Feature Comics #30 - pt. 1

It's been a long time since we last checked in with Quality Comics' flagship title. Here, the Clock (sans mask) investigates how a car was tricked into careening off the road, and anticipates the movie Goldfinger by 24 years.

That the Clock wakes up after 30 minutes suggests that he was simply stunned and recovers 1-6 turns later, but the Editor has decided to make those 10-minute exploration turns (which the Editor can do, at his discretion).

Monogrammed cigarettes must have been a novelty item of decades past.

That's also quiet an expose in the newspaper, that the dead man was a FBI man with secret industrial mobilization plans on him. I bet the FBI was wanting to keep that a secret. Industrial mobilization was, of course, a real thing, and had been ongoing since Sept. 1939 in the U.S.

I've seen this in games before, paying kids to run messages for you. In a pre-modern age it can be more reliable than technology for communication, though it could put the kids in danger.

Panel 3 is a good example of how easy it is for Heroes to scale walls, even in dress shoes and tuxedos, while carrying canes in one hand.

This is Lena Pry and we haven't looked in on this comic strip in a dog's age. I include this bit because of the discussion of relief checks, which was another real thing. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land.

The Great Bear Lake is a real lake. It is the largest lake entirely in Canada, the fourth-largest in North America, and the eighth-largest in the world. Moose Creek is also real, running through Ontario.

There really is a Nugget City in the Yukon, but it's a RV park and, I suspect, doesn't date back as far as 1940. It's possible that "Nugget City" is a euphemism for the Town of Dawson, which was at the center of the Klondike Gold Rush.

This is Spin Shaw and Spin is in an unusual gaming situation that I've only seen once before in a Star Wars session; Spin is "grounded" by a captain who doesn't want him involved in the scenario, so part of the scenario becomes finding a way to get into the rest of the scenario. Here, Spin's player wisely finds a use for his plane that nothing else can do, forcing the captain's hand to let him take off. No dice rolls should be needed to judge a situation like this, and the player should certainly be rewarded for ingenuity.

Unlike Reynolds of the Mounted, which was surprisingly easy to place in the real world, San Luray seems to be entirely fictional. There actually is an archipelago called the Barren Islands -- but it's in Alaska, and it's very unlikely that this adventure takes place there. "Barren Islands" was surely meant to sound evocative, but also generic enough that they could be anywhere.

The cliche of the hollow statue that can be made to appear to be talking to its worshipers is as old as racism in adventure fiction. I include this example, though, because of the added details, like the density of the foliage concealing the entrance (find as secret door?), the fact that the entrance is a "queer opening" because it's much smaller than a normal door, and the shots of the interior show that the body has just one hollow column leading up to a small floored room in the head.

Eisner makes a point of showing us that Dollman is a good fighter at full-size to explain how he is still so capable at tiny size. Why I share this particular page, though, is for the use of "tomahawk" to describe a sap/blackjack. This may be purely a joke, as I can find no evidence that tomahawk was ever a slang term for a sap or blackjack.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Feature Comics #29 - pt. 1

Despite having been a lab assistant until recently, Darrel Dane already has a reputation as a private eye. Becoming a private eye is a handy way to get plot hook characters to walk in on you...but shouldn't Darrel have been suspicious that the threatening note was in easily identifiable cursive?

Suave thieves should probably be statted as slick hoodlums.

I'm curious about this, and wonder how typical it would be for a museum to employ five or more security guards for the same shift. It's also worth noting that none of the security guards wear uniforms.

It may also be worth noting this is the first mention of 18th century Spanish painter Francisco Goya in a comic book.

I don't have anything game mechanics-related to say about this page; I just think the set-up of this scene is hilarious. Ugly piece!

I'm including this page of Dixie Dugan for the unusual use of the word "punk," here used as an adjective and simply meaning "bad."

Sir Malcolm Campbell was real and worthy of being a supporting cast member in a Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign someday. You can read more about him here.

