Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 3

Welcome back to our blog, where we discuss the game Dungeons & Babes. Oops, that's not a thing?  Well, you'd think it was from this page of Golden Knight. Because, obviously, medieval maidens went around stabbing men while dressed in modern swimsuits. I'm familiar with the phrase, "never trust a dame," but who knew dames could backstab for double damage? Is Alice a femme fatale? A D&D thief? Or just a highly effective, perhaps mid-level fighter?

Does wrecking things get easier during confusion? I don't think so, but it allowed him to act undetected. 

Then there's the concept of "saving your strength." It actually is a Hideouts & Hoodlums rule that you get +1 to hit if you take a turn to aim. What if you took an extra turn to rest for each +1 you wanted to your wrecking things roll? 

"Stay away from this fight, Alice!"

"What, are you kidding me? I just killed two guys on my way here, while you were being tortured so long your hair grew out!

"Alice! Alice! Are you hurt?"

"Well of course I'm hurt, you moron! You took my sword and left me with this little knife, and now you're not even using the shield I laid down for you!"

It turns out to be a very awkward family reunion, that Alice mortally wounded the man who turned out to be her dad.

Isn't a flying torpedo a missile? 

I like those guard uniforms. Those will be very handy for any heroes looking to knock out a guard and disguise himself as a guard!

There are real Edgewood's in Florida and Washington, but a Meadowlark Village? A real counterpart for that is proving hard to find.

Waaiiit -- the torpedo has to be controlled by a two-man crew inside it? Willingly sitting inside an armed torpedo? I may have to lower the morale save number for guards -- these guys are fearless!

"Hurry - we'll tell the Professor!"

"You know, Ted...not only couldn't the Professor figure out a way to remote control the torpedo, but he didn't even give us a portable radio to contact him with. Do you suppose we weren't meant to come out of this alive...?"

Waaaiiiiit (again). The torpedo made no noise and there was no sign of a plane -- then how does Yank follow any trajectory back to that forest? Is he just flying randomly over hundreds of square miles until he spots something that looks like a hideout? 

And really, Professor? You're planning to blow up the country, but you can't even remember to lock the front door?

A sliding panel in the floor that catches your foot sounds like the most "1st-level" trap I've ever heard of. Would that even do a point of damage? At best, if you miss your save, you can't move during combat until a turn when you do make your save.

Waaiiiit (third time) -- what's with this strange plane that just happens to look like the torpedoes that just happens to land outside in panel 1? Did the artist put panels in the wrong order somehow? It seems like even the author couldn't make sense of what was going on there.

Gee, Yank, if punching them in their helmets doesn't work, maybe you should aim somewhere else? In game, Yank's player is either rolling terrible, or those uniforms are giving a much better Armor Class bonus than I would have thought.

They didn't check to see if Yank was still alive? Classic villain blunder there. Maybe a villain should have to save vs. plot before he can check.

If the "heart of the country" is the continental geographic center of the country, then we're in Kansas, near Lebanon (or Lebanon has been renamed Edgewood). If "heart of the country" means its governmental heart, than Edgewood means Washington, D.C. -- though that doesn't make much sense (but what in this story does?).

Waiiiiittt (gah!). Yank is hitting the percussion caps on the nose of the torpedoes with a length of chain? This means the crews aren't arming the torpedoes just before bailing out, but well in advance for some reason and -- what really bugs me -- Yank's plane is somehow always able to zoom out of range just before the torpedo blows. Why is there that long a delay? Whhyyyy?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #4 - pt. 3

I know, I left you with a real cliffhanger last time. Would the Golden Knight really climb down the well? Well, he does, and it's a way loonier adventure than you ever would have expected at the start of this story!

The well has become an entrance to the underworld, and a deep entrance it is! The drop to that ledge looks like it would have been at least 40', so it's a good thing he was most of the way there when the rope snapped. That the cave mouth is at the level of the ledge suggests that this is level 1, with at least one more level further down.

The first set encounter on level 1 is a giant scorpion! And not just a realistic giant scorpion, but one with tentacle-like legs, no apparent stinger, and spins webs like a spider! Look out, there's two of them!

"Horde?" I only saw two. I wonder how many were watching from a distance and then failed their morale save...

That the constrictor snake encounter comes so fast on the heels of the scorpion battle suggests to me that it was a wandering encounter, attracted by the noise of the first combat.

And then we get more violence against animals. Oh joy...

Lava boils at a temperature of 1,292-2,192 degrees F. If Golden Knight failed that extremely risky leap, he would be taking about 6-24 points of damage from the heat alone, plus should probably be bumped up higher for the toxic fumes and suffocation damage -- so let's say he's risking 8-32 points of damage.

