Wonderworld Comics #11 - pt. 4

This will be our last visit with this particular issue, and we'll kick it off with about page of "Spark" Stevens.

Although this looks like a tough fight, the gobs should be approaching 4th level by now, these spies are likely 1 or 2 HD, and the guy with the gun has as good a chance of hitting his allies as the gobs by firing into a melee.

And what does "gob" mean here? According to the Old Farmer's Almanac, "There are two theories on this one. This term first showed up in regard to sailors around 1909 and may have come from the word gobble. Reportedly, some people thought that sailors gobbled their food. The term also may come from the word gob, which means to spit, something sailors also reportedly do often."

As for "photostat files," The Photostat machine, or Photostat, was an early projection photocopier invented in 1907.

I was really expecting a better trap when that spy reaches out for the secret pedal than -- a bed coming down and smacking them in the head. Now, while I can't imagine this doing more than 1-6 points of damage (in fact, I would probably treat it as an improvised weapon that does 1-3 damage), it's possible that our gobs were just so low on hp after that fistfight that this was enough to knock them both out. Or, as a surprise attack, maybe this is considered a head blow, which comes with a chance of knockout in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums.

This is the first death-by-normal-sized-spiders deathtrap I've ever seen in a comic book -- and I have to say, it looks plenty unsettling and would surely spook a lot of players! Of course, one ordinary spider isn't going to have enough venom to cause much harm to anyone, but this is a thousand of them, so I would treat a spider swarm as a mobster with a collective Hit Die total and a save or die situation if the swarm starts all biting you at once.

Fire is probably the surest way to get rid of them; I also would have allowed the players to throw rocks at them or even pee on them to drive them off.

As the Editor, never forget about how fire causes smoke, and be liberal with assigning smoke inhalation damage if an encounter seems to be going too easy.

You're in for an unusually educational installment of K-51: Spies at War. It is, in fact, a little prescient -- the Nazis didn't manage to sink their third ship with U-boats until May 28, 1940. The world was shocked that Germany had managed to make new U-boats in secret after WWI, but they didn't have very many, not until capturing the French and Norwegian naval fleets. Now, what else this news ticker fails to get right is the number killed. 22 is purely wishful thinking; the actual death toll from the first two sank ships was over 1,200 deaths (they didn't bother going after small boats!).

Q-boats were real. Q-ships, also known as Q-boats, decoy vessels, special service ships, or mystery ships, were heavily armed merchant ships with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. The British and the Germans used them in WWI, and then the U.S. started using them too in WWII.

Panic parties were a real thing, just as described here. I'm guessing depth bombs, or depth charges, really work like that too, though I've never actually seen a picture of one being launched before.

This is yet another example of a random complication from vehicular damage, this time the electrical systems shorting out.

The weirdest thing about this story is that K-51 does nothing at all the entire story, except swim away at the end so the captain doesn't get in serious trouble. Nice of him, yes, but he gets zero experience points for this "session."

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Wonderworld Comics #11 - pt. 3

We're still here with Patty O'Day and her rival suitors, the aristocratic Mike and the common man, Ham. Ham was climbing out of the well (we saw him get dumped down the well last time) when he pulls this stone loose. Now, we can treat this as a secret door, but it's sort of a build-your-own secret door.

Mike is a very confident climber. Had he begun from standing on top of Ham's shoulders, I would have given him a +1 modifier to his skill roll.

I just googled some pics of French cars of this time period and while, yes, they did tend to have long bodies, and I did see some two-seaters that looked like three men abreast would have to be really comfortable with overlapping thighs...but I still don't think any cars of the era were that narrow.

More evidence of damage done to cars in a chase should trigger a random chance of complication, rather than assigning hit points to vehicles.











Complicating matters about the nationality of these villains, Egroe isn't a French name, but a Dutch word (I believe it means "grand"). Dutch separatists fighting in France?

It's interesting that the bad guys "miraculously" survive, suggesting that car wrecks should usually be lethal in the game. I've got plenty of conflicting evidence on that, but maybe only Heroes should have such an easy time escaping car wrecks.

We're going to leave that story and jump into the following Dr. Fung story. Here, in Persia, Fung and Dan are shown this well by an old friend. It seems like a trap, since there is no visible explanation for how the ground around the well gives way so easily, but apparently it is just coincidental instability.

That is one of the craziest monster designs I've ever seen. I'm not even sure what to call them -- unicycle ghouls? The captions only call them things like "weird creatures" and "strange beings." How do you even rationalize a species evolving to have a built-in wheel?

Complaints aside, I like the idea of pneumatic tubes transporting Heroes quickly between levels of a hideout.

