Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 4

Oh boy - more Fletcher Hanks! Let's see how the science holds up here, he says knowingly...

Space Smith's record-setting moon run is 12,600 MPH, considerably slower than the Space Shuttle in the 1990s, that could orbit the Earth at 17,500 MPH. 

Is that supposed to be a nebula...?

I'm already not sure what's going on. Is it a living nebula, and a monster, or does it just seem to be alive and something else is going on? It seems more like a trap than a monster attack. Perhaps -- and I'm just spitballing with comic book science here -- but the nebula has been ...chemically treated to be drawn magnetically to what powers ship engines?

Uh-oh, it looks like I found another mobster that goes in Volume 1 of the Mobster Manual. So I'm still not done! Hoppers have superhero-like leaping ability, and their speed and agility lower their AC to at least 4 and maybe gives them a +2 bonus to saves vs. dodgeable attacks?

Hoppers are encountered in groups of 5-10.

Space seems to be punching out four hoppers at once. Does this mean hoppers are just 1 Hit Die? It's so difficult to accurately stat Hit Dice from how long they last in combat, because of the "done-in-one-punch" approach of golden age stories. I think, because Fletcher's heroes are always super-powerful, we can assume the hoppers are powerful too. I'm thinking 4 HD for them.

That looks more like a cloud than a net before it comes down. 

Meteor gas rayguns are curious trophy weapons. The gas seems to be able to pass through walls, unless the cockpit of the ship is open the hold? That seems...a bit too overpowered to me. I may keep the meteor gas raygun, but limit the range to 150', blanket a 15' radius (affecting up to 5 targets), with a -2 penalty to save.

This is the next story, Captain Kidd. There's a nice set-up here of Kidd coming to the jungle because of the rumors of a man-eating tree. It's not; the "tree" is the trapped entrance to a hideout. The tree's bark is studded with gems (cheap, ornamental stones, most likely), but if you try to pry one loose, a trap door opens in the side of the "tree" and drops you down a pit, which is the entrance to the hideout. It looks like maybe a 20' drop? 

 

Should guards come in large, huge, and giant guards?

At first it appears the food is drugged with sleeping poison, but if the melon contains acid, does that mean Freddy has actually passed out from taking damage? Ingesting acid should do at least 2-8 points of damage, depending on how strong the acid was.

The large guard is called here both a giant and a brute. A brute is going to be a variant of thug, while "giant" here means pseudo-giant. Since he goes down pretty quickly, I'm inclined to go with the brute for statting purposes.

We surely aren't meant to take Professor Fiend too seriously, but how off is the history lesson here? The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. 2.5 billion years ago was the start of the Proterozoic Era. It really was mostly water back then, as shown here, but it was scalding hot water, about 150 degrees. That might be hot enough to do 0-1 points of damage per minute of immersion.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.) 

Fantastic Comics #4 - pt. 4

Oh boy. Today, we're going to start with a look at Fletcher Hanks' Space Smith. Now, as goofy as it all looks, it doesn't actually read any goofier than most science fiction comic book stories of the time, and by that I mean that he gets the facts about as wrong as anyone.

Obviously, there's no such thing as a solid gold comet. But, comets can be big enough to land spaceships on. The largest known comet, Hale Bopp, is 60 miles in diameter. But, a comet would also be frozen, atmosphere-less, and shedding ice in a constant ice storm.

If I thought Flip Falcon was inspired by Thuvia, Maid of Mars, Fletcher here outright borrows the Kaldanes from it, with the only difference being the eye on their chests and the fact that no alien heads are around to ride on top of them. The narrator refers to these only as "headless soldiers," which is just as well since Kaldanes is still copyright protected.

There are 14 headless soldiers in panel 3, the most we see of them at one time.

Where was Space hiding that telescope before he used it...?

This is an unusual use of wrecking things, vibrating the windows so that they all open? And yet, it's the only mechanic that makes sense for this.

The headless ones aren't all that tough, as Space is decking them with ease. Maybe 2 Hit Dice?

The descending pincer trap is okay as long as it hits on the first try, and must be pretty easy to dodge after that. A cage surrounded by fire seems like a much deadlier trap. Probably too deadly; judging from the height of those flames, I think it would do 1-6 points of damage to Dianna per minute!

I can imagine a random result table for the controls with results like "blinding flashes" and "energy crackles around you," and with the top of the chart being "everything blows up."

