Top-Notch Comics #4 - pt. 3

We're still reading Streak Chandler of Mars here, but it's Professor Finlay speaking first. "I might as well tell you now, the landing gear on this ship is not finished! And...while things are getting real, I might as well fess up, there isn't enough air and food on this ship for five of us. Oops!"

The science is typically terrible for a comic book story here. Granted, we didn't know for sure Mars had no breathable atmosphere back in 1940, but we did know the distance to Mars, and there would be no way to fly there in what seems to take only a few hours -- and even if you could, there would be no way to brake hard enough to not be atomized on contact with the surface. 

Streak's player must have rolled pretty low for his Intelligence score. "Is that Mars?" "Gee, Einstein, how many other planets do you think are in this area?"

And things don't get better on the next page, when they are attacked by Martians that look like demonic Elmer Fudds wearing women's bathing suits. As comical as they look, they can shoot heat rays out of their fingertips and that seems impressive, even if they can only hit one out of three targets with them (they are not rays or cones so much as "Magic Missile" spells, from the earliest editions when you had to roll to hit for them). 

Oh Streak. Yep, your plan worked to perfection -- if your plan was to shoot all the oxygen you needed for a return trip out of the ship. 

More impressive are the strange, winged green men (you know, the blue ones) who fight with gas guns and can communicate telepathically.  

 

Oh boy...it looks like I have to add three new mobstertypes to the Mobster Manual, but these are not winners. The green men who are blue are the lokis. The Elmer Fudds are ferrugas. The octopus with a horse head is called a brontauris, which is a terribly unimaginative name. 

So far I haven't seen enough of what the lokis can do to stat them. I haven't seen the ferrugas do much either, other than shoot magic missiles. 

Now, normally, you'd think, of course you're not going to have much luck fighting with just a pocket knife against a horse-headed octopus. But this is a golden age comic book, and almost all animals get killed with a single stab. So these brontaurises must be really tough! I'm thinking at least 4, maybe up to 9 Hit Dice. It obviously attacks by constricting with its tentacles, but it isn't very strong and doesn't seem to do a lot of damage per turn.

Moving on to Wings Johnson of the Air Patrol, we see that wandering encounters can occur with unexpected frequency, Even in the middle of the English Channel you apparently need to roll once per turn. It's also possible to have a house rule that, after 1 wandering encounter, you immediately roll once in the next turn only.

 

Wings is one unlucky guy -- there's not even a game mechanic for accidental wind shear. I'm imagining a scenario playing out like this -- 

Editor: "Welcome to our first solo session of H&H!"

Player: "I want to play an aviator!"

Editor: "...You're sure? You don't want to be a mysteryman? Or superhero?"

Player: "Nope, I want an aviator campaign, and I'm naming him Wings Johnson?"

Editor: "Wings Johnson?"

Player: "Yeah, why?"

Editor: "Well, it's just that your last character was named Dick Storm. And the one before that was Spurt Hammond..."

Player: "I don't see where you're going with this."

Editor: "Fine. You know...fine! You want an aviator campaign? Wings Johnson is flying home over the English Channel in a German plane when...two British planes try to shoot him down!"

Player: "Don't I have some kind of pass code I can radio to them...?"

Editor: "There's no time! Because...As you fly low to evade them...a sub surfaces right in front of you!"

Player: "What die do I roll to--"

Editor: "And then your wing falls off!"

Player (excited): "Whoa!"

[After 3 hours of successful dice rolls]

Player: "Best session ever!"

Editor: *sighs*

Back to the comic (I think that was my longest digression ever)!

We pick up with Wings climbing his tangled parachute and we're told it's cutting up his hands really bad. Okay, I guess I can believe that would happen, but how do we handle that in-game? It seems too important to wave off as flavor text, as it could make him lose his grip and plunge to his death. I'm thinking the pain should cause a save vs. science to avoid losing his grip, but should the pain itself be flavor text, or 1 point of damage? It's got to be the Editor's call.

The bottom tier of panels does make me wish I had a Popularity or Reputation mechanic in H&H. I know I've talked about it and toyed with it before, but I don't think I have ever worked out anything concrete yet.

 

Not having any military experience, I had to look up to see if "officer of the day" was a real thing. According to Wikipedia, "a duty officer or officer of the day is a position that is assigned to a worker on a regularly rotational basis. While on duty, duty officers attend to administrative tasks and incidents that require attention regardless of the time of day, in addition to the officer's normal duties."

Which, I suppose, now makes it seem odd to me that the officer of the day who is responsible largely for administrative tasks is being put in charge of the arrest here.

Wings isn't wrong; the Spitfire was the fastest plane on the Allied side and would remain so for the next few years. The Germans would soon have a faster plane, the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket plane, but that's a year from "now."

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

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.)

Whiz Comics #2 - pt. 4

This is still Lance O'Casey's strip, though there's no sign of him on this page. I share it here, not because being dangled over a tiger cage is so original a trap, but for the unusual addition of having the prisoners placed on swings over the cage. There would be a chance, then, that they could swing themselves out far enough that they could drop outside the cage, though there would be a danger of falling wrong (with a failed save vs. science) and still landing inside the cage, plus there's still falling damage and the chance of being shot even if they do land right.

Somehow the tigers managed to break out of their cage, which you'd think has always held them successfully before. It is worth noting that an unintelligent animal, entering a melee, will not automatically attack the Hero, but would pick a random target.

That is one fantastically capable monkey. I have an entry for monkeys in the Mobster Manual already; I should add that supporting cast monkeys can do anything a person can do.

