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.)

Slam-Bang Comics #1 - pt. 3

Hello! We're back, still looking at the Lucky Lawton feature. We could talk about the oddly rectangular word balloons (the very next page goes back to rounded corners), or the terrible coloring job on this page, but I'm going to focus on the "no guns" law, which was actually quite common in the "Old West," and is something we badly need more of today. Personally, I would like to run a "no guns" H&H campaign, but I know that wouldn't emulate the comics well.

If you've followed this blog long enough, you've probably seen plenty of examples where the artist just seems to be guessing what an animal looks like without using a reference. The artist here is Hal Sharp, and I have a feeling Hal owned a dog; Pal is in real dog poses every time we see him.

Lucky does the smart thing, circling the perimeter instead of barging right into the bank. 

Also note how not going solo gives Lucky twice the chance to detect the activity in the bank that he would have had walking along alone.

There are two ways to achieve Lucky's noiselessness. One, he can make a skill check to move silently. The other is that he trust to his surprise roll and, if successful, means he must have been moving silently. Since chance of surprise is normally 2 in 6, it seems like that would be easier for most Heroes (unless Lucky is a mysteryman using a stunt, but I doubt it). 

Combat in the dark adds a greater level of challenge, what with the -4 penalties to hit. Just by not flipping the lights on, every unarmored combatant is now effectively at AC 5. Now, from the panel art it appears that there is plenty of light coming in through those front windows, making the scene only dimly lit, but this could just be artistic license so we can see more than five black panels with word balloons in them.

And yet, in this scene, the bandits are silhouetted in front of the windows, so it wasn't really that dark after all? And the remaining band sees Lucky in the darkness now? To emulate this scene, we need a new mechanic for eyes adjusting to darkness after a certain, or maybe random, number of combat turns. 

Although the rest of this story is seemingly set in the Old West, the remaining bandit's hat looks suspiciously modern.

The bad coloring job on the lower half of this page might be fooling me, but it appears that the rancher is wearing his bandana up over his mouth. I only mention it because I see so many people wearing their masks wrong like that these days...

There aren't game mechanics on display here, but I like how Lee is a scientist/explorer. Both were classes in Hideouts & Hoodlums 1st edition, and while both classes did get playtested in my campaigns, no one ever thought to combine those two.

My initial reaction was that having the slavers be Arabs was racist, but while there have been many white slavers through history, there was a strong tradition of slavery in the Middle East, with several countries not outlawing it until 1970. Also in the writer's favor, Ali and Hassan are real Arabic names, and not gibberish names meant to sound Arabic (I know, some golden age writers set the bar really low!).

Wow, we're in pure fantasy territory at this point. First, there's no way a plane explodes, and someone sitting in that plane falls from that wreckage completely unharmed. This should be a save for half damage situation at best. 

Then, there's no way someone's coat would be big enough to create enough wind drag necessary to cushion his fall, so there's more damage Lee should have taken by now. I think we're looking at the tune of 55d6 damage at this point - and that's assuming the plane was at a near dangerously low altitude for flying.

As unlikely it is that all the spear attacks Lee left himself open to while charging the pygmies missed, it is even more impossible for him, game mechanically, to push the leader onto a spear, unless the Editor was house ruling a fumble mechanic. More likely, this is just a freebie from the Editor.

Neutralizing poison is really easy in Lee's world. All you have to do is stick someone with a knife and the poison leaks right out of you! If I was willing to implement this as a new rule (and I'm not), for every point of damage you do to the wound, you would give the recipient a new saving throw. 

The pygmies are very patient in indulging Lee's rampant passive-aggressive racism. "Uh...ever heard of donkeys? The domestication of donkeys started in Africa. And we know what iron is, iron smelting and forging technologies were discovered in Nigeria as early as the 6th century BC. Bricks too, since about 7,000 BC. And just what are you whittling? A giant banjo?"

