Popular Comics #49 - pt. 1

The radio drama allegedly always used true cold cases from the FBI files, and the Gang Busters comic strip at least started out the same, but how true is that by 1940? I can't find any evidence of an actual FBI agent John Winston, though Winston being the middle name of John Lennon is, admittedly, clogging my search results, and there's no reason why the name couldn't have been changed to protect a still-active agent's identity.

Richmond, Virginia is of course a real place. I can't find a Calvert Bank in Richmond, but there is a Calvert Drive in Richmond, and perhaps there was once a bank there? 

The Tri-State Gang was real. According to the Sword and Scale website, their crime spree ran "through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia during the early to mid-1930’s."

By this page, the scene has shifted to Baltimore, Maryland. The names of the streets seem to have been changed to ...protect the innocent streets. Although there is a Harvey Street in Baltimore, it is commercial instead of residential, and doesn't intersect with an Elm Street. 

The map hardly seems necessary, since the maneuver of blocking the intersection with cars is really not elaborate. 

The story of the Tri-State Gang is actually pretty interesting, but you wouldn't know it by this rushed retelling. Indeed, the Gang Busters comic strip often has a bland sameness to its stories.

So we'll skip ahead into Martan the Marvel Man. I'm pleased with what this installment is trying to do, showing us Martan and Vana getting to know Earth, but I'm skeptical that they would immediately understand our comedy as quickly as they do here. Even more interesting is that this is an alien invasion story, but with the twist that Martan and Vana are on the ground with regular people and get to see how they react and deal with it.

The locations are worth mentioning here. It's unusual that the aliens land somewhere in New Jersey and San Francisco and not more obvious targets, like Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C. Likewise in Germany, the aliens skip Berlin and are landing in less important areas of northern Germany.  

On a page I'm not bothering to share we also learn that the invaders are Martians, but the story ends with us still not even having seen the invaders yet. Maybe next time!
 

I am leery of this page because of the gruesomeness of that final panel, but two points here: one -- and we've seen this elsewhere before (and done better) -- is the idea of mistaking dinosaurs for dragons, or having dinosaurs and dragons be one and the same thing. It's a fanciful idea today, but much less was known of dinosaurs in 1940, so it would be easier to equate them with fantasy creatures. 

Second, and going along with how less was known about dinosaurs, pterodactyls are here displayed acting like carrion-eating vultures, when they were actually fish eaters, more like seagulls and albatrosses.  

Again, pretty gruesome, but I appreciate that the author knew the poisonous fumes are at least as dangerous as coming into contact with the lava (oops, Jurassic World 2 seemed to have forgotten that!). I would say anyone within 10' would need to save vs. poison or take ...let's say 2-8 points of damage from it, per combat turn within that distance.

Rekra is a weird name, but it actually is a name! I'm not entirely sure from where, but Google searching seems to be pointing to it being Slovakian. So this Slovakian spy has a gas gun and gas mask. Well-outfitted! This is a variant gas gun too, one that sprays paralyzing gas instead of sleep gas (both are chemically fanciful so, why not?). 

Oil line to motor broken is a good random complication in aerial combat (though this time it's being faked by plane thieves!). 

Out of the Sun was an aviator stunt in 1st edition Hideouts & Hoodlums, and here is used to give the Masked Pilot a surprise bonus while tailing the hijackers. 

This could be the earliest mention of Nicaragua in comic books. It's interesting that Nicaragua, being a neutral county in this story, gets to keep its name, but the villainous country is called "Vulcania." It's pretty easy to figure out which country that is, as El Salvador is known as the Land of Volcanoes. Although ruled by a dictator, Nicaragua was at least officially on the side of the allies during WWII. Although Nicaragua's dictator, Somoza, was corrupt, he wasn't as bad as El Salvador's dictator at this time, Matanza, who had more than 30,000 of his people killed.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Popular Comics #47 - pt. 3

This is The Hurricane Kids, though you're only seeing one of the kids here with his new caveman supporting cast member. And we also see some weirdly drawn giant bats -- giant bats being surprisingly rare in early comics (though ordinary bats, not so much).

This is also a good depiction of what the "underworld" would look like in a Hideouts & Hoodlums world -- like it was part of a natural cave system. They got lost -- guess no one was mapping!

Partially flooding hideouts make for an added level of challenge in them.

1,000' tall waterfalls look dangerous and should be dangerous, despite the cliche of heroes always surviving them. The first time I talked about waterfalls, I suggested a save vs. science at +1 for half damage -- but that would still be 50d6 damage. We need something even safer, like save for no damage, and 1 point per 10' if you fail the save (so, 100 points of damage, almost surely automatic unconsciousness).

