Tip Top Comics #23, 24, 26

Jim Hardy is really taking over Tip Top Comics around this time, as other features like Peter Pat get wrapped up. Further down this page you'll see one page where Jim Hardy is intentionally dressed like Dick Tracy -- and suddenly the inspiration for this strip is crystal clear, even why he picks up a Junior-like sidekick in this storyline. And it turns out that Dick Moores was once Chester Gould's assistant on Dick Tracy, confirming my guess.

This is from vol. 2, no. 11 (Mar. 1938)...

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Game notes: There are three ways that someone can be killed by hitting them with a vehicle in Hideouts & Hoodlums.  One, the Editor can simply change the mood
level of the campaign to be more lethal (this was discussed

more in 1st edition). Two, the Editor can rule that non-Heroes, or at least unnamed non-Hero characters, can be killed instantly. Three, the Editor could rule that hitting the victim knocks him unconscious, and then running him over is a separate attack that does additional, killing damage.

It seems unlikely that The Kid (I don't think he has a name yet) is tactically inclined enough to transfer damage into pushing attacks to try and knock the hoodlums off the train. There may be environmental factors in play, like the pitching and swaying of the train, that make the Editor declare that any damage necessitates a save vs. science or be thrown from the train, making combat as challenging for Jim as it is for the hoodlums.

In Little Mary Mixup, we see rabbits can be bought for $1 each. I'm not sure what good rabbits will do for the average Hero, though maybe a magic-user would like one for pulling out of his hat?

There are some tips here for keeping the challenge level not too high for solo play and low-level Heroes: keep hit points low on bad guys, even if they have more than 1 Hit Die. Be prepared to give away modifiers you would not normally give out, like maybe an Armor Class bonus for swinging on a rope while being attacked with missile weapons.

If running a game for half-pint Heroes, you could cut them some slack on skill checks like balancing on a beam, since that should be easy for them given their small size and low center of balance. But still reward them for coming up with grownup ideas, like juryrigging grappling hooks out of rocks.

How It Began proves useful filler again. I don't know where it got this idea about a charming dragon with emerald eyes from, but now I want to stat an emerald dragon for H&H really bad!

We come back around to Jim Hardy again in v. 2, no. 12 (Apr. 1938). The issue here is, would a steel door stop an explosion that can blow up an entire wooden building? It's almost an academic question, because it's not necessary that the steel door works; all we know is that the hoodlums think it will work. I don't think it would...

Now we're in vol. 3, no. 2 (June 1938) already, and this is that page I mentioned with the Dick Tracy outfit on Jim. We also learn here that a bouquet of roses cost $3.50.

Checking in on The Captain and the Kids again, I'm struck by the unusual situation of the mount turning around and biting its rider. I doubt that happens often, but it's worth bearing in mind that when trying out a new mount, the Editor should always make an encounter reaction roll for it to see how it reacts.

Curiously, the circus man says Blackie is going to get a two-bit (25-cent) ticket, but later he's sitting in the reserved seating where the seats cost $2.50. That's a really big range of pricing, like if I could go to the movies today and choose between $5 seating and $50 seating.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Flash Comics #2 - pt. 2

Hawkman shows up third in this issue. New York City (I presume) is struck by a major earthquake (no other DC characters notice because there is no shared continuity yet). The cause is unusual; a mad scientist calling himself Alexander the Great has created a machine that increases an object's weight 1,000 times, and that is what caused the earthquake. It takes an hour to warm up the weight-increasing raygun before it can be fired.

In this story we learn that Carter and Shiera are engaged, and Carter has promised to give up adventuring when they marry (so, of course, they never do marry).

In a rare sign of heroes drinking, Carter is mixing a drink in a shaker. These are clearly adult heroes; not only does Carter end the adventure by offering Shiera a cocktail, but it's clear from Shiera's dialog that she just spend the night over at his place.

Dinner is served at 10, way later than any dinner I've ever eaten.

Shiera calls Carter's costume "robes."

Shiera gets them invited to dinner with Alexander by revealing Carter is Hawkman to him. Alexander, more like a Bond villain than a comic book villain, offers Hawkman $1 million to not interfere in his plans, and genially tells him he can visit anytime. Indeed, security is so light at Alex's mansion that Carter is able to sneak back in and test if the machine will work on ninth metal (Carter carries around a small sample).

We learn that ninth metal is not composed of atoms (but are not told what it is composed of. Solid energy?)

