Feature Comics #30 - pt. 2

We're looking at the second half of this issue of Feature Comics today, and are still in this month's Dollman feature. If you can't guess, Dollman has snuck aboard a German submarine since we last saw him. If you ignore the dynamic layouts and just concentrate on what Dollman is doing on this page, you'll realize there's nothing here he couldn't have done at full-size, backing my contention that a shrinking power is nothing but flavor text.

Now, he did, on the previous page, conceal himself in a crate too small for a normal-sized person to hide in...but the Editor could easily have changed the scale of the crates to fit the Hero.

I know where this is! the highest suspension bridge in the world was the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado from 1929 until 2001.

I am really impressed by the wrinkle in this story, that Rance leaves the time bomb intact to give the story a time limit. It's not really clear why. What would make this work so much better is if the time bomb wasn't safe to defuse, so the only way to do so is to find the man who left the bomb in the time they have available and trick him into defusing i for them. Which is almost exactly how this story goes, except for the necessity factor.

This is more of what I like from this story - not only finding out who the villain was, but finding out his backstory, looking for things to exploit so they can trick him instead of beating him up. It's all so ingenuously done that I would probably wind up giving Cameron a penalty to his save vs. plot to see through the disguise (the distance and bad lighting probably help too, so, -3?).

Here's an example of expert level sleight of hand from a non-adventure character. But I was more interested in sharing this page for the unusual word "bohunks." I don't know if you all knew this already, but bohunks is actually a racial slur, referring to an immigrant from central or southeastern Europe, especially a laborer.

We haven't looked at educational filler in a while. Things like this are very useful because, when I'm deciding how high or how far a Hero should be able to leap without some kind of buffing (either by skill or power or spell), I will look to world records, but of course world records keep going up over time. It's hard to believe that the pole vault record was "only" 14' back in 1940; now it stands at 20'!

We're jumping from there into Charlie Chan, where the artist does a great job of getting Warner Oland's likeness with all the shading. Here, Charlie lands on the nature of the bad guys' scheme from two clues. I've spoken about this before on the blog, how difficult it can be sometimes to distinguish the Editor misspeaking from deliberately leaving a clue in dialogue. The better clue, for a RPG, is having Chan realize the binoculars are expensive. I'm not even sure if one should need a skill check to determine that; I would think it would be obvious if a pair of binoculars was fancy enough to be expensive.

This page tells me pigeon blood rubies are worth twice what diamonds are worth. I wish it also told me what diamonds were worth in 1940, as that would be a good cipher for figuring out what all other gemstones were worth. Interestingly, I can find this information online, but only going back to 1960.

You don't hear about "pigeon blood" rubies often, probably because it is as violent as it sounds. Pigeon Blood Ruby meaning is primarily associated with its color that matches exactly with the blood drawn from a freshly killed pigeon.

I'm currently running a campaign where one of the Heroes is working to become a professional boxer, so I found this installment of Slim and Tubby particularly interesting. At first glance it seems that Slim needs a license and bond to become a boxer, but that's not true; he needs a license and a surety bond to work as a boxing promoter, something that's still true today (Slim is looking to become a promoter to promote his own boxing career).

We also see robbers armed with sub-machine guns here (well, sort of -- they never leave the car, but we're told they are that well-armed).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Planet Comics #3 - pt. 4

We're down to the last feature -- poor lonely Auro, Lord of Jupiter! - but we're not going to ignore it because I have some things to say about this one.

We start with Auro doing a lot of showing off. We don't need game mechanics to handle simple showing off; any Editor should let his players describe any showboating as flavor text without making them roll for it.

But what if we did need to roll? Like, if Auro was competing with someone else for showboating? If Auro was a mysteryman, competing with other mysterymen, they could try to outbid each other on how many stunts they will expend. Other heroes could rely on the skill system, treating acrobatics as a skill. If only one contestant makes his skill check, then we have an obvious winner. If more than one makes it, the one who makes it by the most wins.

But on a d6, there is not much room for nuance there. In which case, we might switch to the unofficial game mechanic of ability score checks; have everyone try to roll under DEX, with the roll closest to the score winning.

This is not just a dragon; a few pages later we learn it is a dragon man. That would be because it can polymorph between forms. It can also breathe fire through its nostrils, but we never see it breathe fire far enough to function as a weapon. It is massive in size and probably has quite a few Hit Dice. Maybe 12?

Morale saves are very easily triggered in Hideouts & Hoodlums; any time your players say "I do this, does it make them run?" you should probably check with a morale save.

