Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 2

Next up is Flexo the Rubber Man. This is like old home week for me, as both of these heroes (Mastermind Excello and Flexo) were played in my 1962 Marvel Super Heroes campaign I ran two years back. 

Flexo's inventors, Joel and Joshua, aren't ones to rest on their laurels; they're already hard at work reinventing those common comic book staples, the torpedo repeller and the new, more deadly explosive. And our enemies are up to the same tricks, because they have one of those dime-a-dozen rayguns that turn off electric motors. The 2nd edition basic book has no tables for specific trophies, but if it did, they would be weighted by frequency and these items would have some of the widest ranges on the table. 

Joel, captured by spies, is placed in a pretty lame deathtrap; he is tied to a tree with rope and left for wolves to eat. Wolves? Do these spies think they're in Siberia? The spies also don't think to check Joel's pockets, or they would have found the portable transmitter. Portable transmitters are also pretty common among comic book characters, but what makes Joel's different is that he taps on a button on his jacket, Morse code-style, and that transmits the message. 

When Josh gets the message, he takes the hi-tech approach of using Flexo to get him there and the low-tech approach of tying himself to Flexo's back with rope. I hope you're really good at knots, Josh! The comic book doesn't really explain how Flexo flies, but in the RPG campaign I ran that Flexo was played in, we came up with the idea that he shoots gas out his butt for propulsion. 

Josh reaches Joel just as 4 or 5 wolves arrive and, even though the wolves have shown nothing but curiosity about Joel so far, Flexo is made to viciously attack the wolves.

Flexo lifts their plane over his head (its head?). I think a 4-seat, single prop plane weighs about 1.5 tons, which is almost to the point where the power Raise Car tops out. Then they follow the repeller because it's magnetic and their compass in the plane points towards it because...you know, magnetism has no range to it.

As they charge into the spies' hideout, the marching order is unusual in that Josh and Joel go in first, with Flexo trailing behind. You'd think the human beings would want to use him for cover. Unless Flexo just moves really slowly on foot? 

The entrance is trapped with dynamite and all three of them are buried beneath "a mass of rock and heavy timbers" (without specifying how much a mass weighs). The entrance is trapped with dynamite and all three of them are buried beneath "a mass of rock and heavy timbers" (without specifying how much a mass weighs). The panel is pretty dramatic, with it looking like the timbers are exploding towards them instead of just falling. I would rate that as at least 3-18 points of damage. It makes sense that Flexo is not harmed by it if he buffed himself with a strong defensive power, but what's really surprising is that Josh and Joel only have scratches. I had considered them noncombatant supporting cast members - but are they actually mid-level scientists with a fair amount of hit points?

Although Josh and Joel normally control Flexo with a remote, it seems it can respond to voice commands too. The really interesting thing about Flexo is that bullets don't just bounce off of him like you'd expect from a rubber robot; instead, Flexo reseals after being punctured, like self-sealing tires. Only, as far as I can tell, self-sealing tires weren't a thing until 2006, so this seems to have anticipated the technology.

Flexo's "machine gun blows" must be the Flurry of Blows power. What's harder to describe with game mechanics is when the spies' car bounces off of Flexo, as there's not really a good power for that. Bounce Back Blows, maybe, if you let it work on vehicles and not just living attackers. Bounce Back Blows is powerful, so Flexo has a lot of brevet ranks. At this point, Flexo should still be just a first-level superhero. 

Moving on, the next adventure features Dynamic Man, and it starts with a curious mystery. Saboteurs are planning to blow up a bridge to crash a train. Dynamic Man is riding, in costume, on the top of the train. Is that because he knows the train is in danger, or is it just coincidence? Like Mastermind Excello, Dynamic Man has Clairvoyance and can see the bomb being placed, but Clairvoyance only has so much range, so he shouldn't have known about this until the train was close. 