Hawkman arms himself with a trident and net, even though Shiera recommends a sword. The trident and net are also both made of ninth metal (not all his weapons are, apparently).

Showing off how well-read he is, Carter makes a reference to "fling the gage," a way to say "give an ultimatum" that comes from the poem "In the Vanguard" by Scottish poet Alexander Anderson.

Hawkman is still low level; he gets beat by a single mad scientist armed with only a pistol, and has to be saved by Shiera.

In one of the earliest examples of superheroes keeping trophy items, Hawkman keeps one of two weight-increasing machines left in Alex's mansion (after wrecking the other with an axe so no one else can have one).  

Next up is Johnny Thunderbolt, which has not yet been shortened to Johnny Thunder. Johnny "accidentally" casts Charm Person four times, on two police officers, a complete stranger, and a boxer, to get them to do what he says. When he finds a bully harassing a lady and makes him bounce across town into a hospital. It's more difficult to say what spell that would be. Telekinesis, possibly, or a new spell called ...Compel Movement? It would be a 2nd level spell that makes 1 target move in a certain direction for the duration. He also casts Fear, which makes four people run away from him.

The woman Johnny rescued immediately becomes his temporary supporting cast member, since she thinks he's cute.

The newspaper headlines make it clear that Johnny is in New York City.

Previously reprinted by Dell, Rod Rian of the Sky Police is in these early Flash Comics. This installment sets the time of the strip at 2500 AD. We also learn that telurium is a metal only found on the Moon, and that Earth has a world government that uses earthons instead of dollars as its currency. 10,000 MPH is a very fast speed to be approaching the Moon; most Moon landings arrive at around 5,000 MPH. The remainder of the pages are the same ones reprinted in Dell's The Comics #7, and feature the Mephisians.

The Demon Dummy continues the melodrama of Harry Dunstan, a ventriloquist whose sanity crumbles after losing the love of his life last installment.Talking to himself through his dummy, Harry convinces himself to become a destitute drunk and get himself arrested, so he can exact revenge while in jail. We also find out that "hooker" used to also mean a "good, stiff drink." 

In The Whip, Rod Gaynor buys the old villa that the original Whip was said to have owned 100 years ago. The place has a reputation for being haunted, supported by doors that swing open on their own (as the building shifts, perhaps). There is also a wandering encounter in the house, as Rod and his servant Wing meet the sheriff inside.

The Whip is opposed by The Association, a group of rural mobsters. They spend $10,000 to hire five assassins, who apparently work for $2,000 each.

Fighting the assassins, the Whip is able to entangle one of them with his whip and hurl the man against the wall hard enough to hurt him. That's tricky to emulate with game mechanics because the entangling attack and the hurling attack should be two separate attacks, giving his opponents twice as long to shoot him. As the Editor, I would consider how much damage the attack would likely do in total and, seeing how it would not be much, would condense it into a single punch attack (with the rest just flavor text).

The Whip entangles a second assassin with his whip, jumps out the window, and that pulls the assassin out the window with him. I would treat this as an opposed grappling attack, but with circumstances giving the Whip a +2 situational bonus.


(read at fullcomic.pro)

Silver Streak Comics #2 - pt. 4

We're still in Duke Kelly, Ace Inspector.  The narrator calls these thugs, but they sure seem like superstitious hoodlums, a mobstertype that was introduced in Supplement I: National.  Haunted houses are, of course, a wonderful set of tropes to exploit for hideout-building.

There is absolutely no game mechanic that would explain how Duke just happens to be on the same road as the kidnappers at this particular moment; it's just a handout from the Editor.

Shooting people inside a moving vehicle is possible during a chase scene in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but negative modifiers for cover and speed are need to be taken into account. Duke's player must have rolled really high.

Throwing your gun after you run out of bullets is what happens when the Editor just keeps rolling really high for morale saves.

Duke makes an unusual choice, letting the hoodlum/thugs get away so he can go after Hix. But...how does Duke know that neither of these guys is Hix?  Did he ever see a picture of the man, between panels? And he's so confident neither of them is Hix in disguise? I suspect Duke's player is meta-gaming here, and figures this isn't a likely place for a boss battle to take place.

The 6' hedge leading straight up to the house is convenient cover!

The falling beam, poised to fall and hit anyone coming in the entrance, was a trap.

It turns out Hix is a supervillain! Here he uses the power Extend Missile Range I, turning Duke into a missile.  It's possible he also used Spook Bad Guys on the thugs earlier, meaning Hix is at least 2nd level (shameful man).

