Keen Detective Funnies #19 (v. 3 #3) - pt. 2

Yes, Centaur still couldn't afford to color every page! This is still Dan Dennis, FBI, and he's been really slow to get suspicious of the little old lady selling flowers outside the tenement building with a female spy in it he's been watching -- even though it set off red flags for every reader immediately.

Here, at least, he shows good tactics, out-bribing the old lady to get information. 

Invisible ink written on flower petals? Hmm...it seems like petals are too easily destroyed for that to be effective, but it passes comic book logic, I guess. I leave this here for your consideration, when developing coded messages for your own games.

Apparently just holding a gun in the open is cause for a G-Man to belt you in the chops. Works for me! TNT Todd takes down a thug with one punch; the thug must have had very low hit points!

Gee, Todd is pretty brutal. Is he one of the good guys or a D&D murder-hobo? He's also just not very good at anything. He attacked that one guy just for being suspicious, he got himself captured (between pages, I didn't show you that one), instead of ingeniously escaping he has to use threat of force to escape, and then gets caught again right away.

Though, to be fair, that reminds me a lot of my very first Hideouts & Hoodlums playtest. Those poor 1st-level Heroes kept getting knocked down and recaptured left and right. I've tended to go easier on my 1st-level Heroes ever since then.

I have three things to point out about this crudely-drawn page (okay, four, counting that). One, this is not a KKK meeting; these hooded criminals have 1001 written on top of their sheets because they have 1,001 members (we learned this on the previous page I didn't bother sharing). So, every time they recruit or lose a member, they have to all have new monographed sheets made for themselves.

The tiny skull on the desk seems like odd random room dressing, but of course skull decor denotes a bad guy in comics. It would be funny if, based on its position on the desk, if it was just a skull-shaped stapler.

"Give him the gong" took me by surprise, as this is way before I grew up watching The Gong Show on TV. Somehow I'm having trouble finding out how old this saying is, but it seems to predate Chuck Barris.

It's been so long, I had forgotten that we've already seen The Eye several times on this blog already! Here, he's coming to the aid of this paperboy, taken prisoner by three anarchists (they aren't called that, but their cliched behavior indicates it). The Eye either uses Telekinesis or Wreck at Range to destroy the rope -- it really seems unlikely that he/it wastes a powerful Disintegrate just on some rope. 

It's unclear why the Eye is shining light on the boy in panel 5. Is it just a Light spell because the room is dark, or is he/it hypnotizing/charming the boy to make him follow his/its instructions?

Here, The Eye uses Hold Person, which can affect up to three targets, and we see the effect is limp instead of rigid paralysis -- the spell can cause either, as long as the use is consistent. 

We'll jump now into the next story, which stars an old friend of mine (and currently featuring in my Funny Picture Stories anthology!), Dean Denton. This story takes place some months after the most recent one I've republished and -- ah, Harry Francis Campbell, I see you still have a problem with drawing arms that are too short.

The captain is mostly right; the average person cannot dive safely to 500 feet deep underwater. The world record currently stands at 1,082 feet, but that is next to impossible without extensive training for deep sea diving. Indeed, it's dangerous for the average person to dive more than 60' deep. I would say, then, that water pressure can do up to 1 point of damage per 60' past 60' deep, so that at 180' deep a diver takes 1-2 points of damage per melee turn, 1-4 points at 360' deep, and so on.

Compagnie Belgique threw me at first; it looks like a proper name for a company and I looked to see if it was real, but all it means is that Dean went to a Belgian company. 

Harry's work is always full of racism, and Absalom's dialogue here is no exception, but I'm going to give Harry props for at least trying on panel 4. It seems like he put a lot of effort into trying to draw a black man's profile, realistically, perhaps even from a model, instead of the usual caricature. It still came out looking really weird, but that's partly because all the faces around it look rushed and cartoony. In fact, the art overall is just sub-par for Harry. He must have been really rushing towards the deadline on this one.

The end of the story is missing from the copy I have access to, so I never do find out what the helium was for...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Keen Detective Funnies #18 - pt. 3

We're getting to the back of the book now and this month's semi-colored installment of Spy Hunters.

There is a village in Punjab, India called Abdal, but I don't know if that already existed in 1940, or would be a place an American author then would know about. There is an Abdal people in India, Urdu-speaking Muslims, that might be where the author learned the name from.

It's also worth reminding players that this was a time before portable radios, so communication by flashing light off of mirrors was a thing your Heroes might have to employ.

I'm including this page because it's important to note that not everyone everywhere had a radio by 1940. This whole village has no radio, and it's not just natives in the village.

