Amazing Mystery Funnies #19 - pt. 4

 And we're back, looking at more of Jon Linton today. Maybe it's worth reminding novice game Editors that it is important to make sure your non-Hero characters fail, so the Heroes can succeed instead.

I get that it's more dramatic to blast the ceiling away (even when it doesn't make sense to do so; I had this issue with the TV show 24 in the past...), but isn't Jon worried about debris falling on his own workers? Better unionize, people! 

The N in N-ray could stand for nitrogen; well before the nitrogen bomb, nitrogen was already being used in TNT and other explosives. The next page suggests it stands for neutrons, though. Which is interesting, because we were much further away from neutron bombs than nitrogen bombs in 1940.

20,000 MPH is super-fast, barely attainable by today's technology (we can only achieve it with satellites in outer space). That's (roughly) Mach 27, traveling through Earth's mesosphere, and...well, I'm not qualified to say how safe that would be, but with so much at stake in this story, I think it's certainly reasonable to take chances!

References to atomic power might seem visionary for 1940, but New York Times articles from then were already pretty specific about how atomic power would work -- "We have been brooding over the atomic power houses which are to do away with coal and in which uranium-235 is to sputter array in water and make energy so cheap that it will hardly pay to read meters..." (https://www.nytimes.com/1940/06/09/archives/science-in-the-news-atomic-power.html)

I'm less convinced by the science behind "Jon! We're dropping!" Wouldn't an equal and opposite reaction push them backwards instead of downwards? Unless...instead of being repelled from the force field, maybe the field is draining power from the rocket? But since it's an atomic-powered rocket, that's some impressive energy draining!

Spoiler: Jon saves the day, but Satan Rex escapes to fight another day.

But not to fight Speed Centaur, who is busy knocking hats off of bad guys. I find that image funnier than it probably deserves, particularly since, on the other side of the panel, Speed is kicking that guy so hard it probably would kill someone in real life.

The reference to a previous adventure, as vague as it is, was pretty rare in the golden age. Continuity didn't get talked about a lot because it was not assumed anyone was keeping back issues. 

Panels 4 and 5 serve to remind us that Speed is completely naked most of the time. I find the concept of centaurs disturbing on all kinds of levels, and this is just one of them.

I can just imagine the future producer of the Mister Ed TV show reading this as a boy and thinking, "Hmm, a talking horse..."

I cannot figure out why Simp and Flame are in quotation marks, while Speed and Reel are not. Simp and Reel are both nicknames. Flame is the horse's real name. Is Speed Speed Centaur's real name? Does that make Centaur his real surname? This feature makes my head hurt.

"I know, Reel, but they're only the hirelings! I want the big shot of this racket."

"But couldn't we have followed them and seen if they let us back to the big shot?"

".......Why do you leave all these decisions up to me? I'm just a horse with half a human on me!"

"Dope" is slang for a variety of illegal drugs, including marijuana, opium, and cocaine, so it's hard to say exactly what's in those pills. It probably is not marijuana, as I doubt you could infuse enough into a pill form to significantly affect a horse. 

Although Speed is acting like he spotted the pills before eating out of the feed-bag, he's sure acting like he's high on something -- because this is the second time he let the bad guys just get away.

Second spoiler: Speed wins!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

 

Amazing Mystery Funnies #18 - pt. 1

Speed Centaur? Really? You're going to make me read Speed Centaur, first thing? Sigh..

Now, to be fair, this scenario seems as preposterous on the face of it as a centaur superhero. What would the Axis Forces possibly want with U.S. horses circa 1940? It turns out there actually is a real story like this.

"Hop on my back and ride me, trusty sidekick!" How did  Fredric Wertham miss this?

What the waaah? Since when can centaurs fly? I guess I'm modifying the centaur record in the Mobster Manual again!

I've never heard of such a killer horse -- but killer horse seems almost like a worthy mobstertype for Hideouts & Hoodlums! It also appears here that killer horses can attack with both 1 bite and 1 kick in the same turn. Speed beats the killer horse with grappling.

I'm interested in this page for the first panel. Reel is able to gamely perform a move worthy of a movie stuntman; but keep in mind Reel's training is as a cameraman. So when did he become such a capable acrobat and marksman?

On an earlier post, I speculated about Supporting Cast and at what point they can become classed and I may have missed the obvious; as soon as they become Supporting Cast to a Hero, they become important enough to gain a class, even if they only had a mundane profession before. 

