Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 3

Well I'll be...I called this issue #2 in my last two posts, but it's been issue 3 I've been reviewing all this time! Sorry if I confused anyone.

It's been a long while since we last visited The Ghost, but you might recall he was tossing around Wish-level spells all over before the scenario even got started. Now that he has mobsters to fight, we get - Knock, Mirror Images, and throwing a dagger instead of casting a spell. Wow, this is what a mid-level magic-user looks like!

In my current Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign, we just had a long scene of the Heroes mixing it up with police in a precinct house, so it's interesting to see how quickly The Ghost is able to muscle his way in to see the ...Captain? Commissioner? - after just levitating a beat cop out of his way.

That is a strange spell that gets cast mid-page. It's not a Phantasmal Image because The Ghost doesn't know what the spell will reveal. It seems closer to Object Reading, the psionic power. It's also unusual to have a golden age Hero's initial hunch turn out to be wrong.

Now this is interesting! Only some magic-users have ever shown Achilles Heels - like needing to be holding their wand, or needing the use of their hands - The Ghost has to be facing you.

Wall of Force stops the car. 

It's interesting how The Ghost only sometimes bothers to use his "ghost" look and other times just walks around like a normal guy. I wonder how he decides...?

I also wonder -- is that chair a Chair of Scrying, like a comfy Crystal Ball?

The Ghost uses Levitate to save himself from bullets. I find it so refreshing to see so many 2nd-level spells getting used!

Hypnotism, or Charm Person spell? 

We don't know exactly how many hit points The Ghost has, but a surprise head blow can take him out.

The Ghost casts Wizard Eye through the door.

I like the details of that trap; it's a trap that, if you play it just right, helps the Heroes free themselves from it. Of course, you need to have Heroes weak enough not to be able to break rope...

Normally, in a Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign, exploring an entire hideout from cellar to roof could take multiple play sessions; here, we see it come to pass in a single caption. It's rather remarkable, I think, that the only clue he finds in the whole building are the pigeons on the roof. I wonder how many "secret door" rolls he failed on his way though the house...

I'm not sure what to make out of a spell that makes pigeons leave flaming trails. Some sort of Feed Jalapenos to Birds spell? Or perhaps this is just a generous interpretation of the Find the Path spell?

I believe I already have a Detect Lie spell in my game (or should if I don't). Is there any difference between Detect Lie and Speak Only Truth?

Out of all the spells in The Ghost's repertoire, what impresses this guy is the Change Self spell. 

I've never heard of a trick gun like that, but now I think it should be a minor trophy item. 

When did The Ghost cast that spell, turning the bullets to vapor? While writing the suicide note? After grabbing the gun away? As the bullets are being shot? Possibly the first two options, if the spell was cast off-panel, but it's hard to believe Tanko didn't notice. I think he could realistically have cast it at the beginning of the melee turn before being grappled by Tanko.  

Also...Tanko? That's an African name. Is it a nickname here? 

Ignoring the panel where the lights go out, but we can see everything...there are some strange reactions to magic in this story. Like, the phantasmal faces trick the chief into confessing...instead of just running away?

Was the matchbox ever admissible evidence? I bet it's not now, since a roomful of witnesses saw this appear out of nowhere. How do you prove it's the same matchbox? 

Moving on...I'm more amused than anything else by this page of the next story. For one, the "Three Comrades" are hanging out in what appears to be a middle class German restaurant, and the two German spies dressed up for a fancy nightclub aren't attracting any attention to themselves. What amuses me even more is how much Books looks like Peter Parker.

At least Cal thought the spies were suspicious. You can always count on Non-Heroes controlled by the Editor to fail to notice anything suspicious about a name like Baron Von Sneer, even though that just screams "comic book villain!" to the rest of us. 

Wow...you can also always count on European villains to have castle hideouts, even when just visiting the U.S. The caption calls it a mansion, but I know a castle when I see one...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 3

Let's resume with Dynamic Man, just as DM is surprised by a headblow that knocks him out for 1 whole hour. When he comes to, he's in one of those cliche deathtraps where the spiked walls are closing in on him. Rather than fretting, he simply wrecks his way through the ceiling and escapes. This is a problem I have in Hideouts & Hoodlums, where it is hard to stick superheroes in deathtraps if they can just wreck their way out, but I'm glad that the earliest superhero writers seemed to be grappling with this problem too.

