Adventure Comics #38

Yesterday, I was wondering if surprise should not offer more advantages game mechanics-wise. In "The Original Game" that inspires Hideouts & Hoodlums, the side that has surprise before combat not only gets a free turn to act, but goes first in the next turn of combat. I always thought that was inherently unfair, though, and everyone should have the chance to have the advantage of going first, each turn. But...I am seeing an awful lot of evidence in the comic books of surprise giving Heroes big advantages.

Take, for instance, Inspector Kent of Scotland Yard. In this issue, Kent charges through a secret door, sees the secret plans on the table, runs up, grabs the secret plans, and runs back out through the secret door before anyone can stop him. I don't think all of that should happen in just a surprise turn, but even if Kent has the initiative on the following turn, I'm surprised none of the spies at the table get free back attacks on him when he turns to run.

Tod Hunter has the spell Phantasmal Force/Silent Image cast at him, but sees through it (got a save vs. spells to disbelieve) because the bowmen firing arrows at him make no sound.  Without resolving this storyline, the wizard simply disappears and Tod leaves to go exploring elsewhere. He finds a wanted poster that mentions rape, the first time this subject is ever addressed in a comic book. At the end of the story Tod is shot -- and is never seen again!  Tod Hunter is not the first Hero to have his series canceled in comic book history, but he is the first one to apparently die in his last appearance.

District Attorney Steve Malone is handy in a scenario without being present; he tracks reports of fleeing armored truck robbers by radio, compares them on a map, and tries to predict where they are heading next. This could be a good puzzle for H&H players to try and solve (particularly if there is no wrong answer and the bad guys head where ever the players guess).

Captain Desmo's player might be calling shenanigans in this story -- Desmo and Gabby come across Tartar warriors raiding a village and drive them off. Before the warriors all leave, though, some of them somehow managed to get behind Desmo and snatch Marie, one of his new traveling companions. It's a plot device, clearly, but did not need to be. The Editor could have mapped out the scene, placed all the combatants and noncombatants on the map, and made it clear that Desmo had the double priorities of defending the villagers and his own supporting cast. Could Desmo keep from being outflanked?

Tom Brent is in trouble when he is captured by mobster Vic Gano, but Tom talks his way out of it, pretending to want to join Vic's operation, and thereby gets a new encounter reaction roll out of it, modified by Tom's Charisma.

Vic takes Tom to Vic's boss, or at least a swank apartment where a woman speaks to Vic through a wall. Now, Tom could probably follow up on any number of clues at this point, like finding out who owns that apartment, but Tom chooses instead to get invited to a swank party that night, figuring anyone with that swank an apartment would be invited to it. And turns out to be right!

Skip Schuyler is also captured, but in his case he's tied to a chair and whipped until he has scars on his face. Although rare in comics, maybe there is starting to be some evidence here that there should be a small chance of permanent scarring on Heroes.

Anchors Aweigh reminds us of another use for flashlights: sending Morse code messages to each other (and every Hero seems to know Morse code!).

(Summaries read at DC Wikia)

Adventure Comics #37 - pt. 1

Poor hippo!  I hate this cover...

Barry O'Neill and Fang Gow definitely hate each other. Ol' Fang has Barry in a familiar death trap --  "the 'Water Cure' - drops slowly fall on his forehead, which will eventually cause insanity, then death."  I have never understood how that would actually work, but it's enough of a genre staple that it must at least work in Hideouts & Hoodlums. But how, exactly? Since it's obviously not an impatient man's trap, I'd say the victim would have to save vs. plot every four hours to avoid going temporarily insane. Then the victim would have to save vs. plot every four hours to avoid going permanently insane. Then the victim would have to save vs. plot every four hours to escape death.

Fang Gow's followers are described as bandits.

Cotton Carver and Volor the Dwarf are overwhelmed by the "reed men", so called because their skin is green like reeds. In situations like this, when "new" mobster types are clearly just "reskinned" humans, I do not plan to give them their own stats; reed men sound an awful lot like natives to me.