Killer horses will chase after you if you run!

...It's been as hard as ever taking Speed Centaur seriously, but perhaps this could illustrate, instead, that Supporting Cast animals can be given very specific and out-of-their-character tasks, like running down and trampling someone.

Phew! Moving on to The Inner Circle now. There's not a lot of game-relevant material here, although I'm curious to see if any of those newspapers really exist...

Long before The New York Bulletin became a fake newspaper in the Marvel Netflix Universe, it was a real New York newspaper, running from 1840 to 1850! There was a London daily called The Courier, but I can't find that there was a London Daily Courier. The Montreal Post-Telegram is completely bogus.

Next, I'm noticing how widely different the value of the gold stolen is between countries. How close are those exchange rates?

No, there was $4 to the pound, so the London Daily Courier should be reporting 200,000, not 250,000 pounds. The Canadian numbers are even worse; the Canadian dollar was only worth 10% more than a U.S. dollar in 1940, so the Montreal Post Telegram should say 55,000, not what looks an awful lot like 500,000!

I tried to also do a little research on why damage to the conning tower, specifically, would keep a sub from being able to submerge. I don't think it's because the hit was on the tower, per se, but any hole in the sub is going to take on water.

Leaving those Circle Boys behind on their boats, let's jump ahead to Jon Linton, the thinking man's Buck Rogers (well, sorta...).

I suppose there's something comforting in knowing that notes handwritten in cursive are still going to be a thing in the future.

Jon's trick here seems a bit too obvious to me, but I suppose when you're dealing with a narcissist like Trump -- er, I mean Satan -- it's easy to play on his vanity and get him to think you're on his side.

In game play, this can be difficult, particularly if the player and Editor don't see the character's motivations the same way.

If the Editor felt, Jon's player is misinterpreting what I'm going for, he could prompt his player with a skill check or Wisdom check (we've talked about unofficially using ability score checks in H&H before) and correct him if he succeeds - or, simply change the way the villain's character to match player expectations, if that makes things easier.

I love how Harry Campbell, even if he doesn't always get the science right, certainly makes a game try of it. Here he fairly accurately predicts safe atomic energy plants, with 2 million volts being possible if the plant has up to six transformers. He also accurately understands reboot time.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 3 #1 - pt. 3

This is Don Dixon, in a rather exciting but hard-to-follow installment. What I do know is that a dam breaks and an enemy army is wiped out by the ensuing flood. The question for me to ponder today is: is there a way to work out how much damage being hit by water should do?

Yes, there should be a way to work out a formula for how much a certain volume of water weighs, factor in the speed it hits you, and assign it a number of dice of damage. I think it would be high. But there are other things harder to factor for, like the chance of drowning, or the chance of being slammed into a solid object. For attacks this unpredictable, that's why we have a saving throw system. So this should be a save vs. science to avoid death for everyone caught in the path of the floodwaters.

I suspect this will be a stand-alone story and, judging by the crude artwork, its cancellation would be a mercy killing.

We've seen lots of trophy planes by January 1940 already, most of them being faster, but none of them have had silent running yet. It seems like that would be really hard to do with a plane, but I certainly see the value of it, when wanting to fly up to a hideout unannounced.

Sorry, I'm going to make you look at the amateur artwork on this page just for the last panel and the assertion that "they have no chance to use their guns." Should that be true in Hideouts & Hoodlums? Well, it sort of is, if the other side won initiative and rushed into melee before you could get off your missile fire. This is why it's good to let an entire side go before the other side in order of combat.

Not always is "hideout" an analog for "dungeon" -- sometimes it really is a dungeon! And this is another example of why I had to break down and open up wrecking things to all classes in 2nd edition.

Note panel 6 and, if you can follow this narrative, a pilot's plane is missed by anti-aircraft shells, but the shrapnel from the explosion still pierces the cockpit and knocks out the pilot. This is evidence that cover does not protect you from area of effect attacks.

This is Jon Linton, and he's pretty lucky because before he goes on an expedition he gets a map of the whole place from a handy non-Hero character. Most Heroes don't get a map to work with at the start of the scenario, but are asked to draw their own -- and, indeed, this exploration component is a vital part of what makes a RPG Old School.  I also think this is a great page of building suspense. 

Wow -- not only do we get to see the map, but we get the scale for the map too!

This is why you put bosses at the end of hideouts, because the Heroes need to gather XP and level up before they can face them.

