Amazing Man Comics #11 - pt. 2

Welcome back! Let's pick up where we left off last time with Chuck Hardy. Chuck has met a new species in his Hollow World setting and, no, it's not lobstermen, it's pygmy lobstermen. That implies that there are "normal"-sized lobstermen out there somewhere too. We don't learn anything about the pygmy lobstermen other than they use a monarchical system of government, are matriarchal, extremely friendly, and technologically primitive. We never once see them fight, so they could have 12 HD for all we know, but I think it's a safer bet that they have a 1/2 HD, or 1-1 HD at best.

I wish we had a sense of scale for that curious lizard, as it looks more fearsome than pygmy lobstermen and frogmen. 

I'm going to spare you the next page and the results of Chuck's trap. Here's a hint: had it been drawn realistically, there would be blood flying everywhere. So how do I stat this trap? A catapult-launched spear is going to be pretty powerful - I'd even be willing to say 3-18 points of damage worth - but it's also going to be an impractical, poorly-aimed weapon. Despite the number of spears, they would each have a chance to hit equal to just a 1 HD mobster. 

Incidentally, missing from this story is any explanation for how people with pincers for hands were able to make rope ladders.

If panel 3 makes you think of the Ewok Dance...then we think alike.

The only real reason I shared this page is the peculiar wording of "knock him kicking!" Google that phrase and the only thing that comes up is a sports article from a 1965 newspaper, and it's behind a paywall so I can't tell what the context is. I can only imagine that Chuck's dialogue is being written intentionally silly.

Moving on to Iron Skull...

I was confused at first by the term "pet suspects," never having heard it before. Apparently it's a real term meaning the same thing as "most likely" suspects, though my first thought was that the Chief had a pet that suspected them.

It's incredible that the Chief is unable to see the two dead men both belonging to the same cult as a clue. Or perhaps I should say it's suspicious... coincidentally, Drago hears that the Skull is after him right after the Skull leaves the police station. 

This episode of Pinky & Jim, Slave Cultists is interrupted by Iron Skull, climbing up the bricks instead of the easier drainpipe right next to him. To be fair, the Editor could rule that a drainpipe isn't strong enough to support an android's weight (there is no game mechanic behind that; it would just be a common sense ruling by the Editor). It's also possible that Iron Skull is so strong that he's pinching fingerholds into the bricks (which would be handled by a wrecking things roll). 

Here we have a new type of robot - grotesque robots. What's special about these is that Iron Skull's annod comptod machine doesn't work on them. Now, no one knows what "annod comptod" means, but we know from past issues that this machine is what Iron Skull uses to Wreck at Range (the power). It seems that grotesque robots are immune, or greatly resistant, to being wrecked. The Skull has to defeat them the old-fashioned way with punches. 

In the future (or maybe because this is a comic book?), you don't have to smother someone for 10 minutes with a chloroform-soaked rag to knock him unconscious, you just toss the rag on his face and if it lands he is knocked out. 

Both the art and the caption in panel 3 are confusing. The rod must run through the center of the sphere and spins it. The "pyramids" would more properly be called spikes. Being scraped against the spikes wile being rotated past them seems like it would do at least 4-24 points of damage to me. Good thing that the Skull is being held with nothing but rope - easily wrecked as if a door. 

Now this is interesting - Yagani is a Hindu name. In Iron Skull's future, he has to watch out for spies from India! (Unless Burgos just mistakenly assumes this is a Japanese name, since otherwise his WWIII is awfully similar to WWII). 

The bald guy is an assassin, as detailed in the Mobster Manual.  

I think this is the first time I've ever seen a comic book character actually swallow a key; this is usually a cartoon thing.

"Dragon has a time bomb hidden here!"

"We have no time to look for it! In a 10' x 10' cell with almost no furnishings!"

We can see it makes no difference whether Iron Skull wrecks with his head or his fists, so that's all flavor text.

I've never been impressed with Burgos' artwork, but that last panel is particularly rushed. That "BOOM!" going off a few feet away looks like it was set off by a firecracker instead of a bomb.

Note that we never did find out who Drago's informant was - my money is still on the Chief!

