Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 5

We're back, and so is The Lone Eagle! Here we see the Lone Eagle being overcome by four-to-one odds, which I find refreshing, even if it will not be the norm in this adventure from here. Perhaps he levels up quickly! 

Note that LE isn't placed in a deathtrap, but just left behind and they assume he's dead. Who has time to check for a pulse or watch for breathing? 

Now panel 6 is a big mystery, though you might not have realized that it was Where is this "no-man's-land"? You might assume, like I did, this is France - but this was published in February 1940 and Germany did not invade France until May! In February, the world knew Hitler had his eyes on Norway, but most of the fighting in Europe was taking place between Finland and Russia. This panel is like someone wasn't paying attention to current events and just, by coincidence, predicted the future!

I'm amused how Lone Eagle, clearly an Air Force guy, is able to commandeer a tank just by pointing at it. "This isn't Hertz, Lone Eagle!" that officer should be saying (fun fact: Hertz rent-a-car goes back to 1918!). 

I'm calling shenanigans on being inside an exploding tank and emerging unharmed, unless Lone Eagle is secretly a superhero buffed by the Invulnerability power. I think 8-80 points of damage, for being caught inside when a tank explodes, seems more than reasonable.

How did Lone Eagle catch up with Brent? If Brent was there some time ago, asking for the fastest route to German Intelligence, why is he still wandering around the battlefield? Or, if the soldiers didn't believe him and took him into custody - again, how is he now wandering around the battlefield? I feel like we missed at least three pages of Brent's daring escape from confinement.

Lastly, I'm again amused, this time by how Lone Eagle has a secret pocket in that jumpsuit. Come on, LE, the "secret" compartment is one of those huge, obvious cargo pants pockets above your knees, right?  

Great, thanks to this page we need to address the unpleasant subject of torture. Comic book heroes get tortured more often than I enjoy seeing. The goal is never to beat the hero unconscious, but to break his spirit and make him act unheroic. But how to handle that as a game mechanic? It might make sense to consider the whip damage subdual damage -- the hero can no longer resist if he reaches zero hp -- but LE just got over 100 lashes and I'm guessing he doesn't have over 100 hit points. I think how I would handle this is, every time the hero is reduced to zero hp, he has to make a save vs. plot or be broken by the torture. If the hero makes the save, hit points are effectively restored to full and the process can start again. 

But even if the hero is broken, what does that look like? Is the player forced to roleplay blubbering? A player could simply spare himself the headache of the game mechanics and chose this, as it's not really a consequence. But what if the hero lost something crucial - like experience points - if broken? There is precedent for energy draining in the game and, while it's purely supernatural, torture is a draining experience too...

One can't help but wonder what the warden was doing, taking a late night stroll without guards through the prison...but before that is the mystery of how LE got out of his cell. Did he use wrecking things to bust the door down?

Nope, nope, nope - unless that plane was planning to drop a person onto the roof of the train, there is no way LE should be able to leap up to the plane. I can no longer ignore that LE is clearly statted as a superhero, despite his lack of a proper costume and other genre tropes. 

That a superhero could have so much trouble with a single pilot is very much in keeping with how I pictured the superhero class balancing out in H&H; being a relatively weak fighter when not buffed with combat-related powers. 

But he's not just a superhero; it seems pretty clear that he's going to win this 6:1 dogfight (spoiler from next page: he defeats three and then escapes), which suggests to me that he's at least a 3rd level aviator, in addition to at least a 1st level superhero.

I do like the smart tactics of the Germans - trying to stop this unstoppable killing machine indirectly rather than continuing to approach the train with that field gun on it.

There were a lot of comic books published around this time that proved to be prophetic, not that it was hard - during WWII, if you imagined the worst scenario possible, that usually happened sooner or later. This comic predicts a German invasion of the Netherlands three months before it actually happened. Apparently the Dutch failed to believe Lone Eagle's warning. 

Again, this story predicts the bombing of London seven months before it happened. It predicts the bombing of Berlin by four months, though clearly the author is wrong that bombing Berlin first stops the bombing of London.

"Gee, good thing you told us not to miss, Lone Eagle! We were aiming low for a 50-50 success rate!"

A 50-50 success rate is, of course, the norm for 1st-level characters in H&H.

Yes, the British RAF did use some American planes, but most of them were British-made. The implications of this story are, of course, that the English can't save themselves withou the U.S.'s help (again, largely true), and that Americans would seem like superheroes on the battlefield with Europeans (this is just propaganda).

Moving on, we return to what I have long dubbed the Mythic West, a "demi-plane," if you will, that allows for "Wild West" action in the modern day. 

Nueces, Arizona, is not a real place, but is likely named after Nueces County, Texas. 

Panel 3 has some rather disturbing implications.

I had to look up the use of punchers here. From the Internet: "In those early days of cattle drives the cattle were not particularly eager to enter loading chutes or box cars, so the cowboys poked or punched the cattle with long poles to get them in to the cars. The term was first recorded in 1880 and soon became a synonym for all those who worked cattle."  I don't think "Fork-D punchers" has any special meaning, other than they work for the Fork-D ranch...

I had to look twice to verify this, but the guy in the fight at the bottom isn't the Rio Kid; he's just some guy who's about to become Supporting Cast, and is probably at least a 2nd-level cowboy, given how well he's doing in this fight.

