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.)

Zip Comics #3 - pt. 3

We're still looking at Nevada Jones, and there's a few interesting details here. One is the entrance to the hideout, only accessible from a narrow ledge. This would make for a challenging encounter area if the entrance was guarded.

The way the horse is saddled is an interesting and unusual clue that something is wrong in this scenario.

That's some Spider-Man-level agility Nevada Jones shows there -- he doesn't actually fall 100' into the saddle (the man and horse would both take 5-30 points of damage and Jones would have no testicles left), he appears to be doing something even more impossible. He falls 100' until he's next to the saddle, then grabs onto it and swings himself onto it.

The only way I would allow this to happen in Hideouts & Hoodlums is if he was using the mysteryman class, or the old cowboy class from 1st edition, had a lot of unused stunts (5+?), and offered to spend all of them on this stunt.

If you plan on introducing a non-Hero character earlier in the scenario so they can turn up later as the surprise villain, it probably is not a good idea to use an obvious name for them, like Doc Poser. 

 

We're going to jump into the next feature in progress, Kalthar the Giant Man, King of the Jungle. I've written before about Kalthar and how his height seems to be no more than flavor text explaining his powers, like in panel 4 when we learn Kalthar's flesh becomes like granite while he's bigger. So his density increases even faster than his size? Is that why he tops out at 15' tall, because if he grew larger he'd be too dense to move? It also tells us, from a game mechanics perspective, that he's activated his Nigh-Invulnerable Skin power.

White men and guns. Ugh! And what's up with how that gun's discharge is drawn in panel 8? It always looks like it's backfiring.

Taking weeks to recover from 1-6 points of damage doesn't track with how healing works in H&H, though it's possible Kalthar is just enjoying being nursed. 

Interestingly, Kate taught Kalthar the meaning of "golden" and "tablets," but failed to teach him when to use "I" vs. "me." 

Kybys is fictional, as you would expect from a lost city. 

The two lions are a wandering encounter, and it's interesting that only the male lion chooses to fight, as if random encounter reactions were rolled for each of them.

The good look we get at Kybys, with its domes and spires, begs the question - who built it, and when? It looks vaguely Islamic, and more medieval than prehistoric. A written language is more likely to have been composed later rather than earlier. Why gold tablets instead of paper or parchment, though? 

I might need a new power called Danger Sense for superheroes that stops them from being surprised -- though we don't get to see it in use here, as Kalthar is surprised before he can activate any new powers.

That stonework looks medieval to me, and the Romans used lots of domes. Could these be Roman ruins? 

"Science, ha ha! Gravity is hilarious!"

Panels 7 and 8 look pretty sexy -- until you think about how Kalthar lives in the jungle and probably has lice in that long hair of his. You better hope that's a grain you pulled out of his hair, Kate!

Game mechanics-wise, there is no reason why Kalthar should need the grain to activate his powers or wreck things, except that if he established that once then his Editor can demand consistency from him. 

Kalthar uses Improvised Missile Weapon to catch the dome and hurl it back, but either a very high level version of the power, or the tower was full of dynamite. Check out that explosion! 

We're going to end this post with one glance at the next story, War Eagles. I don't have much to say about this page except that I'm pleased that the activities of the two heroes have consequences, in this case, the Germans flying in larger numbers to defend their planes. I expect there to be a lot of this during the course of an H&H campaign, to the point where history itself could be changing. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 4

We're still on the War Eagles feature of this issue. This is the first guy named Kermit to ever appear in comics and, curiously, we never see him again past panel 4.

Tom's big plan is to gamble on a good encounter reaction roll from General Worth. He gets a great roll too, since Worth gives them a promotion and carte blanche freedom to act without supervision. It's a sweet deal, but perhaps a necessary one -- I've never had players interested in a military-themed campaign where they have to take orders all the time.









The Supermarine Spitfire, or Vickers Spitfire, was a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after WWII, and was produced in greater numbers than any other British aircraft. Beside them are the Hawker Hurricane, a British single-seat fighter aircraft of the 1930s–'40s. It was overshadowed in the public consciousness by the Supermarine Spitfire's role during the Battle of Britain in 1940, but the Hurricane inflicted 60% of the losses sustained by the Luftwaffe in the engagement, and fought in all the major theatres of the Second World War, all according to Wikipedia.

I love the composition and art on this page and wonder what Ed Smalle had for photo references.

There are two "stunts" in play on this page. One is luring a plane into an ambush. Normally, your allies have no chance to surprise an opponent if they've already seen one of you, but that's assuming normal on-the-ground conditions where someone can turn and look in any direction. Visibility in aerial combat is really restricted to your facing, so I would roll for surprise for each individual plane.

The other stunt is forcing one plane to crash into another. This could conceivably happen on the ground too, as ramming damage with a vehicle should automatically force a morale save. If you keep getting "run away" results, and box the person in so he has nowhere else to go, he's going to run into someone from his own side. Although, on the ground, you might get a surrender result too -- something someone in a plane can't easily do.

