Zip Comics #2 - pt. 1

I'm pleased today to return to another of my favorite golden age heroes, Charles Biro's Steel Sterling. We're probably not going to skip a page of this story -- mostly because there's good content for Hideouts & Hoodlums-related discussion here, but also because it's a good adventure yarn.

And it starts fast! After a one-panel summary of Steel's origin (and a chance to see him naked), we launch straight into a prison break! But which prison? Can we find a specific prison by a river with housing nearby? It would seem a near-impossible task if I was looking at the whole country. However, in #1 I grabbed onto a tiny clue that Steel is based out of Texas. There is only one river, the Trinity River, that I can find in Texas that had jails near it. Of those four jails, are any of them near housing? Of them, Ellis County Jail looks closest to Riverside, Texas. That Riverside is 270 miles from Beeville, Texas, where I think Steel's first adventure took place, would only be an issue if Steel could not fly fast -- and we'll see that

happen very soon in this story.

We've seen Heroes pushing instead of doing damage before, but Steel pushing nine men at once is probably a first. It's certainly possible by the rules, if Steel is using the Flurry of Blows power, and choosing to make each hit a pushing attack. Normally, you would only be able to hit people in melee range with you, but for pushing, it makes sense that you could push people behind the people you're pushing.

There is zero game mechanic difference in H&H between slapping and punching, and Steel's punch would not have killed that guy.

Steel has Imperviousness activated for crossing the courtyard. Or is is Invulnerability? He may be needing that shortly...

Maybe I don't know cars well enough, but I cannot figure out what those things are on the side of the car in panel 1. Giant segmented worms? They're gone by panel 4, so...

Panels 2-3 would be tricky to replicate in H&H. The grenades wrecking the wall is easy enough, but determining where the debris goes is trickier. To be fair, I would position Steel on a map of the courtyard first, and then roll randomly between compass points to see where the majority of the debris falls.

How much damage should tons of brick and debris do when it falls on you? One of the underlying mechanics of H&H is that 30 lbs = 1 hp. If I calculated damage by weight at this rate gradually, 2 tons of debris could do a total of 133 points of damage. If I calculated it exponentially, doubling weight per point, that would be no more than 9 damage for 2 tons, so perhaps a range of 2-9. Anywhere in between those two seems
fair to me, but it seems that Steel took a major beating here if he

was only buffed with Imperviousness.

I love the flavor text in panel 5, that Steel has to use static electricity in his hair to jump start his powers. Here he's clearly using Race the Train.

Falling 300' would have done 30d6 damage, which Steel would have survived while invulnerable, but the prisoner in the car wouldn't. Instead it seems he used Feather Landing.

One nice thing about prison breaks is, you don't have to bother leaving crooks with evidence at the police station, since they already want them back.

This is a real curious first panel. Zooming "across the continent" to Alaska makes me think my Texas guesses were all wrong and Steel was on the East Coast after all.

Did Steel really zoom there with "lightning speed?" He can't arrive too quickly, because the escaped cons got there ahead of him, traveling by conventional means.

Let's still assume Steel is coming from Texas; that means the distance involved is roughly 4,000 miles (if NYC, add 360 miles to that). If he was using the Race the Plane power (which seems to make the most sense, going along with flying), it would need to last for 16 rest turns, meaning Steel would need to be a minimum of 13th level, as the duration on that power currently stands.




Of course, another possibility is that he took conventional travel most of the way to Alaska, and then "zooms" in by his own power only towards the end.

The crew is a mix of pirates and thugs, with that guy holding the harpoon gun under one arm probably being a higher-level fighter/leader. The harpoon gun definitely looks like a trophy weapon, probably doing at least 2-8 damage -- if Steel wasn't buffed with a protective power. Too bad he decides to wreck it!

Wrecking a propeller is treated only as a machine, whereas wrecking the entire boat would have been a tougher category.

