Planet Comics #3 - pt. 2

We're back and still looking at the debut of Amazona the Mighty Woman. Looking at this bottom panel, I was initially bothered by the fact that I couldn't tell which mobsters had been taken down by Amazona and which by Blake. Then I realized, it not only didn't matter, but this, in a nutshell, is the heart of what makes Hideouts & Hoodlums special. It's a game where fighters and superheroes can fight side by side and both feel important in the combat.

Interestingly, one power Amazona conspicuously doesn't display here is Outrun Train, needing to hop a ride to keep up with the fleeing car. Or maybe female superheroes suffer some sort of movement penalty while wearing heels?

We're going to jump ahead to the next feature, Red Comet. I don't particularly care for Red Comet, and this installment certainly didn't change my mind. The King of the Giants of Jupiter looks about as dangerous as your dad when company comes over but he doesn't feel like getting dressed. Red Comet himself isn't much better, remembering to put on his mask and cape, but forgetting the rest of his clothes other than his matching underwear. It's like a nightmare a superhero would have that ends in everybody laughing at him.

Perhaps most frustrating about this page is Red Comet's size-changing power. If he shrinks before climbing on the giant's knee, does that mean that the giant isn't really that big? Or did Red Comet just shrink down a little?

Whoa - things just took a super dark turn! Bear in mind, Golo hasn't done anything at this point other than threaten to invade other planets. Not a soul has actually been hurt yet; his threat has been less harmful than the average Trump tweet. Yet, Red Comet has slaughtered a whole squadron -- at least 15 giants, given my count from the top panel -- just to teach Golo a lesson.

Red Comet is using the Imperviousness power in this last panel, the only power that would protect him from all rayguns.

And lastly we're going to look at Spurt Hammond today. For once, I can say I'm glad to do so! There's some unexpected history with H&H here...

Way back before Comic Book Plus and the Digital Comic Museum were things, scanned comic books were still hard to come by. Some people, like Steve Rogers, made their own websites for them. Some people posted them to the files sections of various Yahoo!Clubs. And some people posted them on this new thing called blogs. I had chanced upon this story on somebody's blog around the time I was writing the second issue of The Trophy Case...wow, way back in 2010! So I wrote up the robots from this issue as vampiric robots from Mercury.

That third panel is swiped from a famous painting...but I can't remember what it is.

I'm actually not sure where I got the "vampiric" part from; it is described as "invincible" and "super" here.

This is not the only nudity you're going to see in this story...

The only thing more intimidating than a giant must be a nude giant. Anticipating Return of the Jedi, the giant is killed by the portcullis. The portcullis does a lot of damage, but then, it stabs him five times in addition to the crushing damage. It would likely have done less harm to a man-sized foe.

Let me see if I get this straight -- Spurt has the drop on them with a ray gun, then sits down his raygun so he can go in punching instead?

It "ought to," Spurt? So you're willing to experiment on bad guys with their own mad science machines, just to see what happens? I would make any Hero save vs. plot before doing this, as it reeks of being no better than the bad guys...

Although I was very generous with Hit Dice when statting this robot, a single shot from a raygun finishes it off. How super and invincible was it supposed to be again?

Ten years later, and I've still never used a vampiric robot from Mercury in one of my games...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Planet Comics #2 - pt. 3

Well...that was a disappointing debut for the Taloned Man. We don't even get to see if Tiger Beat punched him off the roof or just pushed him off. At least we know he's okay, as he must have fallen into the same moat.

That is some sword Tiger Beat has; he just whacks a diamond and it shatters into a thousand pieces? That's better than a Ginsu knife!





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That's also a really improbable example of the wrecking things mechanic from Hideouts & Hoodlums. This would be like wrecking a dam, but at a -1 or -2 penalty.

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There's a whimsical naivte to thinking that we'll still have a Washington in the year 40,000, not to mention the notion that we'll be launching our spaceships from giant mortars.

The notion of our power source being special elements only found on some planets, though...well, that's textbook Star Trek with its dilithium crystals.

As Spurt Hammond might conceivably go on to become an obscure influence on Star Trek, so does this page show us how Spurt is inspired by the John Carter of Mars series. Well, "inspired" might be too generous, as the Red Men of Mars are blatantly ripped off from A Princess of Mars here.

Even the Martian ships look like they were taken straight from Edgar Rice Burroughs' imagination, while the Earth ships are more boring rocket-like ships.

