Keen Detective Funnies #19 (v. 3 #3) - pt. 2

Yes, Centaur still couldn't afford to color every page! This is still Dan Dennis, FBI, and he's been really slow to get suspicious of the little old lady selling flowers outside the tenement building with a female spy in it he's been watching -- even though it set off red flags for every reader immediately.

Here, at least, he shows good tactics, out-bribing the old lady to get information. 

Invisible ink written on flower petals? Hmm...it seems like petals are too easily destroyed for that to be effective, but it passes comic book logic, I guess. I leave this here for your consideration, when developing coded messages for your own games.

Apparently just holding a gun in the open is cause for a G-Man to belt you in the chops. Works for me! TNT Todd takes down a thug with one punch; the thug must have had very low hit points!

Gee, Todd is pretty brutal. Is he one of the good guys or a D&D murder-hobo? He's also just not very good at anything. He attacked that one guy just for being suspicious, he got himself captured (between pages, I didn't show you that one), instead of ingeniously escaping he has to use threat of force to escape, and then gets caught again right away.

Though, to be fair, that reminds me a lot of my very first Hideouts & Hoodlums playtest. Those poor 1st-level Heroes kept getting knocked down and recaptured left and right. I've tended to go easier on my 1st-level Heroes ever since then.

I have three things to point out about this crudely-drawn page (okay, four, counting that). One, this is not a KKK meeting; these hooded criminals have 1001 written on top of their sheets because they have 1,001 members (we learned this on the previous page I didn't bother sharing). So, every time they recruit or lose a member, they have to all have new monographed sheets made for themselves.

The tiny skull on the desk seems like odd random room dressing, but of course skull decor denotes a bad guy in comics. It would be funny if, based on its position on the desk, if it was just a skull-shaped stapler.

"Give him the gong" took me by surprise, as this is way before I grew up watching The Gong Show on TV. Somehow I'm having trouble finding out how old this saying is, but it seems to predate Chuck Barris.

It's been so long, I had forgotten that we've already seen The Eye several times on this blog already! Here, he's coming to the aid of this paperboy, taken prisoner by three anarchists (they aren't called that, but their cliched behavior indicates it). The Eye either uses Telekinesis or Wreck at Range to destroy the rope -- it really seems unlikely that he/it wastes a powerful Disintegrate just on some rope. 

It's unclear why the Eye is shining light on the boy in panel 5. Is it just a Light spell because the room is dark, or is he/it hypnotizing/charming the boy to make him follow his/its instructions?

Here, The Eye uses Hold Person, which can affect up to three targets, and we see the effect is limp instead of rigid paralysis -- the spell can cause either, as long as the use is consistent. 

We'll jump now into the next story, which stars an old friend of mine (and currently featuring in my Funny Picture Stories anthology!), Dean Denton. This story takes place some months after the most recent one I've republished and -- ah, Harry Francis Campbell, I see you still have a problem with drawing arms that are too short.

The captain is mostly right; the average person cannot dive safely to 500 feet deep underwater. The world record currently stands at 1,082 feet, but that is next to impossible without extensive training for deep sea diving. Indeed, it's dangerous for the average person to dive more than 60' deep. I would say, then, that water pressure can do up to 1 point of damage per 60' past 60' deep, so that at 180' deep a diver takes 1-2 points of damage per melee turn, 1-4 points at 360' deep, and so on.

Compagnie Belgique threw me at first; it looks like a proper name for a company and I looked to see if it was real, but all it means is that Dean went to a Belgian company. 

Harry's work is always full of racism, and Absalom's dialogue here is no exception, but I'm going to give Harry props for at least trying on panel 4. It seems like he put a lot of effort into trying to draw a black man's profile, realistically, perhaps even from a model, instead of the usual caricature. It still came out looking really weird, but that's partly because all the faces around it look rushed and cartoony. In fact, the art overall is just sub-par for Harry. He must have been really rushing towards the deadline on this one.

The end of the story is missing from the copy I have access to, so I never do find out what the helium was for...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Target Comics #2 - pt. 1

We return to Carl Burgos' third android hero. I don't have much to say here, since this is largely recap from the first issue, but...Dr. Simms, the world is at peace? In 1940? How long has it been since you looked at a newspaper?

Carl Burgos seems to be on the side of isolationists here (spoilers: that's definitely not the direction the U.S. wound up going in). 

So far, we don't know what this chromelac can do, unless it can make blinding flashes. Maybe an alloy made with magnesium?

Here's the page where we first learn chromelac is an alloy. We also get a demonstration of how you made phone calls in 1940.

It's worth noting that Manowar has to climb the fence; he does not have the leaping power prepared and it's not his built-in android power. The white streaks from his eyes suggest Wreck at Range is his built-in power. However, a speeding bullet is an awful specific, hard-to-hit target to wreck.  It's tricky because wrecking doesn't specifically call for attack rolls normally, to some extent wrecking is an area-effecting ability, but the Editor can require them at his discretion. A stingy Editor could assign an Armor Class of 0 or lower to a speeding bullet.  