The Editor has a choice of game mechanics for the actual leaping. There is a skill check (I would call that an expert skill check, for leaping that far in heavy mail), or a save vs. science, or even something unofficial like a Strength check.

Things get even crazier on this page, as our hero encounters winged people who, from a medieval perspective, must look an awful lot like angels, yet GK has no compunctions against trying to kill them as soon as they come towards him. On the next page, which I didn't bother sharing, GK acts like the winged men attacked him first, but it sure doesn't look like it on this page.

Moving on, this is Yank Wilson, Super Spy Q-4. Comics.org's experts put question marks by who did this one, and it does look like a quick fill-in job by someone in the Eisner shop, but I'm not sure who either.

We've got a really unusual hideout design here, with a castle built into the side of a cliff (you can see the front of it on the next page), a standalone spiral staircase around a tall column in a really tall laboratory, a skylight-covered hangar above the castle, and a back door exit from the hangar in the cliff behind the castle.








Super-explosives are a dime-a-dozen in comic books already, but what's new is that we know how much this one is worth.

Now, there's a few really weird things about this page, and not just the ridiculously high entrance to the castle. One is that Terro has the audacity to test out the explosive on the village that is basically outside the front door to his castle. I mean, he is taking zero steps to conceal his involvement here, particularly since he just flew a plane from the castle over the village in broad daylight.

But more strangely, Yank leaves Washington, D.C. for Terro's castle before the wounded have all been taken away and, as you can see on the next page, before Terro's guests have even had time to leave. How close is that castle to Washington, D.C.? Does Yank have access to Samson's transporter?

"What?! That's absurd! How could you follow the painfully obvious clues leading here?"

Yank folds like a house of cards. Critical hit? Chance of stun from head blow? It doesn't have to be a surprise attack because he swings at Yank from right in front of him.

Terro's aviator look is pretty cool, and unusual for a mad scientist.

"Pell mell" is a rare term meaning "in a confused, rushed, or disorderly manner."

Yank was only stunned, hence his quick recovery.

The 2nd edition rules for grenades includes a note about catching them before they go off.

It's a little convenient that Terro just had to gas up his plane before takeoff, but what really doesn't make sense is using it on Von Garoff. Isn't it more useful for spies to follow other spies than to kill them?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #3 - pt. 3

We return to Golden Knight as he's rushing indoors to face an ogre, the final guardian before the Holy Grail - er, "Golden Chalice." Kara the Merlin-Wannabe gets the Chalice, but it seems like Sir Richard has the better end of this deal, getting paid with a magic cloak that protects him from all harm (permanent Invulnerability power? That sure beats a Ring of Protection +5).

Now I'm going to jump ahead into Yank Wilson's story. "Alien dive," referring to foreigners, is here synonymous with "underworld dive."

When you're in an underworld dive, and you overhear anything, no matter how innocent sounding, it just has to be a big clue to something.

It's unclear how many thugs are present, but it appears that Yank and X-16 are "greatly outnumbered" by only three of them.

Swimming while handcuffed is something you can become an expert in, apparently (so, it's an expert skill check).

I thought this was clever strategy: make a lot of noise about searching the villain's room, and then be waiting around back to see who sneaks out, and trying to get what safely away. Could be an easy way to pick up trophy items!

 Liquid dissolvent -- something that needs to be added to the starting equipment list?

Space Smith vs. the Leopard Women of Venus. Actually, they may be kidnapped Earth women and not indigenous to Venus at all. And the only thing "leopardy" about them are the spots on their uniforms. Their Belts of Transmitting keep them safe in the vacuum of space. The rifles mounted on their hats are concussive ray rifles, with zero kickback that would knock their hats off, apparently.

Most interesting are the giant saurians -- giant lizard-like creatures 10' long with long claws, short tails, the ability to fly through the vacuum without Belts of Transmitting, and a movement rate that must be at least 23,300 (escape velocity from Venus). 

Giant saurians can be found in groups of up to 10 in their cave lairs on Venus. They must be stupid and easily confused, since they allow a fog cloud to foil them when they can easily move faster than than the fog. 

As weak and ineffectual as these Venusian robots are, I might stat them as the tin robots from 1st edition. The narrator makes a point of calling them clumsy, but if the Belt of Transmitting lets them fly even a fraction of a giant saurian's speed, then the robots are lucky to even get an attack on them as they whiz past (it would seem that robots cannot wear Belts of Transmitting, only living beings).