The iota-ray tube is not unlike a magic wand that combines Hold Person with wrecking things.

Speed Centaur is still in his medieval lost world. We see lots of lances on display here, but also a "mace" being used by his supporting cast member Reel -- though it looks like it would more properly be called a flail, making it one of the earliest, if not the first, flails in comic books.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #12 - pt. 3

Ah, Speed Centaur, the ultimate test of the comic book fan's suspension of disbelief.

Here, we see Speed pushing a boulder, which is a fair use of the Raise Car power. But, of course, the biggest thing here is that Speed has found this whole, crazy subterranean lair right behind his own hideout cave -- as if Batman found a secret passage behind the Batcave that led straight to Castle Greyhawk. This is some really Old School nutty dungeon-type stuff here -- Speed and Reel run into a subterranean rhinoceros in this cave complex.

Also worth pointing out is "Yeh man!!! Put your peepers on that baby!!" -- one of the goofiest lines of dialog I've ever read in a comic book.

Exciting the cave complex, Speed and Reel find themselves...hurled back in space and time? In a lost world setting where early European settlers were trapped here and never moved past the Middle Ages? At this point in the lunacy, does it even really matter?

Knights are going to be a statted mobster type in the Mobster Manual; in fact, they were statted for the basic rulebook, but were one of the mobster types cut because the section just seemed too big and unwieldy.

Disarming is a combat option in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums. Unhorsing a rider is not, simply because I do not expect it to come up as often. In lieu of its own mechanic, I would simply require the rider to make a save vs. science to avoid disarming.

I'm skeptical about that stick between the legs working to trip a horse; I think the stick would just snap like a twig. I suppose the fair thing to do would be to make the horse save vs. science to keep from being knocked prone, but with a situational bonus of at least +2.

This page illustrates three things -- how much of a hideout can be just empty space before reaching an encounter (though that tends to not be too fun for most players), the importance of frequent "hear noise" skill checks in a hideout, and an example of how easy wrecking through locked doors is for superheroes.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #11 - pt. 2

I have a new mobster type called the hag already in H&H 2nd ed., but this might be just a magic-user being called a hag. She finds a pendant that seems to work only for her; there is precedent in H&H (and That Other Game) for magic items that only work for particular classes.

The Cat's Eye Talisman has the power to age or de-age anyone it touches. It seems like it can age 50 years at a touch, which is really powerful. I might make it 10-40 years (with a save vs. spells to resist entirely).

Ooo -- the future of 2009! Behold the wonders of jet planes (called rocket planes here and, really, in most comic books of the time)!  Read of the international secret service active in the future!

Cutaway map! That's one big atomic space-ship.

I've posted before about how to dress up ordinary things to appear futuristic. Here, we have an ordinary electric eye trap turned into a proton ray that deals agonizing amounts of damage (or maybe a save vs. science or die).

Ooo, portable TV sets in the future of 2009! Still in black and white, I see.

Not sure I plan to do anything with this, but...stories where a vehicle swerves and mobsters are knocked out with centrifugal force. I really hesitate to do this because the game mechanic would be pretty nightmarish - some complex formula that took speed and angle of turn into account in computing damage.

In 2009, businessmen will show up for work in sweatsuits! (Actually not that far off from accurate...)

And lastly, this is Speed Centaur. The closest power to what he's using is Extend Missile Range III, but those boulders look like they far exceed the weight limit for that power. However...maybe the Raise powers should be stackable with the Extend Missile Range powers to increase damage.  I'm not sure how to work that out yet, and it seems like it would be confusing to mix and match powers that can be found at four different levels for Raise powers and three different levels for Extend Missile Range powers.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v.2 #9

We rejoin the Fantom of the Fair as he's chillin', just watching a circus act, when ...well, let's think about what's happening here.

The Fantom somehow senses that something is amiss, but we don't know how. Perhaps he was using Super-Hearing for some reason and overheard the man at the tank, far below, over the din of the crowd. Perhaps the Fantom just has a really good sense of volume and figured out that the water was low from looking at it. Or maybe he was using some kind of heretofore unknown Detect Danger power/spell (or would Find Traps duplicate that?).

Then The Fantom defies physics by leaping after Jane, and less aerodynamically than Jane (and with the drag of the cape no less), and still manages to hit the water before her. Some new power called Fall Faster?