Dynamic Man can fly fast enough to catch up to a speeding car, which is difficult to do with Fly II, and might require Fly III if the car had enough of a head start. He is buffed, possibly with Imperviousness, or relying on Nigh-Invulnerable Skin and a little luck, before going in so he doesn't have to worry about the bullets bouncing off of him. He picks up the men with ease, suggesting he has Raise Car activated, and appears to be beating the men against the ground like clubs, doing clubbing damage to them (which would be 1-6 points only -- unless he is also buffed with one of the Get Tough powers). The one surprise is that Dynamic Man seems to have a power that works just like rayguns that shut off engines, though you might be able to duplicate that effect with Wreck at Range, if the Editor allowed you to use it on just the engine and not the whole car. 

The bad guys' car has a special add-on; a radio transmitter in the back seat so their boss can listen in on everything...

(Read in Marvel Masterworks: Mystic Comics vol. 1.)

  

Silver Streak Comics #3 - pt. 3

We're still looking at Ace Powers, who I thought was a private eye, but it looks like he's actually a police officer. Or maybe this patrolman in the car just owes Ace a big favor? Or should be considered one of his supporting cast members?

That last panel...some of the artwork is terrible in this feature...

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I'm sure this scene has played out in plenty of gangster movies and TV shows, with the car conveniently flipping right after the driver is shot, like there was some symbiotic relationship between driver and car. But I'm not going to talk about that so much as the tommy guns and facing. Because, if you're firing out the side window of a car, should you be able to aim straight ahead?  Normally, and I've said this before on this blog, facing is largely irrelevant to the Hideouts & Hoodlums combat system, but there are common sense occasions when facing can't be ignored, like when you're sneaking up from behind, or like when you have to lean out a window to shoot sideways. I think I'd be charitable in giving the mobsters only a -1 penalty to hit.

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The clearest picture of a 1940 drivers license I've ever seen. Looks remarkably like the ones we have today!

Now we're going to move on to our next feature, Dickie Dean, a half-pint scientist. In a very rare instance, we not only learn what city Dickie is from, but we learn his exact address from that letter!















This machine is a two-in-one mad science trophy. See if you can follow this: sound waves don't ever disappear, but keep echoing back to their original source for weeks, just too faint to be normally heard. And shadows last just as long, but you can't see them under normal lighting conditions! If you can swallow that kind of science, you could include this invention in your next campaign!

The first panel suggests the kind of world-altering change that super science would bring to the campaign world, if it was followed through on.

We never learn what kind of improvements Dickie plans to make to the machine. It's hard to imagine what else it could be made to do.

I did have rules in 1st edition H&H for inventing things, but it didn't cover improving things.

I love this page; a Hero who doesn't use brute strength or even something sharp to free himself from being tied up. He burns the house down around him!

---

Now we're going to jump to the next feature, which is Sgt. Drake.


This chauffeur should be statted as a guard, since his uniform can be stolen once he's knocked out.

As if we didn't have enough mad science in this issue, we now have a radio-controlled plane...which is really weird, because Drake is in the plane. Why he is controlling it with his radio instead of, say, manual controls, is deeply puzzling.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies #18 - pt. 2

We're still looking at Jon Linton's adventures in the future; a future where men wear robes and women wear short skirts.

It seems like a huge design flaw that Satan Rex's atomic power plant is controlled by two exposed electrodes. I was going to say the place should also have some fail-safes in place, but I suppose the power shutdown is a fail-safe, preventing something worse like a meltdown.

I don't think any 1940 writers knew about meltdowns yet...and yet, Harry Campbell did seem to have more knowledge of science than your average comic book writer of the time, so...?

I just complimented Campbell for his smarts, but there seems to be a glaring mistake here; two pages back, Jon learned the systems would need 30 minutes to reboot, and here the "wall of force" is rebooting well before then. Of course, maybe Satan was smart enough to have a back-up system kick in for the force wall.

