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.)

 

Target Comics #3 - pt. 1

Welcome back to Target Comics! As you can see, Manowar, the White Streak, is in Chicago, planning to clean up the meat packing industry. Chicago's big three meat packers were Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Nelson Morris -- which one does Leighton represent, I wonder?

We also see Manowar activating his X-Ray Vision power.

As crazy as I think Manowar is for ignoring the fact that he's literally witnessed Leighton committing murder and going after more evidence from the inspector, I just saw this same thing happen in an episode of Superman & Lois last night, where Superman could stop Morgan Edge's scheme any time he wants by simply abducting Morgan and locking him away in a cave somewhere. But this is a trope of the genre, and so Manowar has to save vs. plot to go after Leighton directly. 

There is no game mechanic involved in a grappling match that would be a fumble, or other explanation for causing the car crash. This could be Editor's fiat. This could also be prompted by the player, who suggests, "You know, with all this tussling around in the car, does that make us crash?" And the Editor says, "Gee, I don't know, and either gives Manowar a save vs. plot, or perhaps a save vs. science for the driver to determine if his player was right or not.

Wha? No, I am not creating a new power called Create Ladder Out of Electrons. This is flavor text for the Levitate power, and I'm sticking to that story!

I've seen the need for a Messaging power before, as we see in panel 4. 

Manowar's earlier X-Ray Vision power is still active, even though this would seem to be a lot of turns later. 

Slipping on a greasy floor may seem silly by modern superhero standards, but it is just the sort of embarrassing thing that can happen in any RPG scenario where random dice rolls determine results.

A player would need to be a really good sport to put up with that headblow from a burning falling timber. 

It's a nice twist that Leighton shows no interest in monologing, or even putting Manowar in a deathtrap and then leaving the room. 

Unlike magic-users, superheroes don't need their hands free to activate their powers (normally; this could make a good weakness for alien superheroes) and here he uses Wreck at Range on that gun. 

Explaining how he electrocutes the door with an already established power is trickier. I'm thinking we might need a new power like Shocking Touch, that a hero can do hand-to-hand like Shocking Grasp or project it onto a nearby conductive surface. 1-6 points of damage +1 per level at a max range of 10' per level?

At first it seems like, to me, that Manowar is using Hold Person, but this is a more dangerous version of that where you can move, but take damage for doing so. But would that be a higher level or lower level version of Hold Person? On one hand it has an extra effect, but on the other hand you can simply choose to take the damage and escape the other effect. Aw, I'm going to split the difference and leave Minefield as a 2nd level power (and maybe set the damage at 2-8 points?). 

This is the second time in the same story Manowar is knocked out cold by a head blow. What terrible luck!

 

Hmm...I wanted to explain away that electricity ladder as flavor text for a power we already have, like Levitate. And it does look like levitation, until he goes sideways over the street. It doesn't look like Fly, but that is the only power that really fits, unless we accept this as a new power. Something like Create Normal Item? There is an AD&D spell like that, Minor Creation, but it's a surprisingly high-level one, 4th level. Even if we nudge it down to 3rd level, that's pretty high for Manowar, though a lot of our characters need to be explained with brevet ranks. 

One could argue that, if superheroes in their third issues can do these things, that maybe every superhero should be able to do these things, but it is important that some superheroes can't be able to do these things -- the "if everyone is special, then no one is" argument from The Incredibles.

 

We're going to jump into Bill Everett's Bull's-Eye Bill in progress. This page jumped out at me because of the "Bottles don't mean nothing" comment, and not just because it's a grammatically poor double negative. What it could mean, game mechanics-wise, is that the bottle hit, but didn't "hit" to the point where it did damage, or it could mean that it only did 1 point of damage, and Bill has so many hit points that he can confidently not worry about it. 

I also think it's interesting that Bill isn't the one who wins the quick draw contest, but the sheriff, who just conveniently appears in that moment. It's like the Editor saw where the dice were falling, was afraid Bill was going to get killed in this turn, and intervened on his behalf.