You don't see "Unlimber your machine gun" every day, so I thought I'd include this page, and then look up what "unlimber" means. Apparently, it's a real word that means "detach (a gun) from its limber so that it can be used."

Okay...then I had to look up what a "limber" is. It's 
"a two-wheeled cart designed to support the trail of an artillery piece, or the stock of a field carriage such as a caisson or traveling forge, allowing it to be towed." Huh, who knew?

I'm interested in this page for the map, and wondering how authentic it is. Again, series creator Lochlan Field (according to comics.org) has done his research; Chitral is a real place, both a state and a city that serves as the capital of that state. The Mahi River flows past Chitral at the same angle as that road in the drawing. 

Chitral is significant for the British because of the
Chitral Expedition. It was, according to Wikipedia, "a military expedition in 1895 sent by the British authorities to relieve the fort at Chitral which was under siege after a local coup. After the death of the old ruler power changed hands several times. An intervening British force of about 400 men was besieged in the fort until it was relieved by two expeditions, a small one from Gilgit and a larger one from Peshawar." In other words, a major wargaming scenario.

And this page I'm sharing because it's a rare time when we see first aid being administered (rare, despite how common it is in all Hideouts & Hoodlums scenarios).

Moving on, we have another adventure of the inspiration for the floating eye mobstertype in H&H -- The Eye. We see here that there is a peculiar feature to its invisibility, as one of the workers is able to see it. Does everyone in line of sight need to save vs. spells to see through its special invisibility (the spell does not act this way)?

---

The other reason to share this page is to speculate as to which real country "Osthania" represents. Remember that, this early in 1940, Germany has hardly invaded any countries yet. Further, "bombarded on all sides" seems to only apply to Poland, uniquely caught between Russian and German advances.

---

The Eye can talk! Or is it telepathy, like I had floating eyes use? It's hard to tell because the "science" of word balloons is still in its infancy; there's not even a uniform balloon shape for thought balloons yet, let alone ones that denote telepathy.

Here the Eye demonstrates telekinesis, and not particularly strong telekinesis either, just like the spell. Though maybe he's just being very careful at not setting off the explosives.















"Alfonsky" even seems to confirm this is Poland. But there wouldn't be a Pole in charge of Poland past September 1939, meaning this story had to have taken place earlier than that. The President then was Ignacy Moscicki, which doesn't even rhyme with Alfonsky. Our ambassador to Poland at the time was Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Jr. -- and we know what date he left Poland, September 5, 1939, so we can date this story to the specific day thanks to this page. Anthony even had two daughters, though they were named Mary and Margaret, neither being Sandra.

Further, applying Polish history to this scene explains why the bombers are coming; this would be Day 5 of the German Invasion of Poland.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 3 #1 - pt. 3

This is still Spy Hunters. They may be out in the middle of the Arab world, but I can imagine my players wanting that combat car no matter where they are.

The old man would be called a stool pigeon in an urban campaign. Either way, characters who can share rumors are valuable supporting cast.

Hmm,that's not a very useful map. The markings down in the lower left hand corner look like marsh, but it's highly unlikely there are marshes near this terrain. An oasis, maybe? I also can't find Hardet on a map. I suspect it's a fictional city.

The story isn't very clear on what gave away the ambush. Maybe they were too hasty? Moving at full movement rate is something that might make you lose your surprise turn.

We rejoin The Eye Sees now.  Floating eyes -- based loosely on this feature -- have been in Hideouts & Hoodlums since the beginning. But we can examine those stories more closely now and see what else we can add to them.

The Eye can either use a Disintegrate spell, or can wreck things very thoroughly.

There are several possibilities for this first panel. Floating eyes either have low Armor Class and are hard to hit, have some kind of defensive buffing power, or can use the spell Protection from Normal Missiles.

A car is beyond the limit of the Telekinesis spell for all but high-level magic-users, so this is either proof that they are high-level magic-users, or an example of the Raise Car power, which any low-level superhero can do.

Our last feature is Dean Denton. Doppelgangers were shape-changing mobsters in 1st edition, and were changed in 2nd edition to be the more common archetype of the evil double of one of the Heroes. Here we get the reverse of that -- a good double for one of the villains.

We also get a modified car with a gun slot in the back, and a report of paralytic gas with a remarkable area of effect -- the entire prison!

If you're baffled by how the good double for The Conqueror managed to survive a room pumped full of hydrocyanide gas (hydrocyanide would be hydrogen cyanide, also known as prussic acid), it's because Dean slipped him an antidote in a syringe on the previous page. Dean's antidote seems to deliver immunity for at least 10 minutes.

Dean's list of Supporting Cast Members includes the governor!