It's important for mobsters to leave clues behind in their desk drawers. I'm amused that the ship they plan to sabotage is called the Batavia, as there's a town near here called that. It's odd, though, that Dr. Vee goes along personally to sabotage the Batavia, but stayed in his hideout when the train was to be sabotaged. Maybe Vee just doesn't like trains?

One punch from Dynamic Man sends Vee flying off the ship and, it appears, Vee goes sailing pretty far through the air. We're told he survived, but it's hard to imagine an old man being able to take that kind of punishment. To have punched him so far, DM must have been using the power Super Punch power, which means Dynamic Man has access to a 4th level power. 

Lastly, I think it's interesting that DM loses interest once the master criminal is defeated and lets the police mop up the lesser spies.

Space Rangers is set in the year 2300 and it's a future where just about everyone has spacecraft that you can crisscross the solar system in and space rangers dress like 1940 police officers. New elements have been discovered, and "plinium" ore is the "only substitute for radium" -- which is a really unusual thing to say. Has all of the radium in the solar system been used up by 2300? This is a pretty forward thinking sci fi strip if it's thinking about the depletion of natural resources already in 1940. 

Space rangers' ships can travel from Earth to Mercury in two days, and they need to find the space bandit Black Hawk. It's hard to take Black Hawk seriously since he wears pointed shoes and what looks like a bathrobe. 

The rangers, Bob and Nibbs, are overwhelmed by at least 11 bandits, probably more. For some reason, they don't have a weapon more hi-tech than wooden clubs among them (even for missile weapons all they have is wooden clubs!), but that's okay because Bob and Nibbs have lost their guns, somehow, between panels -- but we're reminded twice that they lost them! We're left to imagine what their handguns could do, but the weapons on board the spaceships can paralyze and disintegrate. 

And it's not just weapons that are low tech on Mercury; once they captured Bob and Nibbs, the two rangers are tied up with simple hemp rope. And they don't even tie good knots!

Moving on to the next feature, that's Blue Blaze, the super hi-tech zombie. When I saw this scenario was about sabotage at an anthracite mine I was expecting something hi-tech, but that's just a fancy word for hard coal. The hi-tech comes in Blue Blaze's new car, a "supercharged speedster capable of unlimited speed." Infinite is awful fast for a Movement rate, though comic book captions are notorious for hyperbole.

Reaching the mine super fast, almost like he's teleported there (hmm...), Blue Blaze searches the wreckage and his "superior knowledge of science" helps him identify bomb parts, which sounds like a successful Intelligence check to me.

(Read in Marvel Masterworks: Mystic Comics Vol. 1)

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.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies #19 - pt. 3

No, "Arrows of Doom" isn't a Fantastic Four adventure (though wouldn't that be cool?). There are British research foundations, but not one called British Research Foundation (that I've found). Bwana is used as a form of respectful address in parts of Africa, so it's a weird name for head hunters. Matadi is the chief sea port of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the capital of the Kongo Central province.

Larry does something you don't normally see in these short adventures -- collecting rumors about the scenario before he heads into it. 

Though we're told that's a giant python, it doesn't look any larger than normal pythons, which can reach 15' in length. 
 

The arrow in panel 2 is puzzling. Did it pass through his shirt before going up into his head? 

You shouldn't be so surprised, Larry; poor Magu has already succeeded at three morale saves this adventure and his time was up. Speaking of Magu, that's apparently a real name you might find in countries like Tanzania (there's a Magu District in Tanzania).

But what is Larry holding over Magu's sleeping bag? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with what's being said in the panel. 

Just as I'm thinking about congratulating the author for his research, I'm forced to deal with the trope of bad guys being willing to kill everyone but the hero, who gets captured instead. Or is there some subtle racism here, that it's only black guides getting killed?  I think it's impossible to call here, because we can't see if the two men accompanying Ronald are black or not. Maybe Larry's guides were just unlucky.

It's really hard to take a villain like Debree seriously -- but what to make fun of first? Should I be making cheese jokes? Debris puns? Laugh at his outrageous mustache? 

Igor is not, as you may have guessed, an African name, but I think we can forgive this, especially if Debree is the one who named the 'holy lodge.' 

People who don't want to sound racist have always had a hard time figuring out how to describe people without sounding racist. Dark? Black? Granted, Larry is tied to a post that's about to be lit on fire, so he doesn't really have time to ask for the man's name...and yet, Larry does manage to fire off a pretty long speech instead...