In the golden age, if you meet a villain twice, he becomes your arch enemy. Repeat engagements are that rare!





Fake iceberg hideouts is very ingenious by 1940 standards, when most villains were still using warehouses. And having five polar bears in room 1 really sets this as a high-level hideout!
















In actual play, these polar bears would be a lot tougher, but because this is a golden age story, they go down quickly in one hit each. Of all the ways H&H purposely chooses not to emulate the actual practice of golden age comics, this one is probably the most dramatically different.

This page does illustrate, though, that grappling moves can be reversed between turns.

What material is that wall made out of, that it would break away like that? And the wall is so thin...

Most players would, if their Heroes saw that much gold, would immediately start thinking about how much XP all that gold is worth.

Apropos of current events, Steel is tear gassed. No doubt this was intended to show that Steel has weaknesses, but a H&H player knows this only shows he missed a saving throw vs poison.

On taking a look at that pile of chains, one could be forgiven for thinking that's overkill. I'm not sure how heavy a 7' tall pile of chains is, but I'm guessing it would be enough to pin down an ordinary man. A superhero probably doesn't need a Raise power buffing him to get that off, though; I'd either allow it instantly, or require a save vs. science, depending on the superhero concept and how strong we pictured him being. And, for non-superheroes, I would probably go with the saving throw.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Smash Comics #8 - pt. 1

It's good to be back around to Quality Comics again. Not that we haven't seen plenty of Will Eisner over at Fiction House and Fox, but I have a special love for Espionage, and I think Will did too. There's a lot of good anti-war messages in Eisner's early work, and here we see a pretty good summary of how terrible the war in Europe is going so far, with accurate dating for Germany's early conquests and only the curious prediction that they would move to China next.  The prediction that Germany's army would be stymied at France will turn out to be disastrously false over the course of just four days, two months after the cover date of this comic. 

Eisner put a lot of work into this story -- almost as much as he will soon into The Spirit -- so we won't skip a page of it.  Luckily, I think we can find something to talk about on every page.

Here, in the final panel, we see the value of relying on random rolls to see if anything turns up in a search. Just saying "I check the closet" shouldn't give you an automatic success, though being specific should give you a bonus.

We don't often get treated to foreign languages in American comics, but the German in panel 9 is asking "Where is the one we are looking for?"







I'm not convinced the name of the former high official of the German intelligence would have been common knowledge to an American in 1940, but we know today that this is likely General Kurt von Schleicher, who was head of the Ministry of Defense until Hitler changed it to the Ministry of War in 1935.

I think it's interesting that Black X refuses to take on the same plot hook from one character, but will take it if given by another. This reminds me of a player I have right now.

Saarbrücken is the capital and largest city of the state of Saarland, Germany. Saarbrücken is Saarland's administrative, commercial and cultural centre and is next to the French border.

There are great details here, from the strategy of substituting for a corpse to get on an ambulance (I'm guessing he let them make sure the man was dead first, then created a distraction and replaced the corpse on the stretcher), to needing to shave because it took so many days just to cross the French-German border. Panels 1-3 are great action scenes, while panels 8 and 9 are dramatically angled. And yet, despite 12-panel pages, it hardly feels crowded on the page.

Koblenz, spelled Coblenz before 1926, is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine where it is joined by the Moselle.

When the secrets Gale is carrying are revealed, they don't sound that valuable to me.

It seems incredible that Madam Doom just happens to be hanging out at this particular guardpost when Black X happens by. Still, it's very comic book-y if you insert a recurring villain into your wandering encounter table every so often.

I wouldn't say it's incredible, but perhaps remarkable (forgive me, I've been playing more Marvel Super Heroes lately) that the shrapnel blast somehow misses both Gale and Black X, but does enough damage to kill the driver. I suppose they were outside the "save for half" radius and in a "save for none" radius.

