepathically with the crew of his flagship submarine in this story. If you've ever wondered how Namor talks underwater...this would be how.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Marvel Mystery Comics #4 - pt. 1

The Human Torch has apparently stayed in Texas since last issue, as he's just coming back to New York now. New York is under martial law because of the attack of the green flames. The green flames are said to be goblin-like creatures with ice-cold green flame all around them. Their cold flame paralyzes and kills, but real heat kills them quickly. It's almost a shame that the "green flames" are actually just hoodlums in chemically treated asbestos suits that become surrounded by the green flame.

The Torch makes up the alias Jim Hamond (initially spelled with one m) in this story.  He also uses some now-familiar powers -- Wreck at Range, Leap II (he clears at least 60' vertically), and -- of course -- wrecking things (by melting).

The Torch is aided by Johnson -- an undercover cop who has helped the Torch before -- and a lady undercover cop named Mazie. Mazie worked undercover with Dr. Manyac, the creator of the green flame. Dr. Manyac only seems to have a gang of six, none tougher than gangsters, which hardly seems like it would be threatening enough to force the temporary evacuation of New York City -- yet somehow hysteria spread to the point where it did.

The Torch gets doused in water and doesn't get his flame extinguished in this story.  Evidence that he should get to save vs. plot for all possible vulnerabilities?

The Torch demonstrates a power again where he can hit someone with a fireball from far away. This time, though, he's shown to have so much control over the fireball that it can go around one target to hit another. That seems a lot like Magic Missile to me...

The Angel's story opens in a kitchen...well, not that kitchen, exactly, but a slummy area of Manhattan here called "The Devil's Playground." Avoiding real life place names allows the writer some latitude for swapping out the poverty that really defined the Clinton neighborhood and replacing it with mob corruption.

The mob has a new enforcer named Butch, a giant (from panel to panel his height seems to vary between 8'-12') that appears to be bulletproof. Now, my first thought was to stat Butch as an ogre and bullets just can't get past his decent Armor Class; but later, when armed militias start patrolling the streets searching for him and meet Butch, they throw "machines guns, revolvers, rifles, and grenades" at him with no effect. That means Butch has to be an evil superhero with some major defensive-buffing powers, possibly as good as Invulnerability. For some reason, though, the Angel's punches make Butch fail a morale save and flee. Is Butch confused, as the narrator says, or is he aware that the duration is about to end on his buffing power?

Somehow, Butch's mob is raking in $5 million a day, though we're given no explanation as to how that's possible.

Butch dies when he plows through an exterior wall on an upper floor and falls, perhaps no more than 40'.

In the Sub-Mariner's story, Namor draws a line -- he's fine with war and killing, but won't abide any nation preventing the delivery of food or medicine to other nations. To show the world how much that bothers him, he's going back to Antarctica to summon an army of sub-mariners and wipe out all the warring countries.

So Namor swims back -- that's over 8,300 miles from New York City, or over 9,000 miles from the English Channel, depending on where he actually was last issue. That's a lot of stamina, or another example of the Teleport through Focus power.

In Antarctica, we see more of the Sub-Mariner's kindgom, The palace is carved out from an anchored iceberg. The realm is ruled -- not by a king, but by an emperor. The emperor has a "court of three," who could themselves be king-vassals of the emperor, and perhaps one of them is brother to Namor's mother. The emperor is held to be a holy figure.

The mermen who are not half-human like Namor and Dorma have large saucer eyes and catfish mustaches, They appear to be blue-skinned, but Namor is colored blue when underwater too.

What power does Namor have over the Emperor? Intervening in the wars of the surface world is apparently against the rules of the empire, yet the Emperor breaks the law and gives Namor carte blanche to do just that. In a week, he has a fleet of "hundreds" of submarines that can also fly via steam jets, and fire steam weapons (instead of direct hits, the weapons create hot clouds of steam and the victims are driven into the clouds).  The metal of their hulls has a "repellent quality", whatever that means. Magnetic repulsion? Probably means a low AC for the planes.