It's interesting that Campbell calls it a wall of force and not the more common term, force field (in use in science fiction going back to 1920!). Wall of Force is, of course, a magic-user spell as well.

The second to last panel spells out that the Scientist class normally takes a week of downtime to invent something, but has a chance to kit-bash something in just a day.

The Mount Wilson Observatory telescope would be the largest in the world until 1949. I'm not sure where the "6,000 billion million miles" came from, but researchers could see nebulae over 5 trillion miles away.

The "reveal houses on the moon, if there are any" is as optimistic as telepathic television-phones.

Bill and Davey is an odd duck, a comic strip coming from a minor league syndicate that was picked up by both Dell and Centaur (though neither for long). It's hard to see what they saw in it -- unless they just picked it up cheap.

There were headhunters, and cannibals as well, on the Solomon Islands, so while the depiction of Ajax might seem racist, the description isn't. 

This is Tippy Taylor on Fantasy Isle, a non-subtle rip-off of Swift's Lilliput. This scenario should be a cakewalk for even a class-less half-pint; since I'm still working on the assumption that 1 hit point represents roughly 30 lbs. of mass, and a 6" tall person would weigh less than an ounce, then Lilliputians...or Fantasy Islanders don't even come close to having a full hit point, or being able to do any damage themselves.

The tank poses more of a threat, even scaled to tiny size. Since it's the size of a gun, I would allow it to do a full 1-6 points of damage if it shot Tippy in the leg.

That must be a 3' high jump by Tippy. Impressive! 

This is John Degen, Private Detective, from a one-shot called "The Fiend of Halwith Hall." Shadowing someone, by car, on a country road, should be a basic skill check.

John is smart to head straight to the cellar, as most of the good stuff in a hideout is underground.

John has a skeleton key, a minor trophy item that gives him a bonus to skill checks when opening locked doors.

Here we have a mad scientist with the emphasis on mad. Like many mad scientists, he wants to do a brain transplant. Now, he might be just a raving loon, or maybe he has the science to do it; we never do find out.

Two wolves are unusual pets for a mad scientist.

The pit trap in the driveway is very unusual. It also doesn't make a lot of sense, since the car was parked when John goes inside, and is in the pit trap after he gets out. Maybe it took a long time for the weight of the car to activate the trap?

That's a lot of blood loss, to make the gunpowder too wet to burn. The Hideouts & Hoodlums rules don't account for blood loss and there's no way to make yourself bleed faster to foil traps.

Wow, that is one dark ending. It's rare for Heroes in comics to fail, but John not only failed to save this poor guy, but we find out just what horrible fate befell him.

Lastly, we're going to look at a verbose page of Larry Kane, investigating "The Ghost of Kirkwood." There's a pretty good set-up for a haunted house scenario here, with lots of rumors being supplied on this page.

My curiosity has been aroused too, but it's late and I'll read the rest next time!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Keen Detective Funnies #18 - pt. 4

Only because I'm a Harry Campbell fan, I'm going to devote one more blog post to this issue, devoted entirely to Dean Denton...despite Dean not being my favorite of Campbell's characters, and this installment in particular being terribly racist.

At least Campbell, as usual, had done his homework. "Bomba" is Boma, capital city of the Belgian Congo, and is still an important city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today.

The text makes it sound like Katanga is a city, but it is a province in the southeast corner of the Congo. The narrator's assertion that Katanga is 700 miles away is pretty accurate.

"Compagnie Belgique" is not a real thing, but seems very plausible, even though  the correct way to say it would be "Compagnie de la Belgique," or Belgium Company.

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Here we see a rare example of kit-bashing hi-tech trophy items during an adventure instead of during downtime. This is how a scientist class would use powers, which would here include a new power, Detect Radiation.  It's a weird sort of power and not how, I think, Geiger counters actually work. It's functioning here more like a long-range Locate Object spell, or a Find the Path spell, rather than detecting something's presence in a certain radius.