 Batu uses...the Phantasmal Image spell? It's been a loooong time since I first discussed in Supplement IV if Batu is an example of psionics or not, and we don't have to revisit that here. Just enjoy some delightful character moments, followed by one of Eisner's signature anti-war messages direct to the reader in the final panel.

And, as an added bonus...it's been a long time since I last shared single panel comic strips. I like these two, particularly the one on the right. I had to think about it about as long as that girl is...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Jumbo Comics #13 - pt. 3

This is Stuart Taylor's lab now? Interesting, because in the beginning, Stuart was just lab assistant to Dr. Hayward. Has Hayward died and left everything to Stuart?

Laura raises a good question about how sexist Stuart is, though Stuart could have countered with the more logical response, "I need you to work the controls that get me home!"

So, in the future, giant mosquitoes will be mankind's worst problem, just like in Minnesota today.

The numbers encountered in this story seem way off. Somehow, the city's defenders are just three guys with one cannon?

And then there's the convenience of Stuart being the only person in the room to think of picking up a hand weapon when the insect arrives. Yes, it makes sense to always give the Hero an opportunity to shine before any non-Hero characters in the room, but this would have made more sense if the soldiers were outnumbered.

So, in the 93rd century, there are very few people left, they have atomic-powered hand weapons, but don't wear pants.

We never learn how the atomo-gun is better than what Stuart last used; he appeared to disintegrate the giant insect in one hit before, so this gun is an improvement how...?

What kind of time machine is this that, that Stuart doesn't know what year he was sent to? Does it just randomly fling him to some year?

Are we to believe the City of the Insects was built by insects, or just taken over by them?









I had to laugh out loud when I read this page. What a terrible plan this was...

"I'm going to take on the insects in their lair! Stay behind men, I'll take this stranger with me!"

"Oops -- I forgot, their lair is outside my jurisdiction! I'm not a soldier, just an ordinary policeman. Here, why don't you take care of the insects for me? Bye!"

So...can only the leader talk, or are they all intelligent insects? We never learn!

This page is pretty comical too. The insect king keeps Stuart prisoner, but without any restraints, without any guards -- in fact, the insect king is now all alone! Where are his followers? Apparently either all killed by the invading army ("Just kidding -- it was actually in my jurisdiction after all!"), or like an ant queen the other insects lack direction without their leader.

Speaking of if things make sense...Stuart is the one who bumps into the generator, but is the only one in the room not hurt? I guess the electricity has an area of effect, with a saving throw for half-damage, and Stuart was the only one who made his save.

Moving on, this is ZX-5 Spies in Action. This story seems to take place in Ukraine or Russia, given the names, which makes it so weird when something like "Chester City" winds up in the mix. Is this supposed to be Chester, England?















I hadn't bothered including the first page of this story so you might not follow the twist here, but ZX-5's girlfriend was with him at the start of this story and, apparently didn't have the documents yet or this adventure would have been much, much shorter. This is a novel twist to pull on your players, having a supporting cast member turn out to be something other than she appeared to be, as long as you don't use this too often.

Completely ignored between panels 7 and 8 is how ZX-5 gets into enemy HQ and gets the general alone. That's probably not the sort of thing you would normally gloss over in a game scenario; in fact, that's likely more likely to be the main goal of the scenario, as there is exploration involved then.

ZX-5 has successfully grappled General Miaha, but does not need any kind of game mechanic to just point a gun at his head. Rather, the player stated the intention, the Editor adjudicated on the spot and determined that warranted a morale check, and the general failed. Or is that the general...?

...Because it seems really weird to capture the enemy's general, but then take Captain Vybral hostage instead. In fact, the whole scenario gets super-sidetracked at this point, with the mission becoming rescuing Manya from Vybral and nothing else really happening on the front. This is part of the charm of a roleplaying game that there is no winning or losing and goals can be highly flexible in a scenario...but as a story, it really doesn't make much sense.