Before we go, let's peek in on just one page of Minimidget. All I have to say about this page is that Boma is a real city, in the Congo - and also that ordinary people seem to be really cool about tiny shrunken people in this strip.

(Scans courtesy of Comicbookplus.)

 

Amazing Man Comics #10 - pt. 3

Iron Skull is back and so is Igor Raston (I don't recall him, but we're supposed to believe this is a grudge match between the two).

The fisticuff is fairly pedestrian, but I wanted to share this page to point out that it's not too late after a fight starts to have traps in the area activated. Indeed, traps going off can liven up a fight!

It's hard to say how much that platform weighs or how fast it's moving, but a good rule of thumb might be 1 die of damage for 180 lbs, +1 die each time that weight is doubled.

We've seen the annod-comptod machine before (I even statted it for H&H already). It normally allows anyone to use the Wreck at Range power freely, but here is an unusual use of wrecking, simply short-circuiting electronics.

Here we also get another trap, a simple one with a tripwire and four spear-holes, with the only unusual wrinkle here being that the four spears are somehow all aimed at the same spot.

It's possible that I.S. is using a defensive buffing power to protect himself from the spears, but it's also possible that they "missed," or he made his saves vs. missiles, and them crashing against his skull is merely flavor text.

Your powers of deduction are amazing, Iron Skull!

Here we see wrecking things being used more traditionally, but I point this out because I.S. is concerned enough about melee vs. what looks like five unarmed hoodlums that he takes that drastic an action. Or perhaps he really doesn't want Igor to get away. Shut up, Rensen, I've got to go catch up with Igor!

Iron Skull has to make a conditional threat in that last panel because of the save vs. plot he needs to roll before he can punch a lady.

We're going to all assume I.S. won and jump into the next story, featuring Minimidget (and Ritty, who has the same power but no billing). Ignoring their shrunken state, this is some of the best science I've read in a comic book in awhile. If they were in a rocket going 400 MPH and were thrown to the floor of the ship, I would expect them to take at least 1-4 points of damage and could conceivably be knocked unconscious.

It would take the rocket about 10 hours to get to Africa. I bet they're really hungry for lunch!

Does it make sense for the rocket to go slower? Actually, I think that's pretty good science too. If the rocket had leveled off and all its inertia was horizontal, then when it loses that inertia it will fall into gravity. Gravity wouldn't pull it any faster than 120 MPH (terminal velocity). That all gets scrapped if there was any downward momentum, which would have added to that speed.

I'm going to spare you this part where the superstitious natives see two tiny people and immediately assume they are gods. A LOT of these comic books make the racist assumption that blacks would worship anything they couldn't understand.

No culture ever had a god named Ramu, though there is a river in Papua New Guinea with that name.

Jumping into Chuck Hardy's adventure, we see how a flood can turn any environment into a nautical adventure. I'm not a big fan of this feature, but I definitely want to use natives riding huge turtles someday.

Lots of comic book Heroes have their own Supporting Cast, but you rarely see them fail their loyalty checks. You see that with the princess right here, which is nice.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.) 

Amazing-Man Comics #10 - pt. 2

Today we'll be looking at two features from this issue -- The Magician of Mars and Iron Skull.

When we saw Jane yesterday, she had just arrived at an airport on...Earth? Mars? Even after reading the whole story I'm not sure which it's supposed to be. I do see that she's hit with perhaps the weirdest weapon yet in comics, incoherent music strong enough to knock her unconscious (and that's something, because we know that Jane has some brevet ranks and extra hit points!).

What happens to make her hair stand up like that when she's startled? Is that a Martian thing?

Suddenly, Magician from Mars is a pole-vaulter! Or, judging from that crotch shot, maybe a pole dancer? Now, stunts are no longer the province of just mystery men -- In the still-unreleased AH&H Heroes Handbook I planned to reveal that other classes above 6th level get stunts too, just a lot more slowly. Anyway, what she does to get to the top of the building certainly looks like a mysteryman's stunt, but then it could also be a Leap I use with some flavor text added, or the Spider Climb spell with a lot of flavor text/reinterpretation!

