Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 2

We're back for round 2 of Samson vs. Eelo! Although he doesn't look like your "traditional" merman, I'd already decided last time I would stat Eelo as a merman. So panel 1 is either proof that mermen have great swimming movement rate, or this is the first clue that Eelo is actually a supervillain buffed with the Race the Train power.

I've seen some interesting rayguns in golden age comic books, but an underseas gun is a new one. A heat ray shoots heat. What is this one shooting out? Underseas? Is it just a water pistol?

That is some significant wrecking going on there. A submarine weighs a couple of thousand tons, so we're talking battleship category. 

But a hero shouldn't have to do everything; eventually moping up the enemies gets to be rote, or antic-climactic. It's good, then, to have the "cavalry" come in and mop up the remainder, or the remaining sub in this case.
 

I like most of this page. Samson, stoically guarding the two reunited lovers...Eelo, almost heroically, pulling himself up for one more contest with Samson (Eelo must be a supervillain with a few more powers at his disposal, to think he has a chance here)...

And then Samson just hits him and kills him. Ugh. Death-Dealing Blow needs to be its own power. It would be more powerful than Super Punch because Super Punch just does a bunch of damage to knock out virtually any foe, whereas Death-Dealing Blow must make you save vs. plot or die. So, a level 5 power? Maybe level 6? At this point, Samson only should have enough XP to reach 2nd level, so he's either been gifted more brevet ranks, or he's had more all this time and was actually holding back.

Like with ultra-powerful magic-users in the comics, one could ask me, Scott, if superheroes are this powerful, then don't you need more power inflation in even the early levels for Hideouts & Hoodlums? Good question, random stranger, but two explanations for this: 1) the superhero class is based on the first year of Superman stories, before all this power inflation happens, and 2) there are certainly elements I don't want to emulate about the early comic books because I just don't like them. These include done-in-one-blow fights and grossly overpowered heroes.

"Mercury is getting closer to the Sun every year. Eventually it will be destroyed by the - ah, I'm just kiddin'. Mercury is in a stable orbit and is gonna outlast both of us, baby." Apparently Flip just likes to periodically test how gullible Adele is.

Now I'm being flip, but this science is so bad it actually makes me mad that anyone would write it in a book children would be reading. What if they repeated this nonsense in class?

You know...you'd think someone brilliant enough to invent a fourth-dimensional projector would figure out a way to put two separate seats into it. I suspect Flip just uses this as an excuse to get all hands-on with Adele.

I don't even know what I'm looking at with those aliens. Are they giant pigeon angels with halos? Are those beanie copters?

Darn, I was just getting excited about statting Mercurian pigeon angels, but those are just thought-wave helmets. 

Whoa, I thought the misogyny in this issue was just going to be subtle, but this just got way over the top. Not cool, giant pigeon angle impersonators! But what do we think about Flip now? Is he off the hook for sparing her feelings, or should he be honest and tell her that the aliens are women-bashing in front of her? 

A thought about the architecture: at first these look like Earth skyscrapers, but if the natives are birds...what if these "buildings" are actually solid perches for the natives to roost on top of?

Nice...looks like I'm getting something cool for the Mobster Manual after all out of this issue. Heidites are D&D basilisk-like monsters, but instead of having a petrifying gaze attack, they exude green slime from their skin! From a D&D context, this potentially makes them even more dangerous than basilisks. 

Heck, I'm so excited, I just added it into the manuscript now! *sigh* Now to fix all the layout of the book after it...

 

Jumping ahead to Golden Knight, we have a lot of people in chainmail here. Except the girl, of course, who is for some reason in a 20th century bathing suit instead of even a dress. The chainmail is AC 5, but it exists almost as flavor text -- if you hit the target, you can stab right through the chainmail as if isn't there.

I had commented recently on a Facebook post about monster tactics in D&D that the DM has to have some latitude for deciding how advantageous to make those tactics, that the Editor had to stop short of making them so advantageous that the players will switch to the same tactics.

Here, we see entangling with nets giving great advantage. The Golden Knight, despite having a sword in hand, can apparently not cut his way out, or stab through the nets. Now, if this is simply a failed saving throw, and the player knows it, maybe this won't become his next character's main tactic. But if nets work like this every time? Then he will, and he'll expect it to always work for him too, and should. 

