Jumbo Comics #11 - pt. 2

Well, that was a two week, unscheduled vacation from blogging!  Let's see where we left off...

Oh, that's right, in Jumbo Comics!  This is a page from Spencer Steel and, here, we see a car chase going on. I'm still in the early stages of formulating some car chase mechanics in my head which may or may not make it into the 2nd edition basic book, so it's worth saving this example of evasion during a chase. How do the hoodlums turn the corner so fast that Nora misses it? Is evasion a skill, or a chase-based mechanic that would have to be rolled for each turn?

It's also worth pointing out that Spencer and Nora marry before this story, making them the second married couple in comic books after Bart and Sally in Spy.

The driver has hard cover from the car. Because the car has not had time to get up to speed since turning around, there would be no penalty to hit for moving too fast. In a chase, there should always be a chance of a complication, like a crash. Though this is not a chase, as soon as the driver of a vehicle is incapacitated, the vehicle should move straight to crash complication.

The episodic nature of this installment leads me to think it was originally a UK comic strip, or was planned to be released that way.

The idea of placing a deadly gas inside glass vials, and then concealing the vials were they would be easily broken by accident, is a good trap.

Is Nora still a Supporting Cast Member? With her upgrade to married partner, I wonder if a player took over the SCM rather than roll up a new Hero. If Nora is still a SCM, then the Editor should not be using her to give away vital clues; that should fall to the players to find them.

For those not keeping track, Stuart Taylor was just the SCM in The Diary of Dr. Hayward, before being cast back in time and becoming a sort of "Yankee in King Arthur's Court"-type character, only in a generic fantasy version of medieval Europe. That's all the explanation you need to understand how Stuart has mini-grenades, or why he's the only character with a modern name.

Stuart doesn't feel so bold when it comes to five-to-one odds, but he also is Lawful enough not to murder them with a grenade just for doing their job.

The pit trap has the additional wrinkle of a stone slab sliding shut over the opening. Though it might be worse, depending on how thick the cover is, I would have that wreck as if a generator for superheroes trapped beneath it.

The pit trap is further complicated by apparently dropping them into an arena where a lion can be released to attack them. More portcullises block other exits from the arena, including one portcullis blocking a curiously small door.

100 xp for whoever can figure out the real life geographical analogues to this map. Chesterland sounds decidedly English, which would make the Island of Dono a substitute for Ireland. But none of that explains how Mongolia is right next to them.

That's actually not bad strategy -- enter the villains' hideout in disguise, slip them a fake map and plans, and watch them follow it into a trap.  Not bad, ZX-5!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Jumbo Comics #7

With this issue we reach cover date April 1939 in comic book history.  To say that Peter Pupp begins it with a bang might be a forgivable pun since we are dealing with resistance to firearms here.

The giant robot seems to be immune to bullets, a special defense that doesn't exist yet in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but could. Quite a few mobster-types are immune to all non-magical and/or non-silver weapons. Of course, it is equally possible that the robot just has so many hit points that Peter Pupp can't observe any obvious damage yet.

As hesitant as I am to allow vehicles to crash into opponents for large amounts of damage, it does seem to happen with a fair amount of regularity in comic books. Perhaps a counter-balance would be to insist the driver/pilot/passengers will always run the risk of taking damage too.

One of the earliest Carpets of Flying in comics. Note the Bat-Man-like silhouette in the second to last panel, in a comic done by Bob Kane, pre-Bat-Man...

This is from Sheena Queen of the Jungle, and I would never encourage an Editor to do this -- let the heroes stumble across an unguarded seaplane loaded with machine guns and TNT -- unless they desperately needed more firepower to finish a scenario.

Evidence that Golden Age comic book characters start out weak and get stronger over time -- Sheena is here knocked out by a mobster so weak he isn't even a named villain, in just three combat turns.

This is from Spenser Steel.  They say the Internet has made the younger generations today less concerned with privacy, but apparently there was a time when you could walk up to a train conductor, ask him where a passenger purchased his ticket, and not be told it's none of your business...