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Oh look, Dean is sexist now too. Sigh...

You're going to have to choke down some really terrible dialogue on this page, but one interesting piece of dialogue is the unusual phrase from Dean, "you're like money from home!" While certainly rare today, I wonder if this was a more common saying circa 1940.

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And check out that sleight of hand! Has Absalom been carrying rabbits and canaries around in his pockets all this time, just hoping for an opportunity to do a magic act? Or is there more than even simple cantrips going on here? It almost seems more like an Animal Summoning spell!

This page is troubling to me, from a game mechanics perspective. We have an aerial dogfight and, the way I have the mechanics for this working out in my head, you make attack rolls each turn you are facing your opponent's plane and the more hits you get, the more a percentage chance of a random complication happens. I see this all the time in dogfight scenes -- but not this one, where the plane simply goes down without explanation, almost as if it had simply run out of hit points.

I guess I will need to watch for more examples.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Smash Comics #5 - pt. 2

Wow, it's been so long, I finished and published the HIDEOUTS & HOODLUMS Basic Book 2nd Edition between posts!

I love how the Scientective uses science for problem-solving. Here, he realizes that something in the room with him can dissolve the material binding his wrists. Of course, a smart Editor anticipates things like this and stocks his hideouts accordingly.

"Rheostat" is a word that's fallen out of common usage. It means an adjustable resistor so constructed that its resistance may be changed without opening the circuit in which it is connected, thereby controlling the current in the circuit.  Of course, John could have just said "This switch ought to shut off the power," but that wouldn't sound very Science-y!

With little time to spare, John Law has to start playing hunches. His first hunch is that the brand new power plant right by the tracks can't be a coincidence, just like every reader was probably thinking on the first page.

John is able to smash the generator easily despite not being a superhero (and wouldn't he be in trouble if his hunch had been wrong!). I did include a note in the scientist entry in the mobsters section of the H&H 2nd ed. basic rulebook that scientists can all wreck labs -- but John is a Hero, not a mobster. For now, this will just have to fall outside the game mechanics...until the scientist class comes back in the Advanced Hideouts & Hoodlums Heroes Handbook someday...

There's a very curious editor's note about a giant induction field displayed at the New York World's Fair. I have not been able to find evidence of this, unless the editor is referring to the automated highway system demonstrated in the Futurama exhibit. I can find no evidence that Russian scientists were ever working on a "floating railroad." Could the author have read something about the electrification of the Russian railway system and misunderstood...?

This is from Wings Wendall and what makes me stop and pause is...what did that officer look up commercial airplane listings in?  Trade journals? Records of the Civil Aeronautics Authority? If Wings is flying with the U.S. Army Air Corps, how do they have these civilian records close at hand?

I like to think these hoodlums are just sitting there in warehouse drinking and planning because they're drunken hoodlums.

I've waffled for a long time now on how vehicular combat should go in Hideouts & Hoodlums. Do weapons trigger a chance of complications, like crashing? Or should it, like man-to-man combat, be a incremental process of hit point loss? The wording of "guns take their toll" suggests to me the latter, as the abstract, cumulative damage -- not any one hit on any one part -- is what causes the crash. But I've so far seen evidence in the comics that support both ways.

The idea that the Boss left such a simple note for Agent M-29 on a scrap of paper, rather than expecting him to commit a single sentence to memory, is an obviously planted clue. But planted for a trap, or by an Editor who really wants his player to get to that warehouse?

It's also worth noting that Wings doesn't head straight to the warehouse, but reports his intention to his superior officer first. That's a very Lawful way to play.

Why is one window locked and another window left open? It could be saves vs. plot, or it could be a simple 1-3 yes/4-6 no roll. The first option makes Heroes luckier as they advance in level, while the second option keeps circumstances at an even random chance.

We also see Wings being surprised. Fresh arrivals to an ongoing combat still get a chance at surprise.