In addition to guns, we see soldiers using knives and whips. These soldiers seem like they would need to be statted as something other than ordinary fighters, because they go into a berserk frenzy if their leader gets taken down first. I hesitate to stat Cossacks as a mobstertype because that's a little racist...maybe we should call them berserkers, or just add this special ability (+1 to hit if their leader is incapacitated) to bloodthirsty hoodlums.


Speaking of berserk, ZX-5 does the same, and I think we can safely say he would be statted as a Mysteryman now, because fighting after a woman has been struck seems like his signature move now.

Panel 6 sure makes it look like some passion is about to spark in the heat of the moment. And just how did his shirt get ripped off again...?

Lastly, why is ZX-5 being congratulated, when it seems like Manya did all the work? She delivered the papers herself and then summoned the English Army herself.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Adventure Comics #47 - pt. 1

It's been nine months since I've last covered the early adventures of the Sandman! This is what happens when I cover so many titles, in such detail...

This story opens with a newspaper article detailing a murder the Sandman is about to investigate. The article is signed by Ogden Whitney, who's been drawing this feature since last issue. Ogden is good, but Bert Christman and Craig Flessel were just that much better...

I'm not surprised that Wesley Dodds was friends with the dead man, as Wesley has one of the richest backstories of early comic book heroes and knows practically everyone. Gardner Fox is starting to tinker with that backstory, though, changing Dodds from a billionaire to a millionaire. And this is the issue where he gives Wesley is his first partner. Being big on strong, equal female partners, it is hardly surprise that Dian Ware is an expert safecracker and resourceful enough to have learned or deduced the Sandman's secret identity (though it's never revealed how). Known as "The Lady in Evening Clothes," Dian even sounds like a mysteryman (or a Victorian one).

The murder weapon is a Corson repeater. I can't find any evidence that's a real thing, but I'm fine with that. I was way too specific about firearms in 1st edition Hideouts & Hoodlums and pulled back from that in 2nd ed.

Sandman still shows some willingness to act in a Chaotic manner, gassing the District Attorney when he won't cooperate and give the evidence back that Sandman already gave to him.

In a firefight with two mobsters armed with sub-machine guns, we see simultaneous initiative, with Sandman gassing them just as one of them shoots Sandman in the shoulder. We also see that Sandman has no control over who is knocked out within the area of effect of the gas, as Dian goes down too. Sandman is weakened by his injury, gradually losing consciousness, which is not a condition covered by the rules, and it takes him a week to recover (players can thank me ignoring this in the rules later!).

Trigger, the killer, is held on $1,000 bond, but for breaking and entering (the police haven't nailed him on murder yet). 

When Sandman confronts Black Bill, Trigger's boss, he mentions Bill isn't as fast as he used to be (more of that backstory I enjoy so much).

Sandman is still not widely recognized on sight; District Attorney Belmont's butler doesn't recognize Sandman by costume until Dian introduces him.

Belmont has three detectives on guard duty in his house, all armed with sub-machine guns. Surely they are not there full-time, but I don't know how Belmont anticipated Sandman coming.

In a nice twist, Dian turns out to be D.A. Belmont's daughter. Unfortunately, as soon as this happens she is "domesticated" and never shows her safecracking skills again. That Wesley falls for her is evident in that he lets her take off his mask and kiss him where her father might see.

Moving on to Barry O'Neill...I'm not sure when Barry went from assisting the French police to working with French espionage, but it seems to have been a gradual transition.  Of course it starts in Paris, because all adventures in France feature Paris. The Village of Vereux is misspelled as Veraux (intentionally?), while Polmere seems entirely fictional.

Barry is able to win initiative against the fake Inspector Le Grand, despite the fact that the doppelganger has a gun trained on Barry's back already; more proof that facing is of little importance for Hideouts & Hoodlums. The doppelganger must have had only a superficial resemblance to Le Grand, as he had to wear a partial face mask to conceal the rest. That the doppelganger is known as Number 37 by his fellow spies suggest that there are at least 37 spies in this spy ring.