Here Bill, by virtue of being a played character, and possibly because of his level title, is able to tell the sheriff what to do. The sheriff, for his part, is perfectly fine with locking the bad guys up, not for disorderly conduct or anything like that, but for being strangers. In the Mythic West, it's important to know someone!

That "trip" into the ravine just reeks of plot convenience. I would normally never require a saving throw to stay on a trail unless it was extremely narrow.

Huh? Okay, it wasn't a plot convenience at all; the fall was just to fill panels. I seem to recall a recent Amazing Man story by Everett had a similar thing where a giant ball of ice was blocking his way for no other reason than to slow the pace of the story down. Of course, in a RPG, random setbacks occur all the time, but you're not as used to seeing them in stories, especially ones with such tight page counts as golden age stories. 

I can't decide if that is a caricature depiction of a black man or as realistic as Bill could draw him; his art can be quite stylized sometimes, and I want to give him the benefit of a doubt. Also, I'm quite familiar with the "girl pretends to be kidnapped to get the western hero's attention" story because I had re-published an old Centaur story very similar to this in Funny Picture Stories. Order your copy today!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Speed Comics #7 - pt. 1

This is the first issue of Speed Comics to trade owners from Brentwood to Harvey Comics, and while the cover reflects the future look of Shock Gibson, the interior art (luckily) is inventory from the old look. 

Shock is reading The Daily Blade, a newspaper we haven't seen him read before, which is good; you shouldn't get all your news from just one source.

More importantly, this is a prime example of the Mythic West. As detailed in Hideouts & Hoodlums Supplement III: Better Quality, the Mythic West is a place, like a D&D demi-plane, where the "Wild West" still exists in the present day. There's really no other explanation for why the Hooded Riders, KKK-like extortionists, would travel as inefficiently as on horseback for getaways.  

In the Mythic West, there's always a job waiting for you at a Lawful-aligned ranch. 

$1,000 doesn't seem that bad. I wonder if any Heroes would just offer to pay it rather than bother to go after them.

It's surprisingly rare that we see bad guys actually being called hoodlums. I'm thinking these guys are bloodthirsty hoodlums. 

I can't really think of much to say about this panel, except that I like it. The bad guys are so obviously bad guys. Shock is wearing his costume underneath a cowboy costume. The humor and light tone of it. 

Of course, the axe doesn't hurt Shock, and it shatters on the next page. Take my word for it. I gave that a bit of thought just now and realized that, if the player has a good in-game rationale for it, like an electric forcefield, then the Editor should let him use his wrecking things ability even when not physically touching something he could be touching (the flavor text rule of Hideouts & Hoodlums I keep referring to so often: if you can explain it, and it doesn't violate the game mechanics, it happens). 

A couple of things: one, as much as I'm enjoying the story, I'm hating how Shock's hair color is inconsistent from panel to panel. I'm having a hard time explaining to myself how his superpower could be causing that, which just leaves a lazy colorist.

Two, it's great storytelling to drop this ethical challenge into the scenario, something that requires a choice and not just an application of superpowers. It tells us a lot about Shock's character.

It also tells us how long he was chasing them -- 20 miles. That he wasn't able to overtake them means he didn't have Race the Train prepared as one of his powers today.
 

Here we can see that making the right moral choice earns Shock valuable information for solving the scenario...though, admittedly, the same information he would have discovered by following the hoodlums and leaving the old man. 

This is likely coincidental, but Dead Horse State Park is in Utah, and it's full of canyons!

I'm willing to bet that bullet doesn't hurt him on the next page...

Well, look at that, I was right! Note that Shock was automatically protected without needing to see the bullet coming, which fits with powers having continuous duration.

The more interesting thing is the grizzly bear in the cage. I'm thinking of an adventure now where all the wandering encounters were really animals in cages, released "offstage," that exploring Heroes might come across later. 

