Crackajack Funnies #21 - pt. 1

It feels like forever since I last reviewed a Dell Comic, so it's pretty exciting to come back around to Crackajack Funnies and all the comic strip reprints here.

First up is Don Winslow of the Navy. I always share a page that shows a code in use, but this one also shows that a code stencil is a random item you might pick out of a hoodlum's pockets someday.

 After that stirring anti-war speech, Admiral Warburton uses "scotch" as a verb in a way I'm not familiar with. This use is defined as "decisively put an end to."

It's also real handy, being given an assignment by your commanding officer, and finding out the hard work of getting started has already been done for him. This makes a lot of sense in a comic strip format, when things have to move quickly, or a home campaign when you don't have many hours to play per session.

Innocent soul that I am, I had to look up "half-caste" to see if that was an actual thing. It's just another way of saying "half-breed," or "a person whose parents are of different races." Yeah, it's pretty racist.

The main reason you're seeing this page, though, is for the idea of tucking your secret notes into the visor of your hat. Noticing the thickness of the visor and thinking that's suspicious enough to investigate is like rolling a 1 for a secret door.

I'm not going to make you look at very much of Looney Luke this time, as it's really insulting towards American Indians.

There are some peculiar features to this page worth pointing out. One is Luke going all the way back to the 14th century to meet Indians; I wonder how Wingsmith happened to choose that century.

Despite these appearing to be Plains Indians, they have a mix of teepee and pueblo housing.

I don't think this is right, Indians practicing mummification. Indian mummies have been found, but mummified through natural processes. The most famous may be the Spirit Cave Mummy found in Nevada -- but that was in 1940, and these reprints usually run two years behind their original newspaper runs. So I wonder what earlier mummy was found that inspired this strip.

Interrupting the melodrama of Myra North is this explanation of a verbal code between mobsters. Myra was even nice enough to write out the explanation for us!

For a feature with "stratosphere" in the title, it's surprising to find them exploring caves this month.

In Hideouts & Hoodlums, you don't have to be a dwarf or gnome to detect sloping passages (I would make it a basic skill check).

The science here isn't terrible -- it is most likely that the Native Americans originated in Asia, maybe 20,000 years ago. The big question is, would primitive people from the stone age have been able to carve out a tunnel that smooth and carve idols like that? Probably not.

It takes them a few days to build a shack (how handy that their plane was full of nails!). It takes them almost a week to repair a radio transmitter. Useful to know if I ever revise my inventing things rules.

This feature went from cave exploring to an aerial dogfight so fast I think I have whiplash!

A cowling is the removable covering of a vehicle's engine, most often found on automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, and on outboard boat motors. On planes, cowlings are used to reduce drag and to cool the engine.

Ah, Roy Crane, how I've missed you!

Here we learn that Flo's skirt is just the right length. I mean -- we learn that it's a good idea, if you're a hero running a business, or just staffing your secret lair with ordinary people, to wire-tap your own phones in case one of your own people turns disloyal. Boy, that Roy Crane art is distracting!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Crackajack Funnies #19 - pt. 2

This is still Stratosphere Jim...

The trophy transportation section in the Hideouts & Hoodlums Basic book has a list of upgrades to vehicles that qualify them as trophy items, and one of them is being bulletproof.

Heroes at any level might think about setting up a hideout for themselves. Here's some sound advice on picking a location with a hard-to-reach entrance, concealing the entrance, and stocking the hideout.

At the rate I go through months' worth of comics now, it takes way too long for me to come back around to Wash Tubbs. Here, we learn that a swanky nightclub could clear $450 in profit in two nights.

You also have to get past the racist nickname of Lucifer for a black man.

And then there's the large-scale ride-on train -- my dad works on those! (true story)

Two things to point out here. Captain Easy could probably handle these racketeers a lot quicker than Wash is, but Wash chooses to do it on his own because combat is dangerous and innocent people could be hurt. That is a Lawful Hero.

Secondly, when Wash has an important decision to make, he gets five different opinions offered to him, four of them from clearly non-Hero characters under the Editor's control. The Editor has to be careful in situations like this not to appear to be guiding the player(s) by making one option sound much better than the other options on the table.

This is Clyde Beatty, who I've already learned was a real person who just happened to get his own comic strip. What I took away from this page is a) not even a cruise ship is too unlikely a location to run into a lion that needs taming, and b) if you spray big cats with water, they need to make morale saves.

Bolton's got a map! I wonder if they would consider opening the flood gates and broadening the Waterfall of Tahar, to wash away the climbing attacking forces...?  Let's see!

Woo, called that one!  But -- what? "My job is done"? You weren't even the one who opened the flood gates, Bolton, all you did was stand around and watch!

A new plane is a pretty sweet reward for him...but I guess it's like giving the player who's Hero was knocked down to 1 hp and couldn't do much all session a full share of treasure.

More evidence of how "bandit" almost always means Hispanic. Other than that, the scenario of rescuing a prisoner from the bandits is much more interesting to me than a "defeat the bandits" scenario.

That is one risky rescue plan; it apparently all came down to Jack beating the bandits at initiative. Otherwise, Whitey was going to have to survive a hail of bullets before that tear gas gun went off.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Crackajack Funnies #19 - pt. 1

Back to public domain stories I can show!

Here we rejoin Don Winslow of the Navy, explaining a bit of problem solving he did. We also are reminded of a definition of "dope" that we might often forget these days.

Someone's been pranking this poor ship captain, replacing his maps with fakes. The Balkans do not border the Mediterranean Sea; they border the Adriatic.

What a "paravane" is is explained here.

The idea that Indians were secretly hoarding gold has enticed white men since arriving in North America.

If I ever succeed in making the Cowboy class (debuted in Supplement III: Better Quality) viable in 2nd edition, it will surely keep the ability to summon mount.

This is Ed Tracer, G-Man X32.

Dapper Danz is very excited about narcotics.

The secret hideout is an old moonshiner's cave with a secret front door.

This page is a nice twist. When we met "Deacon" Slade a few pages earlier, he just seemed like a harmless wandering encounter, maybe a red herring. But it turns out he's a rival with a different agenda vs. Dapper Danz.

Man, that sure is a nice looking Donald Duck pocket watch. It's going to cost a lot more than $1 today!

Stratosphere Jim has an interesting alternative explanation for how VTOL planes would work. A pressurized cabin was also a rare novelty circa 1940.

It would be 1953 before any plane officially matched this airspeed record.  A simple system for keeping track of trophy items would be to say that a plane 13 years ahead of its time is a Plane +1, 26 years ahead of its time would be a Plane +2, 39 years ahead of its time would be a Plane +3, and so on.

The notion that secrets need to be kept, even from your own government, were a comic book staple before WWII, but would quickly seem unpatriotic. Yet, I wonder how many superheroes quietly shared their weapons' secrets with the War Department...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)