The bigger issue is, how to overwhelm foes with superior numbers in H&H?  If, say, 100 natives all try to pile onto a Hero, do you only roll to attack for the 9 who can immediately surround him, or take the collective pushing force, weight, and mass of the whole crowd into account? I here propose rolling to attack for all of them, and giving the Hero a -1 penalty to save vs. science for every hit after the first to avoid being pinned. Even high-level Heroes will have to avoid confronting huge mobs now!

Steve Carson of Federal Men is being led out into a field by three gunmen who plan to shoot him down. No slow death trap, no source of cover -- it looks like Steve's Editor has either decided to stop going easy on him or is ready to end the solo campaign! But Steve's player is smart and comes up with a good plan, to ask the hoodlums which is in charge and get them to fight each other. Given the life-and-death nature of the situation, I might just give him a win and let the trick fool the hoodlums, to reward him for his creativity. But if I was feeling less merciful, I might roll a save vs. plot for the hoodlums to determine if they fall for it or not.

Tod Hunter runs afoul of a jealous wizard with a new magic potion -- Potion of Suggestion (makes him vulnerable to everything said to him, as if the Suggestion spell) -- and a new spell, Life Link. I'd say this spell has to be maybe 7th level, as it's pretty powerful; the Magic-User links his life to someone else and if one dies, the other dies too. Tod gets Dispel Magic cast on him too.

Dale Daring seems a little useless in her scenario; she's surrounded by a company of fighters of up to 4th level (F4 = lieutenant). Still, every good die roll can be important in a scenario, and Dale is able to make the listen check that everyone else fails and allows her to hear the poachers coming.

Captain Desmo is hidden world-exploring and encounters a "prehistoric crocodile."  I'm not sure how big it looks in the comic book, but prehistoric crocodiles could weigh up to 8 tons -- we're talking maybe a 30 Hit Die crocodile here. I'm guessing the author had something less dangerous in mind -- maybe a giant crocodile should only go up to 15 Hit Dice? Regardless, Desmo and Gabby wisely run from it.

The human natives need Desmo's help against giants called the Mudas -- and the summary writer wasn't kidding when he called them giants. One of them apparently picks up Desmo in his hand! So we're talking frost giant size here, if not cloud giant size. And yet...the natives manage to bring these giants down with mostly spears? Something seems amiss here to me. I would probably stat the Mudas as hill giants to make them more killable. And I do plan on weeding out some of the giant types from H&H, so it'll be important to watch how many I recognize here in the blog.

Tom Brent, in a rare stand-alone story...is captured by an old man with a shotgun and misses out on most of his own scenario, as the local police catch the smugglers who threatened him. If you ever have a session of H&H that goes badly for you, you can take some consolation if it didn't go Tom Brent-level bad.

(Summaries read at DC Wikia)

Adventure Comics #36 - pt. 1

We rejoin Barry O'Neill's supporting cast, Jean Le Grand, collapsing from exhaustion, heat, and dehydration in the desert. It has already been pointed out on this blog that Hideouts & Hoodlums has no game mechanic for exhaustion, and that environmental damage should be accounted for by hit point loss. Does this story make me want to revisit that? No, because unusual effects can be assigned to supporting cast always at the discretion of the Editor. If it was the hero, Barry, suffering -- or more examples to that effect -- then I might need to work harder at emulating those conditions.

Barry O'Neill goes in disguise and it's a merchant disguise he's apparently worn before. Maybe disguises could be treated like outfits that can just be bought -- merchant disguise, old lady disguise, hoodlum disguise, etc.

Cotton Carver is still on a lost world adventure. He enters the domain of the White Warriors -- some pretty wimpy warriors who still have some remarkable advanced technology for some reason. They have paralyzing ray guns (though maybe not all their soldiers do), and some of them ride around in something called a "Vicla" -- a red tornado (no, not the Red Tornado, she comes later!) -like ...thing that you float inside and control by thought. The Vicla goes fast, but not extremely fast (maybe a 24 Move?), and seems to offer little cover (soft cover?) to the occupant.

Cotton also encounters a dwarf that sounds like he's straight out of Tolkien's Middle Earth.

