Zip Comics #3 - pt. 4

Just in case I've never made this clear, I don't just include stories I like on this blog. War Eagles makes me a little sleepy...but I include pages that interest me, illustrate how well my game Hideouts & Hoodlums emulates these comics, points out ways it could do so better, or just things I need to rant about after reading. 

This page is the second of those, and it illustrates that administering first aid only required intent and physical contact; you do not need a first aid kit (they do help, though!).

Hoo hum, the ol' "Guards, come quick!" trick worked again like a charm and...ooo, what's this? One of them doesn't make it out? Now, this woke me up and made me take notice. We so seldom see failure in the comic books, but of course it's quite easy to hit a fleeing opponent, particularly with a high rate of fire. And missing your hear noise roll? Sure, that can happen in game. 

Of course, Kermit is only supporting cast. Would they have turned around and gone back for a player character?

 

It looks like the boys are escaping in a Fokker, or maybe a Heinkel, but it has to be a two-seater and that canopy looks odd for either plane. The pursuit planes look like Stukkas, and it's amusing to think of a Fokker outrunning a Stukka - but hey, it's comic books, and random chance is king in Hideouts & Hoodlums as well. 

Oh, these crazy kids. The number of things that have to go right for this plan to work...no wandering encounters en route to the air field, landing unseen near the airdrome, finding a single guard out of sight of all other guards...

...the guard knowing where the prisoner is, the guard giving up that information, the guard's uniform fitting, getting a surprise turn for the bombing run, not getting shot by anti-aircraft guns on the way out, only one guard left guarding the prisoner...

Mind you, a lot of these are familiar tropes of the genre, but still...

"He ain't heavyyyyy, he's my brotherrrrr" -- Oops, wrong war!

What? Tom is still flying around bombing the fields? Where are those anti-aircraft guns? Why are four soldiers manning a machine gun instead?

Yeah, the kids easily win in the end, so no surprises there. This next feature is Captain Valor, and with a witty script by unknown-to-me scribe Abner Sundell (a name to watch for here!) and lush visuals by Mort Meskin, I'm feeling like we should just ignore the jaundiced look of the orientals and soak in the rest of the story...but at the same time, it occurs to me that there must be a lot of junks floating around in the sea and, if Tsin hadn't fired on them, Valor would never have known this was the right one...

This mobstertype is going in Mobster Manual part II: M-Z as a pseudo-giant, a bad guy who is bigger and tougher than a thug, described as a giant, but obviously isn't literally a giant by any literal measure. 

"Bullseye!" seems to suggest a critical hit, but it also could have just been maximum damage. 

"That spinach I ate" -- great Popeye reference!

Hmm...here I was just raving about Meskin, but...look at those awful, stubby arms in panel 3...

You'd think that Valor would be taking continuous hit point loss by hanging from his thumbs, but he seems to be feeling like he just woke up from a nap here. 

I've no objection to the half-pint escaping from being tied up; supporting cast get skill checks too. And last-minute rescues are one of the reasons to keep supporting cast around! 

Valor doesn't seem to be actively recruiting supporting cast here, so the Editor must be elaborating on a very positive encounter reaction roll here.

Heyy...where did that flare gun come from? Did they tie him up with the flare gun still on him?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Jumbo Comics #13 - pt. 4

I've got time for one more rant session -- I mean review! -- of this issue of Jumbo Comics.

Wilton of the West is in Skull Valley, which is an actual place out in Utah. It should also sound familiar because of the White Boy in Skull Valley strip we already reviewed a few years back on this blog.

Drinking water does not restore hit points in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but giving water to a dehydrated person can count as first aid, and that does heal back 1 hp.

I'll skip most of the story; this page reminds us that the cowboy genre is often set in modern day times, so you can include modern cars in your stories.

I don't know how you jump off a horse into a speeding car, but I wouldn't make that easy. It should require an attack roll vs. a low AC, like maybe 2, or even 0.











Jumping ahead, this is our final story, Inspector Bancroft. Bancroft has been given a lot more supporting cast this story, including a fiancee and...well, I don't know what relationship those two kids are supposed to be to Bancroft or Wini, but they don't figure into the plot anyway.

Lumps of jelly used for containers in medicine that melt in heat are good clues to find in a poisoning murder.

"Swanky!" That's a word you don't see often enough in comic books. 