Other than that, what bothers me most about this page? The spaghetti straps on The Golden Knight's tabard? The Gothic style of the castle in medieval times? The fact that the castle is brightly painted all over? Okay, it's actually all three.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.) 

Colossus Comics #1 - pt. 1

Wow! I have been reviewing comic books from only the cover date of March 1940 since August 2019. It's hard to believe it's taken this long, and makes me a little fearful of how long it's going to take to get through April! But now we are on the final issue available to me from this month, the one and only issue of Colossus Comics from Sun Publications (one of only two comic books they ever produced). It reads like a cheaper knock-off of Planet Comics...but I'm getting ahead of myself!

First we get a glimpse of the 27th century. We know from this page that mankind has colonized the solar system at least as far as Jupiter's moons by then, and that we've gone back to manned, moon-bound telescopes instead of automated satellite telescopes. Because this is the second attack of the Plantaliens -- vicious-looking Mr. Potato Heads with spaghetti-like green tentacles -- we get a "oh no, not again!" reaction and not a "we've finally encountered other life in the universe!" reaction. So we don't know from this story if this is the only other intelligent species out there. 

Getting permission from a patient before injecting an untested drug into them is apparently not a thing anymore in the future. Darn you, lax medical malpractice laws!   

Oh, girls are so ditzy! How can you expect them to notice the difference between 2/100th of a part of a catalyst and a portion 10,000 times larger?

 2,000' tall may or may not be a record for largest giant in a comic book to this point; the moon giants in Flip Falcon would definitely give him a run for his money. Thank goodness his clothes (somehow) grow with him!

That's right, technology has still not replaced the zipper by the 27th century -- unless Zenith just likes to wear super-retro clothes. Incidentally, if 20th century clothes were the retro-fashion of the 27th century, that would be akin to people dressing in 13th century garb in the 20th century to look retro.

I'm curious about that threat that he could crush them with his breath. I don't know how even the Mythbusters team would test that one. If we accepted this at face value, we'd have to assign damage to his breath, since Hideouts & Hoodlums currently has no wind-based powers that do damage.

Urbania is either a renamed city or a city that doesn't exist in our time. 

In the future they still have televisions with poor color quality, and use telegrams instead of, oh, an electronic version that transmits over some electronic device.

Here we see the Colossus using his breath to Wreck at Range, though at a distance of 2,000' it's more of an inconvenience than a threat.

You know, it's really annoying that we never get any frame of reference for the size of the Plantaliens. I'm tempted to stat them like a D&D roper, but what if they are only 2' tall?

So, these are fleets? I'm seeing 5 vs. 6. 

The range on those ground ray batteries/electric rayguns is fantastic; they can reach from ground level to the upper atmosphere.

It's not clear from this story if the Martians and Venusians are Earth colonists or aliens.

As odd a futuristic story as Colossus AD 2640 was, the Educational Adventures of Panda-Lin is much weirder. Why does the panda have a P on his chest? Who knows.

I'm showing you this page because of the unusual flying carpet that's a split bamboo mat. Magic items can be shaped to fit the culture they came from.

We're going to end today with just this one page from Lucky Lucifer, Flyer of Fortune. The artwork is so terrible I'm almost embarrassed to have it on my blog; I could find 5th graders who can draw better than this. I share it for two things. One is the concept of Heroes having an emblem on their vehicles that identifies them -- this is long before Batman gets his Batmobile. 

The other is the concept of a direct hit. Critical hits are a house rule almost as old as D&D itself, and in any d20-based game using criticals, it is usually treated as a natural (unmodified) roll of 20 on the die. But what if a direct hit was rolling the exact target number for the Armor Class? Against a live opponent, your direct hit might do +1 damage, or against a vehicle automatically cause a complication (like here, where the engine catches on fire).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Target Comics #2 - pt. 2

Today we're still looking at Bulls-Eye Bill as he says some not-nice things about half-Hispanic people. We're going to grit our teeth and push past that and get to the solution of the code Bill found last time. Did you guess this? It seems like Dee is only taking some wild guesses, so it'll be interesting to see if she guessed right or not. Interestingly, Dee gives me every impression of being a supporting cast member, so when Bill's player couldn't solve the code, he handed it to a character controlled by the Editor, asking for a handout. Of course, the Editor doesn't have to then give them accurate information!

