Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 1

It's no Multiverse of Madness, but on this Dr. Strange adventure we get a trip to the Orient. Or at least as far as Chinatown, so far. Is this page worth sharing? I thought it noteworthy for three things. One, "plans for canal fortifications" felt like such a welcome relief from the upteenth adventure to revolve around a stratoplane or a new type of torpedo. Two, there's the interesting distinction between Chinese and Manchurian. Although we think of Manchuria as part of China today, and it was pretty much assimilated by China long before 1940, throughout most of the 1930s Manchuria had been conquered and "liberated" by Japan. Three, most heroes' contacts in Chinatown are "respectable" businessmen who turn out to be criminals, but this story skips over all that and reveals this guy Fang as a gang leader from the start. This is better (and less racist), as it frees up the rest of Chinatown to be represented by real respectable businessmen. 

That's got to be pretty embarrassing, falling for the ol' go-in-first-while-I-lock-the-door-behind-you trick. Almost as embarrassing as the collection of racist cliches in panel 3! But even that may pale in comparison to how incredibly dorky Doc looks in panel 4, with his incredibly misshapen shoulder, Don King hairstyle, and his short pants that barely reach his socks.   

That is a lot of attackers coming at Doc, but he does have a tactical advantage of bottlenecking them on the same side of the railing. 

More interesting to me is the last panel, with all the hideout dressing in the corner. There's a box, a pail, a coffer, a barrel, a chest, a...couch? A drip pan for oil changes? It's harder to tell with the smaller objects.

Trap doors with slides to lower levels? How D&D-like! A room filled with coffins? Also D&D-like! We only differ when the action moves away from the hideout to a new locale -- though cargo ships can also be hideouts!

I'm pretty sure Doc just killed four men with his Raise Elephant power. 

He could have wrapped up the adventure right there by capturing the men on the ship and learning from them who they worked for, but instead he inexplicably leaves the scene to go talk to someone, so the ship can slip away in his absence, and then has to get lucky trying to find it again. He can't track over water, so this is just a question of a lucky wandering encounter, and/or the Editor just being nice. 

Doc is pretty rich, owning a yacht and a plane already. We've talked many times about brevet ranks for this game. Do we need to start talking about ...brevet starting money?

Doc is lucky that plane isn't a rental!

There isn't any mechanic that would determine if your foot catches in something, so that's simply Editor's Fiat.

Kicking a plane out of the water...hmm. I'm tempted to say that's Extend Missile Range with several Roman numerals after it...but since it isn't used for combat, this could just be flavor text. 

More important is the following panel. How far can a superhero swim? Non-superhumans have swam over 100 miles without stopping, so the fact that Doc swam 30 isn't that impressive. Maybe it's the speed that he swam it? But that could be measured easily with a Race the- power. Anyway, back to my original question...I'm going to say that H&H Heroes can swim 1-6 miles per point of Constitution they have.

Hoo-hum, the old cliche of the warship disguised as a tramp! 

Shielding himself from fire is easy, that's just the power Fire Resistance at work. But shielding or blocking someone else with his own body...that requires a different mechanic, one that is universal in application and not specific to a certain power -- since there are many circumstances in a H&H game when the Heroes might need to shield people.

I am reminded of a recent time I ran Monsters!Monsters!, the Tunnels & Trolls variant where you play the monsters. In it, the only game mechanic outside of combat was saving throws. Need to hide? Make a saving throw! Trying to duck behind cover? Make a saving throw! Shield someone with your body? Oh! Hmm...

There's some insidious history alteration going on here I should point out. Kachukuo isn't a real place, but it looks like it's based on Manchukuo. Yes, Manchukuo had a ruthless dictator, but that dictator was Japanese, not Manchurian, and he was Hirohito -- Manchukuo was a puppet state created in Manchuria by their Japanese "liberator"/conquerors, as I alluded to at the beginning of this post. Suggesting that the Manchurians themselves were the bad guys suggests Japanese sympathies which surely evaporated in December 1941.

