Keen Detective Funnies #19 - pt. 1

WOOOOOO! Finally! Finally, made it to April 1940, after being stuck on March 1940 for the longest time. But will the stories get any better? Uh-oh -- we're back to Centaur Comics...

We're going to start with Spark O'Leary, and the upteenth time someone in comics has invented a method of invisibility! Kudos, at least, to getting the optics of it kind of right, that it would have to bend light around an object instead of reflecting it, though how it makes hands invisible when they're left uncovered is unclear. And is it dangerous to wear the suit? Is that why it needs a built-in gas mask?

There is a lot of plot convenience on this page. One, Spark just happens to leave the press conference early, which seems to be a terrible thing for a "newshawk" to be doing, but otherwise he wouldn't already be on the road to see the kidnappers, who just happen to drive past him. 

The story completely glosses over how Spark manages to sneak into the building unseen, and then how the two men manage to sneak out unseen. But then, these are some pretty nearsighted mobsters, because they completely miss the car just sitting off to the side of the road. Perhaps we can at least give Spark credit for having Prof. Doran lay down in the backseat, rather than visibly sitting shotgun, but it seems a risky move when more careful mobsters might have stopped and checked out the suspicious vehicle.

An old flivver conveniently blocking the road is just the sort of examples of chase complications I need to expand my table, and the owner of the flivver also being an ornery sheriff is just a bonus complication. But how they resolve the problem leaves me very suspicious of who's side this professor is really on. And how impressionable is Spark that he immediately goes along with this plan to run a sheriff off the road into a pond, where he might drown?

It's very rare for early trophy items in comics to have this kind of built-in weakness, like having water short-circuit them. 

In anyone else's hands, having an invisibility suit would be the origin story for a new superhero (indeed, that's precisely the Invisible Hood's origin story!), but Spark simply gives the suit back when he's done with it. 

Spark is, again, unconcerned when he is out-scooped by another reporter, on the same story he should have been on top of, and instead of being concerned about this mysterious-sounding fire, he just shrugs it off like it's no skin off his nose. Way to avoid your next plot hook, player! 

We're going to jump to the end of the next story, Dean Masters, D.A. Dean has apparently gone out and bought this trophy item, a magnetic cane. It allows him to control rigged roulette wheels and, I presume, pick up his dropped keys without bending over. How it cut wires isn't clear; it would be cool if it had a concealed pop-out blade in the foot of it, but such was never shown.

Now we'll jump into Spy Hunters, for a very early, very rare example of breaking the fourth wall in a serious adventure story. Eat your heart out, Deadpool!

Brest is a real city, a port city in the Finistère département in Brittany.

The Maginot Line of defenses had been installed along the German border throughout the 1930s and would be familiar to most American readers. This comic book, though cover dated April 1940, would have come out in January, four months before the Maginot Line became irrelevant. 

I usually share any maps I see in old stories, in case they could be useful later in planning game sessions or published scenarios...but I'm not even sure what I'm looking at in this map. I wouldn't have much confidence in a military campaign relying on such a map. 

Salzwedel is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, so it's optimistic, if not poor forecasting, to assume France would be taking the offensive into Germany soon.

I wouldn't be bragging if I won a fight with 30:4 odds, but this is always possible when you rely on random wandering encounters instead of planned encounters. The dice give you breaks sometimes!

A subaltern is an officer in the British army below the rank of captain, especially a second lieutenant, so this wouldn't be a term you'd be using to describe German soldiers.

This is from Dan Dennis, FBI. Polly spotted Dan and Tick shadowing her because he failed a skill check or a surprise roll (the Editor could handle that either way), and then she tries to throw them off by handing the package to someone else and splitting up, so Dan and Tick have to split up to follow them both. This could work particularly well against H&H players, as not splitting up is so ingrained in their training.

St. James Place may seem familiar to most of us from the Monopoly board, but it's also a fairly common place name. We can't know for sure if this is the St. James Place in Brooklyn, or Chicago, or somewhere else.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.) 

   
 

Keen Detective Funnies #18 - pt. 2

This is still Spark O'Leary, that famous Irish newshawk who doesn't look remotely Irish. In fact, doesn't he look Asian to you? I wonder if he was drawn with the intention of him being Asian, and the publisher decided to paste an Irish name onto him instead, thinking no one would notice or care.

