Target Comics #3 - pt.3

We're visiting the latest story of T-Men again. The description of a funeral car does seem like a good clue, but I would stop and check to make sure there were no reports of a stolen hearse before going door-to-door.

We're still not at the stage of having impressively-designed villains yet. The Octopus looks like a bald Riddler wearing an octopus t-shirt. 

Lockets are both a good clue to find at a crime scene and valuable treasure to collect.

A hawser is "a cable or rope used in mooring or towing a ship." I've never heard that word before!

This is from the next feature, City Editor. The shack's cellar is nothing but a one-room cellar distillery, but you can imagine it as the entrance to a more extensive hideout, with some hideout dressing pictured.

This is that interesting and peculiar feature, Calling 2-R. The lesson here seems to be, if you're given a choice of who to fight, picking the littlest guy isn't going to do you any good. Indeed, there is no game mechanic advantage to attacking someone a few inches shorter than you.

It seems like this page is also demonstrating some sort of dodging mechanic, but bear in mind that anyone with 1 HD has only a 50-50 chance of striking anyone enough to do damage, so it's certainly possible for someone to miss three times in a row. 

There is no security the way we think of it in the utopia of Boyville, not even a necessary starter key to turn on a "bugoplane." 

I do not get that line "Back to the white lights for me" at all. I can't figure out if that is some pop culture reference of the time I don't recognize.

With that kind of a lead, it seems impossible for a flying suit to catch up. And yet, nothing ever seems to be beyond the technology of Boyville...

Yep, called it. So now the bugoplane is a "cosmoplane"? 

The design work on this feature never fails to impress me. Here, a simple spacesuit with bubble helmet is made uniquely different by elongating the helmet and putting bubbles on the front of it -- to magnify vision? That makes sense, considering the distance he's tracking the bugo-/cosmo-plane from. For comic book science, everything seems really well thought out here, down to the limited air supply in the plane. 

Even here -- notice how the motion of the propellers causes the ship to corkscrew -- because of course it would in outer space, with no gravity and no air to resist the propellers. And this is a comic book artist in 1940 who figured this out.

 
 

There's a little hiccup here with the science, when the boy opens the door into a vacuum and nothing gets sucked out of the room. The design of the ship is too small for the airlock it needs to make this scene work. The dizziness from lack of oxygen gets us back on track, though.

And that's that for this post!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Thrilling Comics #2 - pt. 3

Saving the Wayne Girl is worth 100 XP for the good deed. Capturing the Mask is worth $25,000 and almost guarantees a level up.

And yet...letting the villain slip away once he's underwater is a staple of the genre, so he would have had to make a save vs. plot to dive for the Mask.

Now we'll jump into Tom Niles, Undersea Raider. This strip is even harder to read, with smaller font and gray captions. I could read enough for this part to jump out at me, about Berlin being a seaport. That can't be right, can it? I thought. Apparently, Berlin is linked to the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and the Rhine River by a network of rivers, lakes, and canals.

There are a lot of ways this encounter at the bottom could have gone without violence. I mean, don't be so jumpy, Tom! They probably just wanted to check your papers. But in fairness, the soldiers seem to jump the gun too for no reason. It's a good idea to always come up with an idea for your encounter and a motive for the mobsters to work for.

The ol' impersonate-an-officer trick backfires because the commanding officer makes his save vs. plot. The guards at the door fail their saves and fall for such an obvious bluff.

I'm not sure how you would use a bayonet to bend iron bars, but apparently it was easy enough for Tom that it happened off-panel.

I honestly don't know how difficult a zip line is to ride, and if it should be treated as a skill or not.

I wonder if there is really a single lever on a submarine that would let water in. That doesn't seem like good design to me.

I really wanted to share this page because the U-boat is the U-46, and that was the name of my school district!

Tom's strategy seems sound, but I'm not sure how those tactics would play out mechanically in Hideouts & Hoodlums. I'm not liking the idea of fast-moving opponents being able to move into range, attack, and move out without counter-attack, as it seems grossly unfair the way the combat system is set up now. I may have to come back to thinking about that, particularly later when we start looking at more speedster superheroes.

Mobsters can punch women without a save vs. plot!

Despite only being halfway ready for second level, Tom is already given a captaincy at the end, as a special reward for his mission. Special rewards and titles can be worth XP as well.