Barry scores a direct hit with a grenade and blows up a building. Area of effect damage does not normally need a direct hit, and certainly doesn't for damaging structures. This may be only flavor text, describing how Barry rolled really well for damage.

The spies' car has a concealed radio transmitter in it, which is something good to add to the add-ons list for transport trophies.

(Sandman story read in Golden Age Sandman Archives vol. 1, the rest read at readcomiconline.to.)

Whiz Comics #2 - pt. 3

The debut of Spy Smasher's gyrosub, a combination airplane/autogyro/speedboat/submarine, which makes it a very handy and versatile trophy transport item.

This is a rare Virginia-based adventure.

In the Golden Age, it is not unusual for the Heroes to be more technologically advanced than the villains.

Explosions have much bigger blast radii than most D&D spells; in 2nd edition, I increased the blast radii of multiple trophy weapons to better reflect reality.

I've  never been in a dirigible and any effort I would have made at mapping the interior of one would have been informed only by the Rocketeer movie. So it's handy to see a panel like this last one.

Spy Smasher fails his save vs. plot and wastes time on the underlings while the Mask gets away.

A smart villain has an escape vehicle attached to his main vehicle. A smart hero looks for that vehicle before confronting the villain.

It's also worth noting that, once the main villain escapes, the story just skips over the anticlimactic stuff about subduing the crew, and Editors can feel free to do the same.

This is Scoop Smith, of the journalist genre. Here he shows some decent investigator skills, checking the list of former employees to see if any of them might fit the M.O. of "Doctor Death."

Scoop and Blimp (sidekicks get terrible nicknames) rather easily fall for the ol' trap door under the chair trick. We also have another example of the term "dungeon" being used for a villain's hideout.

The fall stuns Scoop and Blimp because they were reduced to zero hit points, but made their saves vs. plot to only be stunned.

The life machine looks rather unimaginatively like a movie camera.

The cup of cyanide pills rigged to drop into the sulfuric acid is an excellent trap for science-based hideouts.

Note how Dr. Death can easily tell the hero from the sidekick and doesn't bother monologing in front of the sidekick (and how the sidekick saves the hero by just happening to find a wrench in his cell!).

The first example of Raise Dead being used in comics, and only on two unnamed henchmen at that!

And now Lance O'Casey debuts, representing the South Seas adventure sub-genre.

Lance is a fighter, but we see even fighters can perform first aid.

Lance is also really good at tracking, being able to recognize a specific person by a single footprint (expert skill check).

Barracudas do not get nearly as much ink as sharks and octopi in comic books, so it's nice that they get mentioned here.

A cutthroat native might be statted as a bloodthirsty hoodlum instead of a simple native.

Again, the sidekick saves the hero, this time because the monkey was able to spot the trap that Lance missed (kind of embarrassing when a monkey beats you at skill checks).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Thrilling Comics #1 - pt. 4

So, instead of tracking down the Faceless Phantom, Dr. Strange takes Jerry to the circus. Apparently, it was not ridiculous in 1940 to have a boxing ring in a circus tent, or for a circus to have $5,000 to put up on a publicity stunt?

The gorilla, at least, seems to hold out longer than the tiger and the octopus did. Despite the fact that the circus ringmaster just tried to kill him to get the $5,000 back, Strange lets this slide so Jerry can get to a bank. By random (?) coincidence, Faceless just happens to show up to rob the bank right then.

 Here we see another example of why it's important for a superhero to keep a Raise power prepared; Strange doesn't have it so, even though he has superhuman strength, he can't get out of the rubble without help.

Strange says his amnesia is gone, but he seems to have forgotten all about his Supporting Cast Members Jerry and Parker (remember Parker, the pilot?).

Now, at this point, Strange has maybe 3,000 xp under his belt, yet when he goes to talk to these guys, who I'm guessing are the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Armed Forces, given their authority, they agree to give Strange carte blanche (or are they only humoring him?).