The headless ones not only can't fight very well, but they aren't as fast as Space and Dianna, and when not controlled, they beat each other up.

This is Captain Kidd, and is it a doozy of a wacky adventure this time. You wouldn't expect an aviator Hero to be exploring D&D-like caves and encountering what appear to be a cross between gnolls and troglodytes, along with a gorilla. How weird that, when confronted with such bizarre monsters, it's the gorilla Kidd is worried about.

"Sulphur" fumes could be a trap in a hideout, as a failed save vs. poison could suffocate you, as it makes it harder for you to breath.

And it gets weirder! The ape can talk. And the ape is advised by four drugged oracles. Oracles, if I treated them as a mobstertype, can apparently whip people into a fighting frenzy with their weird chanting, maybe giving their allies +1 to hit and damage?

Gnollglodytes (I totally made that up just now) are not very fast despite their deer-like legs, as Kidd easily outpaces them here.

This is what worries me, when running modern campaigns -- "hero" hops in his plane and mows down all his opponents from high above. I'd be tempted to lay down a new house rule that, if you don't put yourself in any danger, you get no XP from the encounter. Hey, maybe his Editor did make that house rule, because sure enough he heads right back inside to take on the talking gorilla.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #3 - pt. 3

We return to Golden Knight as he's rushing indoors to face an ogre, the final guardian before the Holy Grail - er, "Golden Chalice." Kara the Merlin-Wannabe gets the Chalice, but it seems like Sir Richard has the better end of this deal, getting paid with a magic cloak that protects him from all harm (permanent Invulnerability power? That sure beats a Ring of Protection +5).

Now I'm going to jump ahead into Yank Wilson's story. "Alien dive," referring to foreigners, is here synonymous with "underworld dive."

When you're in an underworld dive, and you overhear anything, no matter how innocent sounding, it just has to be a big clue to something.

It's unclear how many thugs are present, but it appears that Yank and X-16 are "greatly outnumbered" by only three of them.

Swimming while handcuffed is something you can become an expert in, apparently (so, it's an expert skill check).

I thought this was clever strategy: make a lot of noise about searching the villain's room, and then be waiting around back to see who sneaks out, and trying to get what safely away. Could be an easy way to pick up trophy items!

 Liquid dissolvent -- something that needs to be added to the starting equipment list?

Space Smith vs. the Leopard Women of Venus. Actually, they may be kidnapped Earth women and not indigenous to Venus at all. And the only thing "leopardy" about them are the spots on their uniforms. Their Belts of Transmitting keep them safe in the vacuum of space. The rifles mounted on their hats are concussive ray rifles, with zero kickback that would knock their hats off, apparently.

Most interesting are the giant saurians -- giant lizard-like creatures 10' long with long claws, short tails, the ability to fly through the vacuum without Belts of Transmitting, and a movement rate that must be at least 23,300 (escape velocity from Venus). 

Giant saurians can be found in groups of up to 10 in their cave lairs on Venus. They must be stupid and easily confused, since they allow a fog cloud to foil them when they can easily move faster than than the fog. 

As weak and ineffectual as these Venusian robots are, I might stat them as the tin robots from 1st edition. The narrator makes a point of calling them clumsy, but if the Belt of Transmitting lets them fly even a fraction of a giant saurian's speed, then the robots are lucky to even get an attack on them as they whiz past (it would seem that robots cannot wear Belts of Transmitting, only living beings).

This is Captain Kidd, and it's hard to tell what spells this witch doctor is casting. When he just got done casting on Kidd's porters seemed to have been a Death spell. What he casts on Bennet seems to be a Command spell (I never would have thought of "choke" to be such an effective use of it though!).

The Magic Glass seems to allow magic-users to cast a spell of higher level than they could normally cast, since the Death spell is usually beyond most casters.

But this is all speculative until we read the rest of the story -- next time!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #2 - pt. 4

Welcome back! We're still on January 1940 and this is still Space Smith. Unlike many features, "Space" doesn't seem to be his nickname -- it's his actual first name!

The science is wacky here -- especially weird, being a Fletcher Hanks story. The effect of "long range power lights" is not altogether clear, but they seem to be holding Space's ship in place.

The same applies to "radio-phonic detectors." It's not just a radio, but some sort of eavesdropping device for listening across the vacuum of space. And how did the ogres hear Space's radio call? Do they have some sort of "radio-phonic detector" too?

And then there's "anti-Earth demolishing rays." How exactly are they anti-Earth? Would they not work against other planets?

