Mystic Comics #2 - pt. 4

Back to Blue Blaze! A sudden cave-in forces Blue Blaze to break out his higher level Raise powers and we observe blue flashes radiating from his body, flavor text any player can choose, but then has to be consistent with.

There's an odd plot hole where Blue Blaze learns the man who just walked out of the room was the bomber, but instead of just walking through the door and capturing him, BB ignores the man and speeds off to the next mine the bomber had threatened.

Second plot hole: Even though Blue Blaze's speedster has unlimited speed, Barko (a terrible name for a villain, by the way) somehow gets ahead of him on the way to the mine. Does Barko have a speedster with even more unlimited speed?

Blue Blaze's Raise power might still be active from earlier, allowing him to catch a heavy boulder. If the boulder missed him then he didn't need to lift it, but if it hit, I'm hesitant to let the Raise power thwart it...and yet...I have to admit that the Raise powers are currently of limited utility except when you need to lift something heavy, and that's seldom going to be important during combat. This warrants more thought.

Next Barko shoots out one of BB's car's tires and makes him swerve, but a skill check helps BB regain control. So how does Barko follow that? He sics two dogs on BB. BB chokes the dogs to death. Not cool, BB! 

Barko has a pair of ice guns that put BB in a block of ice. Hold Person with flavor text? BB is only faking so he can get taken to Barko's hideout, which is sound strategy, or would be if he didn't let Barko leave, just so he can chase him to the next mine. If he really wanted to stop the mine attack, he could have just knocked Barko out sooner. At the mine, BB punches out two thugs working for Barko first before taking out Barko, following the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules about taking out underlings before you go after the main bad guy (just like in the H&H play-by-post game I'm running now!). 

The next story is Taxi Taylor and His Wonder Car. It's your typical story of a mechanic who invents a car that can do anything, tries to gift it to the U.S. government, he gets laughed at, out of spite, he keeps the car without even showing them what it does, he becomes a taxi driver with the car that can do anything, until he just happens to overhear spies in his backseat one day. So what is "anything"? It can intercept radio messages, like most radios can. It can transform into a plane, though it isn't the first car-plane in comics. It can also transform into a sub - also not the first car-sub in comics. It can fire "contra-magnetic electric rays" that can neutralize magnetic mines, and now we're finally in new mad science territory. 

The German spies are called Swastikans, by the way - perhaps the most obvious stand-in for the word Nazi ever in a comic book. 

Oh, the wonder car has 6" steel plates all around it, so acetylene torches can't cut through it. That's a difficult game mechanic to rationalize because armor normally only makes something harder to hit, not more resistant to energy attacks. Perhaps this is special steel plating that confers fire resistance.

Taylor isn't reluctant to cut air hoses and kill underwater Nazis. 

Back to mad science, the wonder car can emit gas bubbles underwater that cause enormous suction, enough to pull a ship underwater. That is also hard to rationalize with game mechanics. Maybe some kind of wrecking things? 

The wonder car has a collapsible ladder that can project out of the top of the car. There is a belt and rope attached to a winch that will automatically reel back in in two minutes. There is a trampoline-like net that pops out of a hatch in the top of the car, and I don't even know how Taylor activated that before falling towards the car. The car also has two revolving chemical water jets for putting out fires. Taylor even has a fireman's hat in his car, just in case he has to put out fires. 

There is a nice trap in the spies' HQ. When the wall safe is touched, electricity causes one's hand to be stuck to it. Raising the stakes of the trap is that the building is on fire and a temperature-sensitive bomb (controlled by a thermometer) is rigged to go off nearby. Taylor takes maybe 2-7 damage from being pulled away from the electrified safe, but is still only lightly injured. 

Next up is The Invisible Man Known As Dr. Gade. When I first read this story a few years ago I graded it with an A. Will it hold up as well this time?

In his origin story, Gade is working in front of an open furnace in his lab when an assassin comes up behind him and pushes him in. Now I'm interested in giving assassins a backstab ability so they can increase their damage from behind, but then transfer those points of damage into pushing. 

Soaked in chemicals he was pushed into, and then set on fire, the strange reactions transform him into a ...magic-user? Because what he demonstrates when he comes out is is Invisibility and Resist Fire. Well, not normal Invisibility, because Gade is still invisible after punching and grappling, so it must be Improved Invisibility. 

Gade is not a live and let live kind of guy. Just for trying to kill him, Gade knocks the thug/assassin from earlier out a 40th floor window. As the two guys who hired the assassin wait to shoot Gade once he becomes visible, he forces one of them to shoot the other by moving the man's hand. That's not something the game mechanics of H&H is really set up for, and I'd be inclined to say that the Editor rolled to hit Gade, but rolled so badly that he accepted the player's suggestion that the bullet hit an unintended target. 