See, as primitive as the art sometimes looks and as simplistic as the story may seem, this is actually better than many other golden age stories I've reviewed for this blog. Here, Shock refreshingly doesn't kill the bear -- another moral choice for our hero -- and the reward for taking this action (or inaction) is that the bear flees (missed morale save) and turns on the hoodlums. 

Moreover, while the villains are nameless, hooded antagonists, they are resourceful and are able to quickly escalate their threat level to match (well, nearly match) Shock, with unexpected variety. 

Of course, this water impediment facility is also unexpected because there aren't any in the real Dead Horse State Park. 

All that said, I think it's rather silly to base all your powers on electricity, and have no weakness to water. And he doesn't even to necessarily have a weakness here, but it should follow that activating any of his powers should shock him rather viciously here. 

Instead, Shock demonstrates some sort of Swim Against Current Power -- or simply Race the Train, to give him enough forward momentum to overcome the wave? There's no explanation for why he didn't use it earlier when he was trailing the horsemen for 20 miles -- unless, as in Hideouts & Hoodlums, you can only use the power once and he was simply holding onto it for later.
  

I'm amused by the fact that the hoodlum, stripped to his union suit, is not dressed all that differently from Shock Gibson in his. The similarities highlight the true contrast in their faces and posture. 

Having a uniform that always fits a hero is a characteristic I associated with the guard mobstertype, but maybe this guy was a rearguard...?

I was amused at first that the hoodlum was cold, in a desert, but then it's probably getting to be nighttime, even if the color in the sky doesn't reflect that.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Master Comics #1 - pt. 2

Although we haven't been told yet, I'd bet good money that Ken is secretly the Devil's Dagger. This is twice now that he's openly clobbered hoodlums as Ken so I'm not sure why he even feels he needs a double identity.

Letting the mobsters go so they can be followed back to their hideout has got to be one of the oldest tricks in the book. What's interesting here is that the hideout is a gas station, converted from an abandoned hotel. I never would have thought of that in a hundred years. It's actually kind of brilliant; he would suspect it was a criminal hideout, when they let any stranger who asks go inside their front door to use the phone. What's not brilliant is that there are zero guards inside stopping Ken from exploring the place.

Without special permission from your Editor, your starting SCM should not have levels above 1 (as an "ex-prize-fighter," the implication is that Pat is above 1st level).

The highlight of this page is panel 6 -- I see so many comics in this project with minimal backgrounds that I treasure ones that a lot of planning seemed to go into, that show us a glimpse into the real lives of our heroes. From here, we can infer that Devil's Dagger is well-read (books on his desk), a fisherman, and a marksman. 

Bullet-proof glass is listed as a special add-on for transportation trophies, but tinted windows should be on that list as well. 

It's worth mentioning, I think, that if Ken hadn't taken the time to change clothes at home, he would have got there in time to stop the villains from nearly escaping.

It's also worth mentioning that it was a good idea to have a SCM waiting outside with directions to call the police after X minutes -- though, in a Hideouts & Hoodlums scenario, you probably want to leave yourself more time than that to explore a hideout.

Throwing a dagger so that it snatches sheets of paper and pins them to the far wall is definitely a stunt.

It looks like Devil's Dagger has a clear headshot in that third panel, but we're told Jeff (and what kind of master criminal name is Jeff?) escapes. Maybe it was just a flesh wound (1 point of damage)?

This is from Morton Murch the Hillbilly Hero. It is...really awful. Morton is a weird cross of comic hillbilly and serious action hero. The science is ridiculous. His hot-air balloon is stitched from quilts and full of methane. The floating island has a volcano on it. The island that isn't attached to the ground has a working volcano on it. 

The island people take Morton as a leader and he modernizes them by teaching them how to build anti-aircraft guns -- bear in mind, he is supposedly an uneducated hillbilly. He also must have precognition because he has them do this just before enemy aircraft arrive. Oh, he also builds a flexible glass net, flies over the enemy fleet in a slow-moving hot-air balloon, and nets all the planes. This campaign world would be perfect for players who want to be able to do anything, no matter how impossible.