Wings is attacked here by gangsters, a new mobster type with a special ability of getting victims into cars.

Although players should have some control over their supporting cast, they cannot just arbitrarily declare that their SCMs show up when the Hero is in trouble. The players can suggest that SCMs show up, and the Editor can decide if he should say yes or no, or give them a save vs. plot to see if it happens.

This sequence reminded me, while preparing the chase rules for 2nd edition, that I needed to include a missile combat phase during the chase turn!

I think I missed this, though -- when I compiled a list of abstract complications that could happen during a chase, I may have missed the slowing complication, like a flat tire. I'll have to double check...

Wings recovers quickly because of the new rule in 2nd ed. that allows unconscious Heroes a save vs. plot to recover in 1-6 turns. Because he's still in danger, turns are still being counted in half minutes.

The "boss" is either a master criminal or, if the spy class was in use, a higher level spy.

This is Invisible Justice. Thurston is driven off the road during a car chase (the complication is crash, but because there's water nearby to crash into, Thurston only loses the car and takes no damage).

Here's a precedent for invisibility, at least granted by trophy items, not turning items touched invisible.

Old mansions, on the only estates for miles around, make great hideouts (plus, its fairly easy to find a map of a generic mansion you can use for your game on short notice).

Large patio doors without closed drapes make a great way to spy on the hideouts' occupants before going in.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Detective Comics #33 - pt. 1

This is the issue that gave us Batman's famous, two-page origin story. This story is also the origin of both the "cowardly" and "superstitious" hoodlums, from Bruce's famous speech about "criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot."

When the real adventure begins, Bruce Wayne observes scarlet rays. These rays have multiple effects -- they can blind people and wreck buildings (probably at least as well as a 6th level superhero). Since thousands are killed in a single attack, we can assume they have a large range and a wide area of effect.

Prof. Carl Kruger is at least our 2nd Napoleon mobster in comics -- though I'm still not seeing a lot of justification for statting it differently like I did before in 1st edition. Maybe Napoleons are just master criminals or master criminal/scientists.

Batman hurls his Baterang as a missile weapon for the first time here, but Kruger is protected by a glass wall he keeps in his office between his desk and the window (perhaps wary of snipers?). Batman is overcome with a surprise head blow from behind (already going in 2nd edition).

Kruger's death trap is to leave Batman tied up with rope on the floor with a bomb set to go off in five minutes. Why Kruger wants to blow up his own house isn't clear, other than that he's obviously crazy. Batman cuts his bonds with a blade concealed in his boot and escapes in time. Luckily, Kruger never checked his boots -- or even peeked under his mask! (Save vs. plot to make sure villains don't do anything that obvious to you when you're captured.)

Batman doesn't escape entirely, though. His bleeding lip seems to indicate he took some of the blast, just not enough to kill him. An explosion would normally require a save vs. science for half damage, but with a deathtrap maybe it should be a save vs. plot for half damage, with a failed save meaning death instead of twice the damage.

Batman's not a great fighter yet in these early stories, but he's smart. He doesn't know where Kruger fled to, but Kruger unwisely told him the names of his lieutenants and one, apparently, has a publicly known address. Batman confronts him, tells him to take a message to Kruger, and then follows him in his Batplane (still the auto-gyro).  Of course, Batman would have been sunk had the lieutenant simply called Kruger on the phone...

Batman has a glass vial that, when it breaks, surrounds the Batplane in a thick smokescreen that clings to the plane. How this doesn't blind Batman isn't clear.

Guards can be really stupid. They see a smokescreen hovering in the sky and mistake it for a raincloud. I think even Winnie-the-Pooh would have seen through this.

Smaller (I presume weaker) versions of the scarlet death-rayguns can be mounted on trucks. They're delicate though -- one shot and they all blow up. Kruger explains soon thereafter that the death ray is a combination of ozone and gamma rays.