I am so torn on this page. On one hand, I think it's great that, for once, a lion shows up in a story and the Hero wants to capture it alive instead of stabbing it to death, or snapping its jaws, or shooting it. But that he wants it so he can perform experiments on its brain doesn't sit well with me, even though I get that the author is trying to offer a scientific explanation for how the jungle Hero is able to talk to animals. 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 3

We're going to spend some more time on this issue even though, let's face it, it was really only worth reading for Steel Sterling.

We're still on Nevada Jones and...Dice is okay with serving a masked man in his saloon, but it's the "halfbreed" he has trouble with? And this is doubly weird because this is the only time in the story Little Joe is referred to as a half-breed. Is he really only half-Hispanic, or was the author so racist he assumed Hispanics were all half-breeds?

But perhaps the toughest question I have about this page is what an "alkali eater" is. I had to do some reading for this one and, apparently, "alkali" is a term for baking powder, and at least until the 1920s, people thought you should eat baking powder for an upset stomach. I'm so glad someone invented Tums!





I skipped a few pages about the fire and how it was used to cover up a double murder. The clue at the scene was a big piece of ripped fabric. Thank goodness the villain didn't bother changing his vest, despite it having a big and obviously incriminating tear in it.

Again, that's not my real issue with this page. The more troubling thing is that Little Joe murders the villain in cold blood, and only gets a scolding for it. Instead of standing trial he gets a free pass for being the Hero's supporting cast...but that's some messed up ethics there.

We're going to have to swallow hard on some racism for this story too. There's also a lot of almost-nudity on display here. But your takeaway for this page should be that elephants can make grappling attacks, as long as their opponent is also larger than man-sized.

Of all the pages on this post I have problems with, I think I have the most with this one. Kalthar wakes up and says Mano the Elephant "has been slain." Then he gets up and says, "I shall avenge you, Mano!" ...to Mano, "leader of the herd, and only survivor." So...Kalthar only thought Mano was slain? Is this Mano's ghost before him? If all the other elephants are dead, why is it only Mano Kalthar gets upset about? Were all the other elephants jerks and had it coming to them?

Speaking of jerks...Kalthar captures this one native working for the white raiders, questions him (on the previous page I skipped), and after pumping him for information carefully ties up to a tree branch so Kaa the Snake, or some other jungle critter, can come along and feast on him later.

I think the one saving grace of this story is the idea of the bad guys casually chucking dynamite around, which raises this from a low-level scenario to a challenging scenario for mid-level Heroes. At least until the Heroes get their hands on the dynamite.

This is very Hideouts & Hoodlums-like, with the superhero vulnerable until he's had a chance to activate a defensive buffing power (by swallowing certain grains, though that is likely just flavor text). To protect him from dynamite, the buffing power has to at least be Imperviousness, if not Invulnerability, meaning Kalthar is yet another superhero with brevet ranks boosting him past where a superhero should be, experience-wise, after just two appearances.

Hmm...I'm dubious that polo tactics would translate well to air warfare, but I'm not Mike Carr so I'll just let that go as being outside my area of expertise.

The most useful thing about this feature so far has been the captions that explain what planes we're seeing, but we only get this once in this issue, for the Nazi Messerschmitt Pursuit planes. Despite the Germans having the advantage of surprise, it looks like the British have superior numbers -- I count 12 to 9 - so this could be anyone's victory.

Perhaps most interesting on this particular page is a Hero giving advice to a non-Hero, and the non-Hero just choosing to completely ignore it. Sure, this is exactly what would happen in real life if some kid tried to tell his commanding officer what they should do, but it's very rare for comic books.

The casualties are surprisingly high in this story, with eight dead men on the good guy's side, and this has everyone on edge. The two Heroes aren't getting along and, even though they are quickly promoted to squadron commanders, their colonel tells them the news like it's a punishment.

It's also surprising when the boys try to turn down becoming squadron commanders, and it made me wonder what I would do in a H&H campaign if a player refused the level title associated with their next level ("But I don't want to be a commander!"). Do I hand-wave the level title away, or do they reject the new level and stay where they were? I did elude in the 2nd edition basic book that, at higher levels, there would be more than just meeting XP requirements that would need to be met to level...though I haven't actually worked those out yet.

