Rocket Comics #2 - pt. 3

We're still reading Steel Shark. It's a curious feature; I can't tell from this story if this is supposed to be some time in the future or if it's a more hi-tech version of 1940, so I had to go back and read the first issue's story and this is actually meant to be 1960. The widespread use of television is pretty accurate. But Flux-Ray guns that melt ships in minutes? That's a wrecking ray that didn't exist in 1960. 

Wrecking is so often instantaneous in the comics that it's interesting to read about a ray that takes over 1 exploration turn to wreck. 

"Gyro-pilot control" must mean autopilot, which is odd because autopilot had already been a thing since 1914.

Batteries seem to work different in this 1960; I can't guess how a lurch would foul the batteries. Batteries only "foul" like that when they've been overcharged, and even then the risk is more about an explosion than suffocation, because not that much hydrogen should be leaking.  

We know we're not in the kids adventure genre when Tommy is sent below deck. If this was Dickie Dare, that boy would be all up in the action! 

"Aqua-vapo"? You're trying awfully hard to sound scientific when you have to come up with a new word for water vapor. Water vapor - also known as fog -- doesn't seem like it would make for concealment as well as smoke would. I might treat fog as light cover.   

There are some puzzling aspects of this page and the next.

1. What is the area of effect of a depth charge? How much in danger was Jones' sub? 

2. Again, we are told the subs are very close together, so close that the Flux-ray-guns backfire and jolt Steel Shark just for holding the controls. How do they feedback only to the controls and not the whole sub? And why would flux rays bounce back? I suppose we need to understand what flux rays are first, and I doubt we're ever going to get that information.

Again, the science here is pretty sketchy, but we really can't say for sure that dry ice wouldn't counter a flux ray, since we still don't know what a flux ray is.  

More interesting is the fact that Steel Shark is able to observe Jones telling his crew how to counter the flux ray. Did Jones forget to turn off their closed circuit television connection? It reminds me of the beginning of this sketch, which I just happened to watch earlier today - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp_Fw5oDMao

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this story is the last page, which says "Harry 'A' Chesler Syndicate" at the bottom, proving this comic was produced by the Chesler Shop for Hillman (really, from its pedestrian-ness alone I would have suspected that from this title). Since there's nothing else on that page worth seeing, you're just gonna' have to take my word on this....   

We're going to jump into the next story now, which is Buzzard Barnes. There's little to see here, including the amount of cover necessary to hide behind for a successful hiding skill check. 

Past that...it's looking like this was a false lead. If Maynard was really up to something suspicious, he probably wouldn't get drunk right away, and he would try to flee rather than pick a fight. Let's see if I'm right...

Nope, I was wrong! So what was the point of the drunkenness? Was he feigning drunkenness to appear innocent, or is he just an alcoholic spy? Or is he a drunken hoodlum? That would be interesting - we haven't see one of those on the blog in a long time!  

You know, I'm also thinking how easy this scenario was: figure out who the spy is, from a list of one suspect.

We've seen prisoners hurt themselves before in order to wreck bonds. Now, every hero has a chance of being able to just flex their muscles and break bonds -- but not much of a chance unless a superhero. If I haven't made this ruling before, I would consider allowing a +1 bonus for every point of damage you inflicted on yourself in the process.

Now, how did Andy just happen to stumble across Barnes, inside the enemy hideout? Barnes should immediately be suspicious that Andy is also working with the bad guys.

Nope, Barnes still isn't suspicious! I think we're going to have to chalk this one up as a plot hole.

A supercharged pursuit plane sounds like a trophy item. I would say that it moves at normal speed (whatever that is for that type of plane) except when in pursuit mode (in a chase scene), and then it is always x amount of Movement rate faster. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.) 

  

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)

Speed Comics #7 - pt. 3

 We're back with Ted Parrish, the Man of 1000 Faces as he crosses over into a wizard duel in a Ditko-esque magical landscape...oh, what's that? Scarlo is jumping and not flying in panel 3? Panel 6 is just horribly drawn, with a big, long perspective line inked as it vanishes into a solid chimney and the rest of the roof behind him just vanishes because the artist got lazy? Well, that's disappointing.

Speaking of disappointing...as the Editor in a Hideouts & Hoodlums scenario, it behooves you to ensure that the players feel like their presence in the scenario made a positive impact; that they wouldn't have been better off just standing back and letting the police do their job. You know, like how Ted totally bungles capturing Scarlo alive here, when the two officers might have stopped him had Ted not got in the way. 

But there will be times when the dice rolls go so badly for the players that terrible results will happen, and then you need to have in-game consequences. You know, like how Ted must surely be wanted for manslaughter now.