This is the first story in which Batman's life is saved by a bulletproof vest. This time, the bullets still knock him out and make him bleed (superficially).  On later occasions, bullets will just bounce off him because of the vest (maybe he has a Vest +1 by then).

Then Bruce Wayne whips up -- and I'm not making this up -- an anti-death-ray chemical spray to coat his Batplane with. This was the story that made me decide Batman had to be dual-statted as a mysteryman/scientist for Supplement IV.

The first Batplane is destroyed when Batman crashes it into Kruger's blimp, from which the scarlet death-rays are being fired.

Kruger apparently had an army of 2,000 mercenaries, though we never saw more than him, his three lieutenants, and two guards. After Kruger dies, Batman seems to sit back and let the authorities round up the army.

The next installment of Spy has to do with the country of "Luxen" -- a very poorly disguised Luxembourg suffering a bloodless annexation from "Thoria" (Germany). The story is interestingly prophetic, as this was 1939 and Luxembourg wasn't invaded until the following year -- and it was largely bloodless! The government did flee the country, but to the UK, not the US.  Past that, details seem strangely altered; Luxen has a male president instead of a female duchess. Also, in real life, the duchess fled with her family, which makes more sense than what the president does -- leaving his family behind so they can be threatened as hostages.

Bart Regan seems more observant than normal; he spots a wire hanging down behind a painting and immediately recognizes that it's a dictaphone wire.

The Luxen president's speech is interrupted by what appear to be mountebanks -- or so I call them in a new stat block for 2nd edition. Mountebanks, or rabble rousers, are able to get a growing number of innocent bystanders to start fighting.

And I learned a vocabulary word in this story -- plebiscite. Though it is consistently misspelled "plebecite."

Buck Marshall, Range Detective plays for high stakes when he has a defend a played out mine suddenly valued at $500,000. I learned the term "salting a mine", a con where you add extra gold to the random samples to make the mine seem more valuable.

Buck slips into a shack through a window because the front door is padlocked. It's important to keep in mind that, in modern times, we have multiple ways of locking doors. A padlock is relatively easy for Heroes to foil -- they might be able to wreck it with bolt cutters (though at a -4 penalty, if a non-superhero), or it can be shot off with a bullet if the bullet hits AC 7. Buck didn't want to make that much noise...

Buck didn't bring his own light source, though, so the Editor was gracious and left a lamp sitting out in the dark interior.

(Batman stories read in Batman Archives vol. 1; the rest read at Readcomics.net

Smash Comics #3 - pt. 2

I first discovered John Law the Scientective while researching for Supplement IV: Captains, Magicians, and Incredible Men.  He was not the first scientist hero in comics (Dean Denton might have been first), but he's a favorite of mine.

I'm not sure if the induction alarm was a real thing back in 1939. Of course, motion sensors are commonplace today, as are remote-controlled lights. One of the nice things about running a campaign set in the past is that you don't have to come up with super-science-y gizmos all the time, as modern day stuff would have been advanced science back then too.

John's nemesis, The Avenger, uses a pretty dastardly tactic here, forcing an innocent victim to bring a ball of poison gas to John. This way, no matter what John did, the ball would likely wind up getting broken. Lucky that John has a gas mask so handy, especially considering that I don't plan to make it a starting equipment item.

Antidotes, like gas masks, are trophy items. The scientist class from Supplement III: Better Quality -- which John probably would qualify for -- can make stuff like this, but the scientist won't be in the 2nd edition basic book.

Bombs are a natural trophy item, but the damage they can do is highly variable and even the triggers for a bomb can be just about anything -- like this one, that is triggered by air pressure. I'll probably have just one entry for bombs in the trophy section with a short list of suggestions.

Really, John? X-Rays? You couldn't just shine ultraviolet light on their hands? It does seem like the general public, in 1939, was pretty ignorant about the effects of radiation, but a scientist should have known.

The manager is shot by a sniper, also known as an assassin (and statted as such) in 2nd edition.

