Zip Comics #3 - pt. 4

Just in case I've never made this clear, I don't just include stories I like on this blog. War Eagles makes me a little sleepy...but I include pages that interest me, illustrate how well my game Hideouts & Hoodlums emulates these comics, points out ways it could do so better, or just things I need to rant about after reading. 

This page is the second of those, and it illustrates that administering first aid only required intent and physical contact; you do not need a first aid kit (they do help, though!).

Hoo hum, the ol' "Guards, come quick!" trick worked again like a charm and...ooo, what's this? One of them doesn't make it out? Now, this woke me up and made me take notice. We so seldom see failure in the comic books, but of course it's quite easy to hit a fleeing opponent, particularly with a high rate of fire. And missing your hear noise roll? Sure, that can happen in game. 

Of course, Kermit is only supporting cast. Would they have turned around and gone back for a player character?

 

It looks like the boys are escaping in a Fokker, or maybe a Heinkel, but it has to be a two-seater and that canopy looks odd for either plane. The pursuit planes look like Stukkas, and it's amusing to think of a Fokker outrunning a Stukka - but hey, it's comic books, and random chance is king in Hideouts & Hoodlums as well. 

Oh, these crazy kids. The number of things that have to go right for this plan to work...no wandering encounters en route to the air field, landing unseen near the airdrome, finding a single guard out of sight of all other guards...

...the guard knowing where the prisoner is, the guard giving up that information, the guard's uniform fitting, getting a surprise turn for the bombing run, not getting shot by anti-aircraft guns on the way out, only one guard left guarding the prisoner...

Mind you, a lot of these are familiar tropes of the genre, but still...

"He ain't heavyyyyy, he's my brotherrrrr" -- Oops, wrong war!

What? Tom is still flying around bombing the fields? Where are those anti-aircraft guns? Why are four soldiers manning a machine gun instead?

Yeah, the kids easily win in the end, so no surprises there. This next feature is Captain Valor, and with a witty script by unknown-to-me scribe Abner Sundell (a name to watch for here!) and lush visuals by Mort Meskin, I'm feeling like we should just ignore the jaundiced look of the orientals and soak in the rest of the story...but at the same time, it occurs to me that there must be a lot of junks floating around in the sea and, if Tsin hadn't fired on them, Valor would never have known this was the right one...

This mobstertype is going in Mobster Manual part II: M-Z as a pseudo-giant, a bad guy who is bigger and tougher than a thug, described as a giant, but obviously isn't literally a giant by any literal measure. 

"Bullseye!" seems to suggest a critical hit, but it also could have just been maximum damage. 

"That spinach I ate" -- great Popeye reference!

Hmm...here I was just raving about Meskin, but...look at those awful, stubby arms in panel 3...

You'd think that Valor would be taking continuous hit point loss by hanging from his thumbs, but he seems to be feeling like he just woke up from a nap here. 

I've no objection to the half-pint escaping from being tied up; supporting cast get skill checks too. And last-minute rescues are one of the reasons to keep supporting cast around! 

Valor doesn't seem to be actively recruiting supporting cast here, so the Editor must be elaborating on a very positive encounter reaction roll here.

Heyy...where did that flare gun come from? Did they tie him up with the flare gun still on him?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Colossus Comics #1 - pt. 1

Wow! I have been reviewing comic books from only the cover date of March 1940 since August 2019. It's hard to believe it's taken this long, and makes me a little fearful of how long it's going to take to get through April! But now we are on the final issue available to me from this month, the one and only issue of Colossus Comics from Sun Publications (one of only two comic books they ever produced). It reads like a cheaper knock-off of Planet Comics...but I'm getting ahead of myself!

First we get a glimpse of the 27th century. We know from this page that mankind has colonized the solar system at least as far as Jupiter's moons by then, and that we've gone back to manned, moon-bound telescopes instead of automated satellite telescopes. Because this is the second attack of the Plantaliens -- vicious-looking Mr. Potato Heads with spaghetti-like green tentacles -- we get a "oh no, not again!" reaction and not a "we've finally encountered other life in the universe!" reaction. So we don't know from this story if this is the only other intelligent species out there. 

Getting permission from a patient before injecting an untested drug into them is apparently not a thing anymore in the future. Darn you, lax medical malpractice laws!   

Oh, girls are so ditzy! How can you expect them to notice the difference between 2/100th of a part of a catalyst and a portion 10,000 times larger?

 2,000' tall may or may not be a record for largest giant in a comic book to this point; the moon giants in Flip Falcon would definitely give him a run for his money. Thank goodness his clothes (somehow) grow with him!

That's right, technology has still not replaced the zipper by the 27th century -- unless Zenith just likes to wear super-retro clothes. Incidentally, if 20th century clothes were the retro-fashion of the 27th century, that would be akin to people dressing in 13th century garb in the 20th century to look retro.