I'm amused that Auro feels he's "armed to the teeth" with only two visible weapons. Did he crotch some grenades?

How is there a kingdom within a few miles of your palace, and you don't know about it?

The leopard -- wandering encounter or fixed encounter outside the kingdom? You decide!

I like how the dragon man, as powerful as it is, chooses to throw a rock at Auro. And it's actually the most effective attack it gets in the entire story!

Spoiler - after pages of set up, the dragon man gets killed with one sword thrust, like most golden age opponents. Bleah!

That "scientific explanation of the Earth's origin"...I wonder if there is any truth to that, or if someone just misremembered what they had once learned about the theory of the Moon's origin...?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies #18 - pt. 2

We're still looking at Jon Linton's adventures in the future; a future where men wear robes and women wear short skirts.

It seems like a huge design flaw that Satan Rex's atomic power plant is controlled by two exposed electrodes. I was going to say the place should also have some fail-safes in place, but I suppose the power shutdown is a fail-safe, preventing something worse like a meltdown.

I don't think any 1940 writers knew about meltdowns yet...and yet, Harry Campbell did seem to have more knowledge of science than your average comic book writer of the time, so...?

I just complimented Campbell for his smarts, but there seems to be a glaring mistake here; two pages back, Jon learned the systems would need 30 minutes to reboot, and here the "wall of force" is rebooting well before then. Of course, maybe Satan was smart enough to have a back-up system kick in for the force wall.

It's interesting that Campbell calls it a wall of force and not the more common term, force field (in use in science fiction going back to 1920!). Wall of Force is, of course, a magic-user spell as well.

The second to last panel spells out that the Scientist class normally takes a week of downtime to invent something, but has a chance to kit-bash something in just a day.

The Mount Wilson Observatory telescope would be the largest in the world until 1949. I'm not sure where the "6,000 billion million miles" came from, but researchers could see nebulae over 5 trillion miles away.

The "reveal houses on the moon, if there are any" is as optimistic as telepathic television-phones.

Bill and Davey is an odd duck, a comic strip coming from a minor league syndicate that was picked up by both Dell and Centaur (though neither for long). It's hard to see what they saw in it -- unless they just picked it up cheap.

There were headhunters, and cannibals as well, on the Solomon Islands, so while the depiction of Ajax might seem racist, the description isn't. 

This is Tippy Taylor on Fantasy Isle, a non-subtle rip-off of Swift's Lilliput. This scenario should be a cakewalk for even a class-less half-pint; since I'm still working on the assumption that 1 hit point represents roughly 30 lbs. of mass, and a 6" tall person would weigh less than an ounce, then Lilliputians...or Fantasy Islanders don't even come close to having a full hit point, or being able to do any damage themselves.

The tank poses more of a threat, even scaled to tiny size. Since it's the size of a gun, I would allow it to do a full 1-6 points of damage if it shot Tippy in the leg.

That must be a 3' high jump by Tippy. Impressive! 

This is John Degen, Private Detective, from a one-shot called "The Fiend of Halwith Hall." Shadowing someone, by car, on a country road, should be a basic skill check.

John is smart to head straight to the cellar, as most of the good stuff in a hideout is underground.

John has a skeleton key, a minor trophy item that gives him a bonus to skill checks when opening locked doors.

Here we have a mad scientist with the emphasis on mad. Like many mad scientists, he wants to do a brain transplant. Now, he might be just a raving loon, or maybe he has the science to do it; we never do find out.

Two wolves are unusual pets for a mad scientist.

The pit trap in the driveway is very unusual. It also doesn't make a lot of sense, since the car was parked when John goes inside, and is in the pit trap after he gets out. Maybe it took a long time for the weight of the car to activate the trap?

That's a lot of blood loss, to make the gunpowder too wet to burn. The Hideouts & Hoodlums rules don't account for blood loss and there's no way to make yourself bleed faster to foil traps.

Wow, that is one dark ending. It's rare for Heroes in comics to fail, but John not only failed to save this poor guy, but we find out just what horrible fate befell him.

Lastly, we're going to look at a verbose page of Larry Kane, investigating "The Ghost of Kirkwood." There's a pretty good set-up for a haunted house scenario here, with lots of rumors being supplied on this page.

My curiosity has been aroused too, but it's late and I'll read the rest next time!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Keen Detective Funnies #18 - pt. 2

This is still Spark O'Leary, that famous Irish newshawk who doesn't look remotely Irish. In fact, doesn't he look Asian to you? I wonder if he was drawn with the intention of him being Asian, and the publisher decided to paste an Irish name onto him instead, thinking no one would notice or care.