Should there be a chance of dropping items while climbing? It particularly makes sense if you're trying to hold something in your hands while climbing.

A rare sighting of a cave bear in comics.

How much falling damage gets added to the big rock? I would not add more than 1d6 for that. If you allowed full falling damage to be added, Heroes would be chomping at the bit to fly over every combat (the fallacy of the lethal falling coin long ago infected a D&D campaign I played in).

Here we see cavemen encountered in groups as large as nine.

A rare adventure in the North Sea, this begins a new serial.

I had to look up what the elevation record was by 1940 and these planes are nowhere near it; a record of 56,000' was set in 1939.

 Here we see two old aviator stunts, Power Dive and Hide in Clouds. When I get to the Advanced Hideouts & Hoodlums Heroes Handbook, I'll include many more examples of specific stunts Heroes can try.

This is Penguin Pete and His Pal Pudgie, and this is an unusual wrinkle on the "help, I'm sick" ruse for getting out of jail.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Popular Comics #46 - pt. 2

We return to the Hurricane Kids just in time for a surprising (for them) discovery. Cavemen, on a time-lost island with dinosaurs? I'd be more surprised by how they apparently have access to really good razors or waxing.

I'm amused by that "The high priest, no doubt" from the narrator, based on no evidence other than his white beard.

I do have plans on adding a high priest mobster type in the upcoming Mobster Manual. I'll have to amend the caveman entry to say that there is a chance of a high priest being among them.

This is curious to me...I can't think of any car chase scenes I've ever seen where innocent bystanders decide to chase a driver down. If I ever revisit my chase rules, maybe I'll have to add something about a chance per turn of new participants entering the chase.

A rare use of shotguns by robbers (may need to update their entry to reflect a chance of being armed with them).

These guys are just robbing out of hostility! And always committing their crimes at noon, in the same city? They're just begging to get caught. Makes it easy for the Heroes, though!

This is The Mystery of Mr. Wong Featuring Boris Karloff. The Detective class I debuted in The Trophy Case is still the last un-playtested Hero class, but that doesn't mean I can't make some use of it for non-Heroes, and will probably include details from it in a detective write-up in the Mobster Manual. And maybe it should include a chance to recognize poisons on sight?

Or should this be a skill available to Heroes? If so, it would definitely be an expert skill.

$100 may not seem like much to today's players, but then players seldom need much encouragement to get their Heroes into fights.

More interesting is the idea of a villain taking a dive initially against the Heroes, so he can come back and publicly thrash them later.

Lastly, I don't think we should equate boxing rounds with combat turns. At a guess, I'd say a boxing round should be 5-7 combat turns in length.

This is Masked Pilot. There's a mystery as to why the Black Phantom thinks he's fighting in a war, but what really interests me here are the signs at the gas station -- "6 gallons for $1" and "credit cards honored," showing how experimental credit cards still were in 1939.

The Black Phantom fights with the strength of 10 men and...sounds suspiciously like a superhero buffed with the Get Tough power. Could this be one of the earliest true supervillains in comics?

This is from Shark Egan. In 2nd edition, I gave just example values for treasure items, like gemstones and pearls and left it to the Editor to assign numbers. Had I given a range for determining random values, I would have needed to use a very generous exploding die mechanic (like 1-4 x $10, with every roll of 2-4 triggering another roll) to let pearl values get all the way up to $500,000.

(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.)

Popular Comics #45 - pt. 2

So, this is the "father of all sharks" we saw yesterday, but a few shots with a repeating rifle and -- pfft! No more father of all sharks. Way to snuff out such a unique and amazing example of Nature's wonder, Hurricane Kids!

A repeating rifle would be treated as just a hunting rifle.

G-Men stay connected with current news thanks to teletype machines in their branch offices (at least according to this strip!).

A FBI teletype machine would be a pretty useful trophy item -- instant plot hooks!

"Battered but powerful" cars could be handy trophy items. Sure, it's more fun to drive a cool-looking car, but way more conspicuous.

Deserted farmhouses are natural hideouts -- this guy says so!

Tex Ritter discovers that creating a barbed wire barrier and herding opponents toward it is a sound tactic. Tex could take a turn cutting his way through the wire, but it would leave him vulnerable to a full turn of back attacks.

Compiling more things we know about spooks (weak ghosts), spooks can remain invisible after attacking and can fly at pretty fast speed.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #45 - pt. 1

A little tip here from The Masked Pilot's men -- there was an air bureau you could contact to look up a pilot's registration number, confirming who a plane belonged to, or that the number he gave you was fake.