There's trouble at the hospital and the police are called in. Naturally, a policewoman is put on the case and...immediately dresses up like a vigilante? Does she not think being a policewoman would give her enough pull with the hospital to let her talk to the staff? Or is this some subtle social commentary, that as a woman she feels unsupported by the establishment and has to go outside the boundaries to do what needs doing?

She lucks onto that mobster way too easily in the hospital, like a really lucky wandering encounter roll, or maybe a set encounter.

The assassin is a good one, offing the mobster before he can get out any clue.

The Woman in Red also loses the fight quickly, as a 1st-level Hero most likely would.

Typical of the mysteryman convention, everyone who sees her thinks she's one of the bad guys. You'd think she would just give up and show them her badge...

There's no such thing as an automatic hit in H&H, even when you're firing with a gun and your target is standing less than 10' away from you.

Implied in panel 3 is that the Woman in Red killed those mobsters, or else she could have questioned them when they woke up.

The caption in panel 5 tells us that the assassin we saw earlier is also classed as a mysteryman. Probably at least 2nd level, since he worked over WiR so quickly.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Prize Comics #1 - pt. 2

We rejoin Power Nelson in the "future" of 1982. Here he faces a rhino in the arena and defeats it in one blow -- because pacing is really tight in these early stories and nobody spent a lot of time on depicting combats. The Hideouts & Hoodlums do not emulate this, because playing out combats is too integral to the nature of a RPG -- even if it is not the sole focus of H&H as it is so many other games.

There are three ways we can explain this, in-game. One, we could say this rhino simply had low hit points, perhaps due to age or illness, or random rolling without any rationalizing. Two, we could reduce the Hit Dice of big animal mobstertypes, if we wanted to, to make combats against them go quicker like we see here. Three, Power might be using Super Punch, though that is a high level power, and means that Power is not a 1st-level superhero, but one with at least five brevet ranks.

To sum up the tiger fight, Nelson uses Raise Car to lift the rhino, combined with Extend Missile Range to turn the rhino into a missile weapon.

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Platoons must be smaller in the future; this platoon appears to consist of just seven men.

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It's bizarre that the Mongols were so sporting as to give Nelson a net so large that it could ensnare seven men at once, a net at least 30' x 30'. If explained by powers instead, Nelson has expended three Hold Person powers, which seems almost as unlikely.

Now we're in the middle of the second feature, Ted O'Neil the Barnstormer. There is some crazy aerial acrobatics in this feature, most of which I have trouble believing would be possible

One, there's holding on to the edge of a plane's wing by your knees. I would make the aviator burn a stunt for doing this at normal altitude, and then two more to hold on during the dive! I wouldn't even allow skill checks for something this crazy.

And that handkerchief snatch? I'd make Ted roll to hit AC 0, or maybe even lower, to hit the handkerchief wile passing at that speed, plus a save vs. science to avoid taking ramming damage if he connects with the ground.

Climbing a shaking rope to climb up to a plane might be an expert skill, or could be another stunt. Holding onto Ogden in mid-air is a grappling attack, so no stunts can be used on that.

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Aviator's helmets and bags of silver are more clues to add to murder scenes, and the next time I put together a random table of clues (I did one in The Trophy Case years ago).

Who keeps bags of silver around their home?

A plane's cowling is the removable hood over its engine.

Ogden may be the first villain in comics so cheap that he has to hitchhike to get around.

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Normally I say that stunts cannot be used in combat, but here the gripping the wing of the plane is mostly independent of the grappling attack, and I might begrudgingly allow it.

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Mobs in 1940 are awfully trusting of confessions that are beaten out of someone. Doesn't it occur to them that Ogden might be lying now to make the beating stop?



(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Speed Comics #6 - pt. 4

One last visit to this issue, and we'll resume where we were with Lt. Jim Cannon of the British Navy. This page will give you a good sense for how hard it is for a low-Hit Die mobster/low-level villain to hit a target. Jim isn't far off when he mocks Devilfish for not being able to hit the broad side of a barn.

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While this author was spot-on last time with the British using 15-inch guns, the Germans had already switched to metrics by then. These German "6-inch guns" were really 15 cm naval guns, and yes, the Germans were using those (the scale being to the ammunition, of course, not the gun itself!).

