Speed Comics #7 - pt. 2

We're back to Shock Gibson out West and the hoodlums he hid amongst last time, who have upped their game from hustling ranchers to attacking oil fields. This story has been a lot about escalation of threat level, whether it's targets or transportation (they've now also gone from riding horses to having planes). An Editor needs to up his game like this on the fly if he begins a scenario that turns out to be too much of a cakewalk for the Heroes. 

Though Shock is probably buffed here with the power Fire Resistance, I like how nothing else on this page requires his powers, and lifting and twisting that valve is probably something any Hero could have done. 

It is strange, though, that Shock let them start the fire and waited until the hoodlums were gone to put it out, rather than stop them here in the act. I'm hoping an explanation for that is forthcoming and it's not just a plot hole. 

Okay, I think it's clear at this point that Shock is just toying with the bad guys. There's really no reason to trick the leader after getting him alone in the plane instead of just taking him prisoner now. 

This is, though, the kind of playing I expected to see more in H&H and never have -- good guys vastly outclassing the bad guys, but then taking it easy and trying to make it fun. Players always seem to want to end things as quickly and efficiently as possible. I have wondered before if H&H needed a game mechanic that would encourage this better, like bad guys being worth more XP if you spend longer defeating them than you need to.

Given Shock's powers, you'd think he could have just wrecked the hangars on their own, but there's a poetic justice in using their own bombs against them. Speaking of which...I love that second panel and the fun sense of overkill. I suppose I would give those hoodlums a penalty to their morale saves in that situation. 

The next page is the last page that wraps things up. There's no big reveal of the head hoodlum ("Gasp -- you were Joe the Ranch Hand all along!" or something like that) and it's only implied that the hoodlums knew about the gold and that's why they wanted the land...though the oil would have been just as valuable, so...

Lastly, Shock stops by and gives the old prospector a strange admonishment (and I won't bother showing you the whole page just for it), to "remember the unemployed" when he's rich. The unemployment rate was at 17% and dropping by the end of 

1939, better than its peak in 1933, but still high enough that wealth distribution should be a serious issue for superheroes. 

Now we're in the middle of the next story, Crash, Cork, and the Baron, as they deliver explosives to Argentina. Why, and who hired them? Eh, these guys are Neutral and don't really care about that. Oddly, they flew west to get to Argentina, so...the scenario started in Uruguay? But what I wanted to discuss here was gauchos. Gaucho was a lifestyle, not an ethnicity, but since gauchos were cowboys and not bandits, it's not hard to read some racism into this. Were they ever extinct? No, but their numbers did severely dwindle by the end of the 19th century. 

But this page also gives us more questions. Is Cork not dead after the bolo wraps around his neck (yes, game mechanics-wise, he's likely only unconscious at best, but realistically...)? Is Crash really such a bad pilot that he can't outmanuever an inexperienced pilot (very bad dice rolls, I suppose)? Who is

saying "The blitherin' idiot!"? Did the gauchos change Cork's jacket from a brown one to a green one?

It seems like Crash is using the Out of the Sun stunt from the old aviator's class here, and even though the old version of stunts is gone from 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums, there's no reason why we couldn't keep the concept as a combat modifier, -2 to be hit from below, just like how Crash should be at +1 to hit for attacking from above.

I'm pretty sure this is what only doing 1 point of damage with a bolo looks like. 

We also get one of those rare examples of a hero's gun running out of bullets. While seemingly unlimited bullets is a common trope in fiction, I love it when the heroes can't rely on guns and have to think up another solution instead.  I'm sure they'll put their heads together and come up with some nonviolent solution and...

...oh. A couple o' loads o' dynamite. Well, that escalated quickly.

I have serious reservations about this. I would need the Mythbusters team back together to resolve if you could detonate an explosion big enough to create a colossal wave. I suspect the waves would just make the water choppy, but not enough to capsize the boat. And I have to wonder if it wouldn't have just been better to let the bad guy get away than to destroy an entire coastline.

In-game, I suppose you have to look at these ideas in terms of what will make the story more exciting for the players. Maybe your players like blowing up cliffs. My players probably would have just thrown the dynamite at the boat...

We'll just glance ahead at the third story in the book, this feature being Ted Parrish, the Man of 1,000 Faces. Here, we learn that if you have a steel-lined cap, it protects you from head blows. We also see a clever trick, disguising yourself as one of the bad guys and escaping with them to see where their lair is -- but then Ted goes the easy route and leaves a note on the door for the police. Boo, Ted! What kind of action hero does that (you'd think his player doesn't want XP or something!)?