 

Besides that, there's a rare (at this point) example of a superhero punching a villain upwards into the air. The H&H mechanics deal with converting damage into feet pushed at a 1:1' ratio, but if that should be modified to account for gravity, I haven't done so yet - nor will likely do, honestly; sometimes realism just robs us of chances to have fun.  

The old man being attacked feels like a wandering encounter, while the twist of the "main bad guy" being so civil is refreshing, even if he's just being civil in a Bond villain-way.

Doing random good deeds have a way of coming back to help Heroes later, like how the old man knows a secret entrance. It would have been nice to see how the secret door operated! We do get some nice hideout dressing, with the carved pillars, and the closing walls trap is a classic. 

 

I think it's interesting how there's guards stationed at the secret entrance. I guess Kong doesn't like to take any chances? Or perhaps they too were just wandering encounters, heading back to their guard station.

 

It's interesting that Kong is so sure this cage will work when he knows Doc just busted through a stone wall. I wonder what the bars are made out of/what they were treated with? 

I also like the prismatic raygun, each color having a different power. This one is quite powerful - not for the charm ray, but the raise dead ray.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)
 

 

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.)

 

Wonderworld Comics #11 - pt. 3

We're still here with Patty O'Day and her rival suitors, the aristocratic Mike and the common man, Ham. Ham was climbing out of the well (we saw him get dumped down the well last time) when he pulls this stone loose. Now, we can treat this as a secret door, but it's sort of a build-your-own secret door.

Mike is a very confident climber. Had he begun from standing on top of Ham's shoulders, I would have given him a +1 modifier to his skill roll.

I just googled some pics of French cars of this time period and while, yes, they did tend to have long bodies, and I did see some two-seaters that looked like three men abreast would have to be really comfortable with overlapping thighs...but I still don't think any cars of the era were that narrow.

More evidence of damage done to cars in a chase should trigger a random chance of complication, rather than assigning hit points to vehicles.











Complicating matters about the nationality of these villains, Egroe isn't a French name, but a Dutch word (I believe it means "grand"). Dutch separatists fighting in France?

It's interesting that the bad guys "miraculously" survive, suggesting that car wrecks should usually be lethal in the game. I've got plenty of conflicting evidence on that, but maybe only Heroes should have such an easy time escaping car wrecks.

We're going to leave that story and jump into the following Dr. Fung story. Here, in Persia, Fung and Dan are shown this well by an old friend. It seems like a trap, since there is no visible explanation for how the ground around the well gives way so easily, but apparently it is just coincidental instability.

That is one of the craziest monster designs I've ever seen. I'm not even sure what to call them -- unicycle ghouls? The captions only call them things like "weird creatures" and "strange beings." How do you even rationalize a species evolving to have a built-in wheel?

Complaints aside, I like the idea of pneumatic tubes transporting Heroes quickly between levels of a hideout.

And, of course, we end this page with the cliche of monsters adopting a hot human woman as their queen.

For no reason whatsoever, one of the unicycle ghouls is a gigantic unicycle ghoul, about 20' tall. If unicycle ghouls have 1 HD (I would be skeptical about giving them more, since they should be knocked over easily), then this fella must have at least 12 HD. Rather than being presented as their leader, this thing is just one of them, so it's refreshing to know this race doesn't go in for hierarchical societies, except for elevating human women.

It's hard to imagine the young lady has never thought to scream at the monsters to take advantage of their sensitivity to sound. And then, perhaps she has, but enough of them made their saves that they could always stop her.

We're going to jump ahead again, this time into Munson Paddock's Tex Maxon, the Phantom Rider. The stop, drop, and roll campaign would not start until the 1970s, but that doesn't mean people didn't know that's what to do when you catch on fire in the 1940s.

It's interesting how guns only make lots of smoke when the story benefits from it. I'm not sure if guns every actually made that much smoke, or if this comes from old cowboy movies exaggerating the smoke clouds.