Here's an interesting twist on the Western hero. Is it a modern hero or a 19th century hero? It's so hard to tell with the Mythic West, though a clue may be the posters on the walls advertising the menu, which seems more like a 1940 thing, as well as the price of 25 cents for bacon and beans.

I never would have thought of this -- and I'm not sure if it's really legit -- but maybe the next time I've playing in a game where I need to find out if someone's been out riding on his horse recently, I'll check the horse for sweat. Of course, this may not prove useful results on a hot day, or if the horse is sick...

It seems like everything has been wrapped up neatly -- unless the three robbers recant their confessions in front of the mob, or tell a new lie and implicate Jim. That is one mercurial mob. Maybe they don't care who they string up, they just want to hang somebody today! In a RPG like Hideouts & Hoodlums, you can roll randomly for encounter reactions of every individual in the mob, group them into sets of five and roll for every set, or just roll once for the whole mob. 

Wow. I did not see that twist ending coming! The Headless Horseman's a horsewoman!

This is Harry Campbell's Jon Linton (it's different from Dean Denton and John Law because it takes place in the future!). I like the building of suspense on this page with the running countdown. Harry always tries to add more realistic details to his stories than the typical comic book writer, which I appreciate, but without inches of latitude and longitude, those bombers are going to have an awful huge swath of Asia to search for the hidden city. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.) 

 

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.)

Daring Mystery Comics #3 - pt. 1

Dale of the FBI is our first feature and it takes place on an island in the San Francisco Bay called Dream Island. There are really 28 islands in the bay (and fewer in 1940, since some of them are artificial), none of them called Dream Island. The heavily forested appearance of the island makes me think it looks closest to Angel Island after perusing some photos. 

This story predates the founding of the real San Francisco National Bank by 22 years.

Dale likely arrives in California at the San Francisco International Airport, which in a year will become a Coast Guard base and Army Air Corps training and staging base. The story isn't clear if Red Corker's men just happen to be at the airport or if they on lookout duty watching for G-Men to arrive. It seems unlikely the gang can spare lookouts for every unlikely occurrence, since the gang doesn't appear to be very big.

Dale isn't very good at noticing his car is being followed; he must have failed his skill check to spot things. 

Other than having a keen eye, I would think research beforehand must explain how Dale immediately recognizes Red's lieutenant. This would either have occurred in-game, with the Editor giving the player specific information, or the player could, in the moment, ask for an Intelligence check or a save vs. plot (but not both!) to determine if he had any foreknowledge of what Red's lieutenants looked like.

Red's scheme is to kidnap the child of a San Francisco oil magnate. The most famous San Francisco oil magnate was J. Paul Getty. 

The rescue scene is peculiar, to say the least. Dale comes riding in on an airplane wing, scoops up the kidnapped girl between his legs while holding onto the wing with his hands, then climbed back onto the wing, held the girl with one arm, drew his gun with the other, and shot Red while holding the wing with his leg. There's a lot of unlikely things in there. A Dex check to cling to the wing (or a stunt), an attack roll "to hit" the girl (at a low AC, given the speed of the plane), and then another Dex check for all the balancing he does. And why does he shoot Red? It's his job to arrest Red and Red can't do anything at this point to harm the girl anymore. 

Next up is Breeze Barton in the Miracle City. It takes place in 1945 "and the world is at war" -- which was sadly accurate. Less accurate is the Japanese invasion of South Africa. When Breeze sees it, his first thought is to report this to London, which is weird because that's 5,600 miles away and there must be dozens of places he could check in closer. It's just an excuse to get him flying north over the Sahara Desert. That's how he finds a mirage of a city that turns out to not be a mirage, but an actual city - a super-scientific city where they already have anti-gravity transportation. People have lived there for over 30,000 years -- the same people in some cases, because the city exists in a pocket dimension where time doesn't pass like normal. Time does pass, even though we're told otherwise -- the sun rises and sets and events are not occurring simultaneously. It's aging that doesn't happen. 

More interestingly, the city can only be entered through a "spot" where the electrons flow just one way, so you can't leave. There is at least one neanderthal in the city and at least one dinosaur outside the city; the neanderthal makes some sense but the dinosaur doesn't on a lot of levels. It pushes the existence of this "one-way electron flow spot" way into the distant past, the dinosaur looks extremely unrealistic (even by how much they knew in 1940), more like a dragon, and if it is really that dangerous you'd think it would have been put down long before now. The weapon that puts it down is a tripod-mounted "heatwave" gun.   