Panel 1 reminds us Editors of something important: if the bad guys see you use smart tactics, they will try to use those same tactics too.

"Prop shattered" is an aerial combat complication.

My final observation from this page is that Tom's chances don't look too good...

Mort Meskin's Captain Valor returns this month and, while Mort still isn't up to his full artistic powers, there is still a lot to like about this Terry and the Pirates clone. You just have to get past some really bright yellow skin to get to it.

Hop-Lung's party on top of the ledge looks even in number to Valor's down below, but still has three advantages: height advantage gives them a +1 bonus to hit, the rocks along the top of the ledge give them hard cover, -2 to be hit, and the loose boulders give them potent missile weapons. The advantage Valor's party has is they are armed with rifles, with a longer short range, while it looks like Hop-Lung's party is only armed with pistols.

Anyway, what I like about this is that Occupied China is a dangerous place for low-level Heroes, where any act of defiance (like stealing an officer's car) has dangerous consequences. It also inverts how Alignment works; under these circumstances, a Lawful Hero can work with a pirate, because the pirate is an outlaw for defending his homeland. The Lawful Hero can steal an officer's car, because is strikes a blow against the invaders. The Chaotic guys aren't the only ones who get to have fun and go crazy in this setting.

I also like how Valor gets a fresh plot hook immediately upon finishing his first one, in panel 5. That's efficient storytelling/game play!

Are the sentries good shots? Based on what, exactly? Two of them are shooting at the car at short range, before it's had a chance to accelerate very fast, and are still missing.

In a bit of meta-gaming, Valor's player has already won over Angie and Ronny as loyal supporting cast members thanks to good recruitment dice rolls, but in-game is still pretending Valor wants to drop them off at the consulate.

Wait..where was all that dynamite and hand grenades? Sitting in the trunk of the officer's car?? No wonder the sentries didn't want to hit the car while it was still too close!

Valor throws that smoke bomb awfully close to himself. Good thing he's really sure it's a smoke bomb and not an incendiary bomb (skill check to identify, or is it written on the bomb?)!

If you're confused by the sides in this conflict, the bandits are still bad guys because they're attacking white people. The pirates are considered neutral because they only attack other Chinese people. The Japanese are the main bad guys, and every Chinaman is either a bandit, pirate, or working for the Japanese.

It really looks like Ronny's not going to survive that second tier of panels, but it must be a longer fuse on it than it appeared.

It's pretty dramatic, having to surrender the outer walls and retreat into a wooden cabin. If reinforcements had not arrived, I don't think they would have held out long in there. Once the invading bandits get up to the windows, the people inside lose all their cover bonuses (unless there's enough furniture inside to hide behind too).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 3

We're going to spend some more time on this issue even though, let's face it, it was really only worth reading for Steel Sterling.

We're still on Nevada Jones and...Dice is okay with serving a masked man in his saloon, but it's the "halfbreed" he has trouble with? And this is doubly weird because this is the only time in the story Little Joe is referred to as a half-breed. Is he really only half-Hispanic, or was the author so racist he assumed Hispanics were all half-breeds?

But perhaps the toughest question I have about this page is what an "alkali eater" is. I had to do some reading for this one and, apparently, "alkali" is a term for baking powder, and at least until the 1920s, people thought you should eat baking powder for an upset stomach. I'm so glad someone invented Tums!





I skipped a few pages about the fire and how it was used to cover up a double murder. The clue at the scene was a big piece of ripped fabric. Thank goodness the villain didn't bother changing his vest, despite it having a big and obviously incriminating tear in it.

Again, that's not my real issue with this page. The more troubling thing is that Little Joe murders the villain in cold blood, and only gets a scolding for it. Instead of standing trial he gets a free pass for being the Hero's supporting cast...but that's some messed up ethics there.

We're going to have to swallow hard on some racism for this story too. There's also a lot of almost-nudity on display here. But your takeaway for this page should be that elephants can make grappling attacks, as long as their opponent is also larger than man-sized.

Of all the pages on this post I have problems with, I think I have the most with this one. Kalthar wakes up and says Mano the Elephant "has been slain." Then he gets up and says, "I shall avenge you, Mano!" ...to Mano, "leader of the herd, and only survivor." So...Kalthar only thought Mano was slain? Is this Mano's ghost before him? If all the other elephants are dead, why is it only Mano Kalthar gets upset about? Were all the other elephants jerks and had it coming to them?

Speaking of jerks...Kalthar captures this one native working for the white raiders, questions him (on the previous page I skipped), and after pumping him for information carefully ties up to a tree branch so Kaa the Snake, or some other jungle critter, can come along and feast on him later.

I think the one saving grace of this story is the idea of the bad guys casually chucking dynamite around, which raises this from a low-level scenario to a challenging scenario for mid-level Heroes. At least until the Heroes get their hands on the dynamite.