While dropping out of a tree on your opponent looks impressive, I would assign no more than a +1 to hit modifier for it, making it questionable if it was worth all the effort of clambering to get into position for it.

Surprisingly, this "Spark" Stevens of the Navy story may be our very first set in Guam. By October 1941, all U.S. dependents and civilians on Guam would be evacuated, but here at the beginning of 1940, Guam would have a burgeoning population of 22,000.

There's little that need be said about the "damsel in distress" plot hook, except that it's so. darn. easy.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 2

Today we're looking at Cynde's behind in a bathing suit -- I mean, Rex Dexter of Mars!

Okay, I get why Rex is stripped down to his skivvies, because that's what you do to your prisoners to make sure they don't have hidden weapons or utility belts full of lockpicks on them, but Cynde is feeling unusually confident, or just hoping to catch some rays while saving Rex.

Actually, I further get that Dick Briefer could have been inspired by Burroughs' John Carter novels, wherein everyone on Mars feels more comfortable naked.

All that said, a deathtrap where you are just hung out in the sun and the bad guys wait for you to dry up and die - well, those are real patient bad guys! That's at least three days for Rex to have come up with an escape plan.

So, Reyni gave her a freeze-ray gun...that worked? Does that mean Reyni gave Rex one that didn't work, like as a prank? Or does Cynde (as a typical 1940-era woman, even in the future) think it's surprising anyone would give her a working gun?

Really unsure how that lever reverses the ozone layer depletion back on Earth so quickly, but it's good to know buildings aren't blowing up from the heat anymore.

"Surprised, Rex darling?"

"I'll say -- how did he install this shattering-ray on my ship without my knowing it, or noticing it on the way here? And why are you just telling me about it now? We could have blown up their lab before I went in there, got captured, and stripped down to my civvies!"

Shattering-rays, obviously use the wrecking things mechanic.

Anyway, we're going to jump into the Green Mask story in progress. Now, don't cry over spilled milk. I'm not; I'm wondering instead if milk operators protective associations were real things. Well, there was a Wisconsin Dairy Protective Association at least as late as the 1920s, so as much as this sounds like a shake-down racket, it seems to have been a legitimate thing.

I'm also wondering what Green Mask was doing in the district attorney's closet, and how long he was hiding in there.

Is part of that picture missing? Because that doesn't look like a hand to me. I suspect "Black Hand" might be a stand-in for "Brownshirts," particularly since it is said to be a foreign organization.

Even though Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson," it was already a catchphrase before 1940 and possibly even before its first known instance in print, back in 1909.

Putin's government still uses this same scheme today.

That cop is all bluster; Green Mask just stands there, daring him to arrest him, and the cop does nothing but stand there and watch him climb out the window.

What would be on the ledge for GM to hook his wire to? Does he visit the district attorney's closet so often that he's had time to screw a hook into the ledge?

Is a convertible really a good idea for being out for a drive when you're wearing a mask?

That said, I like how the hideout requires passes, and the skull is an interesting decoration for the business table. I wonder if it has any function, like a microphone connected to a dictaphone hidden inside. 

J.J. Ratfield was the head of the protective association -- so it was a shake-down racket after all!

Look at that panel 6 -- how is GM even keeping his foot on the gas while leaning out the far side of the car, let alone control the wheel? How embarrassing it would have been had he crashed into an oncoming car or ramped over the sidewalk while trying to do his cool move.

The note, I'll grant, is pretty clever. By offering himself as bait, it gives the police more incentive to come to this midnight rendezvous. He just has to hope they are more interested in catching him than they seemed at the window.

The Green Mask gets a surprise attack, though it looks like two surprise attacks here. I'm not comfortable with allowing a grappling attack and a punch on a separate opponent in the same turn in Hideouts & Hoodlums. I don't know what advantage the leap gives him either.

Having the drivers help out in the fight was a lucky break to make it go faster. Their cooperativeness could have been determined by an encounter reaction roll, even though GM didn't ask them to help him.