Ray-resistant shielding is new. If your campaign has too many rayguns floating around in it, your players will want ray-resistors too.

Ramming with spaceships seems fraught with peril, but ogre's must be very confident in their own shielding. Vehicular ramming damage is something that can be found in the 2nd edition basic book's trophy-transportation section, and even for airborne flying objects the ramming damage can be extremely high. I can't imagine how much damage to assign to ramming with a spaceship.

Are the ogres flying without any aid? The demolisher guns can be fired by ogre-sized opponents as if handguns, and superheroes should be able to do the same regardless of size.

Quick-shrinker bombs can take a 10' tall ogre and reduce them to...not sure, but probably under 3' tall, or at least 70% shrinkage, with a corresponding loss in strength (and, I would presume, carrying capacity, and damage). Of course, I'm assuming Martian ogres are 10' tall; given how stocky they look, perhaps they are shorter.

This is the next story, Captain Kidd, and the real mystery here is, where is Morgia Island? This page says it is in the tropics, and the legend of bamboo torture comes from Asia. But where would you find an island in that area? The South China Sea? Well, maybe; there are over 250 islands there, but none of them are known for having gold...

What interests me far more is the design of that temple. Windowless, accessible only by a front door that is only accessible by going underwater, and vaguely shaped like a cubist elephant -- brilliant stuff!

I'm not sure how the hat keeps the gun dry, but maybe we do need a mechanic to see if guns still work once they're wet. 2 in 6 chance of not firing? Anything to discourage players from overly relying on firearms!

I like the idea of a large statue that works like a slot machine; tug the arm and out pops a whiskey bottle from where his kidney should be!

I like the detail of the grenades mounted on the wall -- thank goodness the natives never mistook them for torches!  It would also be a nice encounter for Heroes to walk into an occupied room, see grenades on the wall, and then whoever wins initiative has a chance to grab the grenades first.

Those gold ingots look pretty heavy, and gold was worth $34.50 an ounce back then.

Oh...so that's why you don't want your front door underwater. Actually, I think the real lesson here is to always have a secret escape route from your temple.

Not sure how Kidd knows the bad guy was called "The Voice," since only the narrator called him that up to this point. Maybe one of the natives told him.

This is from a short humor strip called Professor Fiend. People are out to get the Professor for inventing a raygun that fires (*ahem*) permanent waves and curls people's hair.

Shrinking in order to hide is actually a good tactic, if you have the magic or the science for it. A "normal" potion of shrinking (as found in the H&H basic book's trophy section) stops at shrinking you down to about 6" tall. Here, the Professor shrinks to one-quarter of an inch tall, pauses, and keeps shrinking to the size of an atom (not unlike some future superheroes!).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Fantastic Comics #2 - pt. 3

This is Richard of Warwick, possibly intended to be the real-life Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, but here is called The Golden Knight. It's telling that the Muslim knights are taking him prisoner, treating him well, and still all he wants to do is kill them all.

Ironically, one of the reasons I made Hideouts & Hoodlums is because I wanted to get away from RPGs where the main goal is always to kill your adversaries. Oh well...

If Richard was a Mysteryman this would be easy -- spend a stunt, instant arrow split!  But The Golden Knight is obviously a fighter archetype, which means we are bound by the attack roll mechanic fighters have to follow.

Now, for hitting a bulls-eye, we could probably assign Armor Class values to the target based on the average probable chance of hitting the bulls-eye. Unfortunately, it's not easy finding an absolute average for that -- just too many variables. I've seen numbers for the probability of hitting a bulls-eye range everywhere from 1% to 36%. So let's go with the average of that and say 18.5%, and maybe we'll even round up to an even 20%.  The AC that has an equivalent value for level 1 fighters is AC 2. Let's assume that is at short range.

How to account for splitting the arrow, as opposed to the second arrow just bouncing off? Let's assume the difficulty is just 5% worse for that, and drop the target's AC to 1. If someone then came along after Richard and wanted to split his arrow, they would have to hit AC 0.

Oh, and that feast? All I see is a bowl of fruit, so I don't think it's the "feast" that Richard finds so splendorous...

Despite a fair amount of historical bigotry, I can't help but like this feature. A major part of that is this girl, Lady Elissa. By coincidence, Ehlissa is a major character in my own webcomic, and I once ran a 10-year D&D campaign in the Land of Ahlissa (South Province).