Spark has such an easy time following these clues that it's amazing the feds asked him to pursue this instead of just figuring it out themselves. In fact, there was so much evidence immediately pointing to Kurt that I immediately suspected a red herring; maybe the FBI did too!

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It's rare to see ordinary mobsters with a really cool trophy weapon, but this unnamed spy has a tear gas gun! I would imagine it has the range and area of effect of a sleep gas gun, but is less effective (temporarily stunning anyone who fails their save vs. poison?).

It's remarkable that as dramatic an escape to a deathtrap as we get on this page is all recapped in panel 4 alone. I'm not sure how you could dodge out of the way fast enough to make someone pushing you fall out of a plane...but it does create a precedent for fumbles being allowed on push attacks!

But panel 5, with him knocking himself out, Scotty in Star Trek V style?

There's no way to emulate that in game rules; I'm not going to make people roll for movement, with a chance of fumbles and hurting themselves. The only way that makes sense is if there was a lot of turbulence on the plane and the Editor required saves vs. science to keep from falling sideways.

Seditious pamphlets is minor loot you can find with certain types of mobsters.

Setting fire to the ship you're standing on is a ballsy move!

Speaking of ballsy playing, I think we all know the real reason Spark wants to find the hideout -- he burnt up all the trophy items on the ship and he needs more loot to level up!

Rigging an entire hideout to blow up is not a recommended tactic, unless you didn't have time to design anything before the next session and you really don't want the players going in there.

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I'm never sure how much faith to have in these "fact" filler pages, but there's some interesting stuff here, including number of teens arrested in a year (I suppose I could verify that in the FBI's Crime in the U.S. serial, but I'd have to find a depository library to get paper copy of the 1940 issue; I can't find it that early online), where the term "gumshoe" comes from, and which states had no capital punishment circa 1940.

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C-Man shows the value of questioning, not just one witness at the scene of a crime (and expect the Editor to feed all the information you need through one character -- that's lazy game-mastering!), but up to seven witnesses. Actually, if the Editor assigned a 1 in 6 chance for each witness to have valuable clues, there would be a good statistical chance of getting the information in just 6 witnesses.

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Cigars with distinctive wrappers, fresh car tracks, footprints, broken twigs, and heel marks are all good examples of clues to use when Heroes are tracking.

Going to jump ahead now to Dudley Dance, a feature about "the greatest crime chaser of all time" and not, as one would expect, a dancer. Here, Dudley tackles -- or rather is tackled by -- one of the earliest werewolves in comics. Or is it another case of a fake werewolf?

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"Leather hardness of Dance's cheek"? What does the man do to develop such thick cheek calluses that they count as armor? Seems like an Editor that had trouble coming up with believable flavor text on the spot.

Hmm...six shots in rapid succession is possible in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but not for low-level Heroes. I hate giving firearms any advantage, actually, as my personal preference is for two-fisted fighter types, but there is plenty of gun-toting Heroes in these early comic books the H&H game has to emulate.

The story ends with a lot of attempting to explain away the werewolf as something non-supernatural, but it just sounds like he's just describing a tribe of werewolves that live in India to me...and that sounds like a pretty good adventure location for high-level Heroes!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Keen Detective Funnies #18 - pt. 1

Ah, Masked Marvel, such an odd duck. This post might be more therapy rant than useful game content...

This installment starts with the beginning of what should be an epic quest to discover the lost city of gold. While everyone on Earth knows that El Dorado is the name for the mythical lost city of gold, this story insists on calling it Ora. I did a quick Internet search to see if there was any precedent for calling it Ora, but all my search results were for the upcoming movie Dora and the Lost City of Gold. Coincidence...?

Naturally, any human beings living along the Amazon River will be wild savages? What is your doctorate in, Lincoln, racism?

The trope of a highly civilized forgotten race is as old as pulp fiction. It's also a trifle racist.

Bear in mind, this is a Masked Marvel story.