Bancroft gets incredibly lucky here; his accusation comes way out of left field, and all Benza has to do is deny it and Bancroft has no evidence. Things like this always seem to go incredibly easy for the Heroes in Golden Age comic books, so in a H&H campaign, if you accuse a mobster of a crime, that mobster has to save vs. plot or confess.

The author, "George Thatcher" (likely a pen name), likes unusual words, so he gives us "hoary creatures." I'm not sure if he's referring to the color of the spiders or how old they are...

But speaking of spiders, why place them so far from Bancroft, instead of, you know, throwing them in his lap? It seems like a particularly poor deathtrap, if the spiders choose to go in a different direction. 

Keep in mind, as you're reading this, how badly Bancroft has failed at this scenario. He gets captured. He fails to get himself out of his deathtrap. He fails to capture the killer. He doesn't even phone for the police himself; Wini does all of this for him. The moral is, it's okay to fail when you're playing H&H. You're still a Hero as long as you tried.

If I was Wini, I would be hesitant to untie him too. If Dayton had just stood by and let the cops take him, Benza would have gone to jail. Well, maybe. I mean, Dayton still has nothing on him for the murder other than a confession that Dayton has no corroboration for.

But punching him gives Benza the opportunity he needs to try and run, and the cops are so enraged by this that they don't even shout "Stop or we'll shoot" first. This lack of due process and vigilante justice, though, is entirely appropriate for Golden Age campaigns.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

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.)

Keen Detective Funnies #18 - pt. 1

Ah, Masked Marvel, such an odd duck. This post might be more therapy rant than useful game content...

This installment starts with the beginning of what should be an epic quest to discover the lost city of gold. While everyone on Earth knows that El Dorado is the name for the mythical lost city of gold, this story insists on calling it Ora. I did a quick Internet search to see if there was any precedent for calling it Ora, but all my search results were for the upcoming movie Dora and the Lost City of Gold. Coincidence...?

Naturally, any human beings living along the Amazon River will be wild savages? What is your doctorate in, Lincoln, racism?

The trope of a highly civilized forgotten race is as old as pulp fiction. It's also a trifle racist.

Bear in mind, this is a Masked Marvel story.

I was expecting the Internet to be able to tell me what was 10 days upriver on the Amazon, but travel by water isn't so (ahem) cut and dried as that. Let's assume you made very good time over those 10 days and made it as far as the Colombian border. That would put you at or near the town of Leticia. I haven't found much information on Leticia in 1940, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't full of wild savages.

In fact, I found this video as the only evidence of what daily life looked like along the Amazon in the 1940s. Some workers did go around in nothing but shorts, but it is extremely unlikely that you would find a chieftain in a loincloth at this time.

Now, this is after the rubber boom, when native workers were first exploited and civilization was first brought to this region as resources were funneled away from them. Before 1920, yes, it might have been more likely to find natives in loincloths back then.

Remember how this was as Masked Marvel story?







Oh come on! The "natives can be bribed with booze" trope? I'm not putting that in my description of the mobstertype. I will have a note about sometimes using poisoned weapons, though.

Oh yeah -- the Masked Marvel! This is nine pages into the story and MM hasn't even got there yet. So here he is, speeding recklessly to make up for lost time. You'd think this was a timed tournament round by how quickly he's trying to get to the scenario.














At last, the City of Gold! Time for a climactic fight to the finish between the Masked Marvel and the diabolical -

Oh what the heck!? He snipered the villain from a distance? Who is the hero in this piece again? I'm betting it's the natives who were smart enough to leave the old abandoned city alone.

Okay, phew...got that out of my system. We've just enough space left to look at this month's Spark O'Leary, Radio Newshawk feature. Now, this scenario intrigues me, not so much for the spy tapping code over the radio, but the angle of it possibly being a traitor in Spark's supporting cast! This is a good story to throw at players who have amassed large supporting casts in long-term Hideouts & Hoodlums campaigns. Look at that -- brought it back to gaming right at the end!

"Of course I can!"

"Then why haven't you already done it?"

"I was waiting for a player-character to tell me to do it!"

It's a truism that's difficult to avoid...you want your game to be realistic, but you also want your players' characters to be the heroes and the planners, forcing non-Heroes to stand around and wait to be told what to do all too often. The reverse problem is when your Editor-controlled non-Heroes are too proactive and the players feel they have to go along with something the Editor is "telling" them to do. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Adventure Comics #47 - pt. 1

It's been nine months since I've last covered the early adventures of the Sandman! This is what happens when I cover so many titles, in such detail...