A lot of what would make a Wild West campaign different from a normal Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign is all in the flavor text. Every time the hero hits, you should shout "Bull's eye!" Every time an attack misses by 1, it should hit someone's hat. 

I think I've written about lassoing and pulling off a horse before. I can actually think of a couple of different mechanics for this. The simplest would be making a normal attack and applying the push/pull rules to it, subtracting footage from point of damage (I would say at least 50% less damage would get you a save vs. science to resist being yanked out of the saddle). The other is a bit more complex, involving a grappling attack for the lasso, as if in melee, with a successful hold pulling the rider out of the saddle, while if the target wins the grappling match, then he stays in the saddle, and maybe even pulls the lassoer off his feet, depending on by how high he won the grappling contest.

That glossary of cadet slang could really come in handy for an aviator-themed campaign!

When reading non-adventure strips, like the sports genre features, I often find it difficult to figure out how I would make an interesting scenario out of them in a game. The aviation genre is tricky in the same way; what do you have characters do while not flying in combat? One thing is to have non-violent contests, like this "capture the parachute" game. The mechanics seem simple: individual initiative rolls, and then everyone rolls to attack in order; first ones to "hit" a parachute gets one. Another way to handle this, which would be a first for H&H, would be to have contestants bid on which AC they're willing to try to hit, and have those ones go first. Hmm...I sense an alternate initiative system coming up for H&H...

It's not clear if Ramon thinks it's okay to force himself on Loris because he's an entitled movie star or if the author, Campbell, thinks this is culturally acceptable to Hispanics. We've seen lots of evidence of racism from Campbell before, but I'm going to give him the benefit of a doubt on this one.

I'm a little concerned when I see scenes like this and think...man, security is lax at airports back then! If my players just wait and time things so that they can run up to an aviator just before he gets in his plane, they can overpower him and take off in his stead! Some possible complications: the aviator is leveled -- a 2nd-3rd level aviator will probably knock out a 1st-level hero and make him think twice about stealing planes again; a 2 in 6 chance of some obstacle being moved in front of the plane as it taxis before takeoff; pursuit planes taking off behind him and trying to force him to land (skill check to avoid having to land if the forcing pilot makes a successful attack roll?).  
 

"Pan" is slang for face; I've known this one before, but it's worth a reminder, since we don't use it that way much today.

It's pretty disturbing that Lucky and Loris are both convinced that no one will believe her about being abducted for sex (which certainly seems implied to me), perhaps more so because even today people often don't believe the female accuser.

It is encouraging that Lucky faces consequences for stealing a plane. Consequences are virtually unheard of in golden age stories.

Well, consequences until this evidence proving Loris' story turns up. It's actually a nice story touch, as the damsel in distress dropping something is usually just a clue for the hero, but here it proves the hero is innocent.

I can't imagine what real life actor, if any, Ramon is modeled after, but Robert Baylor is surely Robert Taylor, one of MGM's main leading men in the 1930s.

And if you're thinking Loris sounds like a made-up name, it actually was a thing in the mid-1930s. According to SSA's baby names page, it peeked in popularity in 1935 as the 863rd most popular girl's name. Certainly not common, but not made-up either.

In the "there's nothing new under the sun" department, T-Men anticipates the end of The Naked Gun (or at least the part where Ludwig escapes from Lt. Drebin, but then gets hit by a car) by 48 years. It's funny in the movie; here it's a terrible ending to a cliffhanger. 

Despite the fact that Agent Turner wasn't responsible for stopping the bad guy, he's rewarded with a new mission immediately (or maybe I'm just assuming immediately; we don't know when "later" is)!

At least it's an easy mission. "Don't look for clues or try to solve anything, Turner. We want you to find a plane, so check all the planes."