The Clock should be suspicious that the gangsters in the car had taken the time to ditch their identifying papers, but left a letter addressed to "The Reaper" in the car with them. Actually, maybe he is suspicious, because he takes the time to question Holt in the hospital about The Reaper, despite the fact that we learn on the next page that The Clock already knows exactly which local crime boss is known as The Reaper.

Lena Pry makes a surprise return to the blog. Here, Jane Arden's hillbilly counterpart encounters the IRS, and we learn that farm relief has a very old history in this country. I can almost envision a campaign of super-powered IRS agents, having to tour the country handing out checks...

I haven't included an Off the Record in some time. I shared this one, not only because I thought these two gags were funny, but the woman in the dentist's chair with Spike seems like she would be a good character to run into in someone's game. Spike would always be around, growling and threatening the Heroes.

Should half-pints need to save vs. plot to attack anyone with glasses?

Reynolds of the Mounted offers a surprisingly practical explanation for how Reynolds wasn't fooled by the fake clue left for him, but then includes shakier material like a peace pipe that can double as a blowgun, and a hollow wooden pipe being strong enough to be used as a club without breaking.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Feature Comics #24

Today, I lap myself, sort of. Back in the Winter of 2012, I did a lengthy review of this very issue in the sixth issue of my ezine, The Trophy Case -- and that article was in many ways the prototype for what I've been doing here on this blog for almost two years now. So, rather than re-read this issue and try to glean new insights from it, I'm going to share what I wrote then in my "Comic Book World" column.

Over 68 pages, Feature Comics #24 gave you a whopping 22 features between 1 and 9 pages long. And, reading it, it gives me a bunch of ideas about how I could use this stuff in an H&H game.

The first feature, the longest of the bunch, is a Charlie Chan, complete-in-9-pages mystery.  Charlie Chan is drawn to resemble Warner Oland, the original actor to portray Charlie Chan in the movies. It seems a little creepy, actually, since this issue came out 13 months after Oland died, but given  Quality’s reputation of reprinting never- or obscurely-published comic strips, it is likely that this strip was done before Oland’s death.

The page layout and story pacing suggests this might once have been intended as a three-panel comic strip – perhaps a blessing in disguise for the short story, as it forces a slight advancement in the plot to happen every three panels. It is also fortunate that the plot is fairly simple and straightforward, as Chan has to decide which of the passengers around him on a ship is actually a master jewel thief named Grissac (which is not also the name of a Captain Marvel villain, but so should be).

The plot is straightforward in that there are few complications (Number One Son is conveniently
indisposed with sea-sickness for the whole story so we are never treated to a comic sub-plot) and
simple in that Chan makes several assumptions that just luckily turn out to be true (like how the
friends that he last met two years ago are beyond suspicion). It’s still a true mystery story, though,
with a satisfying resolution. The main clue did escape my attention as it whizzed past at the
rapid pace of the story. And, better still, it charmingly evokes the feel of the Charlie Chan films.

If I was running this scenario as an H&H adventure (I’ve seldom, in 28 years of gaming,
been lucky enough to have players who enjoy a mystery scenario, but hypothetically), I would
make a list of assumptions the players could make that are true and roll for one assumption for
each Hero -- like a rumor table, but with all true ones. Nothing bogs down a mystery scenario
more than players who are afraid of spending too much time on a dead end and, I suspect, this
approach would help narrow their options without making the scenario feel railroaded. I would also
take from this story the effect of its pacing and be prepared to have a character around the Heroes
voice a clue or helpful suggestion – or just have something happen around the Heroes, like a
knife thrown from the dark – at frequent intervals.

For a longer scenario, I might also take an old time movie, like a Charlie Chan film that my
players are unlikely to have seen or recall accurately, and steal from it like crazy.