That's a really good ruse, so long as Ratfield falls for it. I would give him a save vs. plot to see if he's suspicious, unless GM uses a skill check for voice mimicry to sound like one of the hoodlums out on the road.

I'm not showing you the next page, but all you're missing is that GM puts the receiver to a dictaphone to record the confession.

We have just enough time left to peek in on the next story of Chen Chang. It seems pretty bold to kill the watchman outside the theatre, even if it is nighttime. But what I have a problem with is two men at the same time falling for the fake door over the 75' drop. One man, maybe, but...were they both going through the door at the same time? Is there more to the trap, like someone comes up behind them and pushes?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Jungle Comics #3 - pt. 2

We're picking up where we left off with Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle. Stripped from his creator, Fletcher Hanks, and put in the hands of a more capable artist, will Tabu be less weird?

Polymorphing into a pigeon isn't too weird, and we already know from two previous adventures that Tabu has the brevet ranks to cast a 4th level spell.

Weirder is a 1930s villain comfortable with punching women, but maybe weirder still is that Velma is in the African jungle and still wearing a jacket. I feel for you, Velma; in my old age I have poor circulation now and get cold easily too.

That Tabu is felled by a bullet is weirdest of all, from a game mechanics perspective, because a magic-user of his level should have had enough hit points to take that shot and stay on his feet. Unless he was playing possum to lure out the villains?

I also want to call attention to that fifth panel, as there's a good amount of detail for outdoor ruins one can gather from that panel -- carved pillars, fallen trees, large skeletons, rocks, shrubs, and abandoned buildings.

 For whatever reason, Tabu allows himself to be tied up despite now being conscious (the bullet either stunned him or he was playing possum, as I suspect), and perhaps it's because Vilma was being threatened if he didn't comply. With these golden age stories being so short, sometimes you have to read the extra story between the panels. Anyway, that looks like a pretty nasty deathtrap, but since he's only tied to the elephants with rope, breaking loose requires just a simple wrecking things roll vs. the door category.

 So, deathtrap take two! This time, Blackwall gets the idea to sick a rhino on him. Because Tabu is still in a deathtrap, the rhino's charge can do lethal damage, whereas normally it would do no more than render him unconscious.

Who says things like, "It's tearing down at him with the impetus of a locomotive"? Probably someone who says things like, "Look at Charles tear into those scones with the impetus of a starving man!"

These clue coupons are clever, and could be a good source for random crime clues I can gather here. From this one, we add checking the flesh around a wound to see if it's swollen in such a way that suggests a poisoned weapon.

Although we already know Tabu can snap ropes, he decides to show off one of his most powerful spells by polymorphing into a rock. Polymorphing into a mineral is a much higher level spell than normal polymorphing, as the spells are written now.

Let's jump into the next story now, which is Camilla, Queen of the Lost Empire. We don't know the backstory of these characters, but Camilla is extremely trusting of an old man who tells her to set herself on fire to get her old kingdom back. I don't know about you, but I'd be concerned that the old geezer has a wicked sense of humor and is about to fatally prank me -- particularly when he starts prancing about and spouting "lo mozo co nomo" around the fire.

Camilla seems to be invoking Baal, the ancient earth and fertility god of Canaan and Phoenicia. You might know him from the bad press he got in the Old Testament.

Turns out the old guy was telling the truth after all! He seems to have cast a Wish spell for her that basically restores everything to the way it was earlier in the previous story.

Jon is either really trying hard to impress Ruth or he's pretty dumb, as it would have been a lot smarter to run from a big crowd of swordsmen than to stand and wait for them to reach him. From what we've been told, Jon and Ruth had no overwhelming need to explore the ruins other than curiosity, so if they had just left and never come back they would have been much safer. Or they could have ran, waited for nightfall, and then tried to sneak in.