It's rare for us to learn that mobsters are using automatics, not that it does them any good. It seems that only one of them gets a chance to hit before Manowar gets to go, which defies how initiative normally works in H&H, with each side rolling against each other. Now, it won't break H&H if you, as Editor, decide to switch to individual initiative rolls, but it does slow combat down unnecessarily.  Of course, just because they're present doesn't mean mobsters need to attack.  They might have been overconfident enough to just have one attack first.

"High tension electrons," huh? Well, that's sort of a thing. He must mean high tension electron voltage, but tension is, as far as I can tell, what helps power your television or your electron microscopic; it's the voltage that can harm you. Here, Manowar is using the Blast power -- perhaps our first encounter with it in a comic book! -- to harm, although an alternate explanation is that he's using Wreck at Range to disarm (his goal is clearly to disarm, but both attack methods have a chance of disarming).

I'm not sure what the science is, if any, behind the electrons having to strike the steel bar first before hitting the water. Apparently being stunned by electricity makes you mispronounce words. 

Manowar is sort of correct, that electrocution typically means grave injury or death, but I think, technically, even being stunned should count as electrocution.

I don't plan on making "toughie" a mobstertype. Toughie sounds enough like thug that I would just use that one.

Note that, again, Manowar has to climb because he can't leap (I point it out because it's so unusual for a superhero circa 1940).

Ha, I would have been right to use thug stats for the toughie!

The narrator calls those guys guards in panel 4; I wonder if that makes them rented cops, as opposed to on-duty officers. There shouldn't be any difference in statting them; they would still be beat cops. 

There is no game mechanic that causes heart attacks; that must have been a freebie from the Editor because the game session needed to wrap up. 

I'm going to have a Message power in the Heroes Handbook, if I ever get that done.

Wait - we still don't know what chromelac is! Is it a magnesium alloy? If it is, why do you want to make bridges and houses out of it? Maybe you should have thought this through before killing Tomsen for just wanting to make a profit off of it, Manowar...

We're going to jump right into the middle of Bulls-Eye Bill and the good stuff. Everett does not write your typical hero stories, so here's the bad guy kicking the good guys' butts. The question I pose here is, should kicking with boots with spurs on them do more damage than kicking with boots alone? Except in deliberately rare situations (trophy weapons), all weapons do the same range of damage in H&H. Again, it's a deliberate choice to go with abstraction over accuracy. 

Now, an option for the Editor that isn't really spelled out in the rulebooks is that, in a situation like this, where the bad guy really kicks butt due to lucky die rolls, the Editor could make his weapon a trophy weapon with a higher damage die, even if the weapon had not been intended to be a trophy weapon, nor did higher damage during the battle. The fact that there's a fun anecdote tied to the item enhances its importance in the campaign.

Let's overlook the racist Chinese caricature for a moment. Can you guess the code? That's the kind of clue that can keep your players guessing for sessions...I love it!

*sigh* Now we have a racist "half-breed" caricature. Relax, I'm not going to create a half-breed mobstertype with fantastic leaping abilities. Rather, I think this is a good example of an enemy mysteryman using a stunt! He's probably higher than 1st level too, since he takes a bullet and is still ready for more fighting!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

   

Crackajack Funnies #20 - pt. 2

And we return with Freckles, which surprises me sometimes with its continued relevance to this blog. Here we see how easy it is to find treasure in the game -- particularly when the treasure is meant as a plot hook, and then you can literally snag it up anywhere.

An interesting code of colored lights for villains to use to communicate with each other.

I think I've mentioned elsewhere how natives need a better chance of hearing noise.

The cowboy genre has lots of reasons for bad guys to want to take someone's ranch by force, but this may be the first time the bad guys have wanted the ranch so they can turn around and sell it to the government. Won't the joke be on them if the government declares eminent domain on the ranch and builds the dam anyway!

Do natives also need a better chance of hiding in shadows, or should that apply to half-pints?

Sleight of hand is a skill you don't often see bad guys using, but this outlaw is an expert -- managing to move his hands over to an exposed axe right in front of Red and still goes unnoticed.

We haven't visited our old friend Myra North in awhile. Most male heroes solve problems with their fists; Myra solves this one with just her shoulder! I wrote recently about how a character should be able to sacrifice his chance at an attack to modify someone else's attack roll upwards, but here is an example of someone foregoing her attack to modify someone's attack roll downwards.

It's also interesting that this scene hinges on wind direction, an element often neglected in stories and RPG scenarios.

"Forcing away" needs to become a stunt in dog fights between aviators; basically a push attack, but without contact between the planes.

Power dive is already an aviation stunt, but I should probably write something about this tactic, of playing chicken with airplanes. It would apply equally to cars; the non-Hero/non-Heroes involved have to make morale saves or swerve out of the way. The Hero then has to make a save vs. science to pull out (or hit the brakes) in time to avoid the collision. Of course, the goal is to make your opponents swerve so hard that they crash, so they have to make saves vs. science if they fail their morale saves, crashing if they fail again (just not into you).

Blowguns are a surprisingly rare weapon in comic books.

According to Clyde Beatty, clowns have a soothing effect on crowds. Perhaps Heroes should bring clowns with them so their allies will all get a bonus to morale saves.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)