Following the longest story in the issue is a one-page feature called “Off Side” that consists of
four, one-panel jokes. The jokes aren’t funny, but I suspect they aren’t meant to be. Instead of an
abrupt transition between features, these one-pagers serve as a sort of pallet cleanser, getting
you ready for the next story. Perhaps one reason there are no successful anthology comic books
anymore is that this technique has been forgotten. The abrupt transition forces the reader
to either ‘switch gears’ quickly or put down the comic book for a while and come back to it later,
while a successful comic book is devoured in one sitting.

That said, the next feature was not worth the pallet cleansing, being instead another three pages
of pallet cleansers bearing the name and character of Lala Palooza. Lala is an upper class society girl plagued by her comic relief, good-for-nothing, Wimpy-like, live-in brother Vincent.  Indeed, if Lala was ever actually the star of these one-pagers, she has long-since been eclipsed by Vincent’s shenanigans. Vincent fights and gambles when he’s not being idle and avoiding work, making it impossible to understand why Lala would put up with him – but I suppose that’s more thought than you’re supposed to invest in this. The past page of the three is the last, with the semi-clever notion of contrasting Vincent’s classy-sounding diary entries with how he really spends his day.

Rance Keane is Feature Comics’ resident cowboy. The plot is nothing original – a conman is pretending to be the inheritor of a ranch so he can sell it, but Rance can tell he’s a phony because the conman is dumb enough to use the wrong hand. What makes this story worth studying is that every character -- the sheriff, the old Indian, the cowhand -- has a history with Rance and we even learn who long he has known them. Every H&H Editor needs to put at least this much effort into planning how Supporting Cast Members know each other and how they figure into the Heroes’ back stories.
Rance would enjoy some better than average artwork in future issues, but none of it is on display yet in issue #24.

The following two pages are more pallet-cleaning comic strip reprints. ‘Toddy’ is about a Dennis the Menace-like young scrapper who clearly makes his mother miserable. ‘Mortimer Mum’ is less clear. In one half-page installment, Mortimer becomes a ‘mum’ when he finds a baby in a basket on his doorstep, but the following installment is a short joke at Mortimer’s expense with no baby in sight.

Two pages of comic strip reprints of ‘Jane Arden’ follow, spread out over four pages. It’s hard to say what Jane is. Each page of her strip ends in a paper doll of Jane or one her friends with some outfits to dress them up in (go on, kids, cut up your comic books!) so it would seem she’s a model, but the police are asking her to go undercover for them at the beginning of this adventure. The plot is similar to the Charlie Chan story, but this time Jane needs to find a jewel thief by locating his fence, rather than picking him out from a crowd of suspects. There’s not much to recommend about Jane Arden for H&H, though perhaps one could make an argument for using paper dolls as miniatures. The artwork on Jane Arden is quite good and usually the best work in Feature Comics since Will Eisner’s Black X
moved to Smash Comics.

At the bottom of each page of Jane Arden is a shorter strip called Lena Pry, a very poor quality Li’l Abner clone. The less said about it the better.  The two-page ‘Big Top’ is a straightforward soap opera, but with all the visual appeal of the circus. It anticipates the movie The Greatest Show on Earth by 14 years, but is otherwise of little use to gamers.

Another page of ‘Off Side’ follows with one good visual joke out of five attempts. This time the pallet cleanser is there to get you ready for ‘The Clock Strikes’. This was Feature Comics’ big draw until Doll Man debuted. Bought from his previous publisher, Centaur, The Clock is not only widely credited for being the first original masked character in comic books and for being the “missing link” between the pulp heroes and the superhero genre, but also must hold a record for the sheer number of titles he jumped around between two companies. That said, it is also easy to see how The Clock would up languishing in obscurity, with the fault almost entirely being in the hands of his creator, George Brenner. A subpar artist, Brenner would seldom draw any kind of action scene, would trace old panels as often as he could, and one time committed the unpardonable sin of reusing the entire art from an earlier issue with only the word balloons changing.