The Blue Bath is a terrible name for a deathtrap, but the idea of a magic pool that can age you to death is a good deathtrap. Or at least it would be if Ruth actually looked older than 50 when she comes out. I wonder, if Camilla hates her so bad, why she doesn't leave her in longer. Maybe the pool doesn't age you more the longer you stay in, but a one-time aging in a random range of years -- say, 10-60. That said, I wonder if being dragged out of a pit by grappling hooks isn't itself a pretty tough punishment; I'd say that would do 2-8 points of damage, 1-4 for the hooks digging into her and 1-4 more if they drag her up the wall.  

The python pit, in comparison, is a pretty mundane deathtrap. There's 1-6 falling damage for going into the pit, and then he could get killed by the constrictor snake, but Camilla was nice enough to let him have a weapon in the pit with him. That Camilla can never get over Jon!

Geez, Jon, do you really have it in for snakes? All you had to do was kill the snake, not dice it!

Awfully convenient how Camilla's fountain of youth is left completely unguarded. Magic water is also, apparently, extremely volatile when exposed to fire...whereas ordinary water would simply extinguish the torch. Don't eat anything spicy for awhile, Ruth!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Jumbo Comics #13 - pt. 1

We're back to Fiction House now and their main publication, headlined by Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. It's a peculiar story for a lot of reasons, so let's take them one at a time. First, it seems strange that Sheena is okay with elephant hunters. Second, Zulus come from southern Africa, and my understanding was that Sheena's adventures were in northern Africa. Third, Zulus didn't use bows and arrows, apparently exclusively favoring melee weapons (though I've only done a little research on that). Fourth, Zulu were not head hunters (again, limited research, but that seems highly unlikely).

Fifth, having the Zulu stream across the plain in, practically, single file is visually appealing and probably easier to draw, but not a sound strategy. Sixth, Bob is waaay too reckless when it comes to starting forest fires. Think about the environment, Bob!

Not a story flaw, per se, but I want to pause to talk about this lion combat and emulating it in the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules. Sheena climbing onto the lion's back to keep away from its bite and claws actually makes realistic sense, but does not work in H&H where facing is barely important in combat. If facing isn't important, then it isn't necessary that Sheena grapple the lion before attacking it, and then she wouldn't be thrown off. And even if the lion reversed the hold and threw Sheena off, there's nothing in the rules that mean Sheena would drop her weapon. Of course -- and I say this a lot -- there doesn't have to be game mechanics explanation for most of this; much of it could be flavor text.

I also keep saying two more things, how much I hate seeing animals killed and how sick I am of animals, or mobsters, being one-shotted.

Seven, it's weird that Sheena is only okay with male elephants being killed...

While exploring, they just happen to come across a cave. Can physical locations be wandering encounters? If you want them to be.

I had to double check to make sure I hadn't already covered this story on the blog because this is, what, the third time we've seen an elephants' graveyard in a comic book so far?

Eight, how are poachers worse than hunters? 

There's a lot of different versions out there of what happens to people who mess with elephants' graveyards. In this one, at least 10 elephants show up to stampede you to death. That's a pretty high challenge level.

Nine -- tripping over a snake is lame, Bob.

In a jungle genre adventure, animals need to have greater than animal intelligence so they can do things like rescue people and communicate to each other.

Having a few more pages to kill, another wandering encounter comes along. This is a good technique for when you've finished the scenario for the night, but Sheena's player says he can stay a bit later.

At least cobras are jungle-appropriate. 

"Golleh", or Dick Briefer (Bob Kane's replacement on this feature), really pulls out all the stops on this wacky ride, with figures squashed and stretched way beyond the point of cartooniness. Perhaps appropriately, Peter Pupp has been shortened to a mere three-page presence, of which I'll only share one of you here (and given how racist it is, consider that a blessing).

"Maravian Crater" is a clue for where this story is meant to take place, since the Moravian Crater is a real place in Germany. Why the villain is, then, a Chinaman, is beyond me...

This page is from Will Eisner's Hawk of the Seas, his great , unfinished pirate saga. Here we see a treasure hunt in progress, with some great ideas for wilderness dressing to look for on such a hunt.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)