Famous Funnies #52

One is not likely to encounter wandering mobsters as frequently as seen here in Hairbreadth Harry, but combining different mobster types is fair game so long as the combinations make sense in the context of the encounter, or the nonsense of fitting "wa-hoo birds", giant porcupine fish, alligators, and wildcats together matches the tone of the campaign.

This is from gag filler called Life's Like That, and -- like the page above -- I appreciate the absurdity of this.

This month's installment of War on Crime includes this tip: bent license plates are suspicious!

Dickie Dare returns home after a long adventure and immediately seeks out his family and friends. It seems a natural response, but it makes good game sense too. When touching home base after wide-ranging adventures, every Hero would do well to meet up with all their Supporting Cast, check to see if any of them have fresh plot hooks, or just collect the Experience Points from including their SCMs in the game session.

Also note that Dickie, like so many superheroes to follow, is from New York City.

This is from The Adventures of Patsy, and "Can I tell which direction the shot came from?" is a surprisingly tricky question to consider. There is a hear noise mechanic, but gun shots are notoriously echo-y and could well come with a penalty. Plus, there is forensic evidence on the scene to consider -- which side of the cat is the gunshot wound on? At worst, I would probably assign this a flat 50-50 chance for Patsy's friend to answer correctly, and at best I would just hand-wave it and say they can just tell.

Goat joke #18!

Oaky Doaks is going up against a giant! It's hard to say just how tall this stooped-over giant is. Twelve feet tall? That would make him too large for a hill giant. I wonder if I'll keep the distinction between sub-groups of giants...

This is from gag filler called Punky, but I could see a whole boys' adventure scenario built around them getting lost in the woods.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Feature Funnies #11

"Off the Record" often makes me chuckle, more than other gag filler does.

A surprisingly progressive page of Hawks of the Seas from Will Eisner. Racism was optional in the Golden Age all along!

Now, where was I?  Oh yes -- stuff you can use in your Hideouts & Hoodlums games!  In this month's installment of The Clock, a trap is rigged so if the Hero crosses a tripwire set in a dark doorway, a gun goes off and blasts him.

Yes, that's so clever, Clock, hiding the wall safe behind a curtain. You only had a 2 in 6 chance of finding that concealed safe, or automatically if your player specifically mentions looking behind the curtain.

I love how the Gallant Knight has a sword in his hand, but leads his attack by throwing a bottle in some guy's face. This actually illustrates two things for H&H - one, if all weapons do the same abstract amount of damage, then players can be more free to be creative with what they attack with. And, two, it demonstrates how important it is for the Editor to stock rooms with items the Heroes can use or interact with.

This panel from a filler page called "Exciting Adventures" brings up an interesting point. By the H&H rules for falling damage, the man who fell out of the plane should have taken at least 10 points of damage on impact and -- unless he happened to have a larger than average number of hit points -- would surely have been unconscious on impact.

This blog has previously addressed similar issues related to falling damage, like falling into water. Perhaps a simpler ruling would be, if any circumstances exist that might prevent the falling damage -- something to cushion the impact, the Hero jumped so the fall may be controlled, the surface landed on is moving at a relative speed -- then the Hero may save vs. plot to take no damage.

From a second page of Off the Record.


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #47

The theme of the day is maps! This is from a page of Roy Powers, Eagle Scout. The scenario is about whose property the scout cabin sits on and, while I'm hard pressed at the moment to think of a good idea for one, I'm sure there's something exciting you could do with a cabin by a remote lake!

This is from Life's Like That, a gag filler page, with a particularly still-relevant today gag here.

This map is slightly better, though still not as detailed as most RPGs require for careful exploration. It would be interesting, though, to see someone flesh out this map and stock it with Dr. Sting's Indian watchmen!

For Lawful Heroes, taking trophies from bad guys is harder (by the book, requiring a save vs. plot to do so). The flip side is that Lawful Heroes should be the ones most likely to get to stick around afterwards and receive rewards for their good deeds. Here, Patsy, Thimble, and the Phantom Magician get $20,000 for solving a mystery from a generous railroad tycoon.That's a huge chunk of XP.
To keep this from leveling up Heroes too quickly, there needs to be an official leveling cap in place (either what you need for the next level, or halfway to the level past that), which H&H does not have now (only discussion of the need in The Trophy Case).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

More Fun Comics #31 - pt. 1

This month's Dr. Occult adventure has him investigating a mine being worked by zombies. The concept of zombies being "exploited" as unpaid labor is glossed over and the plot winds up being an invasion theme (the mine tunnels will come up under the city, eventually). Zombies are said to have "unbreakable" grappling holds, but turn inert when the Magic-User who raised them dies.