Also note one of my pet peeves about golden age comics -- colorists who just don't care and get wrong obvious things, like the constantly changing suit jackets. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

  
 

 

Speed Comics #7 - pt. 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Speed Comics #6 - pt. 2

Continuing on with the latest Shock Gibson adventure, we find Baron Von Kampf is finally using the tactic I had predicted last time, of using the truck's radio to lure Shock into a trap.

It's very unclear to me how a cave mouth wide enough to drive a truck through is a secret entrance, particularly to a well-explored cave complex.

And man, someone really smoothed out those tunnels to allow a truck to drive for miles through them!

When we do see bats in comic books, they tend to be just hideout dressing and not an actual encounter.

An electrical field on the other side of a doorway marked "enter" is fiendishly clever.

A deathtrap worthy of Houdini!

This is the second time electricity has drained Shock's electricity powers. I still don't get how that works, but I appreciate that his player wanted him to have a weakness. By Hideouts & Hoodlums rules, he doesn't need one unless he's statted as an alien, android, or merman superhero.

Shock is using wrecking things to escape this deathtrap -- and it really is a good deathtrap, because if he missed one or two wrecking rolls, he might actually have suffocated inside the concrete. But what category is Shock wrecking? A brick wall is in the cars category, but this concrete hasn't had time to harden yet. On the other hand, Shock has to move with zero room for leverage, so that penalty might negate any advantage he has from the softness of the concrete, so I would stick with cars.

Every villain's hideout needs a lever that opens trapdoors. The question is, does the trapdoor need to be placed in advance and the Hero's movement through the cave accurately mapped, or simply make him save vs. plot to avoid passing over the trapdoor by chance? The former has a certain amount of built-in suspense, as you put a map in front of the player and ask him to show his route, but it requires some prep work from the Editor in advance.

Pit traps that fall into water filled with alligators are a dime a dozen; what sets this trap apart is the waterfall in between. What purpose does the waterfall serve? Not much that I can imagine; it would not disorient the Hero and give him a penalty on his surprise roll any more than falling into the water initially would. If anything, the waterfall gives the Hero a little more time to save himself before winding up in the lower pool with the alligators.

It's usually sharks that are shown attacking each other when one is hurt (the myth of the feeding frenzy), but it's a real stretch to say that having its tail in its mouth makes it so helpless that the other gators go into a feeding frenzy. Couldn't the gator just spit his tail out anyway?

The result is the same anyway; Shock basically chickens out from the fight and exits the pool, using this so-conveniently forgotten ladder left in the pool.

Wrecking a stone wall is in the trucks category, and I would put support pillars in the same category. Now, did Shock make some kind of geology skill check first to determine those were load-bearing columns, or did he just start wrecking columns at random and get lucky?

The Villain class has a percent chance, higher per level, of being "lucky to escape" just like this.

And now we'll skip the beginning and jump further into the next story. Crash, Cork, and the Baron (now also referred to as the Three Aces) are in South America navigating what appears to be the Amazon River. Their riverboat has hard cover in the form of protective screens, but it's not enough to keep some "arrows" from getting in. And I use "arrows" because, if they're 5' long, we should really be calling them javelins.

Of course, from a modern perspective, it's difficult to side with the Three Aces here. That pipeline is going to spill crude oil into the river and pollute the environment; they are really on the wrong side of this conflict.

...Not that the natives seem interested in solving this diplomatically. The native on the far right in panel 1 seems to be drawn more like a monster than a human, betraying the racism of this story.

Hurled stones are improvised weapons and do 1-3 points of damage.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Speed Comics #6 - pt. 1

We're back to Brookwood, predecessor of Harvey Comics, and home to Shock Gibson. Shock is, despite being human and having electrical-based powers, very Superman-like. This is great for Hideouts & Hoodlums, because these superheroes are all using the same powers and that makes them easy to catalog.

Here's Shock using the 1st-level power Feather Landing.

And here Shock is using the power Raise Elephant. Since he's not using the truck as a weapon, that is just flavor text assigned to the Raise Elephant power.

Shock would already be a 4th-level superhero at this point, but he still doesn't have enough of a reputation that ambulance drivers recognize him on sight.

Although he's outrunning a motorcycle and a truck, the power in use here is Race the Train.

There are Hold powers, like Hold Plane, that Shock could be using here against the truck, but since he doesn't seem likely concerned about whether the truck is damaged, it's more likely he is simply trying to wreck it.