This is Wings Wendall of Military Intelligence. My players are rarely so subtle as to use distractions, but if they did, I would have the guard save vs. plot or fall for it. As Editor, you could decide to always let a clever idea for a distraction work automatically, the first time, and then use the save vs. plot mechanic always after that if they repeat it.

It's hard to believe that any bad guys were so dense to need a chart explaining that simple plan, but it made for an awful handy clue for Wings to find.

Lastly, having dim light make it difficult for people to recognize Heroes is a factor the game mechanics don't directly deal with. I guess, if the player was directly asking if the dim light could hide his identity, then you would treat it as a disguise attempt.

Editors don't need to go this easy on their players. How dumb is this bad guy, to already suspect Wings of being a spy, but putting him on a crucial work detail on the sub without a guard anyway?

That said, this is pretty cool, dressing up like the bad guy in order to fool all his underlings.

This is Hugh Hazzard and His Iron Man and...this trophy item is a goofy one. Apparently, the super-seper-iconoscope can pick up a radio signal and convert it into a television signal, as if the scene heard was being filmed. The sheer impossibility of that working makes my head hurt. But that's the Golden Age!

Here's a familiar issue -- are the bullets bouncing off because Bozo's Armor Class is so low, or because the robot has a power like Imperviousness? The robot clearly has the wrecking things ability here. I would treat wrecking planes as if they were (perhaps ironically) robots.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Adventure Comics #40

We've already seen The Sandman once, but here he is, debuting in his regular berth for the first time, Adventure Comics. There's a delightful slow build to the story after Wesley Dodds gets his plot hook. He spends some time mulling it over, while lounging in the dark in his smoking jacket. We meet his butler, Humphries. We get some unusual insight into Wesley's character, when he puts a doll representing himself in his bed, as if psychologically transferring his identity before becoming The Sandman. Before The Batman, The Sandman is the first crimefighter to have a secret underground laboratory (but not an underground lair; that would The Clock).

The Sandman is shown mixing his own chemicals for his gas gun. Last time, I said I was comfortable not giving Sandman levels in the Scientist class, but here he really does seem to be earning at least one level.

There's also a very interesting caption about color. "Then he dons all black apparel", the caption says, yet The Sandman is wearing yellow gloves, an orangish- tan coat, and a purple cape. It seems clear that authors had little input on the coloring of their own characters; the caption was overruled, but the wording was left there anyway.

The Sandman uses stealth (move silently?) to sneak around unobserved, climbing to get to an upper story window, and finds a secret door.

Another interesting detail is that the smell of his sleep gas reminds its victim of violets.

In Barry O'Neill's ongoing adventure, he has just been doused with gasoline and Count Guniff is about to light him on fire - but it turns out he had the wrong bucket and that was just water. A little help from the Editor, or game mechanics? I have had a player suggest the save vs. plot should work like that, with the player suggested an alternate explanation and allowing the player to roll for it. I'm personally opposed to giving the player veto power over the game Editor...but that does seem to be a reasonable explanation for what I've read here...

Steve Carson of Federal Men has fallen far from taking on giant robots to being knocked unconscious by two counterfeiters, one hitting him with a block of wood. I do envision Hideouts & Hoodlums to be a game that can move effortlessly between challenge levels. Maybe I shouldn't be entirely opposed to hoodlums having a special ability of "backstabbing" Heroes for additional damage, and a quick knockout...

Bulldog Martin is overpowered by three thugs (a pretty tough encounter for a solo, low-level Fighter!), but escapes from being tied up by rope by carrying a nail file on him. He foils a plot to murder a racehorse with a fake camera that can shot a poison needle (trophy weapon, but pretty useless to a Hero if you don't allow them to use poison).

Skip Schuyler is in Hawaii, helping a scientist who has made tiny explosives with the power of artillery shells. We also see a good hiding place to search in a scientist's house, the inside of a lampshade.