Dr. Occult also casts a spell that causes a cave-in. Stone Shape...?

Buzz Brown (yet another Terry and the Pirates rip-off) reminds us that you don't have to know Morse Code for it to be useful -- just hearing something that sounds like Morse Code tells you that someone intelligent is tapping on the other side of a wall.

I'm skeptical about using a blow torch to open a hole in a wall, but I don't know...maybe on board a ship the walls would be thin enough.

There is no game mechanic for determining when women faint, it has to be flavor text whenever it would not affect combat. Likewise, "restoratives" like smelling salts don't link to any game mechanic, and are certainly useless for rousing someone who is truly unconscious (zero hit points).

Similarly, there is no game mechanic to determine when you would accidentally sneeze and give yourself away while hiding. There are rules for determining surprise and, if you don't have surprise, the Editor might as well say a sneeze is what gave them away.

Russell "Alger" Cole did a lot of filler material like this in the early comics. I had once tried to develop a similar style of art, years before even encountering an Alger story. I haven't found an excuse to include him to date, as his pages tend to be stationary figures talking to each other, but this page is really different, as it shows men rock climbing.

The Hideouts & Hoodlums rules don't talk about climbing much, assigning it only to the Mysteryman class as something special they can do. And yet, with enough rope, tools, and a guide, surely anyone could try it? I might allow it with a saving throw vs. science if a Hero was using rope, with a +1 bonus for having help.

This page shows the consequences of missing said saving throw -- falling! Actually, it appears that a snapped rope is responsible for the falling, but since the wrecking things rule doesn't really apply here, then no game mechanic is directly tied to the rope; the failed saving throw is simply explained by the rope snapping.

I tended to be conservative with area of effect for weapons like grenades in Supplement I: National, but here we see a grenade thrown through a window into a room, and passerbys outside are still hurt by it. I'm not sure, though, if the area of effect needs to be revised upwards, or if the Editor needs to adjust on a case-by-case situation (clearly the big glass window plays a large part in the passerbys being hurt).

Incidentally, the convertible is called a touring car on the next page. It was a common term for a car in the times, but is a term that seemed rarely used in comic books.

Now this situation is different -- there's no way that a surprise roll should determine if someone wakes up from their sleep or not. I might allow a save vs. plot (for Heroes, maybe villains -- I'd be very hesitant to allow this ordinary characters) to wake up in time to get a surprise roll.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Feature Funnies #7

I've not much to talk about from this issue, which is just as well given how fuzzy the digital copy I have access to is.

We revisit Jane Arden for the first time in awhile. Here, she teaches us that nudist camps were apparently a thing back in the 1930s.

You'd think this wouldn't work as often, hitching rides on the backs of cars. Bumps in the road never jar them loose. No one in passing cars ever points to them and give them away. As unlikely as it seems, this should probably always be an auto-success for Heroes.

And I think this gag is pretty funny...


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Detective Comics #13

Crashing never seems to be very dangerous in comic books. Here, fighting Speed Saunders, we see two men plow through a windshield after a crash, and one of them is still up and fighting afterwards. I would probably only roll 1d6 damage for each occupant in a car crash, regardless of how fast the car was going (under most circumstances; perhaps doubled if it was two cars crashing into each other).

Bars are handy places to listen for rumors, or be spotted by hostile wandering encounters.

Speed will reveal on the next page that he's fine because he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Armor keeps you from being "hit" in Hideouts & Hoodlums (as opposed to damage reduction), but that doesn't mean that people might not think you were hit if you time it right and fall forward, like Speed does here.

Remember not to play your cowardly hoodlums too smart. Speed Saunders had nothing on this judge, not even a suspicion he was involved, until this hoodlum blurted it out. Had the hoodlum played it smart, he would have kept his trap shut, got a message to the judge, and asked if the judge could arrange to preside over his case and let him off, in exchange for his silence. In fact, bad guys in comic books are usually pretty dumb!

Stan Asch will go on to do a lot of superhero art in the "future", of which I've never particularly been a fan, but here we see that his true strength was always in gag filler.

Not long after my last observation about car crashes, here we find Larry Steele also walking away from a car crash without a scratch!  It seems that Heroes should get a save vs. missiles to avoid car crash damage, just like dodging bullets.

Book III: Underworld & Metropolis Adventures includes (ends with, really) a short section on vehicular combat rules that makes it very difficult to hit someone else in a speeding vehicle. One could, perhaps, make an argument that it should not be as hard to hit the speeding car itself, or its tires, as common as that type of hit is in car chases.