Even the dinosaur is quickly eclipsed by my biggest problem with the story, that Breeze solves how to reverse the electrons with magnetism in less than a day, while the best scientist in the city hadn't thought of that in 12,000 years. It hadn't even occurred to the rival city in this pocket dimension, this one occupied by the demon people, an interesting-looking nonhuman race. They are furry, with spiky manes on their heads, pointy ears, hooved feet, they can fly, but with a single sail on their backs instead of wings. They have their own super-technology; they can make a cloud appear around someone's head that sucks thoughts out of your head through the astral plane. Both cities have heat-wave guns...but yeah, magnetism is beyond them. 

There's a further interesting detail about the culture of the demon people. They keep slaves, but the slaves are other demon people...on first inspection, but the slaves don't have sails on their backs.   

In the Purple Mask, Frederick Swabert refers to the Panic of 1907. I had to look this up, but the Panic of 1907 – also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis – was a financial crisis that took place in the United States over a three-week period starting in mid-October, when the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50% from its peak the previous year. Swabert is being threatened to reveal the location of a secret vault he doesn't know the location of, but Purple Mask (Dennis Burton) swipes a book with all of the floorplans to Fred's house in it, like starting a hideout crawl with the whole map in your hand. Since the house has secret doors, this is extra handy. 

The bad guys have a trap for Fred, his phone is rigged to spray poison gas in his face. Purple Mask somehow guesses this -- an impossible hunch -- and shoots the phone. The phone turns out to be a big clue that wouldn't exist today; because the bad guys have their own phone in the same house, so all PM has to do is follow the physical phone line and he locates the rooms they are hiding out in. 

Purple Mask has no compunction against shooting any mobsters holding guns, but if they attack him with fists he switches to the same. 

Somehow a stray bullet hits the secret button that opens a secret door, which is a freebie from the Editor because there's no way that should have happened. The secret room behind the door is where the treasure is and it's an interesting room; the money is in a big box on an island in the middle of a pool of acid with a narrow drawbridge leading to it. The drawbridge can be controlled with controls on the island.

Another discrepancy in the story: Purple Mask somehow knows there is a secret trapdoor under the island, but he didn't seem to know anything about this room from the maps earlier.  

The next adventure is the Phantom Reporter. Typical of these stories, they don't tell us where it takes place. We do get the name of his newspaper, though, and that's interesting because it's the Daily Express, and that is a well-known London newspaper. Is this a UK hero? Even the fact that the crimes occurred in the "East Side" fits, because the East End of London was infamous for poverty and crime. My theory only breaks down when the bad guys start talking in New York accents, and then the reference to Park Avenue clinches it; this is New York City. Oh well.

We're told the Phantom Reporter, in his regular identity, inherited $50 million from his father. Since Henry Ford had $200 billion in 1940, that doesn't even put him close to richest guy in town. 

I don't know what's going on with his mask. It seems to be glowing? Or maybe it's just artistic license to make him look more dramatic, as there's really no reason for it to be glowing.   

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

Famous Funnies #68 - pt. 1

We haven't seen Roy Powers in a while! Here he's on a cruise to Africa (the previous page smartly talked about how much school he was going to miss because of this, but he has a tutor on the trip) where there's going to be some big game hunting (booo!). More interestingly, here's the beginning of some mystery on the ship. What do they want in Roy's room? When laying clues, remember to leave olfactory ones too.

Uashin? I think this is referring to Uasin Gishu County, and it is located on a plateau, in Kenya. Interestingly, "Jambo Bwana" is a Kenyan pop song that will come out 42 years later. 
  

Skyroads surprises me occasionally; there is some interesting chemistry between these two characters, and I laughed out loud at "I was born quite young." Also, salt horse is slang for salted beef. 

Sure, we could talk here about how "fagged out" means exhausted, or how "I feel as though I'd been spanked by a trip hammer" reads like innuendo, but what really grabs me on this page is -- how is that record player working? Is it hand-cranked? Battery powered? I know they had the former back then, but I'm not sure about the latter.

Also note the "Wing Tip" about how 1st-level aviators would need to certify their transport rating, in addition to carrying a transport license.

Senor and senorita? That's interesting because, while Spain in its prime was one of the first countries to have U-boats in their navies, by 1940 Spain's military was in tatters from its civil war and did not have many submarines left. This is a good time to remind ourselves, though, that these are all reprints from earlier comic strips, these ones specifically from 1937 (according to comics.org), and -- according to this Wikipedia page -- Spain still had eight U-boats at that time. 