Tod Hunter moves through a trapped temple in his adventure. One of the traps is a heated floor ("Volcanically" heated -- so hot enough to do 1-10 damage? I recently used a similar trap in one of my home campaigns, where the floor magically burst into fire under people's feet if two or more people entered it).

Tod runs into a magic-user, but we have to wait until the next installment to find out what spells the magic-user can cast.

No game referee likes it when the players bring along too much help. A squad of cops or a couple of G-Men take some of the element of danger off of the heroes and makes the game less challenging for the players. Dale Daring and Don Brewster take that notion and crank it up a notch when they have trouble with a bunch of ivory smugglers -- and recruit an entire Naval regiment to aid them (Dale must have rolled 12 on her encounter reaction check!). The Editor can do two things at that point; he can either kiss his scenario good-bye, or he can up the threat level. In this story, the smugglers -- who had a hard enough time with Dale and Don in the past four installments of this story -- suddenly have mines they can use to try and sink the approaching naval vessels.

Don and Dale also use a cabin cruiser, which makes another transportation item that needs to be statted.

Captain Desmo flies into the Himalayas this time and encounters a new threat we haven't seen before in comics -- cold damage to planes. It's true, I have considered assigning hit points to vehicles for vehicular combat. I don't know how that would work yet. Hit points for living things is based on the mechanic of 1 hit point = 30 lbs of weight (roughly), but that would make for cars with 100 hp!  Maybe the weight allowance would double for each hp -- so 1 hp = 30 lbs, 2 hp = 60 lbs, 3 hp = 120 lbs, and so on.  That would put the average 1940 car around 8 hp, but a small passenger plane would be far more vulnerable with 4-5 hit points.

Regardless, another way to deal with this would be to simply tell Capt. Desmo's player that ice is forming on the wings, and ask him to save vs. plot or something bad might happen because of this.

Desmo hires guides and porters once his mountain trek starts. Obviously, porters are there to keep heroes from traveling encumbered, while guides give you extra rolls for noticing things along the way, like tracks, concealed cave mouths, and so on.

The footing is treacherous on the mountain, though. There is probably a 2 in 6 chance of someone falling into a snow-concealed crevice (like Irma Gladstone almost does in the story), so the more guides and porters you bring, the more likely you are that someone is going to fall, in that circumstance.

(Summaries read from DC Wikia)
  

Adventure Comics #35

In this installment of Barry O'Neill, Barry dives underwater and the bad guys assume he's dead because he stayed under so long. Villains seem to be terrible at underestimating how long Heroes can stay underwater -- so much so that they should have to save vs. plot to avoid making this cliched mistake.

Doctors are treated as a Lawful mobster-type in Supplement V: Big Bang because they have special abilities in comics -- one found here is the ability to quickly concoct antidotes. Dr. Bonfil crafts an antidote for Fang Gow's hypnosis drug in less than a day.

Shades of the Savage Land!  Cotton Carver's adventures debut in this issue. When forced to land on Antarctica, Cotton is saved by a group of people from the lost world of Mayala, a tropical valley long ago found and settled by both the Mayans and Incas (who are rival tribes here now). Though the natives have seen gunpowder weapons before, they have none of their own and Cotton's six-shooters make him a fearsome foe for the natives (and awfully handy for a solo campaign!).

It is unclear how Mayala can only be entered by swimming underwater, if the valley is open to the sky -- unless it is assumed that Mayala is a "hollow world" setting like Pellucidar.

Sleeping gas takes out an entire bank-full of people in this installment of Federal Men. This will be neither the first nor the last instance of sleeping gas being shown to be much more effective in the comics than it is in real life. The amnesia-suffering Steve Carson seems to have no trouble acquiring this super-sleeping gas, as well as gas masks for his gang, despite the absence of such things from the starting equipment list. Though perhaps we are just not privy to the separate adventure Steve went on to find these trophy items.

In Dale Daring, Don and Dale seek shelter in a cave from an approaching storm. The weird thing about storms is that, in real life, everyone rushes out of them, but there is little in-game reason to do so. Is your Hero going to take damage from getting wet? Is the Editor going to pull out all the stops on that storm and start pummeling Heroes with lightning strikes? Probably neither -- and yet Heroes should have to save vs. plot to resist the urge to seek shelter.