However, there seems to be significant artistic license going on here with the "torpedo cruiser." I've seen no pictures of torpedo cruisers that looked like small motorboats, nor have I seen any that launch from the bow of the boat yet.

Moving on, we're going to look at a super-creepy installment of Landor, Maker of Monsters. Voldemort's Dad here has created a new mobster-type, the cat man, in the most disturbing way possible. He's apparently shrunken a woman's body down to the size of a large cat, say 3' tall, traded her head for a real cat's head, and made it so that it would act in very un-cat-like ways, like listening to you when you tell it to do something.

So they just happened to be within sight of Landor's castle. Maybe not the safest place to take your niece for a picnic? And if they know this is Landor's castle, why do they leave it unguarded? Or why not buy it and raze it to the ground? Or convince the nearest municipality to annex the land and rezone it?

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Cat-people are good for fighting half-pints and small dogs, but pretty useless against full-grown men. I would be generous giving this poor thing 1-1 Hit Dice.

The hammer toss is an unusual grappling maneuver, but I'm not sure if we need to add it, as this could be replicated with the throw result. In game play, I would say Torrence's player asked if he could throw Landor into the generator and make it explode. The Editor then said, let's break this down mechanically; you can roll to grapple Landor, then you can roll to hit the generator with Landor, then you can make a wrecking things roll vs. the generator. Torrence's player then got some pretty good dice rolls!

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"If only we could be sure! If only...we could wait for the fire to die out and then check the ruins for his remains. Or watch the entrance and see if anyone comes out..."

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Moving on to Smoke Carter, we find some unusual clues to find at an arson scene, including blood, a counter cut away with an automatic inserted in the opening (like finding a trap), and a letter addressed to himself from the arsonist (not generally a good thing to be carrying when you're committing crimes, but it makes things really easy for your players!).

Guard dogs makes a lot of sense from a mobster's perspective, though it makes things tricky during game play -- do you discourage your players from beating up on dogs and make them outsmart them, or let the players play out the encounter anyway they want (spoiler: odds are 50/50 they will beat up the dogs)?

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Hey...where did Smoke get those steaks from? Are you telling me he routinely carries steaks around in his car for emergencies just like this?

And lastly, we're just going to peek in on Spike Marlin, with a more whimsical than normal adventure courtesy of George Tuska (whose figure work is as stiff as ever here).

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Spike pulls off a coupe most players of H&H would be envious of: a two-man press gang fails to capture him, so he beats them up, disguises them, and sells them back to their own boss -- netting him XP and $!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

More Fun Comics #49 - pt. 2

The Buccaneer picks up with a sword duel about to begin between Dennis and Dr. Killmen -- which would be a pretty good name for a supervillain! Instead, Killmen lasts about one melee turn before getting run through. Such are the vagaries of randomly generated combat results!  Dennis is trying to get the crown prince of Natria back on the throne, Natria being a fictional country on some island near Mexico, despite it looking an awful lot like Europe.

In Radio Squad (another feature ruined by lackluster post-Shuster art), Sandy and Larry are called to the scene of a stabbing, but can't reach the fleeing suspect because of people in the way. This would be an example of a "slowing obstacle," as defined on page 113 of the Basic rulebook, in the chase section. Outside, Sandy and Larry "take aim," and unload their pistols in the suspect's direction as he climbs a fire escape to the roof. Granted, the fire escape probably gives him cover and hence an Armor Class bonus, but this illustrates how there is a good chance of missing even for fourth level fighters (by my page count conversion, Sandy is just shy of 10,000 XP now and is a "lieutenant" for level title).

Sandy, Larry, and the guy they are pursuing all jump down through a skylight and seemingly land unharmed in the apartment below, demonstrating that a jump/controlled fall maybe should not cause damage. Sandy and Larry, twice, enter the apartment without a search warrant. Larry is shot in the arm and takes a week to heal from his injury.

Lieut. Bob Neal of Sub 662 is sent from Panama to Honolulu for maneuvers, but the scenario quickly becomes fighting ruffian/kidnappers in an alley hand-to-hand. They fail their surprise attempt on Bob and one of them gets thrown (grappling result), then punched out. The scientist he rescues lives on "Kolawura" Island, which could just be a typo for Kolavara Island.  "Mt. Palolo" erupts while they're there; Palolo Valley is where Ka'au Crater is. An interesting twist to the scenario (which seems to have no connection to the kidnapping attempt) is the volcanic eruption, forcing the submarine off its maneuvers to evacuate people from the island. Sadly, the native Hawaiians are treated like primitives.