Even Wilton of the West learns that cave-ins can be a random occurrence in caves, and events like cave-ins can be treated as wandering encounters.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Jumbo Comics #3

We've already seen a few dragons on this blog, but this is the first moon dragon. It looks like its only pair of legs are too weak for a claw attack, but it can bite and gore with its horn. It has a hot breath, possibly a steam breath weapon. It might also be particularly vulnerable to electrical damage -- or Peter's electric ray gun is particularly powerful.

There are several elements of this page to ponder. One is how far away the noise is that Peter hears through the first door; Editors will need to play it by ear (ahem) how far sound travels in their hideouts.


Two, what is the size of an anthropomorphic animal? The scale of the panels seems to suggest that Peter Pupp is short. Does that mean that a "giant" he encounters might just be 6' tall? Or is the scimitar-wielding guard more like an ogre?


Third, what should the chance be of a gun jamming? Or, because it's a raygun, does it have charges and has just run out?

 Two cents for a newspaper, according to Spenser Steel!

Inspector Dayton's player might be tempted by that check, especially if he thinks it equals 10,000 XP. However, a distinction needs to be made in the game between money earned as a trophy and money just given to them. Ripping it up in the villain's face should still be worth 100 XP for a good deed award, though.

This is ZX-5, who came up with a rather clever, if not dangerous, way of escaping from a plane's machine guns while parachuting to safety. Of course, how safe this is depends on if the Editor rules that tree tops are soft enough to cushion some of the falling damage. There are an awful lot of sharp branches in trees, after all, usually facing upwards. I might allow, if feeling generous, a save vs. plot to land "safely" in the treetops for half-damage, or else inflict full damage -- or possibly more for being impaled on branches!


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Jumbo Comics #1 - part 1

I've been doing this for almost a whole year now and, during this run of examining the comics from 1935-1938, there have never been more than seven U.S. companies publishing at a time (and I only have access to five). So it's a Christmas treat to finally read the first comic book from "new" publisher, Fiction House. There's some familiar stuff here -- Will Eisner's "Hawks of the Seas" picks up right where it left off in Quality's Feature Funnies, Bob Kane starts his second pre-Batman feature, Peter Pupp, Mort Meskin is the first artist on Sheena Queen of the Jungle, and future comic book virtuoso Jack Kirby debuts with an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo.

I don't share a lot of funny animal strips here, but when they are focused on adventure I will. Some campaigns begin loosely, with some optional directions for the Heroes to take it in. Some campaigns (the "sandbox" campaign style) sets up all the options for the campaign in advance and lets the players decide entirely on how to explore it. What happens to Peter Pupp is the complete opposite -- before he's had more than a moment to roleplay, he's kidnapped in his sleep and taken on his first quest.

One of the benefits of not taking your Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign too seriously is that you can do anything with it? Want them to go to the moon to find out if it's made of cream cheese? Just put them in a rocket ship and fire them out of a giant cannon at the moon? Now, if you want to give them control over the rocket, you can plop other destinations in Earth orbit, like these totally impossible plantetoids. Remember, even though astronomy said this wasn't so, no one had yet been to space to find out for sure, so all this science stuff could be taken with a grain of salt (heck, some people still live this way!)

Moon rockets were introduced into H&H in Supplement III: Better Quality.

We don't actually see any of Spencer Steel on this whole page, but we do get a glimpse of a villain hideout, accessible through a garage with a sound-activated door. In the private office is a secret door that leads to an elevator that does down to an underground laboratory (stairs go back up, presumedly to a floor in between). There's a nice amount of detail to the lab here, handy for an Editor looking to describe one on the fly.

This is some of the earliest Joe Simon/Jack Kirby art in print, three years before Captain America. You can see some detail of a mad scientist's mind transfer machine here.  Mind transfer devices were introduced back in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.

Hypnosis is currently a 1st level power for Superheroes. But does it need to be a skill that everyone has a chance to use? Though, if Kromo is a supervillain, maybe that explains his goofy name...

This is the cave-throne room of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Though the ceiling is festooned with stalactites, the floor has been cleared and smoothed. There is a dais and throne and -- more importantly -- note the oriental urns on either side of the room...

Clues explained on this page!  Note that, although Persia was officially called Iran since 1935, it was still commonly called Persia in the West for many years afterwards.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)