And, of course, we end this page with the cliche of monsters adopting a hot human woman as their queen.

For no reason whatsoever, one of the unicycle ghouls is a gigantic unicycle ghoul, about 20' tall. If unicycle ghouls have 1 HD (I would be skeptical about giving them more, since they should be knocked over easily), then this fella must have at least 12 HD. Rather than being presented as their leader, this thing is just one of them, so it's refreshing to know this race doesn't go in for hierarchical societies, except for elevating human women.

It's hard to imagine the young lady has never thought to scream at the monsters to take advantage of their sensitivity to sound. And then, perhaps she has, but enough of them made their saves that they could always stop her.

We're going to jump ahead again, this time into Munson Paddock's Tex Maxon, the Phantom Rider. The stop, drop, and roll campaign would not start until the 1970s, but that doesn't mean people didn't know that's what to do when you catch on fire in the 1940s.

It's interesting how guns only make lots of smoke when the story benefits from it. I'm not sure if guns every actually made that much smoke, or if this comes from old cowboy movies exaggerating the smoke clouds.

While dropping out of a tree on your opponent looks impressive, I would assign no more than a +1 to hit modifier for it, making it questionable if it was worth all the effort of clambering to get into position for it.

Surprisingly, this "Spark" Stevens of the Navy story may be our very first set in Guam. By October 1941, all U.S. dependents and civilians on Guam would be evacuated, but here at the beginning of 1940, Guam would have a burgeoning population of 22,000.

There's little that need be said about the "damsel in distress" plot hook, except that it's so. darn. easy.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Wonderworld Comics #10 - pt. 3

Bob Powell really seemed to enjoy working on Dr. Fung, as he put his best early work into this feature.

Here we get to see a rare cutaway view map in a comic book panel, showing an underground tunnel complex. Note the tunnels at different levels, as evidenced in the last panel, where you have the dry level up above, and a water-lined tunnel at the lower level.

Hideouts & Hoodlums has lots of stats for giant fish in it already, but maybe there's room for one more. I'm not an expert on fish identification and the narration doesn't help. Is that a giant carp?

Dan's pretty funny.

I'm not sure how Dr. Fung knows the guard has the keys on him. Just a good guess? An expert skill check to notice things?

Dan is a 3rd-level fighter (sergeant) by now, which is how he's able to plow through sentries so fast with just his bare hands. He uses his surprise attack disarming the sentry. It appears that Dan can punch at the same time as being grappled, instead of grappling back, going against the grappling rules I wrote for 2nd edition. Stop that, Dan!

Sort of like the keys earlier, it seems like a big leap to say that a volcanic eruption is about to happen just because a subterranean river is getting warmer.

Powell must have become too busy in mid-feature, as we went abruptly from seven high-quality panels a page to this three-panel rush job. I can see what he was trying to do in the second panel, with the scientific accoutrements in the extreme foreground and the figures in the extreme background, but it also makes it look like the Chess Man is inside a giant glass sphere. Which is not a bad defense, if you know your opponents are coming in unarmed. Interestingly, Dan never bothered taking the sentry's rifle (or shirt).

I've seen lots of disarming attacks in comic books so far, but snapping a sweaty handkerchief in someone's face has got to be the most improbable yet. Maybe Karno has a flashback to being snapped with towels in gym class and freezes up. And then his guard is so shocked at Dr. Fung's sheer audacity that he does nothing to stop him. And then the other three guards are so shocked that the first guard was shocked that they don't bother attacking as Dan lunges at them (initiative rules are very loose in these situations for a reason).

Munson Paddock continues to set new artistic ground, this issue with his Tex Maxon feature. Note the creative way he illustrates a roundhouse kick in panel 2, a method that I've never seen duplicated since. And I love that insult in panel 4 -- "You insinuatin' snake!"

We've seen lots of examples of people recovering quickly from being temporarily stunned in comics -- so much so that I had to relent and put stunning rules in 2nd edition -- but this could be the fastest recovery in panel 2, as the outlaws revive while the fight is still going on and get back into it.

It's rare to see a comic book character stick around while the stolen loot is being identified, but the sheriff gives us a good excuse for why when he claims his own share "fer doin' th' work" -- which seems a likely excuse players would come up with.

This is Spark Stevens and, I'm curious, how Spark knows that those are secret Navy plans. I mean, maybe it's something super obvious and they say "TOP SECRET" across the top of them. He seems very sure of their authenticity at just a glance (skill check?).

It's interesting how they loosen the hinges first, to give them a bonus modifier to their open doors check. I wonder what they used on the screws, though -- their fingernails?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)