Slam-Bang Comics #1 - pt. 2

Okay, the planes going dead are explained (as if we needed it, as cliched as the rays are), but what we never get explained is how the machine guns have no effect. Bulletproof armor on the planes?

Also, take a look at the jowls on War Bird. In the Golden Age, a Hero could debut in his late 40s. 

It's nice that Von Kruhl was kind enough to write his note in English for us, despite being Serbian and writing this for Frenchmen to read.

Where is the searchlight that was on the front of the plane before? Perhaps more odd, what was holding it in place on that smooth surface?

I do like that, as hi-tech as Von Kruhl's forces are, it's an ordinary pair of binoculars that foils him.

We don't see enough of this tactic, where the hero sneaks into the enemy's hideout and, instead of engaging the enemy, wrecks their stuff. This makes especially good sense in the aviator genre.

"Look! A Frenchman!" Is the thinking there that only a Frenchman would be sabotaging their planes?

"Hammer-like blows" would normally be flavor text, except that it seems pretty clear War Bird is hitting them with a wrench, which would be heavy enough to do normal club damage.

You can probably guess that War Bird gets away and wins the day, so we'll jump into Jim Dolan. Jim is in the reporter hero genre, but with the twist that he's an editor.

The list of his past accomplishments seems like a set-up for starting him out with a brevet rank. It's also a pretty good list of scenario ideas you could add to a longer list, and the final panel illustrates the advantages of making the police chief your supporting cast (something I saw being put to good use in my last H&H campaign).

I'm not going to address everything on this page; we've talked about trip attacks and improvised weapons plenty of times. We could talk about movement and if rushing out the door should really be faster than standing up (hint: in H&H it's determined entirely by initiative rolls). But I'm mainly sharing this page because the mobsters are not only using hot irons as torture devices, but somehow have flaming hot irons. Did they soak those things in kerosene first? They look pretty fearsome; I might let them do 2-7 damage as melee weapons.

I've talked before about smoke and heat damage from trying to rescue in an arson scenario, but what's interesting here is that Jim spots a clue in the fire, when he clearly wouldn't have had time to do a search. This has to be a freebie from the Editor, as every skill check should take at least one melee turn, and in most cases should take one exploration turn. 

Does Jim have to roll to hit to land in the net? To truly be fearless, one would think he does, but it makes equal sense for the firemen to roll to hit him with the net, and as long as two of them succeed their rolls, they catch him. 

It's interesting that Jim doesn't know his Bible well enough to know the psalm without researching. His Editor could have spared him the trouble and let him have an Intelligence check to remember.

The clue seems like a bit of a stretch to me, though...

I'm not personally cool with Heroes holding guns on people's faces while interrogating them, but it does happen in games.

Swimming from the patrol board to the yacht is a smart tactic, giving him a chance at surprise he would have lost had the patrol board pulled up alongside the yacht.

We'll jump ahead to Lucky Lawton, this anthology's western feature. I could mention that the law was tougher in the Old West than many give it credit for; even in self-defense these two still have to make their case in court. Or I could mention that Pal can act without being ordered to, making me suspect that Pal the dog is actually being played as a Hero character. But what really catches my eye are the hashmarks on the wall of the jail outside the cells. What would the sheriff have been keeping track of like that, and couldn't do on a calendar...?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Man Comics #5 - pt. 1

No, I haven't skipped any issues; Amazing Man Comics really did start with issue #5. It was, after Superman, the second comic book named after its lead character.

We know from the caption that Amazing Man is over 25 years old. Hideouts & Hoodlums doesn't worry about character age or aging, but it was generally true in the Golden Age that Heroes were college-educated, which meant being at least 22 years old when they started.

John Aman is known both as Amazing Man and as The Green Mist, depending on who you ask, I guess. It would not be unsuitable for H&H Heroes to have more than one superhero name.

The Council uses a sleep-ray on John, I guess so he can't hear their deliberations. It seems to have a very short range, but is fairly portable.

Amazing Man is showing off his powers in the first test. This could be the power Raise Elephant at play -- though, since he isn't technically raising it, maybe he only needs Raise Car to stop it.

Bereft of other weapons, John uses his teeth on a poisonous snake. Although biting is not a particularly effective attack, he might have buffed it up with Get Tough or a similar power.

We know that Amazing Man has enough hit points to take two knife wounds and still be only lightly wounded. So...8-15 hit points? At least they're nice enough to bandage him up afterwards.

 I've no idea why the head of the Council is green.

The invisibility formula is like a potion meant to be taken intravenously. There is a side effect that not all invisibility potions have, but (as explained on the next page) the duration of this potion is a full week.

John's first case is solving railroad sabotage in Wyoming (you'd think there would be plenty to keep him busy in Asia, what with the Japanese occupation of China going on).

John finds his first clue, a monogrammed pencil -- with silver lead. I wonder if that would poke werewolves?

Also note that John has an airplane as a starting item. This is not commonly the case in H&H -- though an Editor could choose to hand out trophy items at the start of a campaign.

I'm not sure how John saves this train in such a way that no one else could have done it. The really amazing thing is that he just tells the engineer to let him take over before the crash -- and the engineer goes along with it!  John must have a high Charisma, and/or a lucky encounter reaction roll.

There's no power for superheroes to do this yet. Psychic Auto Writing? It seems too specific a trick to be useful often. Object Reading might be do-able (perhaps the "automatic writing" part is flavor text?). I would think that this is just a trick with telekinesis to flush a confession out of the villain, except that John seems genuinely surprised.

This is the bizarre last page of the bizarre first and only appearance of the very first Cat Man in comics. He's a man who dresses up like a crazy old cat lady, then has his trained cat scratch people with poisoned claws. The poison must be something that smells bad to the cat so it knows not to try and lick it off. The Cat Man's only superpower is somehow keeping from getting scratched himself, and his cat's only power seems to be that weird ability to smile it has.

No real bearing on H&H, except for the idea that you could have Heroes run into poisonous pets.

This story is the debut of the Iron Skull, but these are just robot bank robbers we see here. They are a pretty good match for the copper robots found in Book II, except for the added ability to shoot poison gas (save or die) out of their chests.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)