This story opens with a newspaper article detailing a murder the Sandman is about to investigate. The article is signed by Ogden Whitney, who's been drawing this feature since last issue. Ogden is good, but Bert Christman and Craig Flessel were just that much better...

I'm not surprised that Wesley Dodds was friends with the dead man, as Wesley has one of the richest backstories of early comic book heroes and knows practically everyone. Gardner Fox is starting to tinker with that backstory, though, changing Dodds from a billionaire to a millionaire. And this is the issue where he gives Wesley is his first partner. Being big on strong, equal female partners, it is hardly surprise that Dian Ware is an expert safecracker and resourceful enough to have learned or deduced the Sandman's secret identity (though it's never revealed how). Known as "The Lady in Evening Clothes," Dian even sounds like a mysteryman (or a Victorian one).

The murder weapon is a Corson repeater. I can't find any evidence that's a real thing, but I'm fine with that. I was way too specific about firearms in 1st edition Hideouts & Hoodlums and pulled back from that in 2nd ed.

Sandman still shows some willingness to act in a Chaotic manner, gassing the District Attorney when he won't cooperate and give the evidence back that Sandman already gave to him.

In a firefight with two mobsters armed with sub-machine guns, we see simultaneous initiative, with Sandman gassing them just as one of them shoots Sandman in the shoulder. We also see that Sandman has no control over who is knocked out within the area of effect of the gas, as Dian goes down too. Sandman is weakened by his injury, gradually losing consciousness, which is not a condition covered by the rules, and it takes him a week to recover (players can thank me ignoring this in the rules later!).

Trigger, the killer, is held on $1,000 bond, but for breaking and entering (the police haven't nailed him on murder yet). 

When Sandman confronts Black Bill, Trigger's boss, he mentions Bill isn't as fast as he used to be (more of that backstory I enjoy so much).

Sandman is still not widely recognized on sight; District Attorney Belmont's butler doesn't recognize Sandman by costume until Dian introduces him.

Belmont has three detectives on guard duty in his house, all armed with sub-machine guns. Surely they are not there full-time, but I don't know how Belmont anticipated Sandman coming.

In a nice twist, Dian turns out to be D.A. Belmont's daughter. Unfortunately, as soon as this happens she is "domesticated" and never shows her safecracking skills again. That Wesley falls for her is evident in that he lets her take off his mask and kiss him where her father might see.

Moving on to Barry O'Neill...I'm not sure when Barry went from assisting the French police to working with French espionage, but it seems to have been a gradual transition.  Of course it starts in Paris, because all adventures in France feature Paris. The Village of Vereux is misspelled as Veraux (intentionally?), while Polmere seems entirely fictional.

Barry is able to win initiative against the fake Inspector Le Grand, despite the fact that the doppelganger has a gun trained on Barry's back already; more proof that facing is of little importance for Hideouts & Hoodlums. The doppelganger must have had only a superficial resemblance to Le Grand, as he had to wear a partial face mask to conceal the rest. That the doppelganger is known as Number 37 by his fellow spies suggest that there are at least 37 spies in this spy ring.

Barry scores a direct hit with a grenade and blows up a building. Area of effect damage does not normally need a direct hit, and certainly doesn't for damaging structures. This may be only flavor text, describing how Barry rolled really well for damage.

The spies' car has a concealed radio transmitter in it, which is something good to add to the add-ons list for transport trophies.

(Sandman story read in Golden Age Sandman Archives vol. 1, the rest read at readcomiconline.to.)

Science Comics #1 - pt. 1

This is an exciting day for me; in the past, I have been reading comic books where I was familiar with at least one character from every issue, but now we finally reach Fox's Science Comics, I title I have never sampled before, with forgotten heroes I've never read and, in some cases, never even seen pictures of before!

But, I think I will ultimately wind up feeling disappointed instead of feeling like I've found hidden gems. Because we're starting with the Eagle, a character whose artificial wings make him look more like a hummingbird than an eagle.

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Game mechanics: The Eagle's player will not need to keep a running tally of how much anti-gravitation fluid he has left, as I suspect this is just flavor text explaining how his flight powers work.

As I showed an example of a Supporting Cast Member being used well yesterday (emergency evacuation from a hideout), today we have another good use of one, as a plot hook collector/dispenser.

Here is a clear example of a wandering encounter; something uncommon in normally tightly plotted eight-page adventures. I can't even say that's an example of a drunken hoodlum in the car; the situation as a whole, more so than the occupant, is what the Hero can choose to deal with.