Tod Hunter becomes the second Hero in comics to suffer amnesia (since the other is Steve Carson, they both happen in the same comic book!). Maybe there needs to be a 1% chance every time someone is reduced to zero hit points and recovers of suffering temporary amnesia.

Large gorillas are strong enough to wreck things, at least against doors.

Both the Dale Daring and Rusty and His Pals installments revolve around finding something in the back of a cave -- a pile of stolen ivory and a secret door to a hidden lair respectively. It makes me think Hideouts & Hoodlums needs a random table for random cave contents.

In Rusty and His Pals, the villains have a seaplane. The villains also benefit from the Heroes lighting a fire in the cave, serving as a reminder for the Editor that any light source the Heroes rely on can be seen by mobsters some distance away (and vice versa).

(Summaries read at DC Wikia)

Adventure Comics #34

Fang Gow purchases a mind control drug in this installment of Barry O'Neill. The drug has to be injected (at least in this form). Worth discussing here is the nature of mind control and what it can and cannot force someone to do. Characters in stories with their minds controlled, even supporting cast, often shake off the effects at the last moment for maximum dramatic effect. In this case, it is notable that Inspector Le Grand is not able to shake off the effect. Evidence of saving throws?

In Tom Brent, the First Mate gets shot when Tom dodges a bullet -- proof both of the save vs. missiles rule, and the dangers of shooting into a melee. The story also involves a shipboard mutiny...Hideouts & Hoodlums briefly touches on Loyalty as a game mechanic, but it is basically just treated as Morale under another name. Loyalty might need to be expanded on in 2nd edition, particularly in terms of how it could cause mutinies among supporting cast members.

Steve Carson of Federal Men goes on a car chase. I've talked before about using hit points and combat for ending car chases, but there needs to be a competing mechanic of evasion at work too. Can Steve make an evasion roll before his opponents shoot up his car? I don't want evasion to just be a single roll, though, because that's boring. Maybe evasion should work in degrees, so the first successful roll moves you from short range to medium, the next roll could move you from medium to long range - or back to short range if you bungle the roll. It needs more thought.

Dale Daring and her boyfriend encounter a trap that consists of a pit/crevice. The unusual thing here is that the pit is not covered or concealed in any way, but the Heroes may fall into the pit because the uneven floor around it is not safe to walk on.

Tod Hunter faces cannibals. I had once considered treating cannibals as its own mobster type, but decided to lump them under Natives instead. There is also an 8' gorilla in this story. In the normal/large/huge/giant categories for animal-mobsters, would an 8' gorilla be large or huge? I would think it would fall somewhere in between, but would probably side conservatively with making it a "large ape", so that "giant ape" could still be something more King Kong-sized.  Also, we know from this story that apes should get a crushing hug attack and a bite attack.

In The Gold Dragon -- we finally see the gold dragon. It's been a long set-up for this (this is the 29th episode), so much so that this is not our first dragon in comics at this point, or even our second. It is the first dragon to fit the dragon types found in H&H, though the gold dragon has, luckily, always been found in the game since Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.

Anchors Aweigh reminded me of several issues this month. One is keeping track of ammo -- because being on your last bullet should be a suspenseful moment for every Fighter relying on guns. Two is fatigue from running. H&H has a fatigue rule that is more combat-oriented; it needs to apply to running as well. Three is when Marshall's last shot fails to frighten off the natives because of their large numbers -- morale needs to be modified so that number encountered affects morale saves.

(Summaries from DC Wikia)

New Adventure Comics #31 - part 2

Don Coyote is another gag strip, and another one of those "I thought I'd never use this strip as an example" situations.  When Don is challenged to a duel, he is given a knife, while his opponent plans to use a spiked mace, or morning star.  There's also a peculiar encounter with a skunk that Don refers to as a "wood pussy" ...which possibly only makes sense in the context that this is a pseudo-medieval setting and skunks, non-indigenous to Europe, would have gone unrecognized there.