Now we're going to jump all the way to the last page of Biff Bannon. Dick Briefer is going full-on Mad Magazine (only 11 years earlier) here with the frantic pace, zany humor, and exaggerated violence. That got me thinking about the H&H rules for modifying campaign mood to fit the style of comic book story you want to tell. If you wanted to run combat in zany mode, maybe every attack should push at double distance in addition to damage (instead of replacing damage), and you could hit as many targets as you want with the same attack so long as the method or results would be funny and inventive. 

I don't think this would work for campaign play, as there would soon be no suspense about whether the good guys win (it wouldn't be funny if the bad guys could hit as many people as they wanted), but it would be fun to try in a one-shot scenario.

And now I'm jumping full steam ahead into Lt. Jim Cannon and the mystery of the needlessly elaborate plot device. I mean, you can sink a ship with icebergs, or you can sink a ship with mines, but does putting the mines on the icebergs really do any extra good? If anything, it makes the mines easier to spot, which is what happens here.

Maybe I'm just so incredulous because Devilfish is such a non-threatening name for a villain. Anything-fish doesn't sound villainous. "You may call me...the Goldfish!"

That does look like a really long submarine. The longest submarine in WWII was Japan's I-400-class sub; at 400' long it held the record for two decades.

This is from Landor Maker of Monsters, and this installment is a weird, soap opera-y one that our Hero (and his girlfriend) doesn't barge into until the second to last page. What's interesting here is that Creeta is clearly an android, with steel wires controlling her body inside, and her weakness is the screw in her neck that ...well, I'm not sure how it kills her exactly, but turning it seems to do a lot of damage to her.

Bob Powell seems to be really rushing the art here too. He could do much better.

This is from Munson Paddock's Mars Mason. Mars is an interplanetary mailman because, you know, we're never going to have some kind of electronic delivery system in the future. Comic book science is as goofy as ever here, with that heat radiation wave that is somehow different than radio waves, but that's nothing compared to a ship from Jupiter leaving after a ship from Earth and moves fast enough to intercept it before it reaches Mars. I think we're going to have to accept that the Jupiter Men have extremely long range teleport technology. 

What really works here is the creative alien design work and, even more interestingly, the villain name Killraye. That is great and suddenly I want to use it (though I'd probably drop the e).   

This, this is one of the reasons why the AH&H Mobster Manual is still not done after all these years. I'll be reading "new" comics and it's the same old human bad guys, blah blah blah, and I'll be thinking I've seen everything new I'm going to see -- and then Mars Mason fights Jupiter Men. Now the Mobster Manual has to include these! This is marvelously inventive, with the spiky heads and strange growths in their faces (are those fangs? Short tentacles? Something else? Who knows!). Their bodies seem to be separated into two halves sort of shaped like wings, which would seem to make sense for a lifeform evolving on a gas giant (if the gravity wasn't so crushing), each side ending in five appendages like giant fingers. Each appendage ends in a tool, either a club or a hook, that I'm guessing are not natural (but you never know in comic book space).  

This first panel makes it look like their heads can detach. Maybe the heads are the only real part and the rest of the body is just something they wear? Crazy.

Almost as exciting is the multi-ray torture machine. Which ray will it be? Sounds like this item needs a random table, although apparently the differences are just flavor text and all of them eat out your vital organs. 

If you're feeling cheated because Mars has to get rescued, keep in mind he's only a mailman. 

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Target Comics #2 - pt. 4

 I just can't seem to let go of Calling 2R, being such a bold, ambitious utopian story -- the sort of thing I wish I could write, if I were to get really confessional. And that attention to detail in the background work! I don't think I would have the patience to draw that first panel alone.

I'm hoping the old man's not literally talking about fining those two for wrong thinking, as that sounds too 1984 for my taste. Owing a debt to society for wrong doing is nothing new, of course.

This page is full of glorious period detail, from the realistically drawn slums, to the sign for a "ice and coal" store, to slang you don't see in most stories, like "nerts" (= an exclamation like "nuts," and a fairly new exclamation, according to Mirriam-Webster online first used in 1929), "bulls" (= city police? But that's an unusual use of it, as Wikipedia tells me this was used for railroad police specifically), and the even more unusual term "white lights." This one's so obscure it almost has me baffled, except...if the punk likes to ride the rails like a hobo and has run afoul of the bulls before, then maybe "white lights" refers to the head lamps of trains?

Here's the protective vests of the rangers in action, and it looks like they work just like the force screen around the city, in terms of hurting and knocking back anyone who tries to melee with them, while also stopping bullets as if the wearer had the Imperviousness power. That's a pretty powerful vest; I'd try to balance that out by saying it can only operate for 3 turns in a row before needing 4 turns to recharge. 

It's unclear if the force gun actually harms/does damage to the opponent to render him unconscious or if it stuns (with a save to resist?). 

