Famous Funnies #59

After a string of DC titles we're back to Eastern's one title.

Map!  It's not much more than a map of Cuba, but it stands out for me because a) this is in (or near) Guantanamo Bay, and b) my home campaign was just there at the beginning of this summer.

Is $100 a day reasonably representative of how much bit players made in movies?

The amphibious plane, or seaplane, is so commonly featured in these early comics that I'm half-wondering if it shouldn't be on the starting equipment list instead of as a trophy. But it also begs the question: do some planes need to be on the starting equipment list?

Also -- what does this storyline have to do with aviation??

This joke's kind of clever; I had to think about it for a moment.

It takes Pooch a week to heal back to normal after being critically injured. What's unusual about that is, I can't imagine a dog that size having more than 3 hit points.

I don't plan on introducing negative hit points into Hideouts & Hoodlums, but I could track how far into negative hit points someone goes after losing consciousness and come up with a chart that increases length of healing time for how deep into negative numbers you go. Like:
-1 to -3 hp: 4 hours to heal back 1 hp
-4 to -6 hp: 8 hours to heal back 1 hp
and so on...

More great King Cedric banter in Oaky Doaks.

Ugh -- another goat joke!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Famous Funnies #54

Here's a fun item to throw into a hideout -- a bucket with a glass bottom. What's it for? For seeing underwater, of course, as any eagle scout can apparently tell you.

This is from Skyroads, and I've done this too. Your players want to know exactly how many gold coins are in that sack, but you cut corners preparing for the game and only worked out what the dollar value of the whole contents are. Who has time to go check the price of gold in 1940, divide the total dollar sum by it, and get a number of coins? So you tell them, "it's a sack of 50,000 bucks in gold" and, if they ask for details, you add "don't worry about it..."

From the gag filler Life's Like That, here's something I thought was funny.

This is from War on Crime.  It seems that hoodlums always have a chance of identifying "dicks" -- or good guys in general, on sight. A 1 in 6 chance, perhaps?

I am not a fan of Jitter, a pretty humorless gag strip, but this page has some mini-history lessons for us -- specifically what a street-cleaning wagon looked like in the 1930s, and the fact that gas stations also had water hoses.

It's rare that the entire hideout turns out to be one big trap, but in this case the entrance is rigged so that, if someone pulls out some of the support stones, the entrance slides shut and traps you inside.

There's two interesting things to point out from this page of Dickie Dare.  One is the clue, mysterious words written on a piece of paper, meaningless without context, which turns out to be the last name of a villain to be met later (and will be recognized then as foreshadowing).  Two -- and this has come up before -- is that every hideout should have more than one entrance, even if you need a crowbar to break into the secondary entrance.

This is from The Adventures of Patsy.  Animals won't cross a line of fire unless they make a morale save. This might apply to ordinary hoodlums as well, since the line of fire could do 1-6 points of damage to the crosser.

Seaweed Sam is back because of the iron robot he encounters this month. It's far stronger than the version found in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies, though maybe it could use an upgrade -- give it the Raise Elephant power?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)