In this installment, Brian O’Brian (usually spelled O’Brien) drops in on his friend, Police Captain Kane (hint for H&H players: police contacts are great for picking up plot hooks!), and learns of a swindler who is about to get away scott free because the witness against him has been murdered. The police have nothing other than circumstantial evidence linking the swindler to the crime, who has an alibi to boot. Still, that doesn’t keep Brian from suspecting him and he mails him one of The Clock’s business cards with the threat that he will show up at midnight. The swindler, frightened, summons all his accomplices to help protect him. This is all the proof The Clock was waiting for, as he needed to catch the swindler and the real killer in the same room to prove their collusion. He then paralyzes
all three mobsters present with nerve pinches so the police will find them together. How a good
lawyer wouldn’t manage to get them off on evidence like that is never explained, but in a five-page story you can’t expect an episode of Law & Order.

The best lesson the H&H Editor can take from this is not to get too hung-up on the reality of how the law works. Flimsy evidence and the admissibility of evidence gathered by vigilantes are staples of the genre. And in most cases, that’s all it takes. Except for a few popular supervillains, most bad guys who get arrested are never heard from again.

The following pallet cleanser is a half-page of ‘Rude Goldberg’s Side Show’, a quarter-page of
‘Candid Cartoons’ and a quarter-page of rhyming ‘Twisted Tales’. Rude Goldberg’s witty inventions
are rightfully famous and this issue’s mosquito killer is no exception (the mosquito, having dulled
the tip of its proboscis on a false leg, will surely head to the nearest emery wheel to re-sharpen it…).

The next four pages are dedicated to the ‘Joe Palooka’ syndicated comic strip. Joe is a boxer from Brooklyn(though we never see him boxing in this issue) who isn’t well-educated, but his innocence highlights the hypocrisy of everyone smarter around him. It’s a charming strip.

‘They’re Still Talking’ is a one-page pallet cleanser drawn in the ‘Ripley’s Believe It Or Not’
style, but with a sports theme.

The next four-page feature is ‘Gallant Knight’, a Prince Valiant-lite story of the paladins of
Charlemagne. Sir Raymond of Navaria has just won a duel with a Tartar spy, but is still lost in the
Enchanted Forest until he comes across a lone maiden at a bridge who offers him water. The maiden is an “enchantress”, but only in the magic-lite sense that the water is drugged. Easily subdued by soldiers who were hiding nearby, Raymond is dragged off to the court of the unimaginatively named Land of Shadows where he is made a slave.

Meanwhile, Sir Neville goes in search of Raymond only to encounter the same maiden, but luckily thinks he’s too busy to drink the water and has to be dragged down by greater numbers by the soldiers in hiding. Later, Raymond passes Neville’s cell and warns him that all the food and drink is drugged to keep the slaves weak. By not eating, Neville is able to stay strong enough to overcome the guards until he finds someone with a whole pot-full of “potion” that will serve as an antidote to the drug.

With the rest of the slaves freed, the King of the Land of Shadows is quickly overthrown. Raymond stays behind and Neville rides away as this serial draws to its not-too satisfying conclusion, with a note at the bottom that next month will feature the new adventures of Captain Fortune.   No explanation is given as to why these Frenchmen have such English names.


The following pallet cleanser is another page of ‘Rude Goldberg’s Side Show’, ‘Candid Cartoons’, and ‘Twisted Tales’, with the first of the three being the only reason to pause on this page.

The next three pages come from another syndicated comic strip called ‘Dixie Dugan’.  ‘Dixie Dugan’ seems to be a soap opera with a strong vein of comedy thanks to her Pa, a sort of domesticated Captain Haddock. The art is on par with ‘Jane Arden’. At the top of each page is a short strip staring “Good Deed” Dotty, done in an entirely different style. Sort of a homely Little Audrey, Dotty is about as whimsical as you can get in three panels.

