Jungle Comics #2 - pt. 2

Tabu, not you too! Once-staunch defender of the wilderness, Tabu now slaughters animals willy-nilly to defend any man he sees. This has got to me my absolute least favorite part of the golden age -- this cheerful acceptance of animal death.

On the surface, Tabu drawn by R. L. Golden certainly looks better than by his creator, Fletcher Hanks, but it also looks more normal and mundane -- even when Tabu turns into a tree!

The elephant's graveyard is certainly supposed to be more impressive than it is, as it appears to only be the graveyard of three elephants.

One thing I do really like about this story is how Tabu discourages the youth from seeking revenge, but encourages him to let cosmic justice take its course (which happens, of course, because this is a comic book).

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 Some game notes: Tabu uses ordinary grappling attacks on the lions, perhaps buffed by some powers, if Tabu is a magic-user/superhero, as I suspect. For the Advanced Hideouts & Hoodlums Heroes Handbook, I have been working on a mystic class that combines them both.

Evidence of gorillas being encountered in groups as large as five. It's odd that gorillas are actually social animals, but in comic books they are almost always encountered individually. This is also an example of pacing an encounter so the Heroes do not face all the mobsters at once.

There is, interestingly enough, a Tree spell in the original game that inspires H&H. I'll have to see if there's an open license version of that spell, or if I'll have to create something of my own.

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This is a really curious story because it is actually a retconned retelling of the story in the previous issue -- something that almost never happens in comic books (except maybe in flashback). The white man's name is altered and the ending is altered so that Camilla lives. Someone may have thought after last issue went to press "Oops -- if we're going to name our feature after Camilla, it might be a good idea if Camilla survives."

I can find no evidence that a city named Kaza ever existed in Africa, but interestingly there is a KAZA now -- the Kavango–Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area.

That is one curious little rocket ship. Or, at least, it would have seemed strange in 1940 -- today we would call that a drone.

...As you can see here.

There's a very curious thing about these "natives." They look an awful lot like robots, yet they're never referred to as robots (or automatons, or anything but natives), and the narrator even tells us John kills several of them. Now, it's possible that the narrator is speaking from John's perspective, and how he thinks he's killing real people.

It's interesting that flexodium is a ray -- so it's a type of energy -- but it discussed as if it was a metal. Very likely this stems from a lack of understanding about how radiation works, which may have been commonplace in 1940.

Other than wanting to destroy western civilization, Camila doesn't sound so bad. Robbing ivory caravans is something I would be quite comfortable with letting Heroes of any Alignment do in my campaigns, though that is from my modern perspective, of course.

By "torpedo" she must mean rocket, and if her rockets can really reach space, her's beat German's V-2 rockets there by four years.

Once again, the very robot-like people are called nothing but guards.

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Game notes: 4 to 1 odds is overwhelming for John -- but if the Editor took a mulligan on their first gaming session, should John get to keep the XP from it?

We've seen so many paralysis rays already in comic books by now, but this time it's called an electric radio beam (which sounds like it would help your radio get good reception rather than paralyze someone).

I'm not crazy about Congo Lancer stories -- but I'm crazy about that map! If I was super-ambitious (I mean, more than I am now), I would try drawing a Editor's map of my campaign area that shows pictures of all the animals in that region and where they can most often be encountered.

That is one weird middle panel, with the crocodile just laying there, minding his business, while the radio waves talk over him.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Silver Streak Comics #2 - pt. 2

This strip is called Captain Fearless, but you won't see Capt. Fearless on this page. Dugan seems to be presented as a Supporting Cast Member, but he plays such a significant role in the story that he must be a played Hero.  

The hideout door closes behind Dugan, seemingly of its own accord. This is interesting to me because a staple of Old School D&D is that dungeon doors are resistant to opening, difficult to keep open. Could this be true of H&H hideouts too?

We get a told more than we're shown of Dugan's battle with six yellow peril hoodlums, so it's unclear if Dugan was able to start using the knife on the same turn he disarmed the hoodlum who had held it, or if he had to wait until the next turn. I would wager the latter is the case.

Ting Ling makes a good case for why more hoodlums should not be armed with guns in hideouts.  I'll have to recall it later, as the struggle is constant to downplay the importance of guns in an active Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign.

Dugan must be at least 2nd or 3rd level (a detective or sergeant, by level title), allowing him to come across three off-duty marines and easily recruit them to follow him into combat.