And this last page I'll share is from the last story in this issue; a stand-alone story about a pilot who befriends an ugly hermit. The hermit is so grateful that he shares a secret; he's guarding a cave full of dust (magic dust?) that disintegrates all metal it touches. A nice touch is that the dust is so fine that you can't see that it's in the air all around you while you're walking through the cave tunnels (as seen on a previous page). I'm sharing this page to show how incredibly potent this Dust of Disintegration is, effectively wrecking as if a 7th level superhero (I'm guessing, by how easily it destroys that tank). It's used here to stop the War in Europe, but it's a good challenging trap for high-level Heroes too.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.) 

  

Science Comics #2 - pt. 3

For this post, we're going to jump right into the middle of the Perisphere Payne story. All you've missed so far is that Payne and his men are helping to stop raids on the Moon. After successfully repulsing an attack, Payne flies around trying to figure out where the invaders came from -- you know, instead of just questioning prisoners or searching the wreckage of downed ships for clues. No, the twist here is that the attackers were coming from underground instead of in space.

That's just to catch you up. Here, we see how extremely maneuverable spaceships are while flying between mountains. We also see, almost as incredibly, the bad guys only leave a single guard at the entrance to their secret tunnel from which someone can foil their entire "invade from below" plan.

The "huge craft" seems to be more like a trolley car than a spaceship, and it's hard to see how it would launch off those rails and fly around.

If that seems confusing, panels 3-5 and are even more confusing Panels 3 and 5, it seems like Carson just walks in, is assumed to be an underling, is told to bring a fresh uniform, and just shrugs and puts on one. But panels 4 and 5 seem to be tell a different story, where Carson captures a guard and makes him take his uniform off (and his boots too!). Regardless, like almost all guard uniforms, this one fits the Hero exactly!

It is very strange to find a city at the core of the Moon, since at the center is a dense core of iron with a temperature of about 1600–1700 K (1,320-1,420 degrees Celsius). That city is going to need REALLY powerful air conditioning. 

I would love to overhear that villain monologing longer and find out how the Moon controls "the fueling system of the universe." Seeing as how the Moon is close to nothing but Earth, that works out how...?

It's also worth pointing out, I think, how even in a future sci-fi setting, big things still have to be moved by cranes and chains. The amount of thought that went into technology with this future world-building is usually minimal.

Marga is like Tarzan, only raised by black panthers instead of gorillas. This is the first comic book character to be named Ted Grant, to be followed by DC's Wildcat in two years.

Here's another wrinkle on the ray that freezes motors, this one freezes people too. 

Check out the scale on that fortress. That is either a mistake, or that is one huge anti-aircraft gun. It's at least as tall as the towers! The airplane hangar looks small, but it's difficult to say how far away from the fortress it is.

Leopards are unusual guards. Unusual guards, of course, often make for better encounters.

Is the Ethiopian strange because he's an albino? I'm surprised they don't mention that. Maybe he's strange because Uchunko isn't a real Ethiopian name. The closest is probably Urgessa.

 
The curious wording of that first panel caption could mean that the guards are savages, or just savage fighters. If the first, I would stat them as natives. If the latter, I could maybe stat them as bloodthirsty hoodlums.

I wonder what the poisonous fumes in the poison pit are. Sulfur? Whatever it is, it isn't very fast-acting.

Someone spent more time on that cheesecake shot in panel 2 than any other panel in this feature.

That tigers and leopards roam freely through the fortress is interesting. There must be a lot of open doorways and not many closed doors in the place.

I don't know how "heavy" that heavy cover is; it looks only slightly larger than the average manhole cover and I doubt I would make anyone roll anything to lift it. 

More curious is how exactly she's aiding Ted to reach the top of he pit. Is she pulling him up as she goes? That could require an expert skill check at climbing, or maybe even a stiffer penalty.

That Ted is "almost unconscious" suggests he's been slowly losing hit points to the poison instead of being in a save or die situation.

Now we're going to jump to the next feature, Dr. Doom! No, still not the Marvel Comics' Dr. Doom, and not the international spy Dr. Doom who really came first. This is middle Dr. Doom, the ugly old mad scientist guy who shrinks people down and puts them under glass with giant mosquitoes that look suspiciously more like hornets. The nice thing about shrinking heroes is that you can use the stats for giant animals for ordinary animals, and giant mosquitoes were statted as far back as Supplement I: National.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Science Comics #2 - pt. 2

We're still on Dynamo's story and, if you remember where we left off, Dynamo had just palmed off the entire scenario onto the FBI -- and now they drop it back in his lap where it belonged. There are arguments in gaming circles from both sides on the fudging issue. Is it right for the referee/Dungeon Master/Editor to fudge dice rolls, even if it's just to nudge the story along? Normally I would urge an Editor to fudge rolls sparingly, but when you need people to fail search results just so your player will go back and try, I think the fudging is worth it.