This page is a reminder, if mystery bad guys have been shooting at you, to search the ground for spent cartridges. With a skill check, you can identify which kinds of guns were being used to shoot at you, which could help you plan for your next encounter with them.

It might be easy to overlook this word through all that heavy dialect, but a yawl is that boat; a yawl is a two-masted fore-and-aft-rigged sailboat with the mizzenmast stepped far aft so that the mizzen boom overhangs the stern.

Oaky Doaks has stumbled across a wizard who lived in a cave for 20 years perfecting this flying carpet (giving us some indication for how long we can expect magic item creation to take?). The flying carpet has an incredible weight allowance, probably carrying 1,750 lbs. as it is here. Being able to reach cumulonimbus clouds suggests a ceiling height over 2,000 feet, and possibly much higher than that. There's no sense of how fast it is from this page.

How would you tell if someone is faking delirium? Perhaps a skill check at first aid. Or a Wisdom check. Or both, so characters with high WIS have a good chance of seeing through the deception, but mysterymen can also cash in a stunt for an automatic success on that skill check.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Master Comics #1 - pt. 3

 This is still Frontier Marshal, and we're being told that every type of criminal -- every mobstertype -- is heading towards Big Savage. Bandits, we've had stats for those in Hideouts & Hoodlums since ...well, not Day 1, but close. Do we need stats for rustlers and fugitives from justice, at least for some future cowboy genre-only supplement (an idea I've toyed with for years now...)? 

I don't know...rustlers shouldn't be especially good at anything other than stealing livestock. Well...a cowboy's horse is livestock. What if a rustler could fight for control of a cowboy's steed, in some variation of the contest of wills mechanic for magic-users? 

Fugitives aren't especially good at anything other than escaping, so...maybe fugitives should have a higher chance of evasion? Maybe a higher skill chance at hiding in shadows?

Mr. Clue is a story I thought I was going to enjoy, about a detective who focuses on solving mysteries solely from the clues left behind at the scene. But this story takes it to ridiculous extremes; by this page, Mr. Clue has been attacked for times -- shot at, flowerpot dropped at him (well....maybe that one is more like a point of damage missed), a rockslide targeting his car as he drives past, and now a safe dropped at him. Mr. Clue could easily stop following his clue and just go after the person dropping things at him (how hard could it be to find someone who dropped a safe?).

Also, I'm going to spare you from the following page, where Mr. Clue reveals how he solved it from a clue that shouldn't have really proven anything.

Streak Sloom? Oh...Streak Sloan! The new comic book feature with the worst title font ever teaches us that whale oil was still extremely valuable in 1940, and that one ship could carry a half-million dollars' worth of it.

The island hideout idea isn't new, or that Sloom -- sorry, Sloan simply has to patrol randomly until he finds it. What's unusual here is that the main villain is the first encounter inside the hideout. It reminds me of the classic D&D module, G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King, where the king's hall is up front in the palace and, if you managed to kill him, the whole rest of the fire giants are thrown into chaos. Like anyone running G3, a lot of reinforcements should, and do, show up quickly here. 

It's disappointing that a super-submarine just means that it has extra storage capacity for transporting whale oil and salmon...though, I suppose if you stocked it with more soldiers, maybe you'd be able to fight back against a coast guard patrol. 

I think the best thing about this story is Black Jack Bannon. He wears the furs of a back woodsman, but thinks of himself as classy, so he smokes a cigarette in a long holder. And that's one intense, smoldering stare in panel 5!

Can you cause a gun to jam just by hitting it? We've seen plenty of evidence of guns being knocked out of people's hands by thrown objects of every size, shape, and weight, but this could be a first for forced jamming. Unless the gun jam is just a coincidence afterwards? 

The realistic-looking telegram at the end is a nice touch.

El Carim is a bit of a trickster. While Jane Grey comes to him in tears about her missing father, El Carim slips some paper into a toaster and then casts Phantasmal Image on his monocle. Or can he really invent magic items? Whatever mechanic you decide to use for scientists, you need to decide if you're going to give that to magic-users too and if you think they need the extra ability.

El Carim casts Protection from Missiles and Rope Trick here. Or perhaps the monocle is a magic item, a Monocle of Bullet Attraction?

By this page I think it's clear that El Carim doesn't actually carry magic items, but these items are flavor text for his spells, like Telekinesis and Hold Person. 

It's so refreshing to see a magic-user getting defeated by a pair of mobsters, just like a normal low-level magic-user would be.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)