Bob takes precautions like pouring water on himself and wearing a wet handkerchief over his face before approaching a fire. I'm not sure that should have any affect on if he takes damage. It could translate into a saving throw bonus, but there's not a save vs. fire damage under normal circumstances, only against magical fire. Bob takes "a few days" to recover from smoke inhalation.

The Flying Fox tangles with two "rough hombres," but I hesitate to stat them as anything other than fighters. The hombres/ruffians work for air pirates, some of whom are armed with sub-machine guns.

Detective Sergeant Carey is needed on a murder investigation because Captain Dart, who looks pretty long in the tooth, might be getting a little senile. Dart has his suspects -- dancing girls at a nightclub -- reenact their dance to pinpoint the killer, without even considering that the killer could guess the purpose of this and switch places with another dancer. Carey seems a little loopy too, he seems to not be able to resist saying the word "voodoo" every other panel, just because it's the theme of the nightclub.

Luckily, Carey just happens to know the bartender. Maybe he really did meet the bartender and add him to his SCM list during downtime between scenarios, but something that recently came up in our message board game was the possibility of switching out a SCM you already have after a successful save vs. plot. This is not an official Hideouts & Hoodlums rule, but it does not run counter to the spirit of the rules.

(Read at fullcomic.pro)
 









  

Adventure Comics #45

The Sandman's starts with him sneaking into a nightclub to investigate the rumors that the popular singer is being threatened with abduction; he overhears that this is a ruse concocted by her manager while concealed in her wardrobe. The Sandman's player doesn't have to make a skill check to hide because he's clearly out of sight. Now, if Gloria had opened her wardrobe, then the player would need to make a skill check to remain hidden (or rely on the Editor's surprise rolls).

Now, some heroes would just beat up her husband at that point and leave him for the police, but The Sandman has only heard the confession; he has no evidence of it. So he abducts Gloria and tries to force a second confession out of her. It's interesting that she does not recognize The Sandman by his distinctive mask, but only by the handful of sand he shows her as a clue. Mystery men may only be recognized by their calling cards, then, unless the non-Hero makes a save vs. plot.

For the first and only time, The Sandman is seen working with a Japanese servant named Toki (an actual Japanese name too!). It is unclear if Toki is one of Wesley Dodds' many employees (the man is a billionaire, after all) or if he works for, or is simply helping The Sandman. The Sandman's hideout is referred to, but we only see one room of it (it looks like a bedroom).

The Sandman cracks a combination lock, probably as an expert skill. We also see that he wears a wristwatch under his glove.

The story is incredibly confusing, being condensed into too few pages. The husband, Rendle, is up to more than Sandman had first guessed. At Rendle's office, Sandman has to face off against two hoodlums and what appears to be a corrupt beat cop. One of the hoodlums is armed with a Tommy gun; he misses Sandman at close range before succumbing to Sandman's gas gun (evidence of how hard it is for a low-Hit Die mobster to hit a target). Pursuing Rendle to a steamer ship which Rendle plans to use to skip the country, Sandman is briefly stunned by being clubbed over the back of the head, but recovers quickly (something I had to account for in the mechanics of 2nd edition).

Barry O'Neil, in his story, appears to have finally outlived Fang Gow (who is shown on his tombstone to had lived to be 69). Fang Gow's age could be as fake as his death, though, as he had apparently taken a Potion of Feign Death and is revived with an Antidote Potion. Meanwhile, Jean Le Grande has been the victim of an extremely slow-moving deathtrap -- a plant has been given to her that attracts a certain type of bug with a deadly bite. Patient hoodlums have to wait until, via proximity and coincidence, she happens to get bitten while tending the flower (maybe a save vs. plot each time she watered it?).

To search for Fang (after finding out he was still alive), Barry flies over Paris and the surrounding countryside for hours, looking for places that look like hideout cliches -- like old castles -- and spying on them with binoculars. Of course, he's lucky that Fang did not go underground, or simply stayed indoors. Unluckily for Jean, Fang is outside watching three lions in his courtyard play cat and mouse with her. I'm not sure how Barry is going to defeat the lions next issue, but I can hazard a disappointing guess that he's going to shoot them all dead.