Although Gade is angry for being initially given his powers, apparently they were only temporary and wouldn't have lasted, so Gade had, between scenes, invented a ray that bathes him with the same energy and renews his powers. For some reason that's not clear to me, he can't turn visible easily on his own, but he's wearing some kind of a belt or harness with a button on it and when he presses it, the device...maybe dampens the energy field that render Gade invisible? 

Prize Comics #2 - pt. 2

We're still visiting with Ted O'Neil in Mexico. He's dealing with diamond smugglers, but pretty poor smugglers. Are they really about to brag about having $1,000 in diamonds? That should be easy, even in 1940. 

Here we have an uncommon instance of a whip being used as an entangling weapon. 

Just as rare, we have a missile weapon -- a rock -- being thrown into a melee to great effect.

Here we're told these are poor smugglers again, willing to kill over only thousands of dollars. 

They're slow smugglers too, though that is because of Hideouts & Hoodlums' initiative system. Even though Bates should be able to pull a trigger before Ted can reach up and grab that beam, he can't if Ted out-rolls him.

The smugglers are also poor shots, missing despite the +2 bonus they should have for attacking from behind, and while Ted can't move too much.

Tossing a lasso over someone while flying by in a fast-moving plane strains cred -- oh, who am I kidding? This whole story is straining me. This lasso trick would need a natural 20, over a result over 20, to pull off. 

And how dark is this ending? It's implied that Ted landed so rough that Bates' face is smashed in by the fall. 

You know, this issue really isn't winning me over, and Jupiter, Master Magician isn't helping. Let's ignore for the moment that Jupiter's antennae look like pencils sticking out of his hair. Let's pretend that monster is drawn less goofy-looking and more like the D&D gargoyle it superficially resembles. Let's even try to ignore the fact that, if the city is shielded by rays so he can't locate it, then how does Jupiter know it's far away? Instead, let's talk about how dumb your supporting cast member has to be to volunteer to be a decoy, while you watch a monster carry him away, even though you have no idea if the monster is going to eat him the minute it leaves town with him. And even if they're convinced from the crystal ball that the monsters are taking their abductees to this far away city, maybe the abductees don't need to show up alive, or with their heads still on. 

Okay, I lied -- let's go back and talk about the crystal ball shielding too. We need a Protection from Scrying spell for H&H

to simulate that.

On this next page, we learn how gargoyles are made. Ouch! And made by mad scientists...or is the old man a magic-user? It seems he is if he knows about white magic and shielding his location from scrying.

Jupiter here casts Hold Person, Knock, and ...Clean Room? Or just a use of Telekinesis maybe? Oh, and previously he used a Fly spell I forgot to note! It's worth noting that the Fly spell for magic-users is slower than gargoyles fly (12 vs. 15), so it would be hard for Jupiter to keep up, unless he has a faster Fly spell.

It's not a very successful ambush if the other side is able to attack first, is it? 

Jupiter's next spell is a new one and I'm inclined to call it Jupiter's Disarming Hand. It creates one invisible hand per level of the caster that can all make attack rolls vs. visible targets within a, oh, let's say 20' diameter area of each other and if the roll succeeds the target is disarmed of a weapon. The range is, let's say, 60' + 10' per level. It's a pretty weak spell, weaker than Sleep, so I think I'd put it at 1st level.

I'm not clear about how to describe the next panel. Is Jupiter using Hold Person, and then loading the paralyzed gargoyles onto Floating Disc spells? Or is there a new spell in play here (actually, Floating Disc would also be new, to H&H)? Maybe something called Jupiter's Delivery, where 1 inanimate, or paralyzed animate, object per level will float to any location you name for them to go, as long as the caster knows the location,

and it is within, oh, let's say 200' + 25' per level? This is maybe a 3rd level spell.

Then Jupiter scrys the bad guy's location with his crystal ball. "Wow! I still don't know how you do it!" "Really? Really? I'm holding a crystal ball right in front of you. How was this not a big clue for you?"

Up to this point, I could still pretend Jupiter is 3rd or 4th level with a Crystal Ball trophy item, but then he casts Earthquake and I'm just rolling my eyes at how many brevet ranks I have to throw at comic book magic-users. 

Now this turn of events starts out pretty cool; we get a nice visual of a paralysis raygun. And then...whaaaat? Instead of Jupiter thinking his way out of this trap, they luck into a stupid gargoyle tripping over the cord and unplugging it? They're miles underground -- why are there even wall plugs down here? 

It's unclear how Jupiter wrecks the raygun (and a lot of wooden rafters around it). Some spell version of Wreck at Range? Or a Fireball spell? 

It's worth pointing out here that Jupiter has either cast Fly twice, or has a Mass Fly spell that let's them both fly separately. He also has a higher level version of the Strength spell that boosts multiple (at least 2, let's say 2-5) targets' STR scores. This spell is going to be level 3. 