And that's it for Keen Detective Funnies. Good bye!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #12 - pt. 3

The Eye apparently also can be invisible and use Phantasmal Image, at least once per day each.

This is Dean Denton, the guy who's gimmick is being a scientific ventriloquist. Here, he's investigating murder via poisoned dart, but the real interesting thing here is the "no electric connections; must be one of the new self-energizing units!" Was that a thing in the 1930s?

Although the feature refers to them as both units and "cells," I think what we're talking about is batteries. Batteries have been around forever. Recharging (what I think "self-energizing" means) have been around since 1859, but they used lead instead of sodium. In fact, I can't find any evidence of sodium-based batteries before the 1960s. So where did this idea come from? I'm stumped, gentle reader!

I had to research this. Light that can translate into sounds has come up before in the early comics, but the technology being referenced had always eluded me -- until now. What is being referenced is the technology of the photophone, which Alexander Bell apparently considered his greatest invention. An actual photophone had a short range of 700 feet, but in comic books a photophone seems much more effective than that.

There's some dressing detail for a modern cult temple here, but mainly I'm just liking this page because the layout is great. I was slow to warm up to Dean Denton, but when the ventriloquism angle is underplayed, I'm really enjoying this feature now.

It's disappointing that Dean doesn't use something more scientific to find the light beam, but at least he smartly tests his hypothesis with one of the photophone receivers before barging in on the hideout.

Cultists are now a mobster type in second edition Hideouts & Hoodlums.

That second panel is such good storytelling. "Another illusion shattered" hints at a tragic backstory and makes you feel for that poor woman, even though you're never going to see her in a comic book again for as long as you live.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #12 - pt. 2

Well...who would have ever expected this trick to actually work? If I were playing State Trooper O'Keefe, I would expect at least a -2 penalty on my save vs. plot to pull off the ol' "fight me with your bare hands" trick.

Despite being knocked out at the same time, these two somehow wake up an hour apart from each other. This not only contradicts H&H healing rules (in both editions), but the hour it takes Shorty to undo his ropes seems unusually long for skill checks to escape bonds (this being a 2nd ed. thing only). Of course, if Shorty is only a supporting cast member, then the Editor can fudge things a little.

It's unclear how jumping off the tables is responsible for knocking the hoodlum out; the height advantage might have given him a +1 advantage to hit, or maybe it just explains how he got his surprise attack. Lighting conditions come up in both editions of H&H, though this instance seems a bit more complicated than most. Being silhouetted with light in the doorway, O'Keefe might have a +1 situational modifier to hit, while being -2 to be hit while partially concealed by dim light and fog (or maybe even -3).

Detective John Degan has skeleton keys (a minor trophy item in both editions) that keeps you from having to make a skill check to unlock doors.

The backstory here is that a museum idol seems to be killing people who went on an expedition to Tibet. Li Wan is apparently able to control the idol when he goes into a trance.

The idol, seen on this previous page, is like a huge bronze golem, only it cannot animate without a "high priest" controlling it with his mind. What constitutes a "high priest" is open to interpretation -- taking a wild stab at it, I'd say any magic-user of 4th level or higher. The golem is strong; it can kill quickly with its claws (2-12 damage?) or by grappling (+2 to hit and damage?). It's tough too; it seems to need magic weapons to harm it and I'd guess it has 10 HD. This one's definitely going in the Mobster Manual!

Steel yourself for some racism here -- we need to talk about yellow peril hoodlums. I put them in 1st edition because I wanted a hoodlum with some cool low-level monk moves. I'm not sure I succeeded at it and, what's worse, the comic books I've read so far don't really support cool oriental fighters. Look how easily Degan takes out these bunglers, who even manage to take out their boss for him (fumble charts for mobsters only, maybe...?).

At last, the debut of The Eye Sees and one of the strangest heroes ever published. The Eye was represented in first edition by the floating eye mobster, and in fact some chroniclers of the Golden Age have described the Eye as precisely that. I think the Eye is really more than that -- some uber-powerful being able to pierce the veil of space-time and look in through the gaps he creates on any situation he chooses to. Of course, the easier explanation for that power is Clairvoyance.

Telepathy is the second power he seems to demonstrate here.

An unusual tidbit -- for some reason the Eye is well-known in Afghanistan?

The mobster calls the Eye's power magnetic -- and first edition did have a Control Magnetism power -- but it could just be Wreck at Range.  Or, since the rest of the Eye's powers seem more like magic, maybe it's just a Lightning Bolt?


It's also worth pointing out that The Eye doesn't seem to be able to Teleport, as he doesn't turn up in the U.S. for weeks after leaving Afghanistan.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)