Whoa...Tim went out with Tom's girlfriend, pretending to be Tom the whole time? That's pretty risque; I remember some direct-to-video movies in the 1990s that were like that...

(Scans courtesy of ComicBookPlus.)

Action Comics #22 - pt. 2

Clip Carson is on a steamship heading from Algiers to South America (two issues earlier, Clip was a guard on an ivory caravan in Africa, so this makes sense). When he sees a man clubbed and shoved overboard, Clip selflessly dives into the water instead of waiting for the ship's crew to point some searchlights into the water first. Searching in the dark would have been at a large penalty, perhaps dropping Clip's chance of finding the sinking man to 1 in 8.

The man, Clip later finds out, was marked for death by having bought an ivory statue crudely depicting an elephant. A cult allegedly worships this as an idol and anyone who touches it is marked for death. Clip is told this marks him too, even though he only reaches for the idol, he never actually touches it. The idol story would make more sense if it was bought in India instead of Africa, then this would be a statuette of Ganesha. A cultist makes an attempt on Clip's life, throwing a dagger through a porthole. Not only would this be a tricky shot, but Clip remarkably makes no effort to go after the dagger-thrower, despite the fact the would-be assassin must have been dangling precariously over the side of the ship.

The first suspect is an anthropologist onboard. The anthropologist correctly points out to Clip that the owner's story doesn't hold up; that there is no elephant god in Africa, but Clip doesn't believe him because the man gets so huffy with him. Remember, when running Hideouts & Hoodlums, to be in-character when giving out information; players need to know that info is coming from a character who may or may not be correct, or honest, and not straight from the Editor.

Clip goes to the radio room and asks the attendant to "burn up the ether with this message." It's a curious phrase and one I was surprised to see still gets used today! The earliest use of it I can find is a 1927 book called The Story of Radio. Apparently, there was once a serious concern that the atmosphere might be able to hold only so many radio waves at a time, and the proliferation of radio was actually a danger -- that it would literally set the ether on fire. Even though Einstein's theory of special relativity made the theory of ether obsolete in 1905, the idea stuck around, particularly in its association with radio waves.

The person Clip sent the radio message to is one of his supporting cast we've never met before, a newspaper editor.

"Tex" Thomson's adventure starts with a lengthy prologue in the Indian Ocean. An explorer is warned not to go to an unnamed island because of the demons there. On the island, he meets an old man who claims to have stolen his soul and begins to slowly transform into the explorer, Cary James. The demon's transformation takes two days to accomplish, at the end of which time Cary will be dead. During that time, Cary remembers he had been given a locket to protect him from the demons. Incredibly, for no reason other than to further the plot, Cary puts the locket in a bottle with a note for a friend instead of using the locket.

Later, in NYC, we learn that Cary's friend is also friends with Tex. The demon, impersonating Cary, is there in NYC too. The demon is looking for the locket, because the locket and the letter both made it to Dr. Drummond in NYC, who just happens to be the friend Tex is staying with. The letter explains that touching the locket to the demon's forehead will destroy it. Tex isn't even the one who does it; it's Dr. Drummond, the true hero of this story.

Although called a demon in this story, this monster sounds more like a doppelganger. Perhaps this is a more powerful version that we can call a demon doppelganger. The touch of the locket makes it revert momentarily to its previous form before turning to ash.

Zatara is at the "El Storko Club," dining alone. This is clearly a stand-in for the Stork Club, the famous Manhattan nightclub, one of the most prestigious in the world at that time. Zatara spies The Tigress before she spies him, (he has surprise) so he turns himself invisible to watch her. The Tigress slips something into a banker's drink. Interestingly, Zatara doesn't cast something like Purify Food & Drink or Neutralize Poison, but a spell that "glues" the man's glass to the table. I have no spell like that in H&H. It seems to be a spell of such limited utility that I hesitate to make one, unless it can make objects much larger than a glass immobile. In that case, Immobilize Object might be a 1st or even 2nd level spell, depending on the weight limit affected and its duration.