It's also conceivable that little enough time has passed that the duration is still ongoing for his earlier application of Raise Elephant.

I love how Shock is interrogating the mobsters through the truck while he's holding it up.

Shock's forcefield is likely the power Imperviousness.

Unconcerned that the mobsters on the radio were listening in earlier, knew Shock had the truck, and were attempting to lure him off-track -- Shock just drives off to Kentucky because he was told to.  This is why it's a great idea for Editors to be flexible with their plans. If you weren't expecting them to go to Kentucky and your players go anyway, then it's time to relocate the adventure to Kentucky.

New York to Kentucky, incidentally, is about an 11-hour drive. I wonder if Shock drove straight through or stopped overnight. There's no indication in the story either way.

I love the idea of hiding hideouts in famous, real world cave complexes. I wonder if a map of Mammoth Caves is available online somewhere.

I've talked about Von Kampf zombies before and how they will be in the Mobster Manual (to be released eventually!). I really like how steady Von Kampf is; he's not a Lex Luthor who flits from world conquering plan to plan. Von Kampf is always focused on one plan, taking over with zombies!













I include this page because I very briefly wanted to mention that, in a modern setting, it is very easy to transport mobsters to wherever you need them for your scenario. Mobsters typically found in a different climate -- or even in a lost world setting -- can be flown or trucked into other areas to be encountered.

I'll have to add to the Von Kampf zombie entry that their creator can see what's going on through their eyes (I would assume, so long as he is within so-and-so range and has the appropriate equipment to do so).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Speed Comics #5 - pt. 2

The pay-off: first superhero vs. dinosaurs adventure!

Right away, we've got a duck-billed dinosaur, some kind of hadrosaur, and...although it looks more like a fat sloth, I think that's supposed to be an ankylosaurus? And, ooo, that pterodactyl drawing looks so terrifying, I think I'll have to use it in the Mobster Manual!

Hmm, saber-tooth tigers coexisting with dinosaurs? Well, okay, it is a lost world, not a time travel adventure, so we can overlook it.

The huge boulder, at that size, must weigh over 1,000 lbs., which makes what he does with it next difficult to describe...

How much damage should the huge boulder do? A rock that heavy cannot be thrown with even the Extend Missile Range III power alone. But if it was combined with Raise Car, could damage be increased? It must be possible, if it can crush a saber-tooth tiger in one hit. But how much? Extend Missile Range III does 3d6 damage and is a third level power. If we stacked it with a first-level Raise power, that could up damage to 4d6, while the power Raise Elephant would then stack it up to 5d6. The rules, as I wrote them, don't specify any of this, but it seems like a simple extrapolation.

I'm not happy with the tiger getting killed.

Pterodactyls are nowhere near this big; it is a pteranodon instead. I'll have to include a note in its stats that it can lift up man-sized prey it catches in its claw attack.

Shock, stop murdering endangered animals! I'm starting to think grappling attacks need to be able to do lethal damage; not that I think necks can really twist like that.

Piloting a dead pteranodon can't be easy, maybe a skill check to maneuver it in the right direction, and then an attack roll to reach the sauropod with it.

This page seems all kinds of unlikely, but maybe appropriate for a campaign as light in tone as Shock's adventures are (minus the racism and rampant animal murdering).

So how do you handle taming a bucking dinosaur? I think it would be, for each successful expert skill check, you get a chance at a friendly encounter reaction roll. If the result is hostile, or the skill check fails, you have to save vs. science or be bucked off for 2-8 points of damage. Once you get a friendly reaction result, the dinosaur lets you ride it.

Cavemen! It's interesting that the cavemen are not so primitive that they can't learn English or build ladders.

To fill you in from the small gap, Shock has challenged the caveman witch doctor to a contest of powers, in exchange for their hostage. But what is the witch doctor? Hypnotism, we have established, is an expert skill in 2nd edition, but it works against one target, not four at once. A Sleep spell would work, which means the witch doctor is an actual Magic-User.

Raise Car should be powerful enough to uproot a tree. A generous Editor might allow wrecking things to do this too.

H&H doesn't have any fire-starting powers yet for Superheroes, but fire-starting is an advanced skill and, once started, he could make it spread quickly with the Control Fire power.

Again, evidence of a Raise power being stacked with an Extend Missile Range power.

And we'll just skip ahead real quick into our next feature, Crash, Cork, and the Baron. They are marooned in the colony of Ceylon, nowadays known as Sri Lanka. In typically racist fashion, the natives run around in loin clothes and use primitive spears.