There is a serious design flaw in this hideout -- if you're going to install steel doors to keep people out, it's not a good idea to leave open transoms above them.

It's an interesting tactic here; most villains rig their hideouts to explode, but Hix went with slowly burning it down and then making it explode. It definitely gives him more time to escape that way!

I'm calling shenanigans on those porch roof physics, though. If their weight was really too much for the roof, they would go right through, not make it "gradually sag" to the ground.

Mister Midnite is a curious feature. These bad guys are called "The Little Men." Some of them look really weird, and the one with the mohawk definitely has fangs, but it's still unclear if these are just ugly midgets with woman issues or if this is supposed to be some non-human race.

The brute they use called "Noman" (long before THUNDER Agents!) appears to be undead, but let's wait and see if that turns out to be true.

Noman is given several colorful descriptors, but brute is perhaps the most telling for H&H. My entry on thugs may say something about how brutes are thugs who specialize in unarmed combat.

Now, bear in mind that Carruthers here is a superhero, so his embarrassingly fast smackdown is telling. In first edition, this would be proof that superheroes cannot use their powers when out of costume. But in second edition I removed that restriction because there were so many exceptions to it. I still think we can explain this, though, as an example of how low level Mister Midnite is, and being low level means Heroes are vulnerable.  Particularly if he rolled poorly for starting hit points, it is not inconceivable for a first-level Hero to go down in one hit.

It's almost impossible to follow what is happening in the first half of this page. What is the nature of this trail that is so easy for Mister Midnite to follow, but the police haven't bothered to yet? Mister Midnite stops time...and then just appears at the hideout entrance?

It's possible that Mister Midnite has used the power Find Evidence -- as-written, it does not find trails, but I have had players ask for a more lax interpretation of the power so it can be used like this. 

And as for the time stop...perhaps the Editor has agreed to ignore how much time it would take to follow the trail, in keeping with the flavor of Midnite's power. There is no hard and fast mechanic to timekeeping when out of combat; mostly it is just the Editor making common sense decisions over how long something should take.

I'm amused by the narrator pretending that he meant to get captured. I think it's pretty clear that Mister Midnite is a bit of a wuss and did not wind up in chains on purpose...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Daring Mystery Comics #1 - pt. 2

Still on John Steele, Soldier of Fortune, the second feature in this title.

There is a delayed reaction from John shooting the bomber that's been dropping bombs at him -- a delayed explosion that crashes the plane. This seems to back up my initial notion that damage to vehicles should cause complications instead of hit points of damage.

When John completes the scenario of delivering the agent to the general, all he gets is thanks. A Hideouts & Hoodlums player would probably appreciate getting some kind of tangible reward instead.

The next feature is The Texas Kid, Robin Hood of the Range. Again, without preamble or set-up, our Hero plunges into action when he catches raiders in the act of burning down a ranch. Instead of statting raiders, I think I would just make them outlaws (chaotic cowboys).  The outlaw/raiders have to make their morale checks in the first turn of combat, before even taking damage, after the Texas Kid goes first.

When The Texas Kid needs to get into the burning building fast, he makes his horse Spot wreck the door down with its hooves. If we assume horses should have a chance of wrecking things (which seems plausible, given their size and mass), then The Texas Kid could order his mount to use its special skill with a skill check of his own, or burn a stunt for it. So...at this point, I wonder if I even need a Cowboy class and couldn't just use the Mysteryman class.

The rancher from the burning building is one of those dying plot hook characters who you can't revive in time before he reveals too much plot information.

Before riding away, The Texas Kid just happens to spot something. I've always held that searching needs to be an active skill use and not incidental, but sometimes the comic books contradict me. Generally, I feel it's not good for the game to make it too easy to find things, but this should be up to the individual Editor...and my skills section should specify that.

To look for trouble in town, The Texas Kid wears the hat one of the outlaws lost.  It turns out to be a very fast way to get a hostile reaction from the outlaws when they spot him in town. In the ensuing confrontation, The Texas Kid disarms one of the three outlaws, but instead of pushing his luck against the other two, he escapes out the window so he can observe what they do next, and have them lead him to the stolen loot from the ranches. As I observed just recently on another story, an equally valid tactic would have been to capture all three men and force them to reveal the loot.