I'm curious about that threat that he could crush them with his breath. I don't know how even the Mythbusters team would test that one. If we accepted this at face value, we'd have to assign damage to his breath, since Hideouts & Hoodlums currently has no wind-based powers that do damage.

Urbania is either a renamed city or a city that doesn't exist in our time. 

In the future they still have televisions with poor color quality, and use telegrams instead of, oh, an electronic version that transmits over some electronic device.

Here we see the Colossus using his breath to Wreck at Range, though at a distance of 2,000' it's more of an inconvenience than a threat.

You know, it's really annoying that we never get any frame of reference for the size of the Plantaliens. I'm tempted to stat them like a D&D roper, but what if they are only 2' tall?

So, these are fleets? I'm seeing 5 vs. 6. 

The range on those ground ray batteries/electric rayguns is fantastic; they can reach from ground level to the upper atmosphere.

It's not clear from this story if the Martians and Venusians are Earth colonists or aliens.

As odd a futuristic story as Colossus AD 2640 was, the Educational Adventures of Panda-Lin is much weirder. Why does the panda have a P on his chest? Who knows.

I'm showing you this page because of the unusual flying carpet that's a split bamboo mat. Magic items can be shaped to fit the culture they came from.

We're going to end today with just this one page from Lucky Lucifer, Flyer of Fortune. The artwork is so terrible I'm almost embarrassed to have it on my blog; I could find 5th graders who can draw better than this. I share it for two things. One is the concept of Heroes having an emblem on their vehicles that identifies them -- this is long before Batman gets his Batmobile. 

The other is the concept of a direct hit. Critical hits are a house rule almost as old as D&D itself, and in any d20-based game using criticals, it is usually treated as a natural (unmodified) roll of 20 on the die. But what if a direct hit was rolling the exact target number for the Armor Class? Against a live opponent, your direct hit might do +1 damage, or against a vehicle automatically cause a complication (like here, where the engine catches on fire).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Famous Funnies #67 - pt. 2

Just a few pages left to share from this issue...

Jack Kirby isn't doing the art anymore on Lightnin' and the Lone Rider at this point, but it's still an interesting set-up with some unusual additions to the cowboy genre -- a Dragon Lady-like femme fatale, and "advanced" technology, like television, in the villains' lair.

This is from Mescal Ike, and while I think the top strip is pretty funny, I'm including this for the interesting turn of phrase in the middle tier. "Head of the class" is still a common term in use today, but if there's a head it stands to reason there's also a "foot of the class," with the bottom scores. Today's school system would not emphasize this fact and humiliate the student, but in 1940...?

This is from the one-page gag filler, Life's Like That. I'm partial to librarians, even though the "Squeaky" panels aren't as funny. What I found really funny was the baby panel.

We're checking in on Homer Hoopee again for the first time in awhile for several reasons. One, even though the chase sequence is over, it alludes to two important factors -- attack penalties for hitting a target moving at great speed (found in 1st edition Hideouts & Hoodlums' vehicular combat rules, but should also apply to attacking movement-buffed speedsters), and ranges on missile attacks. Further, Homer's prize is an example of how generous monetary rewards can be at the end of a long adventure ($50,000 -- in 1940 no less!).

If you can ignore the racism in this page of Spunky Dory, you'll see perhaps the first critical hit to the groin in comic books, and delivered by a goat no less (longtime readers of this blog are aware of the importance of goats in golden age comics)!

The question then is, is this evidence of the need for a critical hit mechanic in H&H, or does the headbutt to the groin simply explain how it did maximum damage on the damage die? I lean towards the latter.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

New Adventure Comics #25

Dale Daring starts with a fall out a window, and it's interesting that the fall only lightly injures Dale and kills his opponent. In Hideouts & Hoodlums, all falling damage is nonlethal unless you fall during a deathtrap. At least that is true for Heroes; I think I will make all falling damage potentially lethal to non-Heroes.

When the police arrive, Dale's word isn't even questioned. This is just the sort of "soft mechanic" (no numbers involved) that I had envisioned for level titles having. Had Dale been of a lower title than the police arriving, then he would have needed to persuade them through roleplaying and the Editor would have needed to roll a positive encounter reaction roll.

This installment of Robin Hood brings up an interesting issue -- if all ranges for missile weapons are the same (and they are, as previously described in Book I, but now found in Book III), then how does one win an archery contest of distance? When a variable amount of distance is needed, I would add the results of a d20 roll to the ranges listed.

Make no mistake, this ape doesn't know Steve Conrad from Adam, yet he immediately leaps in to help. It should not be possible to automatically attract Supporting Cast Members without even trying, so this is clearly a freebie from the Editor, who realized too late that he'd made the scenario too challenging.

It would seem that a dagger between the eyes, killing a leopard, might be proof of a critical hit mechanic in place in H&H. I am still biased against the notion, though I'll try to keep an open mind. The situation could also be explained by the leopard just having unusually low hit points.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)