This first panel is a little confusing. The "one blow" that "felled" that man did not knock him unconscious, because he's still talking. Was he knocked prone by the blow (which means we need a knock down rule for H&H?)? Was the "blow" a grappling attack?

Later, it looks like Richard killed the two guards. Is he making a cruel joke about them being "quiet for a long, long time"? Are they dead? Remember, at the normal mood setting for H&H campaigns, it is almost impossible for a Hero to accidentally kill someone, so these guards are unconscious -- unless the mood of the scenario is set to very dark.

This is Yank Wilson, Super Spy Q-4. The spy was an unpopular Hero class in 1st edition H&H and is unlikely to return in 2nd edition.

Besides the unusually distinctive artwork (comics.org says it's by Jack Parr, but I wonder if he was only inking Fine or Eisner?), I like this page for the unusually specific planning of the bad guys. We know they need 50 spies to work the plan. We know they need 100 tons of super-explosive -- which is scary, because this is what exploding 100 tons of TNT looks like. We know they plan to use "misleading and subversive propaganda to shatter public morale," 56 years before Fox News. And it's interesting how Count Lustig Von Blackgard either slips up, or mistakenly thinks the U.S. has a secret police as his own country does.

Now, despite all that elaborate planning, Count Von Blackgard went and spelled "sabotage" backwards as the name of his dummy company. Now, I am torn about this because, while it makes the villain seem like an idiot if the players figure it out too quickly, it also seems like the sort of puzzle that players will likely be able to solve on their own, and little is more frustrating for players than puzzles they cannot figure out.

I'm curious what "devious legal channels" it took to rent the office next to Egatobas', but I can imagine they had to use some sort of subterfuge to get the previous tenants to leave quickly and quietly.

Hmm, drugging bad guys with narcotics? A very rare, but not unprecedented move for a Hero in the Golden Age. At least it's just a sleeping drug; I would have to draw the line and forbid Heroes from using lethal drugs.

At this point in the scenario, Yank has little to do but coordinate. As players, it would be more fun for the players to control squads of the G-Men attacking the saboteurs at the docks. Given their love of bombs, I wonder if it would make more sense to stat the saboteurs as anarchists, rather than spies. To date, I have not seen anything distinctive about saboteurs to build their own mobster type/archetype around.

Fletcher Hanks' Space Smith faces Martian ogres, which I'm guessing are like normal fantasy ogres, except their number of appearing can be over 100, and they have their own spaceships.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Fantastic Comics #1 - pt. 3

This is still The Golden Knight.  I like the underground castle, as it's so That Other Game. Note how jumping and climbing are not hindered by the knight's armor at all.

The woman is referred to as both a hag and a witch. I'm already adding a hag to 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums; I may have to give it the ability to use Change Self 1/day.

I already have Martian green men represented in 2nd ed. H&H, but now here's Martian imp men. Transmitting yourself on sound waves sounds cool, though I'm not sure how that works. Maybe they "surf" on the sound waves to travel as fast as sound, which would be equal to the 3rd level power Race the Bullet.

The Martian imp men are somehow hitting Space Smith and Dianna with radium rays, but the imp men aren't carrying any weapons we can see, so maybe it's a natural ability? The radium rays just put people to sleep.

Transmitting belts teleport the wearer to a preset location.

This page makes it clear that the imp men are only about 3' tall.

As fearsome as the imp men look, they don't seem to do much damage with their claws -- maybe 1-4 points? And this begs the question -- how many Hit Dice should imp men have? Maybe as little as 2-3 HD.

Behold, the huge, man-eating Martian mosquito. And that's "huge" -- not even giant!  This has got to be at least 4 Hit Dice. Note that it doesn't have a proboscis to feed through like a mosquito, it has a mouth and the proboscis-like appendage is actually a stinger, I presume capable of delivering poison.

This is the first indication I've seen in comics that the working of rayguns is not immediately obvious -- and this is in the future!  I could use a flowchart for figuring out alien technology (the Other Game used that mechanic on occasion) or a simple save vs. plot to immediately understand something of an alien nature.

Even in the future, guards are easily overcome!

Amazingly, I have an easier time believing that Space Smith story with Martian mosquitoes than I do this story about the Eskimongolian Empire in the Arctic Circle being strong enough to challenge the U.S. This has got to be the most ridiculous alternate history I've ever read and I'm just on the first page!

Mind you -- if this was done gonzo-style, waving all logic, you could have polar bear-riding soldiers.  Hmm...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)