At the outlaws' hideout, The Texas Kid douses the lights, get the advantage of surprise -- and uses it to steal the loot back, again putting off a three-to-one battle. If The Texas Kid is 1st level, this makes complete sense. Instead, he rides to the ranch they planned to hit next and raises some help. Now, luring the outlaws into an ambush of angry ranchers would have been an acceptable ending, but the author throws one more wrinkle in the plot when our Hero somehow deduces the identity of the outlaws' ringleader on just a hunch. Now, instead of beating up the bad guys when they arrive at the ranch, the rancher gives them his money so the Texas Kid can follow them, get caught, and have them confess when the ringleader shows up in an overly complex sting operation.

Next up is Monako, Prince of Magic.  The story begins with a very implausible spell -- Monako saves a woman from a hit-and-run driver by making a bridge magically appear underneath her. It seems like nothing short of a Wish spell could create a bridge and lift her up on top of it in the second it would take for the car to hit her. Maybe he was already casting Levitate and the Editor allowed a lot of flavor text.

While spell range tends to be huge for other comic book magicians, Monako can seemingly do nothing when the hit-and-run car drives too far away, despite the fact that he saw the passenger and recognized it as his old nemesis, Mr. Muro.

The woman rescued, Josie, is both already a Supporting Cast Member, but doubles for this story as a plot hook character. She needs Monako to save her brother from kidnappers.

Mr. Muro uses two thugs (a mobster type we haven't seen in awhile) for the abduction. Monako pays his taxi driver the princely sum of $50 to "follow that car."

Monako casts a spell he calls Vision -- it would be a new spell, like an improved Phantasmal Force, but it is intelligent, can communicate, can travel pretty far distances, and the caster can see the Vision and its immediate environs by concentrating. The Vision cannot pass through thick metals, like a heavy steel door. This might be a new 4th level spell.

Monako casts Reduce Person on himself (and carries a small rope ladder he can use while shrunk). He casts a spell that seems to be the high-level Find the Path -- though maybe he just used the tracking skill and pretended he was casting a spell.

(Read at Marvel Unlimited.)

Smash Comics #5 - pt. 3

Whew! I've been getting so much Hideouts & Hoodlums stuff done, I haven't had time for this blog!

When I last left off, I was looking at the Invisible Justice story from this issue. I've already talked plenty about how easy disguise and hypnotism skills are in comics, so this whole first row should come as no surprise. No, what I'm interested in here is that Invisible Hood has to still sneak silently into the room -- invisibility does not itself guarantee surprise conditions -- and the fact that Invisible Hood was willing to shoot Hyde in the back as he was running away.

When I talk to people about H&H and golden age comic books, more than once I've been asked about how the game handles the perceived notion that all the Heroes of the Golden Age were goody two-shoes. Invisible Hood just tried to shoot the bad guy in the back.

This is from Abdul the Arab, and game mechanics-wise this is more complicated than it may at first appear. Abdul encounters a lone man wandering the desert and rides out of his way to aid him; the man turns out to be an ex-member of the mobsters Abdul didn't even know he was after. So what did Abdul just encounter -- a random good deed that rewarded him with a plot hook character, or a random plot hook character Abdul mistook for a random good deed? Only the Editor knows what he rolled for...

Sand pits are a good desert trap -- but not when they conveniently lead to the exact room in the mobsters' hideout you need to reach.

The bad guy is consistently referred to as a brigand here, a mobster type present since the beginning in H&H.  There is no game mechanic reason for the brigand's horse to stumble; it seems like a creative explanation of a missed attack roll.

This is Captain Cook of Scotland Yard, and one clue that this is meant to be a short, one-night scenario is that it starts at the entrance to the hideout (a freighter in this case) and he's already been given his mission.

The fact that this is a low-level scenario is evident by the single guard, armed only with a throwing knife. The guard misses, despite having bonuses for attacking from behind and above.

Linen is a good random thing to find in a hideout.

What the heck kind of map of England is that?

A clipped newspaper article is a cliched clue; making the clue an obituary of the guy who's office you're in gives the clue a creepy twist.

I can easily accept that Cook found the warehouse's address while in the company's main office. He could have even looked up the address in a phone book. But the warehouse address is on the company stationery's letterhead?  Instead of the corporate office address?

Though I've been riding this story pretty hard, this last wrinkle -- about the secret gas solidified into powder and sprayed onto the linens that have been out in plain sight all this time -- is a pretty good wrinkle. It could also make a pretty good trap. "This room's full of nothing but worthless linen; I'm burning it." BOOM!

Hugh Hazzard and His Iron Man would have me believe that large robots are worth $5 million. Nooo, I'm not putting something that valuable in my hideouts!