Here's a peculiar power. It looks like Dynamo has cast the magic-user spell version of Hold Person, but in addition, the victim is moved across the room as if under a Telekinesis spell. On one hand, the placement of the victim seems unimportant enough, in this instance, that it could just be flavor text. On the other hand, I could see a more powerful version of Hold Person that let's you choose where the victim is held at could be even more useful, like if you positioned the victim to block a doorway.

Speaking of more powerful versions of Magic-User spells...it seems like Dynamo is using the spell Shocking Grasp here, only he can use it more than once per spell.

Hoodlums almost never feel confident enough to make fun of the heroes in Golden Age comics, but here we have an unusual instance of a hoodlum making up a clever nickname for the hero.

Wow, okay, way to rub their failure in the G-Men's faces, Dynamo! But...you do know that you likely just killed all those bad guys you're turning in, right? I mean, if being immersed in molten gold didn't burn them to death, they must have quickly suffocated...

Now we're on Cosmic Carson. Here we have a twist on the "ray that freezes your motor" -- the ray that literally freezes your whole ship -- and I think we've seen this twist only once before (always in sci-fi stories).

We don't know how much time passes between panels 5 and 6, but it seems like Carson has just arrived at the planet and immediately spots the lost rocket. Unless he's locked onto a transponder signal or some such, there's no way it should be possible to visually inspect a planet in less than weeks.

Also curious is that Carson's rocket gets much closer to the planet before being detected than the first ship. Are the aliens relying on visual detection too?

Thermo-rays look an awful lot like acetylene torches. In future settings, you can rename ordinary objects and make them seem futuristic.

It's interesting how they capture Carson, but just leave him trapped for hours, as if the aliens got too busy and didn't have time to take care of him.












Late in the story, we're finally told that the aliens are skull-men. They don't seem to be native to this world, since we only ever see four of them. They must be pretty good in a fight, since it only takes three of them to capture Carson. I'd say they have at least 1+1 Hit Dice.

This is likely the earliest reference to Popeye in a comic book not to feature him. Popeye has been getting stronger by eating spinach since mid-1931.

Clever strategy for convincing the bad guys to destroy their own weapons, but most Heroes simply capture the raygun and turn it against the enemy. Instead, Carson is content to fight with his fists, and the prisoners he rescued have to use clubs.

The reference to skull-men being weak doesn't jive with how they took down Carson earlier.

"No one will miss them, so it's okay that we killed them! Besides, they were weak!"

Hey, Carson, you're free now -- you can put a shirt back on!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fight Comics #3 - pt. 1

This could be the last comic book I read at the age of 48. Will Fiction House do right by me?

George Tuska's Shark Brodie is on the island of Tahilla, a fictional South Seas island.

Taverns are a great place to sit and listen for rumors, no matter what milieu your campaign takes place in.

Urban Dictionary has some pretty disgusting suggestions for what "angel cake" is slang for. In this case, I think Brodie just means they don't look like angels.

It takes five-to-one odds to take Shark down, which is pretty good considering Shark should only be a 2nd-level fighter by this point.

Deathtraps involving tides are surprisingly rare to this point, but sharks are a dime-a-dozen. Now, defending yourself from a shark by kicking it, I don't think I've ever seen that before or since...

 ...so it's disappointing that the shark is ultimately dispatched with a cliched knife.

Non-superheroes being able to wreck rope bindings is possible in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums, but conditions are far from ideal for it by the time Brodie succeeds. I would give him increasing penalties each turn as the tide rises, until he finally got a lucky roll.

Does Shark not own dry clothes to change into?

 Moving on to Saber, the future hero of 1998! Here, America is attacked by an air force. And what an air force! Can you imagine how tough a plane would have to be to fly straight through a skyscraper without being damaged, or even knocked off its flight path?

So, when did Saber start investigating the ranks of the Army and Intelligence Department? Just this morning? They must not be very large departments in 1998.

 Okay, I've got some problems with this scene. If this traitor knew the planes were coming, why is he hanging around to watch? Is Saber only lucky to be standing that close to the traitor while using his Detect Thoughts power?

The coordinates given here don't point to anywhere specific.

Saber has invented a Helm of Thought Casting.

Complications in aerial combat usually occurs only between planes, but anti-aircraft guns can cause complications too. Losing a tail fin can force you to land.

Where was this American air force when the enemy air force was attacking? There seems to be no fighter planes present in either air force, only bombers. So whichever air force has the higher ground automatically wins.















I think that's enough of Saber for today. Let's peek in on the Kayo Kirby story. Lead-filled gloves cause more serious damage than normal boxing gloves, though really, punch someone enough with even normal boxing gloves on and you can do serious harm. I think we can say that lead-filled gloves do normal weapon damage instead of punching damage.

The thing that tickles me about this page, though, is that the would-be killer's name is Slam deMan. If I was ever to become a wrestler, I would go by the name Slam deMan.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)