I'm also going to point out this brief dogfight and the relevance of abstract combat to H&H combat. That "fatal hit" Jane makes is very clearly to the wing of the plane and would not be fatal under most circumstances, yet with abstract game mechanics, a combat could end after just such a hit, either from loss of hit points or a chance of random complication per hit.

There's that weird hair flip again!

I like how the entire building has nothing to do with the hideout, other than hiding the secret tunnel underneath it. So dungeon-y!

I hate to do this since it's such low-hanging fruit, but...man, this artwork is terrible! The proportions on figures are just terribly amateurish. Look at those midgets in the tunnel in panel 7 here, or in the top panel on the next page...

 I like how she calls him "sweetheart."

The explanation for "sound bombs" is right up there with the worst garbage science of the comic books we've gone over.

Jane uses Wreck at Range in that last panel. Note that she hasn't really cast anything like a traditional spell this entire adventure so far.

I'm not sure what to make of The Hood being able to go immaterial. If they had the concept of holograms back in 1940, I would have guessed he was only a hologram. Is he a magician too, like Jane? In that case, this could be some Etherealness spell, or maybe even a Gaseous Form spell.

As for her force ray, I think she means the Wall of Force spell here.

If Jane is a magician, why does she have a plane with bombs on it? Or did she steal the bombs from the hideout before it caved in?

And now it's off to the far-flung future of 1970! Hmm, which five countries would profit by the splitting up of the United States in 1970? If this was based on who owns the most U.S. debt, and would hence benefit from the largest payoffs if the U.S. defaulted -- well, I don't have numbers for 1970, but if it was based on today's numbers then these nations would be Luxembourg, Brazil, the UK, China, and Japan. Not your usual list of suspects!

Other 1940 authors might have underestimated inflation in the next 30 years, but Carl overestimated it. This $10 billion fee would have made Hawkins the richest man in the world, since oil magnate J. Paul Getty only had $6 billion in 1970.

I think it's interesting how Carl thought subways would be ancient history by 1970. I wonder what he thought we were going to replace them with.

As for the rest of this page...I really do not understand what the X-ray machine is for, or why the subway train is being supported by cables in a glass tube, or why the glass tubes are suspended so high above a cement floor. It's more like a subway museum in there.

Should a superhero be able to wreck spikes at the very moment of landing on them? On one hand, I would say no, wrecking things should not be an instantaneous action. On the other hand, doing it to save the other person falling with you is a perfect superhero action and should be encouraged. I guess, in the end, I might allow it, but insist that the superhero still takes damage from the spikes at the same time as wrecking them.

Is a 1 ft.-thick glass door still count as a door for wrecking things? At what point is a barrier thick enough that it counts as a wall and not a door? The average interior wall is about 5" wide. Let's round up to 6", though, and get to a half-foot. For every extra 6" of thickness, the wrecking things category can go up one. At least this works for doors, and maybe machines and generators. By the time we get to robots and cars, we might need some other metric, such as weight.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Man Comics #9 - pt. 2

This is still King of the South Seas, and it's Junkins who crowns him! I've written before about improvised weapons sometimes doing only half a die of damage, but without any firm guidelines as to when. I'm afraid I still don't have firm guidelines, but a lot of it has to do with weight and how wieldy it is. In this case, that looks like a heavy kettle, easily thrown by its handle, so it gets a full die of damage, but a lighter kettle or one without  a handle would not make as effective a weapon.

I included brief rules on amnesia in 2nd edition, but really don't like the old trope of needing a second blow to the head to recover (Heroes would just hit each other right away) and opted for a random duration instead.

Jungle Battles is a bizarre little one-shot, and that's saying something because the comic book landscape circa 1935-1940 is littered with bizarreness. It starts with Jay jumping into the trees to save a person from this gorilla, then Jay feels sorry for it and helps the gorilla free itself from quicksand. Then, a stegosaurus just waltzes in and no one seems enormously surprised to see it, as if Africa was full of Jurassic-era dinosaurs.

In a rare instance of a dinosaur having lots of hit points (as they do in Hideouts & Hoodlums), the stegosaurus takes a bomb to the face, is stunned, then gets back up and shrugs off a rifle shot, and then only fails a morale check when more men come running.