I was expecting the Internet to be able to tell me what was 10 days upriver on the Amazon, but travel by water isn't so (ahem) cut and dried as that. Let's assume you made very good time over those 10 days and made it as far as the Colombian border. That would put you at or near the town of Leticia. I haven't found much information on Leticia in 1940, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't full of wild savages.

In fact, I found this video as the only evidence of what daily life looked like along the Amazon in the 1940s. Some workers did go around in nothing but shorts, but it is extremely unlikely that you would find a chieftain in a loincloth at this time.

Now, this is after the rubber boom, when native workers were first exploited and civilization was first brought to this region as resources were funneled away from them. Before 1920, yes, it might have been more likely to find natives in loincloths back then.

Remember how this was as Masked Marvel story?







Oh come on! The "natives can be bribed with booze" trope? I'm not putting that in my description of the mobstertype. I will have a note about sometimes using poisoned weapons, though.

Oh yeah -- the Masked Marvel! This is nine pages into the story and MM hasn't even got there yet. So here he is, speeding recklessly to make up for lost time. You'd think this was a timed tournament round by how quickly he's trying to get to the scenario.














At last, the City of Gold! Time for a climactic fight to the finish between the Masked Marvel and the diabolical -

Oh what the heck!? He snipered the villain from a distance? Who is the hero in this piece again? I'm betting it's the natives who were smart enough to leave the old abandoned city alone.

Okay, phew...got that out of my system. We've just enough space left to look at this month's Spark O'Leary, Radio Newshawk feature. Now, this scenario intrigues me, not so much for the spy tapping code over the radio, but the angle of it possibly being a traitor in Spark's supporting cast! This is a good story to throw at players who have amassed large supporting casts in long-term Hideouts & Hoodlums campaigns. Look at that -- brought it back to gaming right at the end!

"Of course I can!"

"Then why haven't you already done it?"

"I was waiting for a player-character to tell me to do it!"

It's a truism that's difficult to avoid...you want your game to be realistic, but you also want your players' characters to be the heroes and the planners, forcing non-Heroes to stand around and wait to be told what to do all too often. The reverse problem is when your Editor-controlled non-Heroes are too proactive and the players feel they have to go along with something the Editor is "telling" them to do. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 3 #1 - pt. 1

We return now to The Masked Marvel, from Centaur. Originally, we had to decide if The Masked Marvel was a mysteryman or a superhero, but by now his skills have grown so mundane that he appears to be just an aviator.

Although, he does display excellent investigation and math skills, which might suggest he is a mysteryman (with their advanced skill checks).

I don't know if I should be sad or glad that my players don't take the time to leave scenarios in progress to go home to their base and check the rifling on bullets recovered for clues. It doesn't even seem to wind up to be that important a clue in this plot.

 "Ach" is our clue that the unnamed saboteur is German.

The way the Masked Marvel really figures out where the killer came from is by tracing the angle of the bullet holes, and this is legitimate forensic science coupled with trigonometry. One could use skill checks for mathematics, but if time is not a big factor, you could just keep making checks until your numbers work out (i.e., you rolled well enough).

That's a big clue to leave behind on the roof (and apparently it never gets too windy up there!). Remember, if you want your players to be able to finish your scenarios, sometimes the clues have to be really big and obvious.

That's a pretty vague and unintimidating silhouette cast on the clouds. Mysterymen are supposed to trigger morale saves when they do stuff like that, but I might give a +1 bonus because I have trouble accepting that is "feared."

That stunt at the end...I would require a to hit roll first to snag the parachute, followed by burning a stunt to make the parachute wrap around the wing like that.

Modern day pirates need a chance to carry firearms as deadly as sub-machine guns.

I'm not a big Spark O'Leary fan, but I have to admit, that's a fairly clever scheme the pirates had to capture a patrol boat. It's also sort of like how H&H play works for players, always trading up one trophy item for a better, more useful one.

Spark's encounter with the half-pints could be a wandering encounter, or could be a fixed encounter planned by the Editor to make sure Spark gets that clue.

Spotting the concealed hinges on those piles was the result of a secret door check (expert skill check).

There is no reason for Spark, a radio news reporter, to be leading a police raid, except that he must be leveling as a fighter and his level title is higher than beat cops' levels.

There is no reason for Spark to have a cold just then, except to stretch out the story -- or to explain a botched surprise roll with flavor text.