Spark has such an easy time following these clues that it's amazing the feds asked him to pursue this instead of just figuring it out themselves. In fact, there was so much evidence immediately pointing to Kurt that I immediately suspected a red herring; maybe the FBI did too!

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It's rare to see ordinary mobsters with a really cool trophy weapon, but this unnamed spy has a tear gas gun! I would imagine it has the range and area of effect of a sleep gas gun, but is less effective (temporarily stunning anyone who fails their save vs. poison?).

It's remarkable that as dramatic an escape to a deathtrap as we get on this page is all recapped in panel 4 alone. I'm not sure how you could dodge out of the way fast enough to make someone pushing you fall out of a plane...but it does create a precedent for fumbles being allowed on push attacks!

But panel 5, with him knocking himself out, Scotty in Star Trek V style?

There's no way to emulate that in game rules; I'm not going to make people roll for movement, with a chance of fumbles and hurting themselves. The only way that makes sense is if there was a lot of turbulence on the plane and the Editor required saves vs. science to keep from falling sideways.

Seditious pamphlets is minor loot you can find with certain types of mobsters.

Setting fire to the ship you're standing on is a ballsy move!

Speaking of ballsy playing, I think we all know the real reason Spark wants to find the hideout -- he burnt up all the trophy items on the ship and he needs more loot to level up!

Rigging an entire hideout to blow up is not a recommended tactic, unless you didn't have time to design anything before the next session and you really don't want the players going in there.

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I'm never sure how much faith to have in these "fact" filler pages, but there's some interesting stuff here, including number of teens arrested in a year (I suppose I could verify that in the FBI's Crime in the U.S. serial, but I'd have to find a depository library to get paper copy of the 1940 issue; I can't find it that early online), where the term "gumshoe" comes from, and which states had no capital punishment circa 1940.

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C-Man shows the value of questioning, not just one witness at the scene of a crime (and expect the Editor to feed all the information you need through one character -- that's lazy game-mastering!), but up to seven witnesses. Actually, if the Editor assigned a 1 in 6 chance for each witness to have valuable clues, there would be a good statistical chance of getting the information in just 6 witnesses.

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Cigars with distinctive wrappers, fresh car tracks, footprints, broken twigs, and heel marks are all good examples of clues to use when Heroes are tracking.

Going to jump ahead now to Dudley Dance, a feature about "the greatest crime chaser of all time" and not, as one would expect, a dancer. Here, Dudley tackles -- or rather is tackled by -- one of the earliest werewolves in comics. Or is it another case of a fake werewolf?

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"Leather hardness of Dance's cheek"? What does the man do to develop such thick cheek calluses that they count as armor? Seems like an Editor that had trouble coming up with believable flavor text on the spot.

Hmm...six shots in rapid succession is possible in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but not for low-level Heroes. I hate giving firearms any advantage, actually, as my personal preference is for two-fisted fighter types, but there is plenty of gun-toting Heroes in these early comic books the H&H game has to emulate.

The story ends with a lot of attempting to explain away the werewolf as something non-supernatural, but it just sounds like he's just describing a tribe of werewolves that live in India to me...and that sounds like a pretty good adventure location for high-level Heroes!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Fight Comics #2 - pt. 1

Ah, George Tuska...how much better I like his 1970s work. With Young George, you can almost see the Eisner influence there, but the figures are so stiff in almost every panel...

There is no Lolaii Island, but from the spelling it seems clearly a stand-in for a Hawaiian island.

Popeye's love for spinach, clearly the reference here, goes all the way back to 1932.

A rare use of "birds," sometimes used for crackpots and oddballs, but here sarcastically used for obviously bad people.

Manoa is not an island, but a valley on the island of Oahu, near Honolulu. Now, it would make more sense for this story to start near a major city like Honolulu, and move away from there to a more isolated island, but apparently these were lazy pirates.

Oahu does have coves, like the map does, which makes it even likelier to be the location.

I'm a bit surprised that both Shark and the girl are so eager to shoot the whipper while Daddy is right on the other side of him. I mean, it almost makes sense for Shark because he has no personal stake in this, in case he misses and hits Daddy, but the daughter too? She must be really confident...

Since Shark would still be a 1st-level fighter (beat cop), being beaten by four-to-one odds seems, statistically, extremely likely.

Now, Shark could have rushed Skinny at any time, except that he clearly missed his save vs. plot and had to fight his way through the underlings first.

Koa is the Hawaiian word for warrior.