Then the constrictor snake encounter just seems to come out of nowhere. I can't help but wonder if this was part of a larger story, but it was chopped down to fit three pages. Missing panels could have explained a lot more of this strange continuity.

The gorilla is recruited as supporting cast simply by being rescued (remember to make those recruitment checks, even if the players don't ask for them!).

Iron Skull's adventures now take place in 1970 instead of 1950. Retcon or time jump? Either way, it's the biggest of its kind yet in the early comic book medium. Since none of the supporting cast is the same, and Iron Skull is an android and would look the same anyway, this could well be 20 years after the previous issue.

Rocket planes -- or rather, jets -- are just months away from becoming reality in February 1940. Sound detectors had been around since the 1910s. So the technology level envisioned here for 1970 has barely changed at all.

Ray guns that kill motors are the oldest mad science trope in comics, so they don't need to come from 1970.

Dead Stick Landing was a stunt for aviators in 1st edition (and could be coming back in 2nd...).

Though Iron Skull is often depicted as a superhero, there are times when he is more like the fighter class. Here is a prime example, where he seems to be unable to wreck his way out of a net. Of course, Iron Skull might be pretending to be captured so he can get Ludwig to reveal his plan to him (which does happen, on the following pages we'll skip looking at).

By the way, it's extremely hard for one person to throw a net like that.

This is Magician from Mars -- the feature, not the creature shown here. What we're looking at is a new variety of elemental. Let's call it a fear elemental. It is summoned accidentally when a musician just happens to make the right sounds in sequence. It has a paralyzing gaze, grows larger the more people fear it (size based on crowd size). His size seems to max out at 120' tall.

"No Earthly substance seems to affect it" seems to suggest that it can only be harmed by magic weapons (generally always true about elementals anyway).

Jane's ability to match the elemental for size far exceeds what the spell Enlargement is usually capable of. We might need a higher level version (Super Enlargement?) that goes up to 120' tall (or taller? They look even taller than 120' in panel 4) and increases hit dice accordingly.

Before pointing out the impracticality of fighting in what Jane is wearing, keep in mind that the elemental is wearing a loose, baggy robe he could easily be tripping over.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Man Comics #8 - pt. 3

Dr. Magno turns on his own hoodlums and kills them with gas; bear in mind this is 20 years before the novel Goldfinger.

If Dr. Magno is statted as a superhero (or supervillain in his case, making him one of the earliest in comics), then his redirection of the bullet could be flavor text for Nigh-Invulnerable Skin. With his Armor Class buffed, Dr. Magno simply made the bullet miss.

It's time we dealt with the elephant in this room -- why didn't Iron Skull wreck his way out of this trap before now? After all, a lot of people are dead now for his inaction, including an innocent museum guard. Remember that, last post, I said the magnet's effect seemed like Hold Person, which is much different than just immobilizing someone with chains. If he was not paralyzed, I could see two other factors in play; both the electromagnet and the lack of leverage could be giving IS some serious negative modifiers to his wrecking things roll vs. the chains, perhaps as much as -6.

But assuming he is paralyzed, how does the chains breaking have anything to do with him breaking free of the electromagnet? It doesn't; the chains breaking is just a coincidence. The duration ended on the Hold Person effect -- more evidence of durations in comic books.

Here we see (turn 1) punching (Dr. Magno being knocked prone doesn't seem to affect the combat and may be flavor text), (turn 2) grappling (Iron Skull definitely knocks Magno prone this time), (turn 3) Magno reverse-grapples and establishes a choke hold (with some lucky rolling), (turn 4) Magno breaks loose of hold, (turn 5) delivers 2 punches (both of the final panels are in the same turn).

Jane, the Magician from Mars, looked like a magic-user/superhero last time, but she is all-superhero in this issue.

This page explains how she's half-alien, and how using more of her brain gives her super powers.

Immortality is going to be a high-level power, if it's needed at all.

Telekinesis arrests the jumper's fall? It says Jane jumps down, grabs him, and then bounces back up off one of the boats. It's possible that happened exactly like that, since half-aliens can have fantastic jumping ability.

Jane and the Suicider take an air taxi, as shown here. It seems to be a self-driving vehicle (those Martians sure are advanced!).