My first thought on reading this page was that 45,000 tons seemed either awfully specific or awfully random, if it didn't match real battleship weights. It turns out, that weight is historically relevant and makes this strip extremely timely. The U.S. and the U.K. had a naval treaty with an "escalator clause" that limited them to building 45,000 ton-ships to maintain their neutrality. Iowa-class battleships were being built in 1940 at that exact weight in order to satisfy the letter, if not the spirit, of that treaty. 

More exciting, there actually was a U.S.S. Hawaii, but built in 1945, 5 years later, and while it was not built in Brooklyn, it was built nearby, in Camden, New Jersey!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Comics on Parade v. 2 #11 - pt. 1

I have been reading Tailspin Tommy off and on since this blog began, but never enjoyed it until this storyline, with an eccentric group of passengers and crew trapped in a remote valley. There is all kinds of survival advice players could use if someone sprang a similar scenario on them, like how important rationing food is, how many watts of power it takes to power a radio to reach 50-60 miles, and slang terms like "fan his conk." I'm pretty sure that means punch him in the nose...

The stranded passengers and crew do all the right things, figuring out how to hunt birds (they have to improvise missile weapons), foraging for edible berries, and looking for frogs down by th' creek.

We see a rare example of cussing from a newspaper strip as Tommy fails to see the value in trigonometry -- and, to be fair, I'm not sure how the professor's plan helps them any either.

Also note how soap opera relationships help keep tensions high among the cast.

Sorry if you planned on building your own Seversky Trainer out of paper; I'm more interested in capturing its max. speed and landing speed.

I never thought we'd talk so much about Abbie an' Slats -- but I've said that about a lot of strips by now, haven't I?

What I like about this page is that it deals with the main character's failure to win a scenario. Good guys always win? Not in Abbie an Slats they don't, and your players shouldn't feel like victory is always assured either.

Here we get some pricing information and, while some of it suspect, since the man paying is filthy rich and showing off that fact ($50 a day for room and board?), $40,000 for a high-end Rolls-Royce is definitely still believable, even for the 1930s.

And now, since it's much in the news these days, let's discuss misogyny in golden age comic books. Or, is it ever okay for your character to spank a lady?

Since the object of many role-playing games is to kill your opponents, spanking them seems pretty mild in comparison. I think it's also relevant that she slapped first, and he's doing the same amount of damage back. Would it be worse, or better, if he returned the smack instead of switching to spanking? From a game mechanics standpoint, he has to initiate grappling before he can spank, meaning he's invested more actions in his violent act than she did. And he would have taken an extra element of risk to do so in Hideouts & Hoodlums, as she would have an equal chance as him of reversing the hold!

I would say, had he spanked her butt as she walked away, that would have been a more tit-for-tat for the slap.

Moving on, this is from a full page of For the Record, but I only found the bottom two funny.

The Captain and the Kids also takes an unusual turn this issue, as it becomes a long flashback sequence for the Inspector, in his "youth" back in the 1890s. Note how Mitzi was of age to marry at 16, and everyone objects to the Inspector for leaving her at the altar, not for clearly being at least in his 40s at the time.

A few new nuggets turn up on this page. One is that the steamer's voyage across the Atlantic takes 30 days. Two, I love the detail about finding your way in the New York of the 1930s -- turn right at the lamp post with a cop tied to it. It's a grim detail if the cop happens to be dead, but certainly a good clue for any H&H Heroes that they are about to be on an adventure!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Target Comics #1 - pt. 1

Here we are, starting out on a new comic book series again. This uncredited artwork is obviously Bill Everett, who we've already seen at Centaur and Timely.

Wenton, Arizona isn't a real place -- but Wenden, Arizona is.

Cowboys in comic books are really acrobatic. I mean, jumping up, grabbing the rafters, swinging yourself up -- while wearing spurred boots and heavy chaps, no less -- and then kicking the door open in mid-swing to boot? That's one, possibly two stunts right there.

If I don't introduce a Cowboy class in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums -- and I'm leaning towards not -- it will be because most cowboys are Mysterymen.

Further, that's an interesting tidbit at the end about what you can tell from how a cowboy leaves his reins.

I can't help it; I am so amused by the over-the-top misogyny of this first panel. I also can't decide if he's that hard to please, or if she's admitting to herself that her coffee just isn't that good.