‘Slim and Tubby’ is an unusual two-page feature. It’s set on a dude ranch and you’d think
it’s a Western, but it’s really a soap opera. Slim and Tubby are ranch hands, but they’re more like
spectators to the drama going on between the guests on the ranch. The theme of this issue’s installment is boxing, with two guests at the ranch being boxers; one is a bully and the other wants
to teach the first one a lesson by training one of the cowhands (not Slim or Tubby, but a tougher
hand named Benton) to box him.


“Wind screamed through the taut rigging like angry ghouls,” begins the two-page text story “Devil’s Head”. All comic books had a couple of pages of text story back then so they could be sold at cheaper magazine rates. This is a simple, but heartwarming tale about two brothers, one tough and one timid, and the inner strength the former learns of too late from the latter. However, what really makes this story stand out is the overblown prose which, if taken literally, would make for an exciting H&H adventure about a ship beset by ghouls and demons during a storm.

The next syndicated feature is four pages of ‘Ned Brant’ comic strips. Ned is a high school/college football coach who takes some of his players along with him adventures. Because the art is pretty sketchy, it is hard to say what exact age the players are supposed to be. One of them has a rich father who believes mobsters are looting one of his gold mines. He is right, but the coach and players find the secret tunnel to where the gold is being kept and ambush the mobsters.

What makes this H&H-relevant is the temporary Supporting Cast Members – for this adventure only, the regular cast is accompanied by two unnamed government agents. The author uses them exactly right, keeping them around to eliminate false leads while keeping them away from the action until the heroes have had a chance to shine. In this case, had the government agents not been there to check out the tire tracks, the heroes might have followed them and wound up being miles away when the
mobsters doubled back for their gold.

Two pages of ‘The Bungle Family’ follows, a syndicated comic strip about George Bungle and
his domestic adventures of getting so into a radio program that he literally sticks his head inside the
radio, or catching so many fish he sinks his boat and then no one will believe him. It’s light-weight
comedy done in a cartoony style, but the imaginary radio show, “Daggers of Doom” actually sounds more interesting. The artist has a gift for drawing clothing patterns. Each page of ‘The Bungle Family’ is accompanied by a cute two-panel strip called ‘Little Brother’ and a one-panel strip called ‘Another Day Shot’ that misses two chances to be funny.

The next feature is the four-page ‘Reynolds of the Mounted’. This installment is unusual for starting in medias res, jumping into the action without even an explanatory caption. A killer is out for revenge against a village of fur traders.  The effort to bring the killer to justice requires an ensemble cast, with Reynolds assisted by fellow Mounties Bob and Tom and pilot Bert. 

Reynolds is a low-level Fighter; the only time he goes solo, he is knocked out right away. The story has a randomness to it that makes it seem like it was a RPG transcript as well; you would expect Reynolds to deliver the final blow to the bad guy since it is his strip, but Bob is the one who hits the bad guy – with a crashing plane. It’s like Bob blew a saving throw, but the Editor took pity on him and turned his fail into a win. Also worth pointing out to H&H Editors is the role weather plays in the story. Reynolds wants to play it safe and wait for Tom and Bob to come back to him with dynamite, but no Editor would want the low-level Heroes having over-kill like that. So the weather just happens to turn dangerously cold, forcing Reynolds to act rashly or take cold damage.

A one-page pallet cleanser of six panels of mildly amusing ‘Off the Record’ follows.

The last feature is four pages of the syndicated humor strip ‘Mickey Finn’. Mickey is a cop, but this is as much a police procedural as Car 54, Where Are You? half the time, he is just watching his dim-witted Uncle Phil getting into trouble. At the top of each page is a three-panel strip called ‘Nippie’. Nippie is a boy who always does things wrong, but not in a particularly funny way.