This is very Hideouts & Hoodlums-like, with the superhero vulnerable until he's had a chance to activate a defensive buffing power (by swallowing certain grains, though that is likely just flavor text). To protect him from dynamite, the buffing power has to at least be Imperviousness, if not Invulnerability, meaning Kalthar is yet another superhero with brevet ranks boosting him past where a superhero should be, experience-wise, after just two appearances.

Hmm...I'm dubious that polo tactics would translate well to air warfare, but I'm not Mike Carr so I'll just let that go as being outside my area of expertise.

The most useful thing about this feature so far has been the captions that explain what planes we're seeing, but we only get this once in this issue, for the Nazi Messerschmitt Pursuit planes. Despite the Germans having the advantage of surprise, it looks like the British have superior numbers -- I count 12 to 9 - so this could be anyone's victory.

Perhaps most interesting on this particular page is a Hero giving advice to a non-Hero, and the non-Hero just choosing to completely ignore it. Sure, this is exactly what would happen in real life if some kid tried to tell his commanding officer what they should do, but it's very rare for comic books.

The casualties are surprisingly high in this story, with eight dead men on the good guy's side, and this has everyone on edge. The two Heroes aren't getting along and, even though they are quickly promoted to squadron commanders, their colonel tells them the news like it's a punishment.

It's also surprising when the boys try to turn down becoming squadron commanders, and it made me wonder what I would do in a H&H campaign if a player refused the level title associated with their next level ("But I don't want to be a commander!"). Do I hand-wave the level title away, or do they reject the new level and stay where they were? I did elude in the 2nd edition basic book that, at higher levels, there would be more than just meeting XP requirements that would need to be met to level...though I haven't actually worked those out yet.

Whoa...Tim went out with Tom's girlfriend, pretending to be Tom the whole time? That's pretty risque; I remember some direct-to-video movies in the 1990s that were like that...

(Scans courtesy of ComicBookPlus.)

Zip Comics #1 - pt. 3

This is still Kalthar, and we've rejoined him just in time to find out where he hides his magic potions. Is invisible panther hair whiskers? I wonder why the grains even need to be tied to his ears, as weaving them into his hair (if it was longer) would have been much more sensible.

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Being normal size means Kalthar isn't buffed by any powers. In such a state, five guards are easily enough to take him down.

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Unlike many other strips, it is clear that not everyone is speaking English; Kalthar just happens to know all their languages. I honestly don't see much difference between that and having them all speak the same language, although we'll talk about this more on the next page...

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It's interesting that throwing spears at a Hero when he can move around is combat, but if he's tied up, it becomes a deathtrap, with the separate rules that apply to deathtraps (zero hit points means death instead of unconsciousness).

It seems like Kalthar is using some kind of power to summon apes, but if the apes are considered his SCMs, and he's just shouting for them, and they're near enough to hear it, isn't there a good chance they would just come anyway...?

Here's where requiring Heroes to know different languages might actually be useful in the game -- because knowing the language can form a connection with someone, and give you a bonus (+1?) to your encounter reaction roll.

Kalthar can clearly speak with animals as well. I do not want to give this ability all Heroes, and in fact brought up on this blog a long time ago that the Explorer class should get the speak with animals ability. Maybe Kalthar is multi-classed?

And last on this page is a rare example of an elephant being able to wreck through a stone wall. Elephants sure are strong!

Here, for the first time, we learn that Kalthar grows 15' tall when he's activating his powers, which seems to include Nigh-Invulnerable Skin and Multi-Attack.

This feature is War Eagles. Six am seems awful early to start playing Dawn Patrol (TSR joke there).

One of the nice things about this strip is that it includes the name of each plane at the bottom. I don't have to compare the drawings to photos and guess anymore!

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If I ever manage to write my own aerial combat rules, trying to gain control of the facing of your opponents will be a critical function in combat.

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Always make sure there is some downtime in your campaign for role-playing. Friendly rivalries are a good role-playing opportunity. Romances are a little more challenging for most roleplayers.

It seems almost too good to be coincidence that the twins like a Helen Carter, like Captain America would later like a Sharon Carter.

Again, we get the name of a plane to help with research, though that is awfully hard to read...

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A lot of the H&H rules still can apply to aerial combat, including using skills to move silently and gaining surprise before combat -- just occurring at much faster movement rates.

...and yet there still seems to be a need for specific aerial stunts that work more like they used to for the 1st edition Aviator class. Here we see the stunt Power Dive in use.

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This is also a prime example of the amount of carnage that can go on in a war-themed campaign. The goal seems to be accruing the highest possible death toll -- which is perfect for racking up XP in a campaign where finding treasure and trophies is not the goal.

Here we have a villain turn up. You can identify villains by their ability to make return appearances; so, basically, anyone who survives going up against the Heroes could be a villain. The problem here is, the twins haven't actually met or interacted with Anton Schultz, so there's no fun in making him a villain.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)