This installment of Tod Hunter, Jungle Master, starts with Tod and company, very sensibly, planning shifts of watch duty for the night while they camp outdoors. Have to watch out for those wandering encounter checks!  They don't encounter anything all night, but they do meet two men on an elephant the next day. Isn't it often like that with random encounter rolls?

In The Golden Dragon, Ken Cockerill, comes to in a prison cell and gets led through an interesting-looking hideout. Outside the cell is a "vast shadowy hall, with towering sculptured forms on the walls. At the far end was something that looked like a huge altar, extending the entire width of the building." The altar has a writing desk by it. On the side of the hall is a "sculpted doorway" that "led into a sort of grotto, lighted by a small low altar covered with candles."  The Golden Age habit of including descriptive narrative captions was unnecessary in illustrated stories, but is gold for using as boxed text to read during adventure scenarios!

In the grotto, Ken sees an illusion, but it's unclear if his captors are casting Phantasmal Force, or if this is some feature specific to the grotto.

In Rusty and His Pals, at the center of the island is a high stone wall, probably meant to be the remnants of a dead volcano. Inside its circumference are trees, a pond, and a two-story house. The house is one big prison cell; all the outside doors lock from the outside, and apparently the windows can't be opened (or easily shattered, though Rusty and his pals don't seem to have thought to try that yet).

Despite the care Fred Guardineer has put into Anchors Aweigh, this strip has been relegated to the back of the issue. Red is captured in this issue and is brought before a hooded man who is apparently the "Diablo" he's been looking for. Interesting, Diablo will not speak directly to Red, to keep Red from having the chance of recognizing his voice.

Diablo's bad guys have a sneaky idea -- they tell Red at knife point that he has to read something aloud because they have members who might recognize his voice, but it's a trick to record his voice so they can use it to lure Don into a trap.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

New Adventure Comics #30

We rejoin Don in Anchors Aweigh as he's lowering himself into the dark hold of a ship and praying "he wouldn't land on anything sharp cornered."  It's true that, while the base damage for falling is 1-6 points per 10' fallen, the Editor is free to lower this for falling on soft terrain, or raise it for falling on sharp, or otherwise more dangerous, terrain.

In the hold of the ship, Don takes a quick look around and manages to appraise the value of the cartridges being smuggled in the hold at a quarter of a million dollars. The first edition Hideouts & Hoodlums rules say nothing about appraisal (the implication being that everyone could do it automatically), but the second edition will treat it as a basic skill everyone has a chance to perform.

The first sailor who comes down into the hold is said to have "the agility of a monkey" and "runs down the rope ladder".  I'm tempted to add sailor as a mobster type, with the ability to climb up and down ropes and ladders faster than an ordinary person (or just give that ability to pirates).

In Tom Brent's adventure, Tom practices that most important of player tips -- when you have important papers to deliver, meet your contact first without the papers on you, in case something goes wrong.

When Tom tries to escape from the clutches of the fake consul, a guard has his rifle trained on Tom. Tom is somehow able to pick up the other guard and throw him at the rifleman before he can fire a shot. Now, it's possible that Tom won surprise, got a free action (the grapple), and then won initiative on the first regular turn of combat. Or, Tom picked up the first guard during his first turn, but the rifleman refused to fire because firing into a melee has a chance of hitting your ally if you miss.

Tom is captured again and tortured for information -- specifically, he is hung from his thumbs and whipped while shirtless. I would not expect an Editor to have to go into that much detail; torture can be glossed over and summarized by a save vs. science to resist. I would, ironically, require this save once per 4-hour "rest" turn.

In the adventure of Steve Carson of Federal Men, our story opens on the trial of three men accused of treason, with the judge saying "I regret that the sentence for treason carries only a twenty year penalty!"  Actually, according to the U.S. Constitution, treason can be punished with death. It is, however, appropriate for the courts to be more lenient in a comic book universe, as this allows a lot more repeat appearances by the same villains (something that will become more of an issue starting with the Silver Age).

A wanted poster shown to Steve shows a $500 reward for a wanted criminal.

When Steve is about to lose a fight, he is saved by a boy who throws a baseball and beans the mobster in the back of the head. I would normally allow a full grown man to do 1-3 points of damage with an improvised missile like a baseball; for a half-pint, I would probably restrict damage to 1 point of damage. Of course, the mobster could be on his last hit point from the unarmed combat with Steve before the baseball hits him.