But that's not why I'm showing this to you. I'm showing it to you for that crazy panel of Cork (I think that's Cork) grappling two opponents at once while still kicking a third. This keeps coming up because, to truly emulate these comic books, combat can't be limited to one attack per turn, but for fair game balance, it really has to have one attack per turn be the norm (there are already exceptions, but we don't have to get into those).

Or does it? I've long resisted adding critical hits for natural 20's into H&H...but what if a natural 20 gave you an extra attack? And you could keep getting attacks for every natural 20 you rolled? In theory, a string of lucky rolls could then account for every panel where we see stuff like this happening. Something to think about.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Speed Comics #5 - pt. 1

Made it to February 1940! Man...it's taken me a long time to get through these last few months.

Today we return to Crestwood, which will soon be absorbed by Harvey, and -- holy cow, it's a stegosaurus! Normally, comic book covers back then were more exciting than the actual contents, but I have a good feeling about this one...

Sorry, got distracted. Now, back to the contents!

We start with Shock Gibson doing good deeds. Technically, the first one is a plot hook, not a good deed, so he doesn't get 100 xp just for going to South America. Rescuing the "native" (blacks in South America...?) is definitely a good deed.

Yes, he can deliver a disarming attack even in unarmed combat.

I think someone forgot to tell the artist this was South America.

Here we see a spear, cutlass, and a whip brought into combat, and the whip shown as the most effective. It also seems to function as a missile weapon, attacking before the "natives" can reach melee range.

It's interesting how Heroes have no trouble picking up and using weapons, but they rarely keep them. I wonder if that needs to be a rule, or an optional rule, that a Hero has to save vs. plot to keep any item that doesn't fit the theme of his hero identity.

Knives break on impact against the Super-Tough Skin power; the electrical field is just flavor text.

The attacker fails a morale save and surrenders. Other than having to follow-through on his surrender, he is under no compulsion to do anything else, like not be a racist scumbag any time in the future.

The writer and artist continue to dig themselves into a deeper hole, as the rescued "native" is now named Bombi, which doesn't sound remotely Hispanic.

At least they got animals right, as jaguars and constrictor snakes can both be found in South America (and have both been statted for Hideouts & Hoodlums already). It would certainly make sense to put them on a wandering encounter chart for South American jungles.

I'm not sure cracking a snake like a whip would do it enough damage to kill it, but what I'm really unsure about is how to apply a game mechanic to this. Is this just a grappling attack with a little extra flare added to it? And I'm really not comfortable with allowing grappling to do lethal damage; it should always lead to unconsciousness, I feel.

I had to look this up, but head hunters are/were a thing in South America, and in fact this probably narrows down where the story takes place to Ecuador.

It's hard to say what's the most unrealistic thing in this story, but a contender would have to be the arrow piercing his helmet, and still being in good enough shape that it can be pulled out and reused. Technically, there is no rule in H&H for ammunition recovery, but common sense should prevail here.

The Extend Missile Range power can allow Shock to throw an arrow with the force of a bow. We could, in theory, say that anyone could throw an arrow as an improvised weapon, which only do half-damage (1-3).

Again, the fauna is accurate, as electric eels can be found in South America.

Wha--? Electric eels can drain superpowers? It's hard to even wrap one's brain around the attempt at physics here, but he would have been better off just saying the water diffused his powers.

I have race-based limitations in 2nd edition, but not class-based ones, so it's hard to explain what's happening here in H&H terms. Maybe it's simply Editor's fiat. Maybe we should really treat this as a power-draining eel and stat it!

Super-Tough Skin has the knife-breaking thing baked in because it's already becoming a superhero cliche, but sword-breaking is something else that I can't really explain with the rules yet. Maybe the Editor is treating this as an extension of the knife rule, with a 50/50 chance of it applying to swords too (being, essentially, long knives). Maybe this is just an example of wrecking things, but should Shock still be allowed to wreck while tied up? Perhaps the Editor can allow some leeway here, based on the flavor text the player uses to explain how his wrecking things power works.

Rope making is a skill that Shock would have to make a skill check for. I would think it's fairly easy work, just time-consuming, so it would require 1 basic skill check per turn. The leap is clearly one of the Leap powers.

It's weird, though, how Shock's hand sparks as he's holding the rope. Is he trying to electrify Bombi while he's climbing...?

And -- at long last -- the payoff! Shock and Bombi finally see dinosaurs!  But that's where we leave off on today, leaving the best parts of the story for tomorrow.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)