One thing the old anthology books apparently did not always do was leave off with something
exciting. I can appreciate the difficulty of balancing humor and adventure, as well as the more important need of hooking the reader with a strong first story. Indeed, this too would be a lesson for the H&H Editor. Each scene in his scenario should be like a Golden Age anthology title, with a strong opening scene to hook them, a good balance of adventure and humor, and scenes that move through the scenario briskly.

(You can read the issue yourself here!)

Feature Comics #22

I think the closest thing we've ever had to an adventure story in Lena Pry is this extended sequence about rednecks pretending to be ghosts. There's not much to the story and I've only shared it with you once before. This time, I only bring it up because of the pumpkin masks they wear. Traditionally, bugbears had pumpkin heads (before they were redesigned as evil Wookies for Dungeons & Dragons). This is, sadly, as close as we're likely to get to seeing bugbears in a Golden Age comic book.

This is Rance Keane, cowboy and...trapmaker? You don't see Heroes rigging traps often (outside of Scooby Doo) so I hadn't included it as a skill. Still, this is a pretty simple tripwire and anyone who can tie a knot should be able to set this up. I would hand wave any game mechanic to determine if this works or not.

The tactic of trying to trick the bad guy into confessing by pretending he's haunted does need some game mechanics applied to it. It's a complicated trick so I'd use two saves -- a morale save first and, if that fails, a save vs. plot to fall for the thinking he's haunted part.

If Batu is supporting cast and not being played by a player, then this scene gains extra suspense. Batu has a loyalty score that serves as his morale save target number in situations like this. Lucky for Black X, the Editor is consistently rolling high on those loyalty checks!

Again, we're faced with the conundrum of what do about spell ranges. In comic books, they seem to stretch for miles. In practical game terms, it's best to keep them restricted to line of sight or less. My options seem to be compromise -- expand ranges, but keep them in the realm of playability, or maybe a new mechanic, like exploding dice for spell range? (i.e., 3d6 x 10 in feet, with each 6 meaning an additional roll?)

Another use for reading the old comic books that I may not have mentioned before is learning the lingo of how people spoke back then. "Pipe the dude" is a way of saying "Check out that fancy guy" that I never would have thought to use, while talking in-character.

Black X uses smart tactics, bottle-necking his opponents in a doorway so they have to come at him one at a time.

Incidentally, I see little evidence of Will Eisner's hand on this one. Must have been a rush job he had to farm out to his studio.

We return to the Clock, the most verbose hero in comics. But notice how he has "little trouble opening the safe."  Does that mean that, at the Clock's level in Mysteryman, he should have a very high chance of opening locks? Or does it mean he just rolled particularly well?

This is from Ned Brant. The return of the goat jokes (this is #24 now, I think...).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Feature Funnies #19

Hideouts & Hoodlums' combat rules do need to take special maneuvers into some consideration, but I am very hesitant to allow a combat move like this neck twist (demonstrated in Joe Palooka), which bypasses the hit point mechanic and automatically* removes a combatant from play (*and, yes, I realize that it wouldn't really be automatic if a saving throw was allowed). It seems too much like the superhero power Sleeping Nerve Pinch to allow just anyone to use.

This next page serves as an example of why I don't want too realistic a combat system for H&H, but for a different reason. While super-neck twists could end a fight faster, complications incurred in addition to hit point loss -- like blurred vision -- would slow fights down and put combatants at an increased disadvantage the more they are already losing. It may be more realistic, but it does not make for epic fight scenes where the good guy, on the ropes, keeps fighting in peak form all the way up to the end. Further, such an additional penalty might scare players off from risking hit point loss during combat at all.

It turns out not to be a real banshee haunting Lena Pry and Daniel, so I won't be adding that mobster-type to H&H yet, but this story never does explain, over the following pages, how the "banshee" survived being shot in the head. Fake undead still needs to become a mobster-type (not sure if I'll call them "fake undead" though), and maybe they should have some measure of real undead's special defenses until unmasked?