There's more going on, unsaid, here too. The Fantom claims this man looked suspicious because he was standing around nearby. But this is the 1939 World's Fair -- there should be hundreds of people standing around nearby! So this has to be The Fantom using Detect Evil to sense the wrongdoer.

And then there's The Fantom throwing the guy and him landing dead. In Hideouts & Hoodlums you cannot kill in one hit, no matter how much damage it does. I could change that rule -- say, adding an amendment where if you do 10 or 20 points of damage more than what would drop you to zero hit points, then it can be an instant kill, but this is a throw attack that shouldn't possibly do that much damage. Unless The Fantom is using some new power called Super-Throw (with increased grappling damage), or Killing Blow (that gets around the not killed at "zero hp" rule).

This page I include for trivia. From Jane's comments at the end, coupled with the clear outline of a face on The Fantom -- I'm beginning to suspect that The Fantom isn't wearing a mask at all. Rather, his face is always masked in shadow, thanks to magic, and we're just seeing him in silhouette.

A prototype for Marvel Comics' High Evolutionary. More proof that Carl Burgos invented the Silver Age of Marvel Comics back in 1939...?

Now I'm trying to decide if rocket cars needs to be a trophy item. A commonplace rocket car might seem futuristic, but a rocket car held the land speed record (345 MPH) as of 1938. Maybe the Thunderbolt (#7 on this list) will get a stat.

I think I've just solved my problem of how to justify keeping the acetylene torch on the trophy list. A "blue ray" acetylene torch makes it seem more exotic, and could maybe justify boosting the damage it causes a little.

A note to myself that a large transport plane can be a trophy item. A large transport plane has several benefits for a group of Heroes -- it can easily transport them all in one trip, as well as storing all the supplies they might need on adventures (you can see how the interior side of this plane is set up like an armory).

This is Don Dixon. Don't drink was apparently drugged with a Potion of Madness. It makes him gibber and sound like an egomaniac.  Hmm...did someone slip this to Donald Trump?

Oh, Speed Centaur, you goofy feature! I guess Speed cut off his arms in order to fit his torso into that fake horse head? The lesson here is that you don't have to think too hard about disguise for it to work in H&H.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #8 - pt. 1

This is the first appearance of Speed Centaur, the first and one of the only centaurs to ever appear in comic books. It's like the editors at Centaur Publishing said, "How can we make a superhero like Superman without getting sued by DC? I know, let's make him half-horse!"

Speed comes from a futuristic city at the North Pole that explodes, leaving him the lone survivor. Sound familiar? I didn't share that page, but this one, that shows that centaurs should maybe have some kind of cold resistance.

I don't think centaurs are generally known for their leaping ability. Seems a lot like the alien race, though. Or would could make an argument for a centaur being a half-alien/half-human character.

Kicking the bear could be the Get Tough power in use. Or it could be the natural hoof attack of a centaur, depending on how one stats Speed.

Okay, we've been told that Speed leaps, but this sure looks like flying to me. That would make Speed Centaur the first flying superhero.

Speed appears to be attacking five hoodlums at once here. Is this the first recorded instance of the power Flurry of Blows?

This is a curious map. "Corubia" is almost surely Colombia. "Martique" looks like Ecuador. "Belcade" could be the Brazilian State of Roraima. Which would make Strath...part of the Amazon? And it's supposed to be mountainous too!  It's an interesting mix of real and fictional geography.

A little known benefit of riding around in a motorcycle and sidecar -- the sidecar can have a machine gun mounted on it. Who knew?

So, The Inner Circle stops this South American war, but with a pretty dodgy plan. It required two agents to slip into a foreign country, then kidnap a minister without getting caught or even detected. The minister had to go along with writing a letter asking the leader of his country to come meet him at a remote cabin with minimal guards, and the leader being stupid enough to comply with it. This was a very generous Editor.

This was a big catch for Centaur, picking up the license for Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire. And this looks to be a pretty exciting installment! This woman is like a will-o-wisp, luring Don out into the swamp so he'll drown, then vanishing. But as the story unfolds, it turns out she's not supernatural at all; she's the queen of the marsh monsters. It isn't explained, but she probably just sinks into the water because she can breathe underwater.

Marsh monsters -- or marsh folk, as they call themselves -- appear to be ugly, hairless humans with small fins on top of their heads and can breathe underwater, except for a small, elite segment of the population that look like ordinary humans (but can still breathe underwater). It is also implied here that marsh monsters are really good at camouflage and ambush.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)