Did I say three?  Because now it seems Dugan has six marines fighting with him (maybe a wandering encounter of marines heard the fighting and joined in?).  This is one well-defended hideout; I count at least 15 yellow peril hoodlums in this fight, and possibly more.

I've not given this much thought yet, but I wonder if there is room for a hoodlum class?  The one on the left definitely seems to be a cowardly hoodlum, while the one on the right, with "more experience," seems to be a robber. I may work on this and see if I can produce an optional hoodlum class by next year's The Trophy Case issue.

Our cowardly hoodlum makes a surprisingly good case for turning to crime in 1940.  We also learn the value of a complete set of silverware in 1940.

Boy, that Aladdin movie sure would have turned out different if the Genie could have just kept his own lamp away from Jafar!  

Like the example in the basic book about how Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt-genie is a living wand for his spell focus, I think we're seeing the same thing play out here. Tom is casting Minor Telekinesis (a 3rd level spell!) to acquire the gun, but the magic appears to be coming from the Genie.

Normally I go with the narrator when he's naming mobster archetypes, but I've already established this guy is a cowardly hoodlum, so no burglar for you!

I think there's more magic going on here than meets the eye.  Somehow, Tom winds up at the judge's bench right next to the judge.  It makes no sense that any judge would allow this...unless Tom has cast Charm Person on the judge?  

Some subtle legerdemain seems to have allowed Tom to keep the gun he confiscated!  He could have made a skill check for sleight of hand, or maybe he cast a spell and made it invisible.  

Phantasmal Image spells would normally not be permissible in court, but then anything goes once you have the judge charmed!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Top-Notch Comics #1 - pt. 1

We're now up to the third of the MLJ titles and still about two years away from their superhero zenith.

Here we get the first of their superheroes, The Wizard. He's not a magic-user wizard, but a hi-tech wizard. We'll observe him carefully and see what class he best fits shortly.

First a historical note -- there was no historical General Steven Whitney in the Revolutionary War. The actual Chief of the Naval Intelligence Service in late 1939 was Vice-Admiral John Godfrey, not Grover Whitney.

Telephone scrambling was already in development in 1939, but was not practical until 1943.

Somewhat famously, Pearl Harbor would be later attacked almost exactly as it's laid out in this issue.

The Wizard is one of the earliest characters we can pin down to an exact age, having been born in 1904. It was certainly not uncommon for comic book heroes to be grown men in their 30s.

The phone scrambling computer must be a trophy item, but we can't be as sure about this steel-burning chemical. Hi-tech potion -- or wrecking things power?

Woodrow Wilson is the first historically real character in this story, as well as this being the first time President Wilson had ever appeared in a comic book.

That's some mystery chemical -- even in 2017 we don't have a chemical that will burn 1,000 times hotter than acetylene.

In 1939, the land speed record was 369 MPH; it would not exceed 500 MPH until 1964.

The Wizard's invisible car, occurring in flashback, makes it chronologically older than the Ultra-Humanite's invisible car in Action Comics #13. An invisibility field generator that can fit in a car was a trophy item since first edition.

That The Wizard's prop plane can go from New York to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 45 minutes is suspicious -- even today the flight takes almost twice that long. Despite appearing to be a prop plane, it must be a jet.

Now here's where we start to get into guessing what class The Wizard is. First, he appears to be using magic -- maybe some powerful divination spell -- to figure out both what his objective is and where to find it. Then he dresses like a Mysteryman. Then he tears fish nets apart with his bare hands -- strong, but not quite wrecking things strong; a Mysteryman could accomplish this with a stunt.

"Jatsonian" must mean Japanese.

But, here, we see The Wizard using Leap, he leaps unharmed through gunfire as if buffed with Nigh-Invulnerable Skin, and it sure looks like he's using wrecking things on that submarine portal. Further, his high velocity propulsion pistol could be another hi-tech trophy item, or it could be flavor text for one of the Blast powers.

It's also curious just what a high velocity propulsion pistol is. Just about any gun works by propelling ammunition at high velocity. If there is no ammunition, it sounds like an air gun.

Here, again, is the Wizard wrecking his way through that door or using an actual vial of some sort of super-acid?

So, in just his first story, we've already seen what appears to be three different classes represented -- basically, all the core classes other than Fighter (unless the 3rd panel of that previous page counts as that too!).

I'm wondering if I should develop a sort of "bard" class for H&H...a jack of all trades class that can switch back and forth between classes, possibly from turn to turn...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)