Namor, normally happy to parade around in trunks, wears a full-dress uniform while commander-in-chief of his naval air force.

The narrator makes some rather hard-to-believe assertions, like the aerial-subs move at the "speed of light" and Namor can telepathically communicate with the other ships (is it that hard to use a radio?).

"Great sharks!" is Namor's next colorful exclamation.

(Read at Marvel Unlimited.)

Marvel Mystery Comics #3 - pt. 1

The Human Torch is on a train bound for Texas, discussing "Lawson Bell" -- apparently what Orson Welles' name is in the Timely Universe. The Torch befriends Mr. Carson -- and he really makes a good encounter reaction roll, apparently. Remember, in his first appearance The Torch killed his creator, and in his second appearance he accidentally sets fires everywhere he goes. Now he just introduces himself as the Human Torch and Carson calls him a "world-famous character" and wants to shake his hand (of course, Carson is in munitions, so maybe death and destruction just appeal to him!).

No sooner than they've exchanged pleasantries, then the train is attacked by spaceships with forward-mounted electric rayguns! Martians are on board the ships and they want Carson's formula for trinitroluol, or super-trinitroluol as Carson calls it on the next page. Think about that...they have technology that allows them to fly between worlds and shoot electricity as weapons...and they need to come here to steal explosives. Oh, and Martians look just like humans. They seem to need help breathing our atmosphere, since they wear sealed bodysuits, but it doesn't seem to bother them too badly when their face plates get smashed. Their leader's name is Captain Ott.

The Torch was temporarily stunned in the train crash and is pinned by bent steel when he comes to. He seems a little addled in the head too, because he thinks if he flames on, it will take him longer to get free than if he lies there struggling. If I was really mean, I would add an effect like the Confusion spell to those initially recovering from temporary unconsciousness.

Once the Torch recovers, he uses the power Wreck at Range (which, in 1st ed., was treated as a race ability) -- and he uses it on a knife. Think about that...the Martians have electric rayguns on their ships...and still kill with knives. Melting the blade makes the weapon harmless...though I would think melting steel would actually be more harmful than the blade was.

It's less clear what power The Torch is using when he kicks a fireball into a Martian's face, or if he's even using a power at all. Since the Martian is still in melee range, maybe this is just unarmed combat with some flavor text added.

In a sequence of panels that make it very hard for me to take The Human Torch seriously, the Torch decides that the best way to remove a huge steel bar that's crushing Mr. Carson is to melt the steel bar. Somehow, that much heat doesn't kill Carson outright, but both Carson and the Torch think it's curious afterwards when Carson gets dizzy and then passes out and dies. Oops!  This is why Hideouts & Hoodlums can't have too strict restrictions on Heroes killing people.

The Martians tail the Torch later in a car with a long, pointy hood on it; the hood can be shot as a weapon.

The Torch's flame is doused by water in this story, but not by being buried in sand. This is one reason I only make android players take one vulnerability (that, and just to make the race playable at all levels).

Characters usually don't get hurt by jumping from moving vehicles, but Ritton (the traitor working with the Martians) is knocked unconscious after jumping from a moving train.

The last new power displayed by the Torch is Message -- the ability to communicate through the use of a power or, in this case, to make giant sky-writing out of flame.

In The Angel's story, he is summoned on a new adventure by a random scream in the night. Three cultists (a new mobster type in 2nd edition) are abducting a girl, but manage to get away after they hit the Angel with their car and temporarily stun him (reduced to zero hit points and made his save vs. plot).

When The Angel recovers, he's either delusional or using the Super-Senses power -- because he claims he can hear voodoo drums from the north before driving out of town along a highway to a remote road to get to the source of the drumming. The source is said to be an old mansion, but it looks more like a castle with a curtain wall and courtyard. The entrance to the courtyard is trapped -- at the pull of a lever, the ground drops away to reveal a pit at least 10' deep. The cover can be raised back over the pit.

(Read at Marvel Unlimited.)

