Famous Funnies #68 - pt. 1

We haven't seen Roy Powers in a while! Here he's on a cruise to Africa (the previous page smartly talked about how much school he was going to miss because of this, but he has a tutor on the trip) where there's going to be some big game hunting (booo!). More interestingly, here's the beginning of some mystery on the ship. What do they want in Roy's room? When laying clues, remember to leave olfactory ones too.

Uashin? I think this is referring to Uasin Gishu County, and it is located on a plateau, in Kenya. Interestingly, "Jambo Bwana" is a Kenyan pop song that will come out 42 years later. 
  

Skyroads surprises me occasionally; there is some interesting chemistry between these two characters, and I laughed out loud at "I was born quite young." Also, salt horse is slang for salted beef. 

Sure, we could talk here about how "fagged out" means exhausted, or how "I feel as though I'd been spanked by a trip hammer" reads like innuendo, but what really grabs me on this page is -- how is that record player working? Is it hand-cranked? Battery powered? I know they had the former back then, but I'm not sure about the latter.

Also note the "Wing Tip" about how 1st-level aviators would need to certify their transport rating, in addition to carrying a transport license.

Senor and senorita? That's interesting because, while Spain in its prime was one of the first countries to have U-boats in their navies, by 1940 Spain's military was in tatters from its civil war and did not have many submarines left. This is a good time to remind ourselves, though, that these are all reprints from earlier comic strips, these ones specifically from 1937 (according to comics.org), and -- according to this Wikipedia page -- Spain still had eight U-boats at that time. 

This page is a reminder, if mystery bad guys have been shooting at you, to search the ground for spent cartridges. With a skill check, you can identify which kinds of guns were being used to shoot at you, which could help you plan for your next encounter with them.

It might be easy to overlook this word through all that heavy dialect, but a yawl is that boat; a yawl is a two-masted fore-and-aft-rigged sailboat with the mizzenmast stepped far aft so that the mizzen boom overhangs the stern.

Oaky Doaks has stumbled across a wizard who lived in a cave for 20 years perfecting this flying carpet (giving us some indication for how long we can expect magic item creation to take?). The flying carpet has an incredible weight allowance, probably carrying 1,750 lbs. as it is here. Being able to reach cumulonimbus clouds suggests a ceiling height over 2,000 feet, and possibly much higher than that. There's no sense of how fast it is from this page.

How would you tell if someone is faking delirium? Perhaps a skill check at first aid. Or a Wisdom check. Or both, so characters with high WIS have a good chance of seeing through the deception, but mysterymen can also cash in a stunt for an automatic success on that skill check.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Famous Funnies #65 - pt. 2

Morse code is a handy way to send messages to Heroes, but as a non-traditional language it is not necessarily something Editors will let all Heroes know. Translating Morse code could be a basic skill check.

The "sounds phony" clue is a tricky thing to impart in game play. Is my player going to know I know it's not the Navy Secret Service, is he going to assume I didn't know and just got it wrong, or is it going to go right over his head? I've talked about this before on the blog, and there's really no easy solution to this other than to talk to the player out-of-character and explain that this was a clue or hint.

This is the flipside of the issue I just talked about -- what to do if the player is the one testing your knowledge while in-character? Did he just trick the mobster into admitting he was a phony just because I didn't know that thing about West Point? Again, this will require out-of-character discussion about what the player is trying to find out.

The gunshot through the window is evidence of how difficult it is to shoot the correct target in melee, though I do suspect that it did not really matter for these bad guys' plans which one of them was shot.

Dickie Dare features a partial map of the interior of a steamer ship. Looks accurate enough to me!

This deathtrap sounds pretty brutal -- scalding water shot through a firehose seems like it would do 1-6 points of damage. It's not a lot, but because a hose has an area of effect (let's say it's a ray 10' wide at its base), the pirates don't have to roll to attack with it.

A "steam cock" is an actual thing, by the way; it's part of the boiler.

No one is dying too fast from this steam, but I have a couple of possible explanations for that. One, the Heroes in the room, at least, should get saves vs. missiles (or maybe science) for half-damage. Two, the pirates might have started their trap too early, before the water was hot enough to do more than a few points of damage.

That ape looks pretty intense. Note the value of a captive ape. They're almost too valuable to give Heroes a chance of capturing one!

All I'm going to say here is that is some pretty fancy shooting, to spray bullets from a sub-machine gun and only hit his hand, for a disarming shot.

Here's an interesting page! For starters, Dickie and friends have a problem that no players ever have because of player knowledge -- knowing which of them was shot in the dark. To do this in-game, the Editor would need to keep information from everyone -- even the player who was shot, in order to make sure the others do not know.

Being a non-Hero, Kit can bleed to death from being injured (strict hp rules only apply to Heroes).

There was recently a kerfuffle in my home campaign, where one of the Heroes gave a semi-automatic to his 12-year old sidekick. Here we have Dickie, arguably even younger, hauling a sub-machine gun.

I'm sharing this because I'm amused by the fact that Oaky has been sleeping under a tree, and his supporting cast has been out doing much more exciting stuff without him. When your players' SCMs come back after being away from the campaign for a bit, make sure they have interesting stories to tell.