I'm just going to summarize the Slam Bradley adventure. Slam is having a slow day, so he decides to visit a seedy waterfront saloon dressed to the nines, just to provoke a fight (or maybe he needed just a little more XP to level up!).  The improvised weapons in the fight are a chair and a bottle. Slam and Shorty find a plot hook on a sheet of paper in a wallet that they take after the fight. Winding up on board a ship, Slam is repeatedly clubbed unconscious and winds up in the brig, only to escape and do something else that winds him back up in the brig. This is the kind of stubborn determination that low-level H&H Heroes need -- low hit points means being beat up and imprisoned by bad guys often!

Uh-oh. Slam also demonstrates the ability to pick pockets. Another stunt that has to be available to Fighters!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Feature Funnies #4

The next offering from 1938 is this early issue from Quality. Jane Arden reprints were still as close as we got to action stories, but there's also...

The comedy of Mickey Finn is seldom suitable for Hideouts & Hoodlums lessons, but I thought the sergeant's admonishment "You never want to lose your temper when you're in uniform" is a lesson some police all the way here in the 21st century could benefit to remember.

I also thought it was an interesting idea for a H&H scenario sometime, if the Heroes got a bunch of police officers mad while they were on duty, and then had to confront them all at once later when they were off-duty...

As I sometimes will do, I shared this gag filler because I thought it was uncommonly funny.

Though not referred to by any kind of name, the bad guys on this page of Lala Palooza certainly seem to be anarchists, as statted in Supplement II: All-American.

I've talked several times already about the extreme devaluation of used cars in the 1930s, but the cheap auto you could get for $10 might be serviceable, but would not be in great shape. Here, Bungle has a shot at unloading his refurbished used car for up to $200.

And, lastly, we have an example of a Japanese warplane (the Kawasaki) and its top speed (143 MPH). Good to know for any future H&H campaigns in the Pacific Theater!


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Funny Pages v. 2 #4

A mini-history lesson for you, courtesy of gag filler, where one might not expect to find lessons. It's worth noting, I think, that most Americans in 1937 had no idea that Japan was committing war atrocities in China -- hence, the sandwich board accusing them of being "unfair".

Note that, in comics, bullets cannot shoot through doors, or anything used as cover.

I'm not sure what I should do with the fantasy strip Abdallah. It's definitely an adventure strip, and normally any adventure strip is fair game for H&H treatment, but I don't know...it's also so D&D-like, that it might wind up skewing our results.

Here, Abdallah fights a gigantic snake. It has come up before on this blog that H&H needs a snake bigger than a giant snake.  I'm not sure what to make of the "gigantic monster", though. Is it a dragon...?

Here we see bandits again, but this time they are refreshingly not Mexican bandits.


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Feature Funnies #2

I had skipped issue #1 and the debut of the publisher, Quality Comics, because I didn't have anything to say about that issue; luckily, #2 is a little meatier.

This from a page of As Strange as It Seems, and I include it here because those giant double doors, at the entrance to a train tunnel -- seems like it would be a great entrance to a mid- to high-level hideout.

I occasionally feature some funny filler material when it makes me laugh; plus, this first panel is a good test for your Heroes to know if they might be dealing with a corrupt cop...

I've included part of a page of Lala Palooza, not because this is riveting drama or hilarious comedy, but as a reminder of where rich mobsters could be hiding their wealth. That vase the Superhero broke and the folding screen the Magic-User just burnt down? That was 33,000 xp worth of treasure lost.

This is from a page of Jim Swift and His Adventures (not Tom Swift, but the resemblance is surely intentional).

I include this page because -- what Hero wouldn't want to have a sloop with two hidden 4-inch guns on it? (heavy artillery was statted in Supplement I: National)


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #38

We all know how injuries work for Heroes in Hideouts & Hoodlums -- you lose hit points until, if you're not lucky, you run out -- and that's it, with no complications. But that doesn't mean that non-Heroes can't have complications, like broken legs that need special attention, as we see here in the new feature Roy Powers, Eagle Scout.

This one has nothing to do with H&H; I include it only because I think it's the funniest gag filler I've read in a long time.

It's worth noting here that "lottery joints" used to be a thing. That's right, instead of playing the lottery at your local gas station, you'd have to sneak into the dingy backroom of some disreputable saloon.

Speaking of disreputable...I find reading War on Crime particularly enjoyable because so much of it happened in Chicagoland. I know Chicagoland. In fact, I know where the Ontarioville used to be that is referred to here!

Here's a low-powered magic item: the magic torch. Touch the end of it and it bursts into flame on its own. It's easily blown out, but can be re-lit with just another touch, and is never hot to the touch when not lit.

And I included this page of Jane Arden because that's a pretty clever trick for avoiding being caught following someone in a taxi. That Jane is a quick thinker!

Goat joke!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)