 

Although it's hard to take Shipwreck Roberts and Doodle seriously (isn't "Shipwreck" a nickname you would give someone who causes shipwrecks?), Dr. Drown is such a great name for a villain I'm shocked it hasn't been recycled since. Dr. Drown has a French assistant who looks like Igor and sounds like Batroc and, best of all, new mobstertypes! Yes, he creates his own sea monsters, like Dr. Demonicus at Marvel in the 1970s-80s. 

I would like to call these first ones sea dragons, but...

...the assistant Romez, who quickly loses his French accent as soon as Dr. Drown reminds him he's Spanish, calls them brontosauruses. Which is an odd thing to call them since they're much smaller than brontosaurs, don't look like brontosaurs, and breathe underwater unlike brontosaurs. So sea dragons it is! They aren't very big, but they are trainable, so they could in theory be trained to fight. I'd put them somewhere in the range of 3-4 HD. 

The next new mobster is a giantocrab. That's right, not a giant crab, but a giantocrab. You can tell it's not a giant crab because the artist didn't reference any real life crab and just made up something goofy, a rock monster with human-like arms. It's both goofy and creepy at the same time! I would also give it up to three grapple attacks per turn. The giantocrab proves to be too much for Roberts and Doodle to handle, so I'd make it at least 6 HD, maybe 7...

...and give it a really low AC (maybe 3 or 2?) since it appears to be made of rock. It's unclear if this is supposed to be a naturally occurring sea monster or if it's one of Dr. Drown's creations. Drown is able to shoo it away rather easily.

It's also worth mentioning that Drown's hideout is a submerged yacht with all the comforts of home, including this nice-looking study with desk, bookshelves, and a safe just right for Heroes to break into.

Sea dragons only have flippers, so they lack claw attacks, but they can grapple instead. 

If Dr. Dream is firing torpedoes, then what is the Radar gun? Do they mean the torpedoes are Radar-guided? 

The colostopus must be bigger than a giant octopus, so...maybe 10 HD? 

Frontier Marshal is one of those cowboy stories that is hard to place in time, here thanks to the anachronistic look of Helen Wright. I spent a lot of time writing about the Mythic West in Supplement III, a sort of "demi-plane" where time flows differently and the "wild West" continues to modern times.  

I can find no evidence that "pipe" was ever slang for "look," but "pipe th' duds" doesn't seem like it could mean anything different. Plus I can find on Google other people who have been posting the same question online, so this is surely not the only instance out there of pipe being used this way.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

   

Target Comics #2 - pt. 2

Today we're still looking at Bulls-Eye Bill as he says some not-nice things about half-Hispanic people. We're going to grit our teeth and push past that and get to the solution of the code Bill found last time. Did you guess this? It seems like Dee is only taking some wild guesses, so it'll be interesting to see if she guessed right or not. Interestingly, Dee gives me every impression of being a supporting cast member, so when Bill's player couldn't solve the code, he handed it to a character controlled by the Editor, asking for a handout. Of course, the Editor doesn't have to then give them accurate information!

A lot of what would make a Wild West campaign different from a normal Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign is all in the flavor text. Every time the hero hits, you should shout "Bull's eye!" Every time an attack misses by 1, it should hit someone's hat. 

I think I've written about lassoing and pulling off a horse before. I can actually think of a couple of different mechanics for this. The simplest would be making a normal attack and applying the push/pull rules to it, subtracting footage from point of damage (I would say at least 50% less damage would get you a save vs. science to resist being yanked out of the saddle). The other is a bit more complex, involving a grappling attack for the lasso, as if in melee, with a successful hold pulling the rider out of the saddle, while if the target wins the grappling match, then he stays in the saddle, and maybe even pulls the lassoer off his feet, depending on by how high he won the grappling contest.

That glossary of cadet slang could really come in handy for an aviator-themed campaign!