From the map, we learn that the Masked Pilot is in Texas. We also see that it's fairly easy for him to get help/helpers from the Coast Guard.

Now here's a new one. I've talked a lot about disguise -- Heroes disguising themselves, mobsters disguising themselves -- but what about Heroes disguising their planes?  Does this warrant the same save vs. plot mechanic here? Should it be an aviator stunt to camouflage a plane so that it's findable only like a concealed door?

Also note how long they wait for a wandering encounter.

From Gangbusters, we learn that apprentice robber is a low-paying job -- $10 a week. That's only 200 apples!

Apprentice robber is a position that lasts two years.

Note that carrying two guns gives the young hoodlum no advantage -- he's still losing the fight with the beat cop.

Thrown canned goods as improvised missile weapons? Let's say 1-3 points of damage.

We return here to The Mystery of Mr. Wong Featuring Boris Karloff.  Here, Wong manages some sleight of hand, pocketing a clue in a crowded room with no one noticing. Now, that's a pretty advanced skill and I would give it a 1 in 6 chance of success normally. Though, everyone seems to be looking away at the moment so, if there was some diversion going on, I would double his chances.

In both movies and comic books, characters seem to be able to react to guns being fired from hearing them fired. Of course, science tells us the bullet has already passed you before you hear the sound, so Wong is here dodging a second shot, not the first. Also note that the bushes will only serve as soft cover (-1 to hit) -- unless he drops behind them completely to hide, in which case he is effectively invisible and -4 to be hit.

Our first giant turtle?

Note how much more quickly the Hurricane Kids can fix a boat than the Professor on Gilligan's Island...

I like how this isn't just a giant shark, or even a giant prehistoric shark, but the "father of all sharks".

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #42 - pt. 1

People have died from falling off horses in real life, but you don't expect to see that in a comic book and you don't expect that in most RPGs, where falling damage is assigned to specific distance thresholds (like 10' = 1-6 damage). Here, then, is an unusual example for two reasons -- a rare example of taking falling damage for falling less than 10', and a rare complication from an injury. Granted, this is a minor character and not a Hero, but I might still compile these injuries into a table that will be rolled on for non-Heroes.

Speaking of unusual -- here is a rare example of someone attempting to recruit a non-Hero character to, if not his supporting cast, at least to his cause, and failing; probably because of a failed initial encounter reaction roll.

The mobster type "cowardly hoodlum" comes from Bruce Wayne's famous remark "criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot." I had wanted there to be both cowardly hoodlums and superstitious hoodlums from the start, but I was stymied by how to make the superstitious hoodlum a unique set of stats. And I'm still not satisfied with how I did it.

Which brings us around, finally, to this page of Shark Egan. These are sailors, or sailor-hoodlums, but they are definitely superstitious. And I see now that the difference between a cowardly hoodlum and a superstitious hoodlum is that the superstitious hoodlum actually has good morale, until you spook him.

And then there's also a shark!

As of now, I have no plans to include any game mechanic about being blinded by your own blood to Hideouts & Hoodlums. Notice how the kid seems almost excited about it. Forget Batman -- I'd be scared to meet The Hurricane Kids in a dark alley!

And this vine climbing is a good example of why H&H has to move to a separate skill system instead of folding it into the saving throw mechanic. The kid isn't reactively avoiding anything, he's actively climbing. And I definitely wouldn't just hand wave the mechanics here, since there's a good chance of him falling and taking serious damage.

Now this is great example of concealing the entrance to a hideout. The only way in is to climb straight down a sheer vertical cliff face about 20' (with the risk of a drop much further) to a pterodactyl nest, with a crevice concealed behind it. Also note the small size of the tunnel -- not all hideouts need to be built on a 10' scale.

Mini-hideout map!

This is complicatedly named Mr. Wong, Detective, Featuring Boris Karloff. Sorry for the mystery spoilers, but the idea of glass balls filled with poison gas shattered by a remote siren seems like a good idea for a trap to me.

Funny! The page is called Hold Everything.

Really? An hour to extricate someone from a tree? That's six exploration turns. Either the Editor was making The Masked Pilot's player keep rolling skill checks and the player was really unlucky, or it's harder to extricate a person from a tree than I would have thought.

And what's this with The Masked Pilot's credentials? Is this the prototype for Dr. Who's psychic paper? Maybe credentials should be a trophy item that serves as a "gets the police to do whatever you want" card.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)