Adventure Comics #48 - pt. 2

And we're back with what I promised, a look at this issue's installment of Federal Men. In it, the FBI gets a hot tip that counterfeiters are working in Northville, and in an unusual way -- a fake $1,000 bill is mailed to them anonymously, but came from Northville. Of course, we're given no indication as to where Northville is but, since so many comic book stories have a New York City orientation by now, it stands to reason that "Northville" means somewhere North of NYC, so...maybe it's actually Albany? Or even Poughkeepsie? Ah well, it's all speculation...

The plot is one we've seen before and will see again -- the hero stumbles across a crime school where a professor (or professors) teach classes on forgery, safe cracking, and killing in exchange for a cut of future profits. This one is pretty expensive -- a complete course costs $5,000, plus 25% of your take for the first year. I would be really leery of allowing a real game mechanic benefit to this.

Steve Carson (our hero) disguises himself as a "tough" by smoking a cigarette, going without shaving, and possibly darkening his eyebrows. He's caught -- not because he looks just like Steve Carson, but because he gets fingerprinted and the Professor somehow has all federal men's fingerprints on file.

Fitting in with the dark themes at DC Comics this month, the deathtrap is a suicide machine -- you're strapped in, with a gun in your hand, and the machine makes you squeeze the trigger and shoot yourself in the head. Without wrecking things, it's a pretty foolproof deathtrap -- so the only way out for Steve is to have one of the hoodlums turn on the Professor and free him. The twist is that the hoodlum did it -- and sent the fake $1,000 bill to tip off the feds -- not out of any altruism, but revenge because he was about to be expelled.

By now, the Sandman has been downgraded from billionaire Wesley Dodds to millionaire Wesley Dodds. Wesley is shown smoking a pipe, and the Sandman carries binoculars for the first, if not only time, in this issue.

Dian Belmont is in love with Wesley already, if her letter to him is written honestly. Her father, the D.A., learns Wesley is the Sandman in this story and seems cool with it, even though the Sandman was wanted by the police in the past.

The Sandman is shown jumping safely from a second floor window. Should stunts be able to lessen falling damage? Maybe. Maybe...half damage per 10', per stunt?

The Belmonts own a Chris-Craft -- Chris-Craft Boats was an American manufacturer of boats that was founded by Christopher Columbus Smith. This page is a good commercial for them -- it's fleet, and can easily catch up to a yacht. 

When Sandman searches Judge Quick he finds a letter in a secret pocket. I'm not sure how you conceal a "secret pocket" on your person. A pocket inside your jacket certainly wouldn't qualify as "secret." Maybe it's sewn to the inside of his pant leg...? The letter is a major clue without even reading it, because it smells of one of the suspects' perfume. 

Sandman climbs a wine-covered trellis (it's called a ladder, but it's pretty clearly a trellis) to an upstairs window, which should be a basic skill check, maybe even with a bonus if the trellis is sturdy. Dian, the Woman in Evening Clothes (and that's including high heels, no doubt) climbs it right after him, and that's got to be an expert skill check.

In one panel, the gas from his gas gun is referred to as "deadly."   

In Socko Strong, Socko is trapped in a deathtrap underwater, but he finds a trapdoor that serves as the drain for this pool. It feeds to an underground stream and Socko is swept into it. He emerges, "finally," on the bank of a river. But how long was he underwater? Were there pockets of air for him, or did he hold his breath the whole time? We're not told, but those details can mean life or death in a realistic campaign. 

The next day, while shooting a film, the guide wire snaps on a heavy arc lamp, and the lamp is about to fall on a small girl. "The entire group all stands motionless in frozen horror -- except for Socko..." Now, there's two possible explanations for that. One is that, as the only Hero present on the scene, the Editor is making sure none of the other characters on the scene can upstage him. Or, the Editor used surprise rolls to determine if anyone was surprised by the falling arc lamp, or perhaps Socko surprises the falling arc lamp, giving him even more time to act.

In an interesting twist, the father of the girl was paid to kill off Socko by sabotaging his parachute for the next scene to film. Doing the good deed pays off and saves Socko.  

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

 

 

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.)

Fantastic Comics #2 - pt. 1

I like the early, pre-Davey Samson stories, and this one is no exception. Here we see Samson dealing with Hitler, here called Dragor. I'm not a fan of concealing real places and people with fictional counterparts, but Dragor is a pretty good villain name.

It's possible that I like this story just for the giant flame tanks. Sure, flame tanks would be impractical as all get-out, but there's no way an army could face those and not be terrified. The range seems pretty good on those things for flame throwers, but it's hard to judge just how far by that panel.

This last panel anticipates the attack on London by six months, the attack on Paris by four months, and the attack on Copenhagen by three months.