Later, another half-pint Junior Federal Man thwarts an attempt on his own life by having rigged an alarm system for his bedroom -- anyone climbing the drain pipe outside his window pulls a string that causes a ball to drop and land on the boy's sleeping head to wake him -- after which the boy can bash the intruder with a baseball bat while the intruder is prone and hanging from the window ledge. If this comic strip -- and the movie Home Alone -- has taught us anything, it's that half-pints should be good at setting traps and alarms.

Nadir, Master of Magic, deals with river pirates in his adventure. They are well-equipped pirates, piloting speedboats and armed with sub-machine guns; they might be better statted as robbers than as pirates, since robbers tend to be more hi-tech. Nadir defeats them with a Charm Person spell on their leader, who Nadir gets to sound a retreat.

Later, Nadir is ambushed by peculiar attackers using a noose. I would say that a noose could do normal 1-6 points of damage on a hit, but only if the hit occurs during a surprise attack. If the victim is somehow unable to free himself, he will continue to take damage each combat turn.

Cal n' Alec is a joke strip about two old prospectors, but they remind me of played characters in this installment. Frustrated that their mine was buried in a dynamite explosion, they briefly decide to swear off prospecting. This can happen to players too, who can feel disgruntled by too much failure in a game scenario. In the end, though, Cal and Alec bite on their next plot hook when a stranger runs up and hands them a map -- and stalwart players will often bite on that next plot hook too.

Incidentally, I'm not keen on preparing any game mechanics to determine the extent of a cave-in when a mine is hit by dynamite. There just needs to be things for the Editor to wing as he goes along.

Another example is The Adventures of Desmo and Gabby.  Gabby loses his wallet during a fight. There does not need to be a game mechanic to check for seeing if you lose something from your pockets during fights. Sometimes, players just need to accept that their Editor has a story-based reason to make something happen.

Tod Hunter, Jungle Master, finds rubies worth $5,000 each, which is 10 times what I guessed rubies were valued at in Book III: Underworld and Metropolis Adventures (in the gem table previously found in Book II: Mobsters and Trophies).  Guess I may have to revisit that!

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

New Adventure Comics #29

Anchors Aweigh! picks up where it left off last issue, with our Don Winslow-clone investigating El Diablo. El Diablo has somehow slipped poison slips of paper to Don Kerry's prisoners and the chief suspect is an old friend of Don's. This is a good position to put your players in -- do they stand by their Hero's supporting cast, or turn on them when things look bad?

Later, Don and Red are listening to clues from a nearby group of sailors in a joint, but one of the sailors notices them listening. Hideouts & Hoodlums definitely has a game mechanic for hearing noise, but not for the reverse -- and it does not make sense to simply reverse the mechanic (it should be easier to hear noise through a door, for example, than to hear someone listening through a door). The Editor may have to play this one by ear -- are circumstances right to be observed listening? -- and then resolve it with a save vs. plot for the Hero.

This story also gives us an explanation for why not to have hoodlums immediately use guns in a fight -- for fear that the sound will bring the police.

Don overhears the name of a ship captain who might be in league with El Diablo. But how to find the ship captain? Don asks around, claiming to have a message for the captain from El Diablo. It's a clever and daring plan -- exactly the kind that Editors should give a good chance to work.

Tom Brent's adventure has a crew mutiny, two jewel thieves, a diamond worth $50,000, and a suspect who turns out to be a police inspector doing his own secret investigation. I particularly like this last wrinkle. Could it be a cure for Heroes who shoot first and ask questions later?

The next adventure of Steve Carson of Federal Men is an unusual one in that it takes place just before a Presidential inauguration ceremony -- which means it took place two years earlier in 1936 or two years later in 1940!  Time can be a fluid thing in a roleplaying campaign -- it can take place over days or it can take place over years, but generally campaigns follow sequential time. This does not always need to be the case, as I wrote about in Supplement V: Big Bang.

