All-American Comics #11

The lead feature is still Red, White, and Blue, written by Superman's creator, Jerry Siegel. Like Bart Regan, Spy, the highlight of this feature is the fun romance between the lead characters, Red and Doris. Their interplay keeps the story light even when the subject is the murder-disguised-as-suicide of a U.S. Senator. The Senator's name is Clifton A. Carter, which is interesting because Lyndon Johnson would later have an aide named Clifton C. Carter.

The villain is a Mr. I.M. Glib, a refreshingly friendly mad scientist with an invisible car -- the same gimmick Siegel had recently used with the Ultra-Humanite against Superman. Glib has clothes that make him invisible too, and we even get an explanation for how that works; electrical impulses received by silver wire sewn through the suit cause it to become invisible. Unusual in a story, the Heroes decide to share this secret with the government and ask them to make more invisibility suits. It's unclear how this makes everyone wearing invisibility suits able to see each other.

Glib is foolishly killing senators because they won't agree to give him $1 billion for his invisibility invention; if he'd just taken out a patent and a bank loan, he might have made a billion dollars legitimately.

Hop Harrigan starts with a pretty exciting take-off; Hop's plane is parked on a frozen river, and has to take off just as the ice starts cracking underneath the plane. Mechanically, the Editor could decide this with a skill check for Hop, or maybe even an initiative roll to see if Hop can act before the ice does.

Adventures in the Unknown still has Ted and Alan 1 million years in the past, where they encounter ape men. One million years ago there were several real-life contenders for these "ape men," including neanderthals, homo erectus, and homo antecessor. The ape men use cunning tactics, having some of them roll around on the ground as a distraction while others jump down from the trees from behind. The ape men are also advanced enough to make cages and thatched roof huts.

The Scribbly installment clearly is taking place on New Year's Eve, 1939/New Year's Day, 1940.

In the reprinted newspaper feature Ben Webster, Ben goes on a trip in the first RV (recreational vehicle) in comic books.

In Gary Concord, the Ultra-Man, Gary is captured by Stella Tor, the wicked (and wickedly hot) dictatrix who has stormed Gary's lab with her men and found Gary (and his sidekick, Guppy) seemingly dead, but actually being revived from poison gas while in a comatose state. Recovering, Gary locks a door between them and Stella's guards' futuristic weapons are not able to get them through a steel door.

When Stella escapes, Gary's vibra-detector is able to hear the hum of her rocketship in the distance, and can tell it is hers and not anyone else's rocketship, apparently. Gary's helio-shaft is a rocket that is fired out of a giant cannon, making it faster than Stella's rocket. There's a catch to using it, though -- it can't be steered but will crash when it eventually lands. Rather than take her alive, Gary fires a giant bolo at her rocket; the bolo is made from "elasteel" with "destroynamite" on either end.

Luckily, the helio-shaft lands in water. Unluckily, it lands inside the territory controlled by Stella's father. Gary is captured, and observes first hand the flying guns and destroynamite torpedoes that the Tor Army is amassing. Gary's cell is protected by "ray-eyes" (electric eye beams?), electrified bars, and armored guards. In fact, one poorly drawn guard in the background might be wearing some kind of powered armor.

(Read at fullcomic.pro) 

All-American Comics #10

Wrapping up this month's Red, White, and Blue...

Doris distracts the Master with a flash of light reflected off of her compact mirror so Red can paste him one. I don't think we need any game mechanics for that other than a simple initiative roll. If the players won, then Doris' distraction worked.

A lot of the Mutt & Jeff's featured in All-American Comics are reprints of comics already licensed to earlier comic books, but this one in particular I don't remember. It features a goat -- that very important animal featured in so many gag strips -- but maybe takes the cake for most exaggerated abilities for a goat. This time, the goat can not only push a car with its headbutts, but it eats half the car.  As crazy-powerful as goats are in joke strips, I'm thinking of pushing them up to 1+2 Hit Dice, and let them do 2-8 points of damage with a headbutt, limited to when they are combining pushing with damage (and 1-6 otherwise).

In Popsicle Pete (they wisely removed the The Adventures of part, since there's never any adventure), we learn that a plate of spaghetti could sell for a quarter at a restaurant, but for 45 cents if there is live music.

In Adventures in the Unknown, Ted and Allan continue to encounter anachronisms, as an early man is attacked by a triceratops that went extinct 67 million years earlier. Further, even though "tri" is right there in the name, the triceratops is consistently drawn with four horns. And, of course, they kill it, not caring if it is the last of its species. They also produce a medical kit/first aid kit, which they never listed having with them before. I wonder if I should be more lax on equipment lists and let players save vs. plot to have any common tool they need when they need it.

We learn that Ted's full name is Theodore Magroodle Dolliver. That doesn't make me like him any better.

With nothing but time on their hands, Ted and Alan begin a three-day trip of rafting upstream just to see where the river begins. While rafting, they are attacked by a huge river python -- and this might actually bear out, paleontology-wise, as pythons would likely have evolved by then. Now, aquatic pythons...that was probably an evolutionary dead end. Comically, when Ted is constricted, Alan keeps trying to shoot it with his pistol, regardless of how good a chance he has of hitting Ted by mistake! When Alan fishes Ted out of the water and pumps water from his lungs, we're reminded that -- back then -- people though you should lay someone on their stomach in that situation.

When Scribbly takes a week's vacation up north in the country, his mother gets fed up with his younger brother and mails the tyke to Scribbly. That might seem like child endangerment today, but apparently this was an actual thing that used to happen until 1913!

Lastly, in Gary Concord the Ultra-Man, we learn that they have "ray eye recorders" in the 23rd century, or what we would call security cameras today. "Televisors" are what they call television. An "electron racer" is a fast personal plane, but maybe that is a make and model (the 2236 Electron Racer)? Electron Racers are faster than cosmic ray craft (another type of personal plane, but a two-seater). Both look like jets. After being shot out of the sky, Gary and his sidekick Guppy encounter a land-tank (suggesting there are also sea-tanks or air-tanks) equipped with a raygun in its 180-degree top turret. When Stella Tor divebombs them after they take control of the tank, she drops poison bombs from the Electron Racer (probably not standard issue and something she loaded in herself).

(read at fullcomic.pro)