What? Those flame tanks looked gigantic just a page ago. Now, as soon as Sampson gets up close, they are barely bigger than he is. It must be some perspective trick to how they are designed?

Since the flame gun's flame seems to be an area of effect, it should not just miss Sampson like that (if he saves vs. science, he would take half damage). He must be buffing himself defensively with a power like Imperviousness.

Lifting a small tank is possible with the Raise Trolley Car power, which buffs his encumbrance limit.  Mopping up the soldiers by hand could be an example of Multi-Attack but, really, if he's operating as a 6th level superhero (which would take 5 brevet ranks this early in his publication history), then handling some 1st level fighters should not be a problem for him, even un-buffed offensively.

The colorist got plenty creative here; personally, I think such an important tank would have been more likely camouflaged.

Making 10-12' leaps just while covering horizontal distance does not seem to warrant using a power and could easily just be flavor text.

It is very unclear how the gas gets from this central tank out to the field, especially since there are no hoses or pipes leading from it. I guess this was more of a refueling station?

Unless the gas inside that tank is helium, it likely far exceeds the 720 lb. limit of the power Extend Missile Range III. This feat could be duplicated by combining any of the Raise buffing powers with the power Wreck at Range.

How does Sampson get to the roof without revealing himself to the people inside? Here is where leaping as a game mechanic comes into play instead of just flavor text. Since he's only leaping 30', this could be Leap I or even just the leaping ability of aliens. Since this version of Samson (see my Samson entry in Supplement IV, where I explain there were actually three different Samsons in the same series) has no origin story, he might as well be statted as an alien.

Since a bridge is a structural feature, it gets wrecked like a car.

This turbine was on my mind when I made generators a category for wrecking.

This page is a little odd; Dragor raced out of the room not that long ago, but Samson has no idea where he went? Evasion must be pretty easy, or tracking must be hard. Here, Sampson forces morale saves until someone tells him where Dragor is.

No players like mazes and they are awful hard to navigate while in-character. Wrecking things is an easy way to circumnavigate that problem.





(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Jungle Comics #1 - pt. 2

We return to check on Tabu today. We see him perform some tree climbing so uncanny that I hesitate to say that could even be done in Hideouts & Hoodlums as an expert-level skill; that is more likely the power Wall-Crawling in action.

Jungle Torment might be a magic-user spell in the making here. For the duration, up to 7 targets cannot rest and must make morale saves each turn. Seems like a good 1st level spell to soften up opponents.

Still going easy on them at first, Tabu decides to use Gust of Wind on their torches. Then he starts to get serious and lets loose with Insect Plague, a 4th level spell. Insect Plague hasn't made its way into any H&H product yet, but you can bet it'll be in the AH&H Heroes Handbook whenever I'm done with that. It will do continuous damage to whoever is caught in the swarm, so either these explorers have really good hit points or they escape from the swarm pretty quickly.

Since that pool of slime looks like green slime, I'm very tempted to include green slime now in the AH&H Mobster Manual (now in progress!).

It's unclear if this tiger is huge, in the sense that it has extra Hit Dice, or it just looks huge to someone when it's advancing menacingly on you in the wild (I'd probably think it was huge too!). Apes and tigers have both already been statted for H&H.

It's harder to say what's going on here, since we can't see where these paralyzing thorns are coming from. Is there some monstrous form of plant life that should fire paralyzing thorns? Or should this be a new spell? Or are the thorns simply flavor text for a Mass Paralysis spell? I'm leaning towards the first option, simply because there is not a lot of plant life you can fight in H&H compared to animals and people.

I'm going to have to call shenanigans here. Yes, I'm all for making Gust of Wind a more useful spell (and feel I did more to increase its effectiveness in H&H already), making it strong enough to bend over trees so that they can knock over people seems like it would be way too powerful, almost on par with an Earthquake spell (which, frankly, is where I thought Fletcher was going with that at the bottom of the last page).

Oh, it's not green slime after all! They climb out unharmed.

I cheated and used that illustration of the giant snakes as a hydra in Supplement I: National, but I'm pretty sure that's meant to be two giant snakes.The next page reveals that they are constrictor snakes.

Here we see evidence that the Leap powers allow for safe downward movement, though a controlled leap is different from a fall and I'm not sure if I'd allow this to protect heroes from falling damage (I've gone both ways in game play).

Tabu, still just showing off, demonstrates Polymorph Self and Transmute Mud to Rock (the latter spell has not debuted in H&H yet.) The jungle tree-vine was statted in Supplement I: National (I believe), based on this very picture.

I'll have to review my stats and make sure I gave the tree-vine the ability to stretch out its vines before entangling.

Tabu levels up!