Nadir, Master of Magic, continues to show an aversion to actually using magic. He gets through a locked door, not with a spell, but with a skeleton key. He gets around by "powerful sedan" instead of by spell.  Instead of turning invisible, he hides behind curtains. He does cast a Detect Thoughts spell.

Captain Desmo starts this new adventure by flying overhead when he sees travelers being attacked. Luckily he has two grenades for his sidekick to toss over the side of his plane. Then Desmo and Gabby use the oldest trick in the book, disguising themselves (in this case wearing Arabic robes, even though this is supposed to be India) so they can get in to see the big boss. The boss is guarded by a fighter who must be at least 9' tall (I would stat him as an ogre, then).

In Tod Hunter, Jungle Master, the primitives we met last time are called tribesmen here (a better name than natives or savages, maybe?). From the arena we observed last time, the prison cells are only reachable via an underground stream that requires Tod and crew to travel by raft. Past the stream is a maze of tunnels that seem to go on for miles. And yet, the trip back to the throne room seems to take no time at all -- perhaps they find a shortcut back. In the throne room are large urns, axes and spears mounted on the walls, hanging masks, and statues -- including a giant statue of the tribe's bald, fanged god that must be at least 30' tall. Tod is able to climb the statue and find a secret door leading through the statue's arm. The statue (I believe we learned it was wooden last time) is hollow and can be navigated inside by ladder. There is a secret room in the head where a crazy old man with a scimitar can speak through amplifiers and imitate the god.

Dale Daring's boyfriend Don is able to conceal a sub-machine gun under a cloak.

In The Golden Dragon, it's very unclear if the men are attacked by undead skeletons, or men dressed to look like skeletons, Scooby Doo-style. Regardless, a woman present is so frightened that she is paralyzed with fright. I'm thinking that everyone, even Heroes, will have to make morale saves when first encountering the undead, and non-Heoes will have to make morale saves when first encountering people pretending to be undead.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

New Adventure Comics #28 - part 2

Tod Hunter, Jungle Master, and his English gentleman sidekick Tommy, are exploring a temple hideout. In a room concealed behind a curtain is a lit and smoking incense brazier and a raised dais used, not for sacrifice, but for sleeping by the high priestess. While Zara the High Priestess wields a scimitar, her followers (there are at least eight of them) fight with primitive spears and hand axes (and half of them only wear loin clothes).

The sacrificial room is a huge chamber with a tall wooden idol carved to look like a sitting demon -- not too far different from the iconic cover of the 1978 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook!  The corridors are lit with torches held in sconces. A corridor leading from the sacrificial room runs to a circular arena that can be watched through barred gates. The entrance is trapped so that a steel shutter falls down over the entrance behind them, and then a lion can be released into the arena. Because the High Priestess is watching, this must be a deathtrap.

Dale Daring is in need of rescue in the mountain hideout of a bandit chieftain. Because the bandits are Asian, her boyfriend Don decides to disguise himself by staining his skin yellow and putting transparent tape around his eyes to make them almondine. And because this is a comic book, the disguise has a good chance of working.

We also see a torture chamber with a rack and a suspended cauldron for boiling oil.

Detective Sergeant Carey of the Chinatown Squad is a bit of a jerk. Instead of investigating their suspect's room himself, he sends his Supporting Cast Member,"Sleepy", to do it. Sleepy is actually fairly clever; when confronted by the suspect, Sleepy pretends to be a two-bit crook eager to make any kind of a deal to avoid a "fourth offense" and a lifetime sentence (it would be interesting, if I had the time, to investigate which states had four-strikes-and-you're-out laws for repeat offenders in the 1930s).

Carey is a bit of a risk-taker too. He suspects dope is being smuggled in a coffin, so to prove it, he throws pepper into the coffin and waits to hear a sneeze...which would have been awkward if any part of his theory had turned out to be wrong.

The Robin Hood serial continues to be surprisingly accurate. Friar Tuck fights with a broadsword and a buckler (small round shield), both of which would have been common fighting tools in the 1100s, when Robin Hood supposedly lived. It does suggest, in this installment, that hound dogs should have good Armor Classes, as the Friar's hound dogs are shown being able to dodge arrows.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)