Although comedic, Archie O'Toole is still an adventure strip and could serve as the basis of a light-hearted campaign. I definitely think Count Morris Hackula of Brooklyn would make for a fun encounter. Here we see the traditional vampire power of being able to turn into a bat (and could this be ghosted by Will Eisner? Countess Hackula looks an awful lot like one of his femme fatales...). Except, on the next page, we learn that the Countess isn't really a vampire, but a jitterbug. When she bites you, you go mad and don't want to do anything but dance. It's a ...somewhat intriguing notion, though I don't know if I'll be adding jitterbugs to the mobster section anytime soon.

You never know with these non-fiction pages how non-fiction-y they really are. This one is As Strange as It Seems, and while I'm not sure how representative that really is of West Indies fashion in the 1930s, it's the first panel I've seen set in the West Indies in modern times. I just recently ran two H&H scenarios in that part of the world and had to rely on real world research to guess at what it was like.

True or not, I like the idea of "living lanterns" being a regional thing there and, if one of those scenarios ever sees print, I might add this in for color.

I could also see an exciting story where the hero finds himself in a horse race with little or no rules...

This is Espionage, by Eisner. I normally feel I can trust Eisner to have done his homework, but I'm a little incredulous this time that you could get a working plane in the cargo hold of a ship and not be asked for an inspection (though I suppose the machine guns could have been hidden elsewhere during inspections?). I'm also a little ...surprised that Black X keeps something in his wallet that identifies him as spy.

Speaking of things that surprise me, if a lariat is really able to stop a tiger, as shown here in Big Top, then why even bother using other weapons? Special maneuvers with lassoing is going to need more thought.

Here's an idea for incorporating war tactics and strategy into a game without war -- stage it as two "armies" of half-pints having a snowball fight, so that no one gets hurt in the scenario (well, unless one side fights dirty and switches to ice balls...).

This is from Off the Record. The first gag I think is pretty funny -- and the second one is another goat joke! Am I going to have to go back to tracking how many goat jokes I've seen so far?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Feature Funnies #10

Ah, a pleasant walk in the park with two big dogs...all well and good until you start getting dragged for points of damage!  Yesterday's post brought up the subject of being pulled off your feet in combat, but today's Joe Palooka makes me wonder if there is a lower threshold for what should be able to pull you off your feet? In other words, does it need to be two dogs dragging Knobby, or could one dog have done it?

I'm thinking someone should have a chance to pull a target with up to 3 times his hit points off his feet. A small dog would have no chance of pulling a grown man off his feet, but a giant rat might. That same giant rat would likely not be able to pull a 2nd-level Hero off his feet. 

This is from Off the Record. I thought it was really funny.

I never thought I would be featuring Lena Pry, and probably shouldn't here. I mean...if Hideouts & Hoodlums is to reach as broad an audience as possible, I shouldn't engage in the very negative stereotypes I point out on this very blog, right?  So if I was tempted to include a hillbilly mobster type that is permanently confused and shoots shotguns at random targets...I should just ignore that impulse, right?

I include these panels from Gallant Knight because I want to pose the question -- should fire have any additional effects than regular damage? Weapon damage does not take into account any residual effects, like bleeding, so it seems wrong to take residual effects like being set on fire into account.  Plus you just don't see many instances of people burning to death in comic books.

You do, at least here, see fire having a stunning effect, similar to how weapons sometimes just seem to stun people. So maybe H&H needs a game mechanic for any type of damage having a chance of additionally stunning the victim for 1 turn. Maybe there should always be a save vs. science?

Twelve days ago, I used a Dixie Dugan strip to support my supposition that people were accustomed to walking everywhere in the 1930s. I failed to remember how far back America's love affair with the automobile goes and, while this page of Dixie Dugan is probably exaggerated, it does go far in refuting my supposition. The urban streets were definitely still full of cars in the 1930s (or at least they were on weekends!).

I have no reason to post this page of Dixie Dugan, though, except that it's hot.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)