Marvel Mystery Comics #2 - pt. 2

So, we left off with The Human Torch chasing racketeers who have been trying to fix auto races. Though this story probably started in New York City, he follows the racketeers to "Auson City", which I can only guess stands for Austin. The Torch seems to run all the way there, perhaps using an Outrun Train power.

When The Torch reaches the race track, he uses a power faster than Outrun Train to pass the race cars. In 2nd edition, there is a 2nd level power for outrunning called Outrun Plane.

Somehow, The Torch throws the villain's race car out of control just by grabbing onto the back of it. I'm not sure how that works, physics-wise. Yes, in a set of chase mechanics, there should be a way to try and force a complication on your opponent, and I'll work on that. But in this scene, it would have made more sense if the villain was instead plowing through the fence in an effort to shake the Human Torch off.

While pursuing the villain's henchmen, the Torch accidentally sets a building on fire. It's a plot convenience, allowing the bad guys to get away while the Torch saves people he himself put in danger. But how to deal with that in terms of game mechanics? I do not want powers to come with built-in disadvantages where they can get out of control. If I ever took away the limited resource aspect of powers, then this might make a good game balance mechanic, but I would rather keep H&H a limited resource management game.

What's even harder to explain is the Human Torch's new ability to talk to flame and tell it what to do. Except to say that this is -- as goofy as it is -- simply flavor text for the 3rd level power Control Fire (debuted in Supplement I: National, retained in 2nd edition).

What should be the final battle with Blackie comes in a steel mill, where Blackie and his men don asbestos suits (in H&H since Book II) and train fire hoses on him. The high pressure of the hoses is able to push the Torch into their next trap. Second edition has rules for pushing an opponent, but those rules are for melee. However, I could see making exceptions for that, based on circumstances. 

When The Torch escapes the trap, he flings a ball of flame that lands in front of the fleeing men and it forces them back, the heat being too much for their suits to protect them. This looks a lot like Wall of Fire, which would be a 5th level power (it's currently a 5th level spell, though).  This means The Human Torch is a superhero of at least 8th level. That's a lot of brevet ranks!

We see Wreck at Range in use again, and this time we have a precedent for wrecking being able to wreck something very small and specific -- in this case, the visor of Blackie's suit. 

And, again, we see the Torch's wrecking things power being out of his control, as he starts to bring down another building around him. Maybe this can be explained away, though, as the Torch being only one month old and not in full control of his powers yet. Presumedly, an android Hero under a player's control is going to be "older" and have more control over his powers.

Blackie's car has a smokescreen ejector (also found in the game since Book II).

The patrol car the Torch hitches a ride on has a top speed of 110 MPH.  The Torch runs faster than that, meaning he's using at least the 2nd level power Race the Plane. The duration seems to end when he reaches the airport, though, as he can't keep up with the airplane taking off at that point.

Again, the Torch uses the Wall of Fire power to surround the bad guys for what, this time, finally turns out to be the final showdown with Blackie. Blackie uses his car as a weapon, trying to ram the Torch with it. The transportation trophy section of 2nd edition will say a lot more about ramming damage for cars. The Torch uses the Dig power to dig a deep trench to stop the car. He certainly doesn't need to, since he can just wreck/melt the car, but I guess he still had one 4th-level power slot left unused and decided to burn it before the scenario ended.

Whew! That's enough about the Human Torch. The next story features The Angel. While the first Angel story seemed to take place in New York City, this one is definitely in Hong Kong. The main character is the plot hook character, Jane Framan of the Smithsonian Institute, sent to report on the Lost Temple of Alano (a very un-Asian-sounding name). 

We also encounter the word "gruely" to describe a scruffy, disheveled man -- the only time I've ever seen this word.

Marvel Mystery Comics #2 - pt. 1

Oops!  I goofed with Buck Rogers, starting with reviewing volume 1. Upon further research at comics.org, the Buck Rogers strips reprinted in Famous Funnies started in 1933 -- that would make them the strips from volume 3 in the reprint series!