As the banker and Zatara leave together, Zatara spots a safe about to land on the man beside him. Zatara makes the safe blow away -- probably with Telekinesis rather than Gust of Wind. Safes are heavy though, but Zatara has a lot of brevet ranks, so maybe he's high enough in level to move 800 lbs.? That would make him...oh. 40th level. There either needs to be a Greater Telekinesis power, or Telekinesis -- already a 5th level power -- needs a lot of tweaking.

Zatara has no spell for analyzing poison; he takes the drink from the Stork Club to a chemist for analysis (luckily it's not contact poison because it's surely been sloshing around and spilling on his hand by now). Zatara casts a spell that is very much like Word of Recall, but it doesn't have to be Zatara's home, it can take him to anyone else's home who travels with him. Zatara casts a Wall of Glass spell around the man's home. I'll make that a 4th-level spell; it's still pretty effective, since the glass is about 5' thick. Then he casts Passwall to go through the Wall without just flying over it. After all these powerful spells, it's remarkable to see Zatara cast a 1st-level Disguise spell to make himself look like the banker. Then he casts the 8th-level Polymorph Any Object spell to turn an ordinary paper check into a living snake.

Zatara turns down a $100,000 reward for saving the banker. With as many brevet ranks as he has, Zatara's player has apparently given up on ever leveling his was past them.

The man who hired the Tigress to kill the banker is a bad guy called the Mask. Like the Tigress, he has no powers; he just pays a plastic surgeon to make him look like people. Zatara must be famous enough that the surgeon knows exactly what he looks like (or the Mask had a lot of photos taken between panels). Having failed to kill the banker, the Mask impersonates Zatara and asks for that reward money -- which is a pretty good Plan B, I have to say.

If using Telekinesis on a safe was too much, Zatara next uses it on a car that must weigh a ton. Telekinesis definitely needs improving in the rules. Zatara uses Polymorph Other on the Mask to make his face ugly (even taking away one of his eyes to be extra mean). Zatara even goes after the plastic surgeon, putting a curse on him so he can never perform surgery again. Again he lets the Tigress go free, since he has the hots for her.

So, to summarize, we know Zatara has somewhere between 18 and 100 levels in Magic-User.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Fight Comics #3 - pt. 2

We're going to skip the introduction and jump right into this issue's Kinks Mason story. These mermen are too strange to stat as ordinary mermen. They are called nothing but amphibians all through the story, so I'll keep that name. They don't seem all that tough; I wouldn't give them more than 1+1 Hit Dice (Kinks kicks their butts bare-handed), plus a -1 to hit because of their monocular vision. As true amphibians, they suffer no penalties for fighting out of water. Maybe they get a +1 to grappling rolls too, since it seems to be the only thing they're good at? It looks like they can be encountered in groups up to 8.

I don't have much to say here, but I like the layout of this factory. There's enough detail that one could start to fashion a map based on it.

"Huge fish?" Is Kinks not aware that looks like a dolphin or porpoise?

Kinks is immune to the bends, or just making all of his saving throws?

It's unclear if Kinks has more than one crew member on his boat. It doesn't seem to be that big, so it's possible there is just this one guy.

Wait, didn't they want to test that ray on Kinks first? I guess Plan B was to invade the surface world without running any tests on the ray yet.

Kinks' strategy might work over time in a chase scene; if not everyone makes their skill checks to increase speed, then some pilots will fall behind and create these gaps between ships.

This is also an interesting example of rayguns having limited charges. 

Spoiler - Kinks wins. So let's jump ahead to Fletcher Hawks' favorite lumberjack, Big Red McLane. We've talked before about pacing golden age scenarios and sometimes they can require a lot of patience (this is baked into Hideouts & Hoodlums in various ways, from the low chance of wandering encounters to the slow rate of healing from hit point loss). Here, we see that Big Red has to wait out in the woods for two whole days before this encounter finally happens.

The six bad guy lumberjacks -- what do I stat them as? Brigands, maybe? -- they don't fare well against Big Red despite two of them having weapons vs an unarmed attacker, and using the tactic of surrounding him to make sure at least some of them are getting an attack-from-behind bonus to hit.

