Champion