When reading non-adventure strips, like the sports genre features, I often find it difficult to figure out how I would make an interesting scenario out of them in a game. The aviation genre is tricky in the same way; what do you have characters do while not flying in combat? One thing is to have non-violent contests, like this "capture the parachute" game. The mechanics seem simple: individual initiative rolls, and then everyone rolls to attack in order; first ones to "hit" a parachute gets one. Another way to handle this, which would be a first for H&H, would be to have contestants bid on which AC they're willing to try to hit, and have those ones go first. Hmm...I sense an alternate initiative system coming up for H&H...

It's not clear if Ramon thinks it's okay to force himself on Loris because he's an entitled movie star or if the author, Campbell, thinks this is culturally acceptable to Hispanics. We've seen lots of evidence of racism from Campbell before, but I'm going to give him the benefit of a doubt on this one.

I'm a little concerned when I see scenes like this and think...man, security is lax at airports back then! If my players just wait and time things so that they can run up to an aviator just before he gets in his plane, they can overpower him and take off in his stead! Some possible complications: the aviator is leveled -- a 2nd-3rd level aviator will probably knock out a 1st-level hero and make him think twice about stealing planes again; a 2 in 6 chance of some obstacle being moved in front of the plane as it taxis before takeoff; pursuit planes taking off behind him and trying to force him to land (skill check to avoid having to land if the forcing pilot makes a successful attack roll?).  
 

"Pan" is slang for face; I've known this one before, but it's worth a reminder, since we don't use it that way much today.

It's pretty disturbing that Lucky and Loris are both convinced that no one will believe her about being abducted for sex (which certainly seems implied to me), perhaps more so because even today people often don't believe the female accuser.

It is encouraging that Lucky faces consequences for stealing a plane. Consequences are virtually unheard of in golden age stories.

Well, consequences until this evidence proving Loris' story turns up. It's actually a nice story touch, as the damsel in distress dropping something is usually just a clue for the hero, but here it proves the hero is innocent.

I can't imagine what real life actor, if any, Ramon is modeled after, but Robert Baylor is surely Robert Taylor, one of MGM's main leading men in the 1930s.

And if you're thinking Loris sounds like a made-up name, it actually was a thing in the mid-1930s. According to SSA's baby names page, it peeked in popularity in 1935 as the 863rd most popular girl's name. Certainly not common, but not made-up either.

In the "there's nothing new under the sun" department, T-Men anticipates the end of The Naked Gun (or at least the part where Ludwig escapes from Lt. Drebin, but then gets hit by a car) by 48 years. It's funny in the movie; here it's a terrible ending to a cliffhanger. 

Despite the fact that Agent Turner wasn't responsible for stopping the bad guy, he's rewarded with a new mission immediately (or maybe I'm just assuming immediately; we don't know when "later" is)!

At least it's an easy mission. "Don't look for clues or try to solve anything, Turner. We want you to find a plane, so check all the planes."

My first thought on reading this page was that 45,000 tons seemed either awfully specific or awfully random, if it didn't match real battleship weights. It turns out, that weight is historically relevant and makes this strip extremely timely. The U.S. and the U.K. had a naval treaty with an "escalator clause" that limited them to building 45,000 ton-ships to maintain their neutrality. Iowa-class battleships were being built in 1940 at that exact weight in order to satisfy the letter, if not the spirit, of that treaty. 

More exciting, there actually was a U.S.S. Hawaii, but built in 1945, 5 years later, and while it was not built in Brooklyn, it was built nearby, in Camden, New Jersey!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: The Complete Newspaper Dailies: Volume 1, 1929-1930 - pt. 2

More thoughts and observations on the early Buck Rogers.

Buck Rogers' future is a strictly Lawful society, but not necessarily a Lawful Good one. Participation and allegiance to the Orgzones -- municipal governments linked by a weak federal government -- is required and anyone who defies this is branded an outlaw. It is then legal to shoot these outlaws. The Orgzones made up the Federation Zone, which included all of Canada and all the U.S. east of the Mississippi, while the Mongol Empire controlled all the rest of the U.S. and Mexico.