This is an unusual reward for a scenario, both the flapjacks and the percentage stake in the company rescued. The latter is actually a great idea, giving the Hero(es) incentive to keep protecting the company against future threats.

The lumberjacks were careful to use facing to their advantage in the above encounter, so I share this page of Oran of the Jungle to show how Oran deliberately tosses away any benefit he would have from it by jumping down into the middle of the group of natives. It seems like the smart thing to do would have been to jump down before they reached him, so he can block them from getting to the village, or jumping down after them, so he can attack them from behind. The only benefit I can see here is if he is expecting to get the "combat machine" advantage of fighters and multiple attacks against low Hit Die mobsters, so he places himself within reach of the maximum number of opponents.

Oran tracks them all night. Just think about how dark that second panel would really be, then, compared to how clearly we see the tracks in the dirt, and try to imagine what kind of penalty you would assign to Oran's tracking skill check. Then he successfully tracks them for hours. How many skill checks should that be? I would count this time in exploration turns, which means he has to succeed at six skill checks per hour. That is a lot of lucky rolls!

Oran is overwhelmed because the natives use "heavy weapons." H&H doesn't distinguish between normal weapons and heavy weapons. I would take this simply to mean that the weapons feel heavy as they are bludgeoning him for so many points of damage.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

All-American Comics #12 - pt. 1

Our lead feature is again Red, White, and Blue, a feature I quite enjoy so far. This story takes place in the city of Montville, of which there are at least four, for real, in the Northwest. It takes Red, White, and Blue less than 15 minutes to get there by plane from Washington, D.C., making Montville, New Jersey, our safest bet, though at 220 miles that is one fast plane.

Our villain is an unusual one, a single saboteur working with a longbow to shoot thermite-filled arrows with blasting caps as arrow heads into munitions plants. He also carries a pistol as back-up, but the longbow is his main weapon, making him the first villainous archer in a modern comic book story. Some light detective work traces the archer to a Mr. Rausch, who works at the embassy of a "belligerent nation" Red refuses to identify. In a delightful twist, Mr. Rausch is innocent and being framed by an agent from another nation, who plants all kinds of evidence against him, but Red's girl Doris sees through it all by simply talking to Rausch and finds out he's in love with an American girl and looking to naturalize, removing any motive he might have had. Red, normally the hero of these stories, comes across as a real jerk by not trusting Doris. He does display a gift for tracking in this story, though.

Hop Harrigan sets out on a long plane trip just to blow off some steam, but he finds when he's way out to sea that his radio isn't connected and his compass is off. Maybe I haven't used enough radios, but I don't get what he didn't do to connect his radio. Unreliable compasses is another complication I wouldn't have thought of when planning a scenario. Somehow he crosses the entire Pacific -- 7,000 miles, we're told -- and winds up on the coast of China, where refugees are looking to escape from Japanese aggression. This is a fairly timely story, though by 1940 the Japanese were actually very far inland in China and it's unlikely refugees would be coming to the east coast; it would have made more sense for them to be fleeing to Burma or Cambodia by then. For flying across the Pacific alone and rescuing Chinese refugees, Hop becomes a national hero and gets a ticker tape parade. It's odd that this would create such instant fame for him, as two Australians had already crossed the Pacific by plane as early as 1928.

Adventures in the Unknown continues with Alan and Ted having to tangle with prehistoric ape-men. Producing fire triggers a morale save for them. Alan and Ted want to get into a cave the ape-men are guarding, but the entrance is only accessible by climbing vines and the ape-men can stand above them and drop rocks on them. Their supporting cast member, the ape-man Ikki, is still working for them and carries their guns; they talk about "rewarding" him by taking him back to the present and putting him in a zoo or a sideshow. Alan is captured and taken to a pit where a saber-toothed tiger is being kept prisoner by the ape-men; they throw their enemies inside for the tiger to eat. Ikki helps rescue Alan, but later at the cave housing their time machine, Ted "accidentally" shoots Ikki in the back of the head while aiming for a different ape-man in melee with Ikki, killing their ally that they were planning to put in a zoo anyway.