Jane displays the power Raise Building. Then she appears to use Super-Punch to knock the Crook into the sky. Of course, there's no way he would still be conscious after a Super-Punch unless he is a high-level Fighter, so perhaps something else like Telekinesis is going on here.

Jane keeps really busy! Now she's helping out at a rodeo (Martians love Earth culture). She grapples with a bull and tosses it pretty far (Extend Missile Range?).

Later, while flying around in her rocket ship, she gets in an aerial dogfight with another rocket ship. The saboteurs' ship has a melting ray mounted on the front, while her ship has some sort of "slices ships in half" ray (or is she Wrecking at Range with her powers?).

We see that trains on Mars travel through pneumatic tubes.

There is a Stop Train power and this seems to be that power reversed.

Jane remembers she's also a magic-user and finally uses a Minor Polymorph spell.

It seems unlikely that we need a Create Ink spell. Jane would probably not ruin the entire lobby just to teach this one guy a lesson, so I'm guessing this is an illusion spell.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Man Comics #8 - pt. 2

This is the original Cat Man again. From this page, we get a rare "dead or alive" bounty for $35,000 (that's a lot of xp for Lawful Heroes!). We also see that plot hook characters can turn up coming from any direction.

Cat Man uses his cat to poison bad guys. Technically, it gets around the rule that Heroes cannot use poison, though since a cat has low Hit Dice and a corresponding low chance to hit a target, it seems an impractical method of delivery.

Speaking of impractical, this character takes the age-old cliche of crime-fighting in a dress and crossdresses it. It still seems impractical, but at least a dress this concealing can hold a bulletproof vest under it. Typical of comic books, people in bulletproof vests are shown to feel no pain at all when shot.

This is from the serial The King of the South Seas. First we see an unusual improvised missile weapon, and one that looks so small you wouldn't think throwing it against someone's head would knock them unconscious.

We see pirates and natives working together, which is a good combination of archetypes for variety.

Next we see a character bleeding out from a head wound who faints from it. This isn't how hit point loss works for Heroes and mobsters, but Editors have more leniency for bending the rules when it comes to plot-useful side characters.

I've no idea why the boat blows up.

The jungle island is pretty big; if the boat is being rowed at 6-7 MPH, and it takes them 30 minutes to reach their destination in the heart of the island, it means the island must be at least 6-7 miles in diameter. And this is good, because if you're going to use an island as a "sandbox" setting, you need it to be spacious enough for lots of travel.

If the coincidence of the "King" turning out to be the old man's son seems too great for your liking, bear in mind that we still don't know this is true; we only know the old man thinks it is true. Editors can always introduce false information through characters to throw the players off.

In the "future" setting of the 1950s, people use televisions to call each other. Carl Burgos is only one invention off here, as what he's posited turns out to be true later for computers.

Game mechanically, all Dr. Magno has done here is a disarming attack. If played that way, then the magnetism power is only flavor text. But it's possible to have performed this feat with a telekinesis, or a magnetic control power too (though the later would only duplicate telekinesis in this case).

There are some superhero buffing powers that would have shielded Iron Skull from that throwing knife, but it seems unlikely that he would have them prepared for a trip to talk to the police commissioner, and cannot activate them at the same time as being surprised. So, either Iron Skull is not as surprised by the knife thrower as the panel would have you believe, or perhaps the Editor has hand-waived game mechanics for this scene, since the thrower only needed to send the message and was not here to kill him.

It's remarkable that Iron Skull fails to sneak into the second floor window, so he changes tactics dramatically and noisily crashes into the basement. He's definitely buffed himself defensively so he takes no damage from the fall, and uses wrecking things while falling to go through the door.

Of course, this just plays right into Dr. Magno's hands, as his electromagnets happen to be housed right in the basement. I wonder what effect they would have had on Iron Skull if he was still up on the second floor. In the basement, the effect is essentially a Hold Person spell.

This museum keeps $50 million in jewels on display. A Hideouts & Hoodlums player playing the numbers would wait to thwart Dr. Magno until after he's stolen the jewels and the museum has put up a reward -- even a 1% finders fee would be 500,000 XP (basically 1 free level), while Dr. Magno himself is probably worth just a few hundred XP.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)