Star Comics v. 2 #7

Count Rocco may be the only count in comic books who's not a bad guy. Here, The Rat uses a cat o' nine tails on him. I've already added the whip to the weapons list in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but don't plan on a cat o'nine tails being different, mechanics-wise, from an ordinary whip.

Hanging from your thumbs is pretty serious torture, though. Maybe 1-2 points of damage per minute?  Sometimes time has to be measured in real time measurements instead of turns, since turns have a more flexible meaning, and torture that does 1-2 points over a 4-hour rest turn isn't that scary sounding.

Ooo, what's this? A haunted island? A land of underground caves? Sounds like a great set-up for a hideout crawl to me! And that this is the first stop on a quest to find the Lost Islands sounds like a full campaign! Sadly, this is the last installment we ever see of The Last Pirate.

The grappling attack only lasts one turn underwater. Shortening the length of the combat turn to 30 seconds will allow for longer underwater combats, since Heroes will now be able to hold their breath underwater for 1-12 combat turns.

This is from Dash of the 100th Century and, while a gag strip instead of an adventure strip, I include it because there's been no discussion anywhere else about how much an interplanetary rocket would weigh.  Five hundred tons seems a bit much for a rocket that size but...maybe it's made of super-dense metals, in order to survive the rigors of space, or to help establish gravity?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Star Comics #16

At least I still have some primary sources to work from!

This is a gag filler called Davy Jones, but it's also a passable adventure scenario. Davy doesn't do any fighting, but the deckhand does and he seems to be remarkably high-level -- he kills all three sharks between this last panel and the next one, with his bare hands.

I would not normally recommend a supporting cast character be able to overshadow the main character, but if we considered the roles reversed and Davy the useless sidekick, this makes more sense.

One of the nice things about campaigning with a light tone is that wandering encounters don't have to make a lot of sense. A tiger on a deserted island? Sure, why not?

This is new sports genre hero Brad Donovan, worth noting here only because I think it's great that the ringleader of this crime ring is an old lady with a pet duck. I can't wait to roleplay this character!

This is from Carl Burgos' The Last Pirate (like Bill Everett, Carl also worked at Centaur before Timely).  I'm not sure why firing the cannons would make them ruined, unless the crew just doesn't know how to reload them -- or, what if all gunpowder weapons were treated like wands with charges; once they run out of charges, they're no good any more and have to be discarded? It would be another way to restrict over-reliance on guns in Hideouts & Hoodlums...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)