As bad as that is, the racist dialog in the second tier is even worse and only excusable because it's coming out of a bad guy's mouth.

Lastly -- the real reason I shared this page -- is the interesting effect of being hit in the face by a hot coffeepot. Not only does it seem to do significant damage (perhaps treating it as a regular club and not an improvised weapon), but the heat seems to do residual damage on the following turn.

Bill studied his cowboy tropes for this story; here we see Vault into Saddle, which I believe was one of my original stunts for the Cowboy class (back when stunts worked more like powers and spells).

Bill's idea of "point-blank" range looks a little long to me, as I'd guess that's...at least 80' between them?

Shooting at someone behind you, when you can't turn to face them, should probably be at some sort of penalty, and maybe as much as -2.

And we have precedent here for grappling attacks from on horseback.

Along with Bill Everett is that other Timely Comics stalwart, Carl Burgos, here offering us his third android superhero, Manowar. This page covers his origin, with the big difference being that, while the Human Torch came from the present and Iron Skull is from the future, Manowar comes to us from the past.

His electric eyes (that sounds like a song title...) can wreck things, and it looks like he could wreck through a brick wall, which is the Cars category. That means Manowar has to be at least 2nd level (an android great man), with 1 brevet rank since he's just started gaining XP.

Manowar, at least at this point, doesn't seem to have any defensive-buffing powers engaged, so the machine gun is just missing him.

Here's what appears to be a clear example of a single, normal strength head blow downing a superhuman (and an android to boot; does he have an off switch on the back of his head, maybe?). Or is it? Perhaps the machine gun was "hitting" him, abstractly, reducing his hit points until this moment when he finally went down to 0.

"Bolita" is obviously Bolivia.



(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

War Comics #1 - pt. 1

This is an interesting filler page; I'm skeptical that these numbers are accurate, but they're probably close enough that you could use these to keep track, as a roster of enemy planes, in a war-themed campaign.

This is Scoop Mason, War Correspondent. Scoop and "Sleepy" Samson make their expert skill checks, as they can tell these shells are duds just by looking at them.

Does Baron Treville need to make any kind of roll to identify Scoop and Sleepy? He's seen them before and they have only changed clothes. On the other hand, a costume is also a change of clothes. I would, however, rule that the saving throw required to identify a disguised person would be waved under these circumstances.

This is not the first time we've seen someone jump from a height into a car and land safely on this blog. Am I going to have to make this a thing? Maybe save vs. science and take no damage if you land in a car?

Not the first time we've seen carrier pigeons used in comics, but perhaps the first time they were owned by the Hero.

Now, think about this in context -- because this is during the period of American non-involvement in the war, it's okay that Scoop's solution to the scenario is to reveal Treville is selling dud armaments to the Germans. Two years later, the scenario would be tricking the Germans into taking the dud armaments.

This is 1940, remember, so an employer taking advantage of his position to sexually harass an underling of the opposite sex is still funny.

More interesting is the fact that No Man's Land, as described here, sounds an awful lot like Wonder Woman's Paradise Island, well in advance of its debut.

This is the stereotype of the Russian anarchist that has served as the Hideouts & Hoodlums anarchist since Supplement I: National.

Sky Hawk is essentially DC's Red, White, and Blue played more serious. A $50,000 bribe is more money than most players would need to bait them into a scenario, but it's interesting how Allen, Lane, and Magee all turn it down.

Allen remembers something very suddenly at the end, almost as if he had asked the Editor if he knew anything about Ah Fong and was told he would if he made a save vs. plot.

Not all Heroes in the same group need to be of the same Alignment. Note how Allen is Lawful and won't think of being bribed, while Magee is Neutral and, being more of a mercenary, wishes they had been given separate checks to cash.

This is an interesting scenario because the Japanese are clearly the antagonists in this story, but America is still officially neutral in their war on China, so they have to dogfight without shooting at each other.

Forcing down a plane is a special kind of stunt where the pilot still has to burn a stunt slot, but instead of getting an automatic success, the opposing pilot then has to fail a save vs. science to avoid being forced to land.

Also note that neither the Chinese nor the Japanese in this story are depicted in stereotypical racist ways.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)