Boy, this is one violent comic book! This page is a nice reminder, though, that not everyone in a given organization is going to be the same Alignment. Here we have a Lawful jailer having a disagreement with the Chaotic sheriff. Turn this around when you're stocking your hideouts - make sure there are the occasional Lawful hoodlums who may turn on their bosses and help the Heroes!

Shooting a rope, while riding on horseback, would normally require a natural 20 on an attack roll (at least while I'm running the game) - but this is why the cowboy class, when it resurfaces in 2nd edition someday, will still need to have stunts. 

Tombstone is, of course, a real place. It is likely a portal site that exists in both the real world and the Mythic West, so one could leave Tombstone heading into either.

(Scans courtesty of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 4

We're back (after a LONG time away!), still with the Three Comrades, though you'll only see two of them on this page. 

Max should be statted as a guard, or maybe a beat cop. 

Note that our two Heroes intentionally surrender to Von Sneer, no doubt to learn what he's up to. If they'd wanted to, they could have rushed him, even from across the room, and still gone before him if they'd won initiative (which I see happen in comics a lot!).

It's worth noting that Heroes shouldn't have to worry about what languages they know, but you're encouraged to take this benefit away from non-Hero characters. This is a good way to give Heroes another advantage over normal people (and here, greatly assists the plot!).

This page brings up an interesting point, because a lot of the time Heroes are tied up for deathtraps, but are almost never gagged. And they almost never yell for help either. Now, we don't expect them to because it doesn't come off as very heroic, but it is certainly the most natural reaction to being tied up. 

I am skeptical about allowing a filing cabinet tipping over on someone to knock them out - though it will famously be super-effective against Iron Man years later - and would probably allow this to do no more than 1 point of damage. Of course, it's possible for mobsters to only have 1 hit point!

That's a really good guess as to what the oil drums are for. I probably would have guessed they were smugglers myself, but this makes for a better story with higher stakes.

It's weird how physics work in comic books to feed the narrative. A filing cabinet tipping over knocks out a guard, but Lucky bounces down a flight of stairs, caught halfway in a barrel, and seems virtually unharmed. Two thoughts: 1) this proves that damage ranges are a thing, and 2) it makes me wonder if objects should be able to soak damage. I have ruled before if you fall on a person, you can half your damage and transfer the other half to the person you're landing on. But if we applied that to inanimate objects...then armor has to work much differently game mechanics-wise. I think we'll skip this for now.

"Attaboy, Lucky, keep 'em busy killing you!" Seriously, how is Lucky not dead, as the mobsters shoot down at him at short range and he's only moving as fast as a motorboat attempting to match to their vessel? Luckily, in the hands of a 1 HD mobster, even sub-machine guns only get 1 attack per turn. 

I am as unconvinced by that wooden beam being able to do that as I was by the filing cabinet. This is a very generous Editor these boys' players have.

Using the oil seemed an ingenious move at first, but wouldn't starting a fire with it have been more effective?

We're done with those crazy kids and moving onto the next feature, The Woman in Red. The violence level is pretty extreme in this feature, with a man being shown (granted, in silhouette) hanging from the rope that you see on this page on the previous page, and on this page you get a knife thrown into someone's neck (again, granted, not the first time I've seen that in a golden age comic book; it even features into Amazing Man's origin story). 

I mainly include this page for two points. One, American mansions have a tendency to be castles or have many castle-like features in golden age comic books -- and that is a good thing, because you can freely borrow castle maps from That Other Game and use them here and they fit this game. And secondly, telling the handedness of someone from how they tied a knot sounds like a basic skill check to me.

Okay, one more observation - other than having very pronounced cheekbones, there doesn't seem to be anything too terrifying about The Terror.

 

Since The Woman in Red and The Terror are both unencumbered and, hence, moving at the same movement rate, it's only natural that WiR fails to catch up. 

 

Here, we learn that you can open a secret door and still get a surprise turn after. 

 

A 200' drop is a very tall castle, unless this also accounts for a dry moat at the base of the castle wall too? 

 

It's not clear where the mysteriously handy rope is hanging from. Depending on how far down she is when she passes it would help me determine how fast she's falling and, from that, the AC to reach out and "hit" the rope -- AC 9 in the first second, AC 7 in the second second, AC 4 in the third second - by then she's fallen more than halfway. I might also require a Strength or a Dexterity check (whichever is better on the 1st second; whichever is worse on the 3rd second) to determine if she can keep a hold on the rope after catching it, or if her downward momentum pulls her past it. 

 

I'm puzzled by what that shape is in front of the window, as I'm not aware of that being a castle feature. I mean, it makes sense, as it makes it harder for anyone to smash through the window and fit inside, but I just don't know what that pole would be called.  

 

I wish I had enough detail to map this castle, because we keep getting tantalizing glimpses of how elaborate it is. So far we have a rooftop access door from a tower, multiple staircases, rooms that are only accessible by secret doors and outside windows (or by digging your way into them), and a literal dungeon with cell doors (double-barred no less) on the same floor with a library.
 

 

More interesting points - the Woman in Red gives away her real name in order to gain someone's trust, a rare instance of a gun being used to disarm a knife, and in the Scooby Doo-esque climax we learn that the butler - that is, someone named Butler - did it.

 

 

 

 

Here's a quick look at the next feature, which gives us two novel twists - one, a new location to rescue a damsel in distress from, and two, a new "Macguffin" - a military code book (thank goodness it's not yet another new invention!).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)