So many animals in old comics are killed in one shot that it's refreshing to see an elephant just take the hit and keep moving.

I don't think any game mechanics are behind this accidental entangling; more likely, this is set-up for the scenario instead of part of the scenario.

Here's more evidence that Jon Dale's player isn't in control of his actions yet -- just what is the rationale for climbing to the top of the plateau? In his shape, after being dragged, you would think he would choose the easier journey of going around it.

This is the second story in the same comic about a hidden land of secret white people in Africa. I'm guessing the authors were inspired by the Prester John legend, although it might be just good old-fashioned racism.

600 years would put these Norsemen as coming from the 15th century, which is really late for Thor-worshipping Norsemen. Of course, maybe this is not the first generation of them isolated in Africa, which may explain how they got their own religion wrong and think Thor takes human sacrifices.

Still no idea how a Norsewoman manages to go by the name of Camilla.

Potions of longevity belong in H&H. But if it's that volatile, how is it safe to drink...?

Daily sacrifices? These people make the Mayans seem mild-mannered.

The reference to electrodes tells us that these Norsemen have had enough contact with the outside world to at least catch them up to 19th century science. They probably also heard that modern society doesn't approve of human sacrifice, but just didn't care.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Blue Ribbon Comics #2 - pt. 1

This is shaping up to be my least productive month on the blog in the past two and a half years! And we end this month, revisiting MLJ's second issue of their first comic book.

Hmm...according to Rang-a-Tang the Wonder Dog, dogs can make high jumps into second story windows. Or maybe I'm selling the "wonder" in "wonder dog" too short. Could this be the first dog superhero?

Hmm again...if you see unusual tire tracks, you can call the Rubber Manufacturers Association and they can tell you where the tires were sold? It seems implausible..and yet, players sometimes need really easy hints to keep them moving in the right direction.

Assuming this page is referring to the North Bay in Ontario, it seems very unlikely that Detective Speed is going to need a dog sled to get around. This would be an example of adding "local color" to a foreign scene by utilizing common cliches about it.

It seems unlikely that seeing the same tire tracks in Canada would signify anything, since Speed was already told that those tires were only sold in Canada, and hence would be more common there. This would be another example of keeping the clues really simple.

You heard Speed -- rifles way a lot and slow you down! No complaining about encumbrance rules allowed now.

Okay, think about this one. Dan Hasting's friend, Dr. Carter, wants to set Dan up with an assistant. First, he picks one with an obvious personal grudge against him. Then, he talks up what a "fine technician" he is, when Barnes is almost 50 and still just an assistant. The lesson here is -- if your Editor tries to set you up with a supporting cast member who seems suspicious -- ask questions. Check references. Your Editor could be setting you up for a trap later.

That's right -- if an atomic blast hits your spaceship, it's not the heat that will get to you -- it's the humidity. I love how clueless people were about atomic radiation in 1939. You can use this in your campaigns to have atomic radiation do any crazy thing you want it to. Humidity? Sure, why not!

This is Buck Stacey. Now, it's true that low-level Heroes and mobsters with low Hit Dice have a roughly 50/50 chance to hit something. Some people might think that seems low. I give you this page, then, as evidence of how hard it is to hit someone. That gunman is shooting at Buck as Buck rides away with his back to him, in a straight line, at short range -- and misses. Now, there is also the Hero's save vs. missiles to factor in here, but I believe a low chance to hit is still justifiable.

This is Scoop Cody, and Scoop is the guy in orange. That might surprise you, because the guy dominating this scene is the mysteryman in a suit and ski mask. The guy (his calling card says he's called Marvel) just wanders into the scene like a wandering encounter -- proving that Hero classes need to be featured on the wandering mobster tables.

This is Bob Phantom -- one of my favorite characters to make fun of about his name. You can tell Bob is low-level; here, Bob warns the bad guys not to kill this guy. But, hey, they've got Tommy guns, so Bob is just going to warn here where it's safe. Hey, he did warn them, at least!

(Read at Comic Book Plus.)

Wonderworld Comics #6 - pt. 1

The Flame appears on the scene thanks to the Teleport through Focus power. He shows up here in the middle of an investigation, just courteously turning over evidence he's collected so far to the D.A.

Collecting evidence isn't a requirement in Hideouts & Hoodlums, nor is respecting due process. Rather, they make for additional challenges that a player choosing a Lawful Hero might enjoy.

The Flame makes what looks like a 15' leap downward, apparently without taking 1-6 points of falling damage. I believe I've covered this on the blog before, but leaping down should not be treated as an uncontrolled fall (when the Hero is taken by surprise).

This is Lou Fine at his artistic best. I like this page so much that one panel of it became the cover art to the first H&H module Sons of the Feathered Serpent. Just soak it all in.