Rusty and His Pals is at a climactic scene rarely seen in comics -- an earthquake is destroying the island the whole scenario is taking place on, there's a single seaplane that can get people off, and various factions are racing to get to it. One could make a board game out of this scenario. Combat plays a minor part, but it's movement rate that really wins the scenario here.

Anchors Aweigh is on a new scenario. Don and Red get captured by thugs (that seems to happen a lot -- thugs are tough!) and are left in an uncommon deathtrap -- an island that will flood when the tide comes in, and then sharks will show up. They're tied up so they can't swim away, but escape using the old "focusing light with a pair of glasses". I don't think we need an escape artist game mechanic; rather, any idea you come up with to get out of ropes should just automatically work.

There's also an octopus -- and a normal one, not a giant one!

(Sandman adventure read in Golden Age Sandman Archives vol. 1; summaries of the rest read at DC Wikia.)

Wonder Comics #2 - pt. 2

Yarko has a spell that lets him see in the dark. Infra-Vision?

This is one weird building, by the way. The view of the manor we saw on page 1 of this story looked like a lone building standing on a hilltop. Now there's a moat around one building, or part of the same building, cut off from the rest, that wasn't visible before. Is there a moat inside the house, or is the layout of the place different once you're inside, because it's magic?

Yarko's Rope Trick spell. Rope Trick usually raises a rope vertically, but here it is shown being horizontal as well.

Under hypnosis (like the 2nd level spell Hypnotic Pattern?), victims can be commanded to perform skills better than normal. Maybe at a +2 check?

This is Shorty Shortcake again, one of the properties to carry over from the first issue of Wonder Comics. We have previously only seen temporary amnesia as a complication Heroes suffer from being reduced to zero hit points. Now we can add losing their senses to the short list. The effect leaves the Hero temporarily mumbling incoherently and stunned to the point where the Hero can do nothing more complicated than sitting upright.

Patty O'Day returns -- and we get more evidence that Hideouts & Hoodlums needs leopards statted in the next main book.

Whoa, what the- ?  Patty's new supporting cast member Ham is suddenly a Superhero! He's clearly wrecking things on those bars (which should wreck like doors), and in combat he's either using the power Multi-Attack, or he's a Fighter/Superhero and using combat machine as well!  Way to recruit the SCMs there, Patty!

Dr. Fung and Dan Barrister are back. Dr. Fung has invented a potion that ...well, the science behind it is highly questionable, so let's just call it a Potion of Water Breathing. The Scientist class has seen a little playtesting over the years since it debuted in Supplement III. One of the disappointments has been that scientists are supposed to relegate their inventing to downtime between scenarios, but that's exactly what we see here. A Scientist Hero, then, would have to be lucky enough to be working on something that will be useful in the next scenario (though the Editor could always help make that happen).

I'm not sure what's going on in that top tier of panels. Is Dr. Fung looking to buy lots of pearls to help Dan (who is undercover already as a deep sea diver)? Is he looking for someone the murderers might be unloading stolen pearls to? Or is he just going around, telling people he's loaded with dough, and looking for trouble? All of them are valid investigative angles for a Hero, I suppose.

The cross-section map of the hideout isn't as helpful as an overhead map would have been for running a scenario there, but it's interesting nonetheless.

I don't know that I really needed to share this page. I just think that's one of the goofiest octopi drawings I've ever seen, it's a rare instance of not being called a giant octopus in the comics (is "giant" now always a given?), and -- really -- that leash on its tentacle that holds it close to the villain lair is too comical to ignore.

Listen to Tex Maxon -- if you're going to stuff dynamite in your shirt, store the caps separately!

Man, the quality of these microfiche scans seems to be getting worse. I can still make out Tex saying that'll "seal 'em in for five hours". I wonder how he knows it'll take that long? Can x amount of manpower at y hours of digging duplicate the Dig power for Superheroes?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)