The last feature to debut here is Dan Dare, of the detective genre. It's hard to take "Seals of Doom" seriously as a story title when you find out, a page later, that it refers to the animal seals.

That said, it's interesting to see a story set in Florida, indeed the first I can recall. Sea Castle is not a real town, that I can tell, though it seems to be a common name for businesses in Florida.

$5,000 seems to be a very generous sum for detective work in 1940. That Dan so cavalierly promises to return it if he fails suggests that he's pretty well set for money already (or just highly confident!).

Note how easy this investigation is for Dan. The chief of police not only coaches this man, a complete stranger, on every detail of the case, but then simply hands him the murder weapon to examine. When actual (ahem) legwork is required, he simply calls up his friend Carol and asks her to do it all, not even bothering to find out where Pete is for her first. The first case could be explained by a great encounter reaction roll, while the second case might warrant a loyalty check from Carol in the near future.

Speaking of legs...that panel 6 had to have been pretty scandalous for a kid's book in 1940.

Player tip: when someone suspicious tells you not to go swimming somewhere, you should bring nothing but a little red bathing suit and go swimming there.

This is not the first time we've seen an underwater entrance to a hideout.

Whoa, what's going on here? Bending bars, swimming three miles, and then climbing a sheer wall while soaking wet is starting to make Dan look like he's a superhero instead of a fighter. One or even two instances could be explained away by really good rolls, but all three of these on the same page really make it looks like he's activating powers.

Superhero or not, Carol has got to be questioning her loyalty to Dan right about now.

This is the first time I've ever seen the term "community chest" used outside of the board game Monopoly.

It's also worth considering, for home campaigns, if you want to send them instructions to pursue scenarios via telegram, rather than wait for them to pick up on plot threads on their own.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Marvel Mystery Comics #2 - pt. 4

Namor kills one of the policemen who survived his vehicular weapon attack later by drowning him, racking up a kill total of five over two adventures so far.

The Masked Raider's story begins with intriguing narration -- it describes a hideout in a hidden valley protected by "rocky mountains" -- perhaps meaning the Rocky Mountains?  This could be the only clue we ever get for where the Masked Raider's adventures take place.

The entrance to the hidden valley is protected by a lone sentry, later referred to as a dead shot. I would stat him as an assassin, a mobster type left out of the 2nd ed. basic rules, but will be in the more comprehensive AH&H Mobster Manual.

Rifles are called "smoke poles" in this story, because cowboys always have strange names for things.

Dressing in the hidden valley includes a U.S. Marshal's skeleton, still wearing his white hat and badge. I have white hats and badges statted as Mythic West trophies (badges appeared in Supplement III: Better Quality) and will both appear in the AH&H Editor's Guide.

Late in the scenario, we learn that the Masked Raider is infiltrating the group of outlaws to find out where they have their loot stashed. This is almost the opposite of how most players would play this scenario, preferring to fight the outlaws first and then search the valley for the loot themselves. The secret storage vault is concealed down at the bottom of a dry well, where, admittedly, not every player would think to look. A ladder leads down inside the well, while a tunnel also leads into the vault from another direction.

The American Ace story is an alternate history where World War I was perpetrated, not by the Austrians, but by the French, following a young French queen named Ursula -- only France is here called Castile D'or. Like Napoleon, Ursula is in exile, only Ursula is rescued by her old allies and put back in power. The focus of her revenge is Attainia -- likely standing in for Britannia. Ursula has her own minister assassinated in Britannia as a pretext to declare war, similar to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in WWI. Attania has a king instead of a queen. But all this is simply backstory before Perry Wade, the American Ace, shows up.

In Attainia, Perry encounters a steady string of random encounters: trucks and artillery heading for the front (Attainia is not an island in this world), old, weeping peasant women, children begging in the streets, and an air raid as a random event.

This scenario does not shy away from violence, as the aforementioned beggar children are blown to bits by a bomb. Perry is temporarily knocked out by the bomb, but recovers quickly. And that's all we see of him in this installment!

I don't normally mention text stories, but this issue contains a one-page Angel story that treats (mistreats?) him as if he had Superman's powers.

In Ka-Zar's installment, a jungle explorer only needs low-tech trophy items, as Ka-Zar fights Bardak the Ape for an old mirror.  As they fight over the mirror, Bardak uses a grappling move to disarm Ka-Zar of his knife. Now, normally I would not let dumb animals make disarming moves, but in the jungle explorer genre, all animals seem to have human or near-human intelligence.

African elephants are shown to be able to uproot trees, which should be as difficult as wrecking cars for a superhero.

Ka-Zar avoids falling damage when shaken out of a tree by grabbing onto a branch. Only at the Editor's discretion should there be saves vs. plot to see if some projection can be grabbed onto and protect the Hero from falling.

Elephants are explained to suffer a madness that makes them go rogue. It also makes them a really dangerous encounter in a H&H scenario.

In Ka-Zar's rematch with Bardak, Bardak doesn't seem to have to make morale checks because all of his tribe is watching them fight, and fear of dishonor checks his fear of Ka-Zar.

Ka-Zar kills Bardak with a single thrust of his dagger -- which seems like Bardak must have awful low hit points. Because Ka-Zar falls on Bardak while stabbing him, perhaps it is the transfer of falling damage, coupled with the dagger wound, that delivers enough damage to knock out Bardak. Then it's Bardak's fall from the tree that actually kills him (because he's now at zero hp).

(Read at Marvel Unlimited.)