Now, this time, The Flame doesn't just leap down, but has to take the extra step of swinging from the wire to land safely. It's unclear which floor he is leaping from, as it looks like the 2nd floor in panel 1, but could be the 7th floor or higher in panel 2. Maybe he doesn't have a leap power prepared for today, so he can't make the leap safely from that height. Or, maybe the power would only protect him, but someone being carried would still take jarring damage from the landing.

The Flame catches a break at the end; instead of having to catch the thug himself, the thug just gets handed over to him. That's moving the pace along!

300 MPH?  That is one fast car, in any age. It was called a super-charged car in 1st edition. I might be making transportation trophies more customize-able in 2nd edition. For example, this would be a Car +2, with each plus representing a bonus feature in the car (or, more specifically, one plus per extra 100 MPH the car goes).

Leaping up or down, easily handled. Leaping sideways into a moving car? That might require an attack roll, or burn a stunt.

The Flame is buffed by Imperviousness here.

The Flame doesn't need to be using a power to get that "heads slammed together" attack. In unarmed combat everyone gets two attacks per turn, so this would count as separate attacks on each head.

It doesn't take one of the raise powers to pick someone up and throw them out of a car; anyone can try to do that too.

Somehow, he ties up Mr. Crass remarkably quickly. It seems like it's less than a turn he spends on it. And how is his car matching speed without anyone's foot on the gas? Autopilot? Maybe this is a Car +3.

The Flame doesn't seem too concerned about blowing up mobsters, so long as he has the boss villain to take into custody. Does that make him Neutral in Alignment?

Should cars be extra susceptible to flame guns? Or could this be an example of Wreck at Range? I suspect the latter.

And now we move on to the Yarko the Great adventure in this issue. Here, Yarko is on a treacherous journey through Devil's Pass in the Himalayas. His encounters along the way are with natural disasters instead of mobsters (though he finds evidence of vampires at his base camp).

A blizzard this fierce might do 1-8 points of damage each exploration turn that the traveler fails a save vs. plot. While the rockslide might do 3-18 points of damage or more if a save vs. science was missed.

The hoshai plant is a strange sort of trophy item. It's really bizarre -- a giant lilly-like plant that grows in molten lava and has blood inside it. But, other than that...it doesn't actually do anything. In this sense, it's more of a trophy to have, like a giant penny, than something to actually use. I plan on having some examples of these sorts of trophies on the 2nd edition trophy list.

After beating the Devil, you would think Yarko wouldn't be scared of three vampires with bows and arrows. Perhaps he's more concerned for the safety of his traveling companion, or just wants to get captured so he can be taken to their leader.

Speaking of which, vampires with bows and arrows is a fairly novel idea.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

The Funnies #35

According to The Crime Busters, it's possible to take the hinges off a vault door with a pocket knife, though it will take you hours to do it.

Ew, John Carter -- did you have to cut off his whole head? Cutting off heads is not so easily done in Hideouts & Hoodlums. Perhaps John has his hands on a magic vorpal sword. Or it's something about how strong John is in this environment that lets him do that. But would that make it possible for superheroes to decapitate on Earth, then? I'm not comfortable with this precedent...

A Hero capable of super-leaping, like a superhero on Earth or a fighter on Barsoom, can apparently leap long distances in a downward direction. Should that mean he can fall long distances safely? I had such a precedent for awhile in my Sundays at Home campaign, but I don't care for it. There should be a difference between a controlled fall and an uncontrolled fall. Could a super-leaper take less damage from falling, though?  I'm still thinking about that one...

Atomic cartridges? They were just called radium rifles in the original books. I wonder why they changed it here. "Atomic cartridges" seems like there should be a mushroom cloud with every shot, which is definitely not the case here. Maybe they do 2-12 points of damage per shot, though...?

Cerebus the Aardvaark??

Yeah, I didn't have anything else to say about this one. I'm not statting mosquito swarms...

Lost Temple of the Swinks should become a H&H adventure module somewhere down the line. But it does bring up for me, the issue of illumination.

Wash isn't carrying so much as a lit match to see by, but he seems to be able to see these spacious chambers quite clearly. Is it a mix of the outside light coming in through that small hole, combined with his eyes adjusting to the dark? Should dim light not be an issue in H&H?

I'm okay with the diamond eyes on the statues, but when there's a Fibber McGee closet-full of pearls, I think the Editor is being way too generous with treasure.

Wash seems to just happen to notice tracks on this page, but tracking in H&H is an active skill, not a passive skill.

But, yeah, I'm mainly just sharing these pages because it's Captain Easy...

This is from The Wonderland of Oz and I'm wondering...am I going to have to break down and finally put gnomes in H&H?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)