If someone carries or wears two jumping belts, that person can fly off into space without extra ballast or letting go of one of the belts.

Eventually, it is no longer implied but explicit that airplanes 500 years in the future still run on gasoline.

The Mythic West exists even 500 years in the future. The cowboys of the future are Luddites who have rejected all futuristic scientific advancements and are suspicious of them.

For some reason I still can't figure out, MacGregor is a Canadian, but he dresses and talks like a Scotsman.

The North American Capital is Niagra, now a metropolis full of skyscrapers. People get around the capital on foot, or by rocket cars that can drive or fly (the police pilot rocket motorcycles). The city is powered by hydroelectricity and protected from Mongol invasion by "thousands" of giant cannons. Building security is maintained by sound detectors that can register the image of what made the sound thanks to echolocation.

Speaking of Alignment, it's very clear that the North Americans represent Law (though a pretty harsh Law) and the Mongols represent Chaos, which I suppose puts the Golden Dragons in Neutral territory. At first, this secret Mongol society aims to overthrow the Emperor for their own rise to power, but they throw in with Buck on first meeting him, and even put him in charge!

I have to say something here about Buck's Charisma score. I have never yet advocated exceeding the cap of 18 for ability scores, but Buck's CHA seems to be a 19. He's a man 500 years out of time, but when he shows up, people start putting him in charge of everything! It would be like if a man from the 16th century showed up today and the U.S. Army immediately made him a 4-star general. 

The Golden Dragons have an advanced disentegrator ray -- actually two disentegrator rays. They have a range of 1,000 miles and, wherever the two beams meet is an atomic explosion ("Don't cross the streams!"). 

Buck Rogers travels all over the place. It’s unclear where his original mine was except that it seems to be somewhere in the Midwest. He then heads west to California through the desert, then back across the country to New York to Niagra, then he pursues the Golden Dragons to the Cumberland Mountains, which puts them in…maybe Virginia? But their main headquarters is buried under a river in Iowa, near the ruins of Davenport (so that would make it the Mississippi River, or maybe the Rock River), accessible by what appears to be the conning tower of a submarine that rises to the surface like an elevator.

The preferred weapon of assassins in the 25th century is still the knife.

After Wilma and MacGregor, the next most prominent supporting cast member for Buck is Lanlu, a Mongol woman who keeps turning up in adventures. Her journey, going from jealous concubine of the Emperor, to Mongol spy in Niagra, to working for the Celestial Mogul’s treasure hunting company is an intriguing one and at least as interesting as Buck’s journey. Lanlu latter denies having aided Killer Kane in Niagra, which suggests that there might be more to her story than we even know (or this was one of the earliest retcons in comics).

Killer Kane eludes Buck in Niagra with the ol’ “disappear in a cloud of smoke” trick. This smoke bomb is enhanced, though, as it "paralyzes the senses."

The Buck vs. Killer Kane final battle is done by proxy, with each controlling iron robots (like the ones statted in Book II, but with tank treads and only pincer hands). These robots are completely remote-controlled and can make no autonomous actions. They are stronger than iron robots were statted as, being able to wreck through walls.

The "telev-eye" perfectly predicts the spy satellite. Rarely in literature, though, has a spy satellite been used to ram an emperor off the deck of a flying ship. Rarer still is a rocketship with an outdoor observation deck, for emperors who just want to see the view better while four miles high.

Another curious thing about future politics is the powerful nation-state of Chile that we encounter in the second storyline. Chile dominates, without controlling, all of South America, and its navy is the equal of the Mongol Empire's colonial forces in North America. Chilean submarines are super fast -- about twice as fast as today's nuclear-powered submarines. It isn't clear if this practice applies to all their submarines or just their command submarines, but the one Buck is a prisoner on uses two decoy submarines and a ring of radio-controlled torpedoes around the submarine to take fire -- like a hi-tech Mirror Image spell!