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This is a large scale aerial combat. I have no plans to produce game mechanics for such; it would need to be handled by someone with a firmer grasp of wargames than me.

Spurt uses a raygun to wreck his way inside, takes out a guard, and uses the guard's cloak as a disguise -- some of the details are different, but the tactic has been used a thousand times in fiction up to this point.

Now, how Spurt knew this was the ship that the prince was on, that part is much harder to follow. Was he somehow able to detect that this ship was more heavily protected than the others?

You would also think that at least one of the prince's guards would have a weapon on them, but Spurt catches them all empty-handed and gets to wale on them with his fists!

Now we're moving on to the next story, with Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol. Here we get a new mobstertype -- crab-men! Crab-men are numerous in appearance, outnumbering a spaceship's crew. We also find out here that crab-men are vulnerable to radiation, and this makes them susceptible to commands.

Look at how tough this crab-man is, picking Buzzup and just throwing him on the ground like a rag doll. These bad boys have got to be at least 4 Hit Dice.

Being trapped in giant specimen jars is an unusual form of trap too.

Spoilers: Buzz wins.

...So we're going to jump ahead now to the next feature, Captain Nelson Cole of the Solar Force. 

Dwight Field Airport is a real place, and I strongly support using real world locations in comic book stories for realism, though the ground-based, sideways-launching spacecraft then take some of that realism away.

There's also no such thing as  "light mile," though this might just be future shorthand for miles traveled at the speed of light. If 250,000 is the number of light years, though, that makes the number of miles 1.4696563 x 10¹⁸. Conversely, if it means 250,000 miles, that is just the distance to Earth's Moon, and reaching it at the speed of light would be like teleportation.

The object that can take out two spaceships moving at the speed of light? A shooting star, or meteor. Meteors, of course, move nothing close to the speed of light.

"Poor fellows! Oh well, they were newbies and kinda deserved it for being dumb. Full speed ahead, and let's skip contacting their families back home!"

Note how spaceships are controlled by simple levers.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Planet Comics #1 - pt. 4

So much to talk about Planet Comics! I really think someone could run a great, if campy, sci fi campaign using Hideouts & Hoodlums, and I hope someone does someday and tells me about it.

A couple of things about this page: one, making heroes wait for a reward at the end of the adventure not only gives them more XP, but it motivates the players to play out the return trip home, rather than just wind up a scenario right after the battles are over.

And another thing -- one of many that bugged me about this story -- who is that woman? She's been standing around Zan the entire story, and even in jail she's forced to keep the same gown on, but she never says a word. What's her story?

Ah, Spurt Hammond, the most awkward comic book character name of all time!  Spoilers abound here, as we learn that Spurt is going to run afoul of Amazons on the Moon (so, Lunerzons). This is sometime in the future after Mars has been colonized, so in the Amazon entry in the AH&H Mobster Manual, I'll just add a mention about them having a moon colony in the future.

Now this is kind of a cool cultural tidbit -- despite being armed with scimitars, the Lunerzons only beat Spurt into submission with their fists. This could be a code of honor like is found in the Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter books, where no one on Mars attacks with a weapon better than their opponent is using.

Those are some funky-looking plants for making explosives.

Speaking of funky-looking, the droopy-nosed Mooniacs are said to be "powerful," which should translate into at least 5 Hit Dice. But how powerful? Hopefully we'll see clues soon.

All we learn here is that the "dullwitted" Mooniacs are still smart enough to use tools (or at least can throw weapons), and that they can walk on two or four legs like a bear.

I guess mooniacs aren't so powerful after all, as Spurt can not only defeat them with his bare fists, but he beats a bunch of them. Oddly, despite the fact that I can clearly see four mooniacs in that lower left hand corner, they only attack him one at a time (maybe they are dullwitted after all).

Spurt clearly has no code of honor, threatening women with a gun that refused, twice, to use weapons on him.

Oh come on!  I guess the Amazons are attracted to douche-nozzles with no code of honor. I can honestly say I've never read a Golden Age story until now where I wanted the hero to get beat up by a moon monster.

I can tell getting through Planet Comics is going to be tough; here's another interchangeable space hero. Maybe this story will have more to offer us, though, as we already get the concept of plastic armor (AC 6 maybe?) and a mention of Neptunian Shark-Men.

Okaayy...I don't know what those shark-men are supposed to look like, but it sure isn't sharks.

Despite the fact that Buzz seems to be a fighter, Buzz appears to be using the Sleeping Nerve Pinch power of a superhero on the control room shark-man.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)