"Hey, watch where you're grabbing with that hand, mister!" You know which panel I'm talking about.

That is one funky ramp onto the plane. And for that matter, why are subterranean monsters using a plane?

Uh...H&H already has an Enlarge spell, but the size of Jupiter's hand is pretty ridiculous there. More so because we're lead to believe it's only his hand that gigantic and the rest of his body, off-panel, is normal size. 

Jupiter demonstrates a Mass Teleport spell that, gosh, that would have to be a 7th-level spell, especially since Johnson isn't anywhere near them when Jupiter and the mad scientist teleport. Johnson is, of course, only there to either witness Jupiter's victory (because Jupiter needs it for his ego) or -- as happens -- to give the mad scientist one last chance to threaten them. Polymorph is already a 4th-level spell. Based on the 7th-level spell alone, we know Jupiter is at least 15th level, and that's with 13 brevet ranks, just for what we see in this story. And I don't even remember how many brevet ranks we had to assign him last time!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

 

Wonderworld Comics #11 - pt. 4

This will be our last visit with this particular issue, and we'll kick it off with about page of "Spark" Stevens.

Although this looks like a tough fight, the gobs should be approaching 4th level by now, these spies are likely 1 or 2 HD, and the guy with the gun has as good a chance of hitting his allies as the gobs by firing into a melee.

And what does "gob" mean here? According to the Old Farmer's Almanac, "There are two theories on this one. This term first showed up in regard to sailors around 1909 and may have come from the word gobble. Reportedly, some people thought that sailors gobbled their food. The term also may come from the word gob, which means to spit, something sailors also reportedly do often."

As for "photostat files," The Photostat machine, or Photostat, was an early projection photocopier invented in 1907.

I was really expecting a better trap when that spy reaches out for the secret pedal than -- a bed coming down and smacking them in the head. Now, while I can't imagine this doing more than 1-6 points of damage (in fact, I would probably treat it as an improvised weapon that does 1-3 damage), it's possible that our gobs were just so low on hp after that fistfight that this was enough to knock them both out. Or, as a surprise attack, maybe this is considered a head blow, which comes with a chance of knockout in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums.

This is the first death-by-normal-sized-spiders deathtrap I've ever seen in a comic book -- and I have to say, it looks plenty unsettling and would surely spook a lot of players! Of course, one ordinary spider isn't going to have enough venom to cause much harm to anyone, but this is a thousand of them, so I would treat a spider swarm as a mobster with a collective Hit Die total and a save or die situation if the swarm starts all biting you at once.

Fire is probably the surest way to get rid of them; I also would have allowed the players to throw rocks at them or even pee on them to drive them off.

As the Editor, never forget about how fire causes smoke, and be liberal with assigning smoke inhalation damage if an encounter seems to be going too easy.

You're in for an unusually educational installment of K-51: Spies at War. It is, in fact, a little prescient -- the Nazis didn't manage to sink their third ship with U-boats until May 28, 1940. The world was shocked that Germany had managed to make new U-boats in secret after WWI, but they didn't have very many, not until capturing the French and Norwegian naval fleets. Now, what else this news ticker fails to get right is the number killed. 22 is purely wishful thinking; the actual death toll from the first two sank ships was over 1,200 deaths (they didn't bother going after small boats!).

Q-boats were real. Q-ships, also known as Q-boats, decoy vessels, special service ships, or mystery ships, were heavily armed merchant ships with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. The British and the Germans used them in WWI, and then the U.S. started using them too in WWII.

Panic parties were a real thing, just as described here. I'm guessing depth bombs, or depth charges, really work like that too, though I've never actually seen a picture of one being launched before.

This is yet another example of a random complication from vehicular damage, this time the electrical systems shorting out.

The weirdest thing about this story is that K-51 does nothing at all the entire story, except swim away at the end so the captain doesn't get in serious trouble. Nice of him, yes, but he gets zero experience points for this "session."

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Marvel Mystery Comics #5 - pt. 1

We're heading back to check on Timely Comics today, back in (cover date) March 1940. This month, the Human Torch leaves New York City for the Midwest. It's the old story of a remote Alaskan village that needs urgent medical supplies but is cut off by the weather, only transported to a fictional island in the middle of Lake Superior because...I guess Alaska was too far? This weird island is covered in a glacier...I suspect Carl Burgos never visited Lake Superior and maybe heard some tall tales from Minnesotans about how cold and snowy it is there.

So HT leaves for the Midwest, but using the Newark Airport, which is an interesting choice. That's a real airport in New Jersey, and one New Yorkers still use today. The LaGuardia Airport had just opened months before this comic book would have been written.

HT, or Jim as his friends know him, has a supporting cast member named Johnson, who Jim isn't apparently on a first name basis with, but is still willing to come along on this dangerous flight to Lake Superior.