In Ben Webster, while traversing a desert, Taffy Tate says "water's as rare out here as a 'demmycrat' in Vermont!" That seems an odd saying to still be spouting in 1940, when the Presidential election results from Vermont were only 54% to 44% leaning Republican. In fact, you have to go back to 1928 to find a time when the Republicans had a strong 66% to 32% majority.

Ben seems to pick up a new supporting cast on every adventure. This time, he's looking for a missing prospector with old man Tate, the prospector's friend, Tate's pet monkey, Ben's pet dog, and they pick up a crazy guide in the desert. The guide takes them to a mountain trail hidden behind a waterfall (players should always check behind waterfalls!). The trail is treacherous; their burros slip and almost fall a few times, with it being implied that their chances of slipping and falling would have gone up on foot. The end of the trail is guarded by two bandits using a boulder for cover.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)



 

Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 1

After a long spell we check in Fox Comics again and the first feature here is Blue Beetle.

Blue Beetle does what most of my players have always done, try to get to the location before the bad guys. But here the location works against him; with the wide open spaces, the mobsters are too far apart and the second one has an easy free shot at range.

Now, one bullet shouldn't be enough to stop BB; it usually isn't in comics. I have been wondering recently, though, if bullets should do exploding damage to account for instances like this...but on the other hand, firearms are already really deadly in Hideouts & Hoodlums and I hesitate to make them more so.

BB has a temporary Supporting Cast Member in this story; you won't see anymore of Tom.

BB has to take off his heavy mail costume; for the first time a comic book acknowledges that encumbrance can hamper skill checks.

BB must be using a power to keep up with a motorboat, that has a head start, while swimming. I hesitate to create a new swimming-related power, though, when activating Race the Train would accomplish this same thing.

It seems to me that the first mob to use an autogyro to escape from robberies is really smart, but after that people would always be on the lookout for it. The real mistake of this mob is to stay in the air so long that a plane that hadn't even taken off yet when they left the warehouse has time to catch them.

So, in addition to the autogyro, these bank robbers can afford three fighter planes. This reminds me of a lot of Silver Age stories where the super-gizmos the supervillains employ must have been so expensive that there's no way they'll come out ahead from robbing a bank. But that's not comic book logic for you!

It looks like Wing performs two Immelmann turns to get the height advantage on his pursuers, giving him a +1 bonus to hit after performing an expert skill check. As difficult as this seems to be for just a +1, it's more likely that aviators should be able to perform stunts as a free action before attacking.

Catching fire needs to be a common complication for dogfighting.

Panels 3-5 are what a fighting withdrawal looks like after a gunner fails his morale check aboard a plane.

There is currently no game mechanic for whether chutes open.

The atmosphere grows thinner, intensifying the sun's rays and causing terrific heat? Sounds like Dick Briefer predicted the ozone layer depletion! This is Rex Dexter of Mars!

What on Earth was it that exploded that took out two skyscrapers?

Ooo, I'm statting these monsters! Sadly, there is no name for these monsters given other than "new horror." The Tauromen that Reyni is referring to are actually human-like aliens controlling the new horrors, but Tauromen is a pretty cool name and I might keep it for these things instead.

They're pretty big floating heads with three long tentacles and Dumbo-like ears. Are they flapping their ears to fly, or levitating? It's not clear what those dots on the end of their tentacles are for, but I'm going to guess they are little mouths for sucking blood. And those big tusks in their mouths mean fierce bite damage. Let's assign them...6 Hit Dice? Blood drain for 1-8 damage per tentacle? Bites for 2-12? Given their scaly hides, I think we can give them an AC of at least 6, maybe 5 because they can use their tentacles as shields too.

Reyni is one great contact; not only does he hand out plot hooks, but he hands out space charts for how to get there, trophy weapons, and paints your ship!

There is no indication of how fast "zooming" is, but unless this trip takes years, "zooming" must involve folding space, warping space, accessing hyperspace, or creating a stargate.

Despite being called living chains, I'm real hesitant to stat them as mobsters; more likely, this is some technological trap, where the chains ensnare as if alive (attacking as a high HD mobster?). They might even be linked to some kind of computer intelligence that can sense enemies.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)