While I get that sorted out, let's move ahead to the second issue ever from Timely Comics. Despite the Angel starring on the cover, the first feature is the Human Torch. It isn't a particularly good story (I wrote a whole rant about it once here), but there is a lot of content to it we can discuss through Hideouts & Hoodlums. Follow along if you have your own copy of this book...

The Torch seems to demonstrate the power of Resist Fire when he tries to aid a race car driver caught in a fiery wreck. We see the android race's "too hot to handle" ability being applied to flavor text, and we see him using his wrecking things ability to melt handcuffs when a police officer tries to arrest him.

The Torch willingly goes to jail, which is convenient because he meets a convict in jail who has information valuable to dealing with the plot for him. It is unlikely that players will let their Heroes get arrested, so it would be wise for the Editor to float the plot hook character to whatever location the Hero(es) wind up in.

Incendiary bullets are really powerful in this story, or race cars are supposed to be really volatile. A couple of hits from an incendiary bullet, and a race car just goes up in flames!

Once the Torch knows who to go after, he wrecks (melts) his way through the bars of his cell, and an Imperviousness power is probably buffing him to keep him safe from the machine gun fire being shot at him by an overzealous policeman. When he sets the floor of the police station on fire, I'm not sure if I should consider that flavor text, or if he's using some new power like Start Fires as a distraction. Remember, if the Torch's player wants to set floors on fire just because it would look cool, or because it fits his character, then that is flavor text. If he's doing it for some game mechanic advantage, like to evade pursuers, then the player can't just describe what he wants; he has to burn (aha - pun) a power.

When the Torch takes out the tire of a police car following him, he's using the android's wreck at range ability.  Wrecking a tire is not as hard as wrecking a whole car -- I would treat it as wrecking a door, but make the player roll to hit the tire separately (AC 7 or better, probably depending on how fast the car is moving). He leaps over the cars in the street because, hey, this is 1939, and superheroes still leap instead of fly (and I gave androids the leaping ability for just this reason, though it isn't called leaping).

The Torch can melt a plane, and small planes wreck as if robots.  The pilot uses unusual slang in his thoughts as he runs away, thinking "that fire-man looks hungry!"  I'm guessing the pilot did not think the Human Torch mistook him for food, but "looks hungry" meant "looks like he's out to get me" or something like that back in 1939.

The Torch stops the pilot from fleeing with a small ring of fire around him. One could conjecture this is a creative use of flavor text with the Hold Person power.

When a fire truck arrives on the scene, the narrator says The Torch "leaves in a burst of speed." The fireman says "he's flying thru space," but it still looks like The Torch is leaping.

There's a curious trap for The Torch. The hook for the trap is fine -- mobster's moll (vamp) pretends to be leading him to the hideout, but the entrance is trapped and she knows it. But the activation of the trap requires The Torch to open roll-doors (I've only seen them called sliding doors before this) with enough forward momentum to fall inside. You would think a push door would guarantee more forward momentum. Regardless, the floor is lower inside the garage entrance (for some reason), allowing him to fall into a vat of water. And no race has more obvious disadvantages than the android race.

Now, apparently the Human Torch is extremely vulnerable to his disadvantages -- water doesn't just rob him of his flame temporarily, he seems to go completely inert in it, since the water vat is open on top and someone could normally just climb out of it. I would not place such a crippling weakness on a H&H Hero, though.

A completely thrown-away plot point is that the abandoned lime mine The Torch is left in is supposedly haunted. It also doesn't make sense that there's a boiling lime pit in an abandoned mine, unless the mobsters somehow heated it before dumping the Torch in there.

(Story read through Marvel Unlimited.)

Marvel Comics #1

And now we finally reach this milestone. Until now, half the Hideouts & Hoodlums Hero races didn't make sense!

The Human Torch story that starts this issue is the inspiration for the android race. The special abilities of the android race emulate the ability to burst into flame, shoot flame, and take off into the air on a fiery jet -- though all these can be disguised through flavor text (like turning "Fiery Jet" into spring-loaded feet). Androids are H&H's verion of dwarves.