HT badly fails a skill check to pilot during a storm (probably at a penalty) and crashes their plane. In a rare occurrence, a Hero is knocked unconscious in a crash. The wrinkle here is that two hoodlums just got free from jail on the island (not sure how this island is big enough to have a jail, but okay...), they discover the plane, rob the medical supplies, and then set the plane on fire to get rid of the pilots.

I've never been fond of the Human Torch and reading these old stories make me less fond. It really bothers me how unscientific his powers work, that fire somehow answers to him as if it were alive. Nowhere is it more evident than in this story, where the fire forms a protective circle around HT, even while he's unconscious. So either he can subconsciously control fire in his sleep, which I think is way overpowered, or fire has some sort of collective consciousness, which is really weird and wonky. Now, once he's conscious again, using his Control Fire power to make the fire part for him -- that makes sense to me.

More wonkiness comes a bit later when HT falls into water and, instead of his fire being extinguished, the narrator says he was "ordering his flame out." Now, maybe there is a sensible explanation for that too. Maybe he extinguishes his flame voluntarily before the water extinguishes it because, if he turns it off then he can turn it right back on, while if it's extinguished, then he can't use his powers for a random amount of time.

Still more wonkiness is when HT searches a wooden cabin, while still ablaze, and doesn't combust anything. That Control Fire power really gives you complete control. But what you can't explain away with that power is towards the end when he encircles a pack sled and its dogs completely with fire, and the dogs keep running. That all six of them make their morale saves, at their Hit Dice, is rather incredulous.

There's an interesting wrinkle where HT flames on (he doesn't call it that; that's a Johnny thing) and his heat helps keep Johnson from freezing. Now, an Editor could hand-wave that as a common sense side effect...but it could also be a new power, Resist Cold, that a superhero can confer on someone else. We also see HT do sky-writing with flame, which I think we've seen before and needs to become a power in the Heroes Handbook.

Lastly, the two hoodlums plummet into the icy lake waters and die after HT melts the ice under their feet with a circle of fire. Whether he intended for that to happen is unclear...but he shows no regret, and we already have seen he has total control of his fire, so...

Next up is The Angel. The Angel's strength level is really up in the air in these early stories. Except for one text story that had him at Superman levels, he usually was only a strong human in most of his stories. Here, he can tip over a car with extreme effort (or a little help), so he can maybe lift 1,000 lbs. In Hideouts & Hoodlums terms, this is the Raise Car power, as there is no Can't Raise, But Can Tip Cars power (H&H deals more with abstraction than specific measurements). This isn't just a prank; it's all part of a plan to foil bank robbers by tipping over their getaway vehicle and any other vehicle on the street they can use to escape.

Angel then uses a length of rope (he must carry rope sometimes) to get to the roof and watch for them to come out. Note that he does not simply leap to the roof, so he has great strength, but not great leaping powers, again confirming that H&H is on the right track by making players choose which powers they have for each scenario.

Speaking of Raise Car, later in the scenario he is on top of a speeding taxi and pulls the driver out through an open window (if the taxi had air conditioning, maybe the hoodlum who carjacked it wouldn't have carelessly left his window down). Now, this seems to defy science, because you would think that even with great strength, someone with no way to brace himself would just fall over the side before being able to pull a braced man out the car window. Superpowers, luckily, defy science by their very nature. I might also, on a generous day, allow a Mysteryman using a stunt to do that as well.

For some reason, The Angel isn't wearing pants today.

Soon, when The Angel is swinging on that rope, one of the robbers manages to shoot the rope, and it seems to be merely accidental. There is some precedent for this, with firing into melee giving a chance of hitting a random combatant. For this to apply here, we would have to consider the rope and The Angel in "melee," which is a bit of a stretch. For the Editor to just randomly through in this complication would seem unfair in game play. 

The Angel joins a long line of comic book Heroes willing to use mobsters as living shields, but this might be the first Superhero to do so.

In the end, Angel decides to pummel the last of the hoodlums unconscious and he rains "blow after blow" on him. Now, in most game systems, a superhero's strength remains constant and the damage he would have done after just one blow might have knocked out an ordinary hoodlum. But here, a superhero has to buff his strength first before doing additional damage, so if he wanted the satisfaction of punching out a bad guy slowly with normal blows, that's very easy to do.

Next up is The Sub-Mariner, called the "Ultra-Man of the Deep" on the first page of his feature here. Demonstrating the difference in pace of Golden Age stories, the Angel story took place all in 10 minutes, while Namor accompanies a cargo ship to protect it for 3 days before the scenario even gets started.

Remarkably, Namor is said to communicate telepathically with the crew of his flagship submarine in this story. If you've ever wondered how Namor talks underwater...this would be how.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)