In Federal Men, a racketeer named Rutska kills a man and only has to pay $5,000 bail. After he kills again and skips bail, the unnamed city this takes place in offers a reward for $25,000 just for information that will lead to his arrest.

Rutska uses a zip-line to escape from the rear window of his boardinghouse hideout, but dies when the line breaks and he crashes into a telephone pole. This could be a good trick for Heroes, zip-lines that have a 1 or 2 in 6 chance of snapping under a full man's weight.

Socko Strong's story begins with a wrinkle on the amnesia cliche: Socko is hit by a car and gets amnesia, but the gamblers who rescue him don't know it and tell him who he is right away. The gamblers aren't evil, but slick opportunists and convince Socko that he had already promised to take a dive in his next fight, for altruistic reasons (skirting the issue of whether amnesia can alter Alignment nicely).

In a virtually unprecedented move, Biff Bronson from More Fun Comics guest stars in this story. Biff and Socko turn out to be old friends and Biff removes the amnesia by punching Socko unconscious (the story goes to great pains to establish how evenly matched they are in the boxing match until Biff sucker-punches him.

Captain Desmo's adventure in India involves "natives" again, though these well-armed natives defy the traditional stereotype. This scenario is different than usual because the natives are a complication rather than the main adversaries; Desmo has to deliver a serum for cholera to a besieged outpost.

Skip Schuyler, while exploring the Arctic, takes a 20' fall, but because he lands in snow he is "shaken, but unhurt." 


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

Blue Ribbon Comics #2 - pt. 1

This is shaping up to be my least productive month on the blog in the past two and a half years! And we end this month, revisiting MLJ's second issue of their first comic book.

Hmm...according to Rang-a-Tang the Wonder Dog, dogs can make high jumps into second story windows. Or maybe I'm selling the "wonder" in "wonder dog" too short. Could this be the first dog superhero?

Hmm again...if you see unusual tire tracks, you can call the Rubber Manufacturers Association and they can tell you where the tires were sold? It seems implausible..and yet, players sometimes need really easy hints to keep them moving in the right direction.

Assuming this page is referring to the North Bay in Ontario, it seems very unlikely that Detective Speed is going to need a dog sled to get around. This would be an example of adding "local color" to a foreign scene by utilizing common cliches about it.

It seems unlikely that seeing the same tire tracks in Canada would signify anything, since Speed was already told that those tires were only sold in Canada, and hence would be more common there. This would be another example of keeping the clues really simple.

You heard Speed -- rifles way a lot and slow you down! No complaining about encumbrance rules allowed now.

Okay, think about this one. Dan Hasting's friend, Dr. Carter, wants to set Dan up with an assistant. First, he picks one with an obvious personal grudge against him. Then, he talks up what a "fine technician" he is, when Barnes is almost 50 and still just an assistant. The lesson here is -- if your Editor tries to set you up with a supporting cast member who seems suspicious -- ask questions. Check references. Your Editor could be setting you up for a trap later.

That's right -- if an atomic blast hits your spaceship, it's not the heat that will get to you -- it's the humidity. I love how clueless people were about atomic radiation in 1939. You can use this in your campaigns to have atomic radiation do any crazy thing you want it to. Humidity? Sure, why not!

This is Buck Stacey. Now, it's true that low-level Heroes and mobsters with low Hit Dice have a roughly 50/50 chance to hit something. Some people might think that seems low. I give you this page, then, as evidence of how hard it is to hit someone. That gunman is shooting at Buck as Buck rides away with his back to him, in a straight line, at short range -- and misses. Now, there is also the Hero's save vs. missiles to factor in here, but I believe a low chance to hit is still justifiable.

This is Scoop Cody, and Scoop is the guy in orange. That might surprise you, because the guy dominating this scene is the mysteryman in a suit and ski mask. The guy (his calling card says he's called Marvel) just wanders into the scene like a wandering encounter -- proving that Hero classes need to be featured on the wandering mobster tables.

This is Bob Phantom -- one of my favorite characters to make fun of about his name. You can tell Bob is low-level; here, Bob warns the bad guys not to kill this guy. But, hey, they've got Tommy guns, so Bob is just going to warn here where it's safe. Hey, he did warn them, at least!

(Read at Comic Book Plus.)