This is Captain Kidd, and it's hard to tell what spells this witch doctor is casting. When he just got done casting on Kidd's porters seemed to have been a Death spell. What he casts on Bennet seems to be a Command spell (I never would have thought of "choke" to be such an effective use of it though!).

The Magic Glass seems to allow magic-users to cast a spell of higher level than they could normally cast, since the Death spell is usually beyond most casters.

But this is all speculative until we read the rest of the story -- next time!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #2 - pt. 3

This is Richard of Warwick, possibly intended to be the real-life Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, but here is called The Golden Knight. It's telling that the Muslim knights are taking him prisoner, treating him well, and still all he wants to do is kill them all.

Ironically, one of the reasons I made Hideouts & Hoodlums is because I wanted to get away from RPGs where the main goal is always to kill your adversaries. Oh well...

If Richard was a Mysteryman this would be easy -- spend a stunt, instant arrow split!  But The Golden Knight is obviously a fighter archetype, which means we are bound by the attack roll mechanic fighters have to follow.

Now, for hitting a bulls-eye, we could probably assign Armor Class values to the target based on the average probable chance of hitting the bulls-eye. Unfortunately, it's not easy finding an absolute average for that -- just too many variables. I've seen numbers for the probability of hitting a bulls-eye range everywhere from 1% to 36%. So let's go with the average of that and say 18.5%, and maybe we'll even round up to an even 20%.  The AC that has an equivalent value for level 1 fighters is AC 2. Let's assume that is at short range.

How to account for splitting the arrow, as opposed to the second arrow just bouncing off? Let's assume the difficulty is just 5% worse for that, and drop the target's AC to 1. If someone then came along after Richard and wanted to split his arrow, they would have to hit AC 0.

Oh, and that feast? All I see is a bowl of fruit, so I don't think it's the "feast" that Richard finds so splendorous...

Despite a fair amount of historical bigotry, I can't help but like this feature. A major part of that is this girl, Lady Elissa. By coincidence, Ehlissa is a major character in my own webcomic, and I once ran a 10-year D&D campaign in the Land of Ahlissa (South Province).

This first panel is a little confusing. The "one blow" that "felled" that man did not knock him unconscious, because he's still talking. Was he knocked prone by the blow (which means we need a knock down rule for H&H?)? Was the "blow" a grappling attack?

Later, it looks like Richard killed the two guards. Is he making a cruel joke about them being "quiet for a long, long time"? Are they dead? Remember, at the normal mood setting for H&H campaigns, it is almost impossible for a Hero to accidentally kill someone, so these guards are unconscious -- unless the mood of the scenario is set to very dark.

This is Yank Wilson, Super Spy Q-4. The spy was an unpopular Hero class in 1st edition H&H and is unlikely to return in 2nd edition.

Besides the unusually distinctive artwork (comics.org says it's by Jack Parr, but I wonder if he was only inking Fine or Eisner?), I like this page for the unusually specific planning of the bad guys. We know they need 50 spies to work the plan. We know they need 100 tons of super-explosive -- which is scary, because this is what exploding 100 tons of TNT looks like. We know they plan to use "misleading and subversive propaganda to shatter public morale," 56 years before Fox News. And it's interesting how Count Lustig Von Blackgard either slips up, or mistakenly thinks the U.S. has a secret police as his own country does.

Now, despite all that elaborate planning, Count Von Blackgard went and spelled "sabotage" backwards as the name of his dummy company. Now, I am torn about this because, while it makes the villain seem like an idiot if the players figure it out too quickly, it also seems like the sort of puzzle that players will likely be able to solve on their own, and little is more frustrating for players than puzzles they cannot figure out.

I'm curious what "devious legal channels" it took to rent the office next to Egatobas', but I can imagine they had to use some sort of subterfuge to get the previous tenants to leave quickly and quietly.

Hmm, drugging bad guys with narcotics? A very rare, but not unprecedented move for a Hero in the Golden Age. At least it's just a sleeping drug; I would have to draw the line and forbid Heroes from using lethal drugs.

At this point in the scenario, Yank has little to do but coordinate. As players, it would be more fun for the players to control squads of the G-Men attacking the saboteurs at the docks. Given their love of bombs, I wonder if it would make more sense to stat the saboteurs as anarchists, rather than spies. To date, I have not seen anything distinctive about saboteurs to build their own mobster type/archetype around.