Chilean torpedoes come in two varieties, magnetic and lightning. It isn't clear how a lightning torpedo would work, but the magnetic torpedoes are just drawn to metal hulls, like a heat-seeking missile, and probably have a bonus (+2?) to hit. The lightning generator on the submarine seems extremely powerful when compared to a Lightning Bolt spell. The lightning starts in the clouds overhead -- a range of miles -- and then travels to the periscope-like projection on the submarine instead of from it. That could catch a lot of aerial targets.

The Chilean capital is inside an extinct volcano, accessed by subterranean water tunnels. Since there are about 100 volcanoes in Chile, this seems feasible.

The first of the American big rocket cruisers is three stories tall.

Jumbo Comics #11 - pt. 3

This is ZX-5 again, but I don't have anything Hideouts & Hoodlums-related to share from this page, I just like that it features the word "balustrade." You don't see that every day.

This is Wilton of the West, another feature that takes place in the "Mythic West" that still looks like the cowboy genre, but exists in the modern day world. And here we see a grim example of lariats being used as lethal weapons. Since the constriction damage would be continuous, then anyone dropped to zero hit points by the lasso/noose would die the following turn.

Inspector Dayton is out on the town when someone is murdered in a nightclub. Again, like in a previous story in this issue, the Hero takes a backseat to the supporting cast female accompanying him. I complained then about the Editor lazily allowing the SCM to find clues for the Hero, but maybe I have that backward -- maybe this is an example of a player taking advantage of a SCM's better chance at skills, like picking pockets. We have seen before, ever since Jane Arden debuted on this blog, that women seem to have a natural gift for being mysterymen in comic books. The slightly exotic name of "Miss Damien" might even suggest his companion is a vamp.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Silver Streak Comics #1 - pt. 3

Capt. Fearless and Lt. Dugan are "hopelessly outnumbered" by what appears to be just five thugs, or yellow peril hoodlums (or do we need that distinction? Their stats were always similar...).

Boxes as a thrown weapon would seem to be not too effective, and thus probably the type of improvised weapon that only does 1-3 points of damage. But, depending on how heavy the box is, it might do 1-4 or 1-6 damage.  If the Hero has a Strength of 15+, I might even consider 1-8 for a really heavy box (but you can only attack with it once).

This is Calling the 'Duke', Ace Inspector, and this seems as good a time as any to point out that Heroes should not get saves vs. missiles to dodge attacks if they are surprised; Duke only dodges the falling bag because someone shouted and warned him. But do the rules really need to spell that out, or is it just common sense that you need to see it coming to dodge it?

There's interesting dressing here at the airport, from the catapult used to launch gliders (something Heroes who acquire glider trophy planes will probably need) and piles of balloon silk, which is apparently absorbs all falling damage.

This is The Wasp, another mysteryman. So far, he's recovered missing blueprints and found the mobsters who wanted to sell them. The Wasp could have simply handed them all to the police at this point, but instead The Wasp shakes down the crooks for $5,000 and gives them fake plans. Good way to find out how much treasure your opponents have!

This is Barry Lane the Adventure-Hunter, and it's another good example of how easy it is to slip into the "Mythic West" from any modern day state out west (see Supplement III for more on the Mythic West as a setting).

This is -- well, obviously, Spirit Man.  The TV that acts like a crystal ball is cliche already, but the new twist is that Spirit Man can apparently transport himself through the "futurescope" to whatever scene he's watching.

But wait, there's more!  The futurescope also turns you invisible after it teleports you!

The mistodine ray gun wrecks things as if a remarkable man (4th level superhero).

The futurescope bestows Passwall too? I'm beginning to think that the futurescope is just flavor text and Spirit Man is statted as a magic-user of 9th level or higher.

There's a peculiar trap here. I may not have been reading carefully, so I don't understand why the floor of the next room is electrified, or why the switch that keeps the current off is disguised as a folding chair.

Spirit Man kills!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)