Pre-modern Hawaiian hunters used bows, but Hawaiian soldiers used slings. Of course, this is 1940, so they'd actually be wearing modern clothes and carrying guns in real life.

I can find no evidence that Hawaiian soldiers ever used poison.

Shared for the prize purse after five months of professional fighting, which is good news for Heroes who want some side money between adventures.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Feature Comics #29 - pt. 1

Despite having been a lab assistant until recently, Darrel Dane already has a reputation as a private eye. Becoming a private eye is a handy way to get plot hook characters to walk in on you...but shouldn't Darrel have been suspicious that the threatening note was in easily identifiable cursive?

Suave thieves should probably be statted as slick hoodlums.

I'm curious about this, and wonder how typical it would be for a museum to employ five or more security guards for the same shift. It's also worth noting that none of the security guards wear uniforms.

It may also be worth noting this is the first mention of 18th century Spanish painter Francisco Goya in a comic book.

I don't have anything game mechanics-related to say about this page; I just think the set-up of this scene is hilarious. Ugly piece!

I'm including this page of Dixie Dugan for the unusual use of the word "punk," here used as an adjective and simply meaning "bad."

Sir Malcolm Campbell was real and worthy of being a supporting cast member in a Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign someday. You can read more about him here.

The Clock should be suspicious that the gangsters in the car had taken the time to ditch their identifying papers, but left a letter addressed to "The Reaper" in the car with them. Actually, maybe he is suspicious, because he takes the time to question Holt in the hospital about The Reaper, despite the fact that we learn on the next page that The Clock already knows exactly which local crime boss is known as The Reaper.

Lena Pry makes a surprise return to the blog. Here, Jane Arden's hillbilly counterpart encounters the IRS, and we learn that farm relief has a very old history in this country. I can almost envision a campaign of super-powered IRS agents, having to tour the country handing out checks...

I haven't included an Off the Record in some time. I shared this one, not only because I thought these two gags were funny, but the woman in the dentist's chair with Spike seems like she would be a good character to run into in someone's game. Spike would always be around, growling and threatening the Heroes.

Should half-pints need to save vs. plot to attack anyone with glasses?

Reynolds of the Mounted offers a surprisingly practical explanation for how Reynolds wasn't fooled by the fake clue left for him, but then includes shakier material like a peace pipe that can double as a blowgun, and a hollow wooden pipe being strong enough to be used as a club without breaking.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

The Comics #7 - pt. 1

Dell seems to have shaken up the line-up of The Comics so that it's not so many comic strip reprints anymore.

So, for this April 1938 issue, we start with cowboy nobody remembers, Ted Strong -- and Ted would sure be a goner already if not for his horse!  But what's the game mechanic here? Did Ted simply fail his saving throw vs. science, but the horse made its save? Or should there be some mechanic that is Hit Dice-based that would allow one to ignore certain effects (like x number of pounds of force)? I sense there should be some elegant way of creating that mechanic, but I'm just not seeing it yet...

Speaking of something that there's currently no game mechanic for -- how much damage should a boulder rolled off a cliff do to someone underneath it? Maybe we can wing that, from what we do have. Let's see...a 180 lb. opponent does a base 1d6 damage. Hit Dice and damage progress incrementally together on this model. So, let's be charitable and say that boulder is 1,000 lbs. That would be 5d6 damage. But it's also falling, oh, let's say 50'. So let's add 5d6 of falling damage to that, making it 10d6.

Or, the Editor would be within his rights to simply say save vs. missiles or die (unless the Hero is a Superhero with one of the "raise" powers ready to activate!).

If I were ever to create a cowboy-themed supplement for Hideouts & Hoodlums (and don't think I haven't considered that), I would compile a lot of the educational material from the comic books, like this piece. Maybe not so much for the Indian lore, but I found the saddle primer interesting, and would be useful for a cowboy player to know.

Similarly, this page of nautical-themed info on ships' bells and knot-tying could be conceivably improve someone's campaign flavor text.

Whoa!  I have no idea how to stat them yet, but Alien, Mephistosian needs to become a thing for H&H!  What a way to side-step the whole demons and devils controversy!

Rod Rian was, according to comics.org, a British strip that was purchased for U.S. distribution, much like Sheena of the Jungle will be by 1939.

I don't know what Carno is supposed to be -- a giant mutant ape?

Called shots to the eye, by the way, is a no-no for H&H -- unless the long-neglected optional hit location charts from Supplement II: All-American are in use.

Mephistosians fight with scimitars, and seem to show a surprising lack of technology for a sci fi feature.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)