Fletcher Hanks' Space Smith faces Martian ogres, which I'm guessing are like normal fantasy ogres, except their number of appearing can be over 100, and they have their own spaceships.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Fantastic Comics #1 - pt. 4

Yank Wilson is an odd duck; there's no indication that this is some future scenario, so this is a present in some alternate timeline where the U.S.'s greatest enemy is a tiny kingdom at the North Pole and both sides have ridiculously large military forces backed with super-science.  For a clue as to how super-sciency this feature is, the airspeed record in 1939 was 469 MPH, almost half what these strat-bombers can do.

More evidence of not only super-science, but impossible super-science, as "2,000 degrees below zero" can't happen.  A freezing gas would be useful for hideout traps, though.

We're given no explanation for how 5,000 tanks managed to cross the Arctic Sea, but judging from the rest of this feature, I wouldn't be surprised if they grew wings and flew.

A long distance atom separator sounds an awful lot like an atomic bomb. It would take something like that to destroy 5,000 tanks at once too.  For such a goofy feature, it's scarily prescient here.

Interestingly, the writer had to come up with electro-vibrographs because, as discussed before, the term RADAR was not in common parlance yet in 1939.  Note how super-sciency Radar seems to be at the time.

The freezing gas, in sufficient quantities, can be used to affect entire cities.

This is, I believe, the first instance of a heat ray being used to counter a cold effect.

Other than the feature being named after him, I really can't see how Yank Wilson was granted a hero's reward and not, you know, the scientists who came up with the heat ray and the other super-science.

This is Captain Kidd, Explorer.  When you meet a mad scientist, don't attack right away, and get a good encounter reaction roll, they want to show you all their trophy items and explain how they work to you.

When I put a mechanical hand on the trophy list for 1st edition, I didn't actually have a good example of one in mind. Here's one, though it is better for attacking and giving a human a claw attack than for wrecking.

He doesn't look like one, but Von Haupt was a supervillain, buffed with Nigh-Invulnerable Skin. Kept him safe from bullets, but not from falling damage or heat damage.

As if this issue hadn't already hit its weird quota, this is from Flick Falcon in the Fourth Dimension.  Flick is a scientist who's 4th dimension machine flings him onto Mars. The slave giant appears to be at least 30' tall, which would stat him as a titan (from Supplement I: National).

Not sure what to make of this other guy. He must be some kind of mutant Green Martian, missing his fourth arm, and apparently having tiny hooves for feet. Only, the next page shows dozens of them...

Having escaped the mutant Green Martians through their own time machine, Flick discovers -- as so many others have on Mars -- that *humans* are the aliens on Mars and gain the same leaping, speed, and (presumedly) bulletproof skin that aliens have on Earth.

The fourth dimensional ray takes Flick back and forth, much like a "future" Adam Strange.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Fantastic Comics #1 - pt. 3

This is still The Golden Knight.  I like the underground castle, as it's so That Other Game. Note how jumping and climbing are not hindered by the knight's armor at all.

The woman is referred to as both a hag and a witch. I'm already adding a hag to 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums; I may have to give it the ability to use Change Self 1/day.

I already have Martian green men represented in 2nd ed. H&H, but now here's Martian imp men. Transmitting yourself on sound waves sounds cool, though I'm not sure how that works. Maybe they "surf" on the sound waves to travel as fast as sound, which would be equal to the 3rd level power Race the Bullet.

The Martian imp men are somehow hitting Space Smith and Dianna with radium rays, but the imp men aren't carrying any weapons we can see, so maybe it's a natural ability? The radium rays just put people to sleep.

Transmitting belts teleport the wearer to a preset location.

This page makes it clear that the imp men are only about 3' tall.

As fearsome as the imp men look, they don't seem to do much damage with their claws -- maybe 1-4 points? And this begs the question -- how many Hit Dice should imp men have? Maybe as little as 2-3 HD.

Behold, the huge, man-eating Martian mosquito. And that's "huge" -- not even giant!  This has got to be at least 4 Hit Dice. Note that it doesn't have a proboscis to feed through like a mosquito, it has a mouth and the proboscis-like appendage is actually a stinger, I presume capable of delivering poison.

This is the first indication I've seen in comics that the working of rayguns is not immediately obvious -- and this is in the future!  I could use a flowchart for figuring out alien technology (the Other Game used that mechanic on occasion) or a simple save vs. plot to immediately understand something of an alien nature.

Even in the future, guards are easily overcome!

Amazingly, I have an easier time believing that Space Smith story with Martian mosquitoes than I do this story about the Eskimongolian Empire in the Arctic Circle being strong enough to challenge the U.S. This has got to be the most ridiculous alternate history I've ever read and I'm just on the first page!

Mind you -- if this was done gonzo-style, waving all logic, you could have polar bear-riding soldiers.  Hmm...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)