It's odd that Bozo is immune to the death ray, since it very easily wrecks the plane it strikes first. Bozo is clearly no ordinary robot, but one statted with levels in the superhero class. But no power of a superhero buffs you to be immune to rayguns (yet). Could this be as simple as a successful saving throw?

(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.)

Popular Comics #43 - pt. 1

This page of Tex Thorne got me to thinking...could game play switch one type of mobster into another? These outlaws, for example, become drunken hoodlums because Tex gets them drunk to make it easier to overpower them.

My first thought on reading this was -- how bad are these bad guys, to throw their dead into a cabin and turn it into a funeral pyre instead of taking the time to bury them? And then I remembered -- the players in my various campaigns have almost never taken the time to bury their dead allies, let alone their enemies.

Moose-like creature? That's pretty clearly drawn as a moose.

It does remind me of this session of D&D I once played, though, where we spent this time chasing a "fox-like creature" through the dungeon, curious to find out what it was. The trick was that it really was just a fox.

Triceratops are such a common dinosaur that I was tempted to put them in the new "basic" book -- but decided against it. The basic book will be for levels 1-6 and triceratops would be too tough to fight for even 6th level Heroes.

This page illustrates the problem with including more dinosaurs in H&H. What is that potbellied carnosaur supposed to be? I mean, the obvious guess is a Tyrannosaurus Rex because that was one of the five or six types of dinosaurs that everyone knew back then, but that drawing...ugh.

Yes, this grisly scene was brought to you by the same company that was producing wholesome Disney comics at the same time!

Bat-birds? Really? You can call a triceratops what it is, but you have to be coy about pterodactyls?

This is The Masked Pilot's strip, though that is his supporting cast member, Jenkins, having all the trouble. Engines conking out and planes catching on fire are just some of the complications that can happen during a dogfight. The plane busting into pieces is what happens when a light cannon takes out the last of a plane's hit points.

Power dive is shown here giving some combat benefit, either to hit or to damage, or both.

A rare instance of first aid being shown applied to a Hero.

There have been several versions of how first aid works in H&H over the years. Right now, I'm leaning towards it giving an immediate 1 hp back.

Doctors were statted for Supplement V as a Lawful mobster type, but here we see an example of a chaotic doctor, giving other mobsters bonuses on their disguise chances.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Keen Detective Funnies v. 2 #9

The Masked Marvel is slumming on this adventure, tackling stamp counterfeiters. He apparently has a power that allows him to translate codes super fast. A Read Codes power?

As a superhero, MM should be able to rip open that wall safe with brute strength, but instead opts to play safecracker and hope for a lucky skill check.

Here we have a rare example of a disguise failing. A small printing press probably still weights just over a ton, meaning The Masked Marvel had to use Raise Car to lift that.

This is from Spy Hunters and it demonstrates some of the challenging solutions players have to come up with in a low-level campaign, or even a solo mid-level campaign. A more powerful group of Heroes would have just stormed in there and fought their way to the prisoners, not coordinate with the prisoners via thrown note and stage a diversion for them.

And I share this page because these continue to be good tactics. Again, bear in mind that these must be low-level fighters -- because mid-level Heroes can usually take out low-level/Hit Die opponents in large numbers -- so they are using sneakier tactics like hit-and-run raids to steal better weapons from the enemy. They also use the terrain to their advantage, not only using the height advantage of the hill, but seeking out a cave to bottleneck combatants into.

One good thing you can say about cultists -- they know to change their passwords often. There's now a stat entry for cultists in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums.

This interesting wrinkle turns out to be a good history lesson. 3-D film was first shown in 1915, but it either didn't work very well or just failed to catch the public's interest.  Most people wouldn't have even heard of 3-D film until 1936, when a 3-D short won an Oscar, and it would not be until 1939 when millions first witnessed 3-D at the New York World's Fair. Out here in California, though, it is conceivable that many of these cultists had not made the trip to New York yet and could be fooled by their first exposure to 3-D film.

It takes Dean Denton all day to invent something, and it's not even anything major (spoilers: it's a calcium chloride bomb with an external trigger).

What I really like here is the multi-tiered cave complex, where one can lower oneself from the ledge of one level down to a lower level, without having to look for stairs or sloping tunnels to get down.

From a filler page called Detectionotes! -- this note about the FBI not being able to arrest people before 1934 is another useful history lesson for any H&H campaign set pre-1934 (or a later campaign with a very detailed backstory, or a time travel adventure...).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)