Here the Eagle makes an unusual choice. He could have tried just following the car from the air -- unless his flight power is so slow that he cannot keep up with a car in city traffic. Instead, he decides to target just one mobster and force information out of him. Now, perhaps he chooses this method just to get a feel for the opposition first. If the hoodlum blows his morale save immediately, chances are the Eagle is going to be facing some very low Hit Die mobsters. This could be especially important in a "sandbox" campaign setting where the hideouts of various challenge levels are all preset and the players won't know which are which.

I included this page, not to ridicule it (though it may be deserving), but to discuss old school maps and the scale of hideouts. Bear in mind that, to keep the aesthetic of old school D&D maps, many rooms in the hideout are going to be 20' x 20' at the smallest, and many 30' x 30' or even 40' x 40'. These larger rooms give you a lot more leeway to stage encounters in -- as you see here -- even though the room dimensions are not realistic.

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And now we move on already to the second feature, Electro! This superhero is tied with Timely Comics' robot Electro, who also debuts this same month, and waayy before the Spider-Man villain. 

Here we quickly get his origin story -- Jim Andrews is electrocuted, but instead of killing him he gets superpowers. Right off the bat, he's lifting heavy machinery that looks heavier than a car -- Raise Elephant power?

And he can do the Light spell too, unless we make a power for that.

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Here we find an interesting rationale for why superheroes wear distinctive uniforms -- because they can't live as normal humans anymore, they don't want to dress like them. Doesn't explain why so many maintain secret identities, though.










Of all the fake names for Germany I've seen, Moronia is still my favorite, but Gerlandia might be my second favorite.

Although you don't often hear about FDR's children, Franklin Roosevelt did have a then-33-year-old daughter, Anna. He also had four sons, so it's more than a bit sexist to ignore them and go after the one daughter.

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Here Electro is shown how he flies by riding on electric beams -- not that it makes any sense, but hey, you can explain your powers anyway you want as long as you filled one of your power slots with it.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Pep Comics #2 - pt. 3

We're still watching Sergeant Boyle's one-man war against the Nazis -- not fictional stand-ins either, mind you, but real deal Nazis. By 1940, more and more comic book creators are going to take a more direct position on the War in Europe.

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Game mechanics discussion: I'm less interested in how black eyes are achieved (flavor text) or how Boyle rips down that telephone line pole (wrecking things), but by the double agent's sudden recovery from failing a morale save. I never addressed this before, but should morale results have a random duration? Or did he just get a new morale save when the circumstances changed?

That's a fairly impressive rendering of a battle scene, but it's all flavor text if the Hero is not involved in it. Or is it? Hideouts & Hoodlums does not emulate this sort of large-scale battle well -- I can't think of any RPGs that do -- but what if the game was set aside at this point and the referee and player switched to wargaming to resolve the scenario?

Boyle has until June 14, 1940 to enjoy tranquility in Paris.

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Wowee, look at that Mort Meskin half-splash page! You know, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were still a year away from the iconic work they are best known for, so at this early stage it may be Mort who comes in second behind Eisner for most dynamic page layouts!

Although we aren't given an exact time frame, it seems clear that Press Guardian has been undercover with the bund for some time, possibly weeks.

"Moronia" is a great fictionalized name for Nazi Germany.

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Although this page superficially looks pretty good, the combat is confusing and hard to follow. Press Guardian was shot on the previous page but is fine now. Was he buffed with a defensive power? Wearing a bulletproof vest? Just took minimal damage and shrugged off the hit point loss?

When he's knocked down, is Press Guardian just playing possum until Von Leo turns around, or was PG really stunned?

PG's leap seems like something a normal person could attempt with a skill check.

Calling in the valet who also happens to be a pilot is an excellent use of Supporting Cast.

This is Manly Wade Wellman's Fu Chang. The art by Lin Streeter is amateurish and the story is not much better, though I am intrigued both by the summoning spell, which seems to require a magic potion...

...but more importantly, the tiger-devil. A tiger-devil has a gaze attack that paralyzes...

















...and I think we see here that it can also turn to gaseous form. I'm inclined to give tiger-devils 8 Hit Dice, making them on par with vampires.

Although this fight is said to take seconds in length, in H&H terms it is three turns long, or 90 seconds (in 2nd edition, 180 seconds in 1st edition).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)