A "high-powered car" is a trophy item, the equivalent of a Car +1.

The trap requires the Editor and the players to agree on interpreting the situation -- would a tripwire make a car crash, or would it just drive through it? The situation is somewhat similar to yesterday's post, where The Owl covered a windshield and made bad guys crash, though here I think the chances of a tripwire making a car skid are so low that the save vs. plot to avoid should be at +4.

The drunk is surely a wandering encounter (unless just a freebie from the Editor?).  If the player had wanted to contest the drunk driver getting ahead of him, they could have rolled driving skill checks (basic skill) until one of them failed to see who reached the curve first (or which one came closest to succeeding). It's a simple race and doesn't need a complex mechanical resolution.

Dan Dennis' "danger sense" is not a real thing, in the sense that he has to actively roll for something. If the assassin fails a surprise roll, then Dan's "danger sense" is what warned him of the attack.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #12 - pt. 1

How sad if I wind up having to end out the year on such mediocre fare from Centaur!




Here we have the return of "The Masked Marvel." If some of this art looks familiar, it is because it was featured prominently in Books II and III of 1st edition Hideouts & Hoodlums. We see a master criminal at work with a high number of thugs working for him; I may have to up the "number appearing" range to 1-12 for thugs.




Note how most of them have Tommy guns, except for that one guy who only brought a pistol. Don't bring a pistol to a Tommy gun fight, Muggsy! In hoodlum descriptions, I tend to present a random range of likely weapons. If the Editor has time, he should determine weapons individually instead of having every mobster fight with the same thing.

Or are they all thugs? One or two of them may be gangsters instead, including the lone guy armed with a revolver. Gangsters are a new mobster type in 2nd edition H&H who have a skill for coercing people to get into cars, not unlike what we're seeing in that last panel.

Master criminals are 3+1 HD hoodlums, but I'm wondering if public enemy number one's need to be an even more powerful type of hoodlum. Maybe 4+1?

Here we see how high the bounty can get on a public enemy number one, at least in the comic books. The sum of $100,000 is rather incredible, considering that the bounty on John Dillinger was only $10,000.


I'm also amused by the phrase "that's a lot of sugar," instead of the more familiar to our ears phrase "that's a lot of dough." I wonder how interchangeable these terms were in common parlance of the time.

That Zr, Zy, and Zl can be put in charge of a squad of policemen each, despite having really goofy code names, tells me they must be at least third-level fighters, which makes them the equivalent of sergeants.

It's almost worth mentioning that this story is the first time a sidekick character dies in a comic book. But then, it's just Zl, so no one was ever shaken up over this.

This is Spark O'Leary, Radio Newshawk. The scenario is that he has to prove the Countess is a phony. Now, some players might just choose to beat her up and then frighten a confession out of her, but Spark goes out of his way to collect lots of evidence.

I point out the fingerprint collecting in particular because this is a go-to for my players, despite the limitations on it at the time. They have to remember that there is no national database of fingerprints they can scan for a match in; the local police station can try to match them against the ones they have on file. They can then try contacting other agencies, but it will be a slow process. At best, I would let you have a save vs. plot to try and get results back as fast as Spark gets them here.

What, I wonder, is the origin of the "organ that can create destructive sound"? It's not quite common enough to be a cliche, but it surely didn't originate in this obscure comic book and this Dan Dennis, FBI story. It's worth pointing out that the villain here is called The Fiend.

The organ sure seems versatile; it can not only wreck, but it can "paralize." My first thought that The Fiend was a mad scientist is giving way to a new theory that he is a magic-user and the organ serves as his wand (since he seems to be casting Hold Person here). Too bad The Fiend is such a poor speller...

Players finding trophies may often wish that they were all properly labeled with instructions, like potion bottles clearly (and honestly!) marked with their contents. At least the Editor, in this case, only gave the player a clue as to which button to press on the organ.

Of course, there goes my magic-user theory, as Dan would not be able to use a wand unless he was also a magic-user. It seems the organ is, instead, a powerful trophy item with a range of, at first, random effects Heroes could trigger -- sort of like a Wand of Wonder, until they figure out how to play it.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)