That The Human Torch is of the superhero class is evident by how much wrecking he does in this story (as if wrecking trucks, if not tanks). He's encased in a 10' cube of cement and busts out, he melts bars (as if wrecking doors).  He sets a warehouse and a regular house on fire (automatic, if around combustibles). He melts three doors, a truck, and the roof of a building (treat as a car). The amount of wrecking suggests to me that The Torch has three brevet ranks right here, despite being first level.

Other than wrecking, The Torch seems to demonstrate Fly I and possibly Nigh-Invulnerable Skin. At one point he badly scalds the mobsters who fled from him into a swimming pool by boiling the water -- I don't have a power yet for that one. Heat Water?

Sardo (that's an Italian name, apparently, though it always seemed science fiction-y to me), the villain in this piece, has a wealth of trophy items at his disposal -- he has a diving suit, a glass tube large enough to contain full-grown man, a gas mask, a gas bomb, a tank of liquid nitrogen, a tube of nitro gas, and a tank of sulfuric acid.

Likewise, The Sub-Mariner is the first merman hero in comics, and the inspiration for the merman race. Being able to breathe underwater was a given. We may or may not see faster swimming in this story. Later stories establish that mermen are weaker out of water, hence the wrecking things penalty out of water. And as for the magic resistance...it doesn't really emulate Namor at all, but mermen are H&H's version of elves, and I figured it helped round out the race and maybe would make it a more appealing choice to play.

Speaking of swimming faster, at one point Namor and Dorma travel from Antarctica to New York City in two days. That means they were traveling at, at least, 190 MPH -- way faster than I let mermen swim. That means they were either boosting their speed with a power, like Outrun Train, or -- even more likely, were using some sort of underwater vehicle we didn't see.

Wrecking wise, Namor crushes a diving helmet (wrecks as machine?), and he jams a rudder on a huge ship (maybe treat as a generator?). Curiously, Namor uses an axe to break glass at another time -- perhaps the only so far we've seen any kind of a limitation to how often a superhero can wreck.

Power-wise, he uses a leap power (probably Leap II) to catch a plane and Extend Missile Range (at least I, possibly II) to throw a man out to sea. Not a lot, so even though Namor surprises wrecks very little, he probably also has three brevet ranks even at first level.

Lastly, it is worth noting that Namor is actually only a half-merman. H&H works under the assumption that all half-mermen have the abilities of full-blooded mermen, though in actual comic books a half-merman is apparently more powerful than a full-blooded merman (this discrepancy could just be from Namor being higher in level too).

Both The Torch and The Sub-Mariner are also killers, or at least we know for sure that Namor is and The Torch very probably killed some people. They are Chaotic in Alignment.

The Angel also debuts in this issue. In many ways The Angel is typical of the Mysteryman tropes, particularly with how criminals fear him by reputation. For the most part, The Angel could even just be a Fighter, as he solves almost every problem with fists. But there is one instance where he leaps from the roof of a courthouse and lands safely. We never actually see the courthouse; we're just told this. So, maybe this courthouse has a really low roof, keeping The Angel from taking falling damage. Or maybe The Angel has unusually high hit points for a low-level Hero (high Constitution score?) and just absorbed the damage. Or maybe The Angel has a leap power and is actually a superhero? I'll watch for more evidence in future installments.

In the one-shot "Jungle Terror", the story's macguffin is a lost diamond in the Amazon and the apparently false rumor that the diamond can "enslave people". Rumors are good -- they get Heroes to go do things, and you only have to pay out on the rumors half the time! The twist in this story is that, instead of one diamond with special powers, our heroes find lots of ordinary diamonds. However, the Editor wisely doesn't give them time to collect them all, throwing endless waves of natives at them so they'll just snatch a few and run.

Lastly, I reviewed this issue on one of my Scottenkainenland blog.

(Issue read in Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Comics v. 1.)