Seaweed Sam surprises me again with more Hideouts & Hoodlums-relevant content. Here, in this land of giants, we see that giants (and, really, any mobster class we want) can also be magic-users. This giant magic-user is at least 7th level if that is a regular Polymorph Other spell. The Polymorph Other spell is not supposed to be able to turn you into any animal smaller than a bird, but bear in mind that the scale is way off in any panel with giants in it, and that butterfly is really quite large.

Not sure, but I probably won't be statting large butterflies, unless I find much bigger and more dangerous examples.

Big Chief Wahoo's feat here could have been accomplished with one of two powers -- either Improved Missile Weapon, with the heavy lifting hand-waved, or more likely Raise Car, since the distance thrown itself looks pretty normal and the lifting is the only really impressive part.

We also learn how much it cost to shoot that much of a movie.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Famous Funnies #62

Opening with a joke...

Jack Kirby's Lightning and the Lone Rider reminds us that silencers existed for guns in the 1930s, though here it is called a "muffler". I would think everyone in a hideout would want a silencer, because gun shots echo so loud.

$2 for an airplane ride.

Dickie Dare's Editor needs to stop having his supporting cast do all the hard work for him, or he's going to get over-reliant on them. If Joe had missed a loyalty check, they would have been done for.

And here's a good lesson about smoking. If you smoke, you'll eventually discard a match in a pile of wood shavings and almost burn down the boat you need to get off a deserted island.

I have a write-up for nobles ready for 2nd edition, because evil counts show up so often in comics...but I can't help but wonder if this guy isn't an evil mysteryman, or even just a really capable slick hoodlum...

Oaky Doaks is a great example of Lawful Alignment. I admire his convictions.

From Babe Bunting -- a map!

From Connie -- a good size comparison of a yacht, a sloop, and a rowboat.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

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 #58

Here's a good example of game play. There's three non-Heroes controlled by the Editor and one player-controlled Hero in the boat, with a gun under the seats. The Editor knows it's there, but has his characters stay quiet, so the player can solve the problem and remember about the gun.

Also worth discussing is the term "high-powered". In the basic rules, that could be code for a Gun +1. Or, if using the optional damage rules, it means the difference between 1-10 points of damage and 1-12 points of damage.

It's also worth pointing out that, unless that's one sickly shark, 12 points of damage is not going to kill it. More likely, the shark failed a morale save afer being injured.

Is it ever just an octopus? It's almost always a giant octopus, isn't it?

This is from the gag filler page Life's Like That. I think this one is pretty funny.

Oaky Doaks has nothing to contribute this month to Hideouts & Hoodlums, but I'm sure digging King Cedric's snappy patter.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #57

Map!

More evidence of improvised weapons -- like coconuts -- being able to do real damage.

If you put yourself at risk to save your comrades, is that a good deed (worth 100 xp) or just you being a good teammate?  It's a decision each Editor will have to make, either as a blanket judgment or on a case by case basis.

Speaking of things the Editor will have to make decisions on....Should he bother rolling random encounter rolls for supporting cast members, or just assume that nothing interesting is happening to them except when a Hero is around?  It could be a good source for plot hooks; if you're out of ideas, have a SCM ask for help with some mobster they encountered...

After what I considered a weak start, Oaky Doaks has developed into a strong strip.

There has been a surprising dearth of wolves as bad guys in the comic books so far, but here we see a particularly menacing one.

Speaking of coconut weapons -- monkeys are apparently vicious with coconuts. Maybe they should be able to throw 2 per turn, for 1-4 damage?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #55

Goat joke #19, courtesy of Skyroads!

I don't agree with Hairbreadth Harry that pulling a snake off of someone would spin them like a top, that spinning like a top would necessarily hold a tiger spellbound (though I suppose you never really know with cats, maybe every turn spent around a cat should result in a random encounter reaction check?), or that a tiger wouldn't notice its own tail being tied. That all said -- it does seem like a sound strategy to pick up an animal and throw it at your main opponent. The animal, enraged, is likely to attack whoever it lands closest to.

Dickie Dare doesn't fail to provide -- we get a partial map of a hideout, ideas for treasure to place in a hideout, and the idea of having the hideout unoccupied, giving the Heroes a limited time to loot before the mobsters show up.

Never miss a chance to split up the party!  If asked which way they jump, during a cave-in, players may be tempted to use player knowledge and make sure they all jump the same way. A better way to handle this might be to ask the players to write down on slips of paper which direction they jump.

An unusually effective page of Oaky Doaks. This would be a good set-up for a haunted castle...

This is from the Life's Like That gag filler, but I found it quite amusing.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #44

For historical detail, remember that telephone numbers used to be a combination of a word and numbers.

I like how Eddie Gentz is called the "king of the bank robbers" here. I wonder if I should have a "king of--" mobster type -- a hoodlum who has 9 HD?

None of my research shows that microscopes could have been "priceless" in the 1930s; perhaps our villain simply puts great sentimental value to it (sentimental value does not translate into earned XP). The villain's name is Doctor Sting, continuing a string of great villain names in Dickie Dare.

This is also just a great page of storytelling, so I wanted to show it off.

I'm not a big fan of Oaky Doaks, but here he reminds us that wandering encounter tables are the reason why even Heroes should not all go to sleep at the same time outdoors without scheduling watch duty.

It's been awhile since we've checked in on Seaweed Sam. Here, he encounters a magic item called the Vanishing Vase, which could serve as a portal to a hidden land.


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)