The trophy armor Strange has invented here is Ray-Proof armor (AC 3, immune to rayguns). With Army financial backing and enough time I suppose he could make a dozen suits like this...but isn't Faceless taking over the East Coast while he's kicking back in this down time activity...?

If Strange's gun shoots Alosun-negating gas into the air, shouldn't he be worried about entering its area of effect? Once it's in the air, he's going to have to be very careful where he moves.

This page just reminds us that even a smell can be a clue the Editor means for you to follow up on.

So now we're finally told that Faceless is only turning invisible after all. I guess Strange's player just didn't know that he could still try to attack invisible opponents!

It seems highly unlikely that Strange knows of an ancient society that had invisibility chemicals and reagents to counteract them, but okay.

After all Strange has been seen doing, you'd think seven hoodlums would not be this confident against him. Maybe we need a new mobstertype -- overconfident hoodlums!

Alosun or no Alosun, the Editor has decided to bump up the main bad guy's level to match the Hero's, just for a climactic final battle -- which is within the Editor's purview to do.

Really only included this page in case you were interested to find out who Faceless was. Surprise!

This is from another feature in this issue, Nickie Norton, Secret Service Agent. It reminds us that Heroes can hire lookouts too, hideouts don't have to be entered by the front door, and it's always a good idea to bring a flashlight.

The idea of pressing a statue's eye to open a secret panel is interesting hideout dressing.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 3 #1 - pt. 3

This is Don Dixon, in a rather exciting but hard-to-follow installment. What I do know is that a dam breaks and an enemy army is wiped out by the ensuing flood. The question for me to ponder today is: is there a way to work out how much damage being hit by water should do?

Yes, there should be a way to work out a formula for how much a certain volume of water weighs, factor in the speed it hits you, and assign it a number of dice of damage. I think it would be high. But there are other things harder to factor for, like the chance of drowning, or the chance of being slammed into a solid object. For attacks this unpredictable, that's why we have a saving throw system. So this should be a save vs. science to avoid death for everyone caught in the path of the floodwaters.

I suspect this will be a stand-alone story and, judging by the crude artwork, its cancellation would be a mercy killing.

We've seen lots of trophy planes by January 1940 already, most of them being faster, but none of them have had silent running yet. It seems like that would be really hard to do with a plane, but I certainly see the value of it, when wanting to fly up to a hideout unannounced.

Sorry, I'm going to make you look at the amateur artwork on this page just for the last panel and the assertion that "they have no chance to use their guns." Should that be true in Hideouts & Hoodlums? Well, it sort of is, if the other side won initiative and rushed into melee before you could get off your missile fire. This is why it's good to let an entire side go before the other side in order of combat.

Not always is "hideout" an analog for "dungeon" -- sometimes it really is a dungeon! And this is another example of why I had to break down and open up wrecking things to all classes in 2nd edition.

Note panel 6 and, if you can follow this narrative, a pilot's plane is missed by anti-aircraft shells, but the shrapnel from the explosion still pierces the cockpit and knocks out the pilot. This is evidence that cover does not protect you from area of effect attacks.

This is Jon Linton, and he's pretty lucky because before he goes on an expedition he gets a map of the whole place from a handy non-Hero character. Most Heroes don't get a map to work with at the start of the scenario, but are asked to draw their own -- and, indeed, this exploration component is a vital part of what makes a RPG Old School.  I also think this is a great page of building suspense. 

Wow -- not only do we get to see the map, but we get the scale for the map too!

This is why you put bosses at the end of hideouts, because the Heroes need to gather XP and level up before they can face them.

The iota-ray tube is not unlike a magic wand that combines Hold Person with wrecking things.

Speed Centaur is still in his medieval lost world. We see lots of lances on display here, but also a "mace" being used by his supporting cast member Reel -- though it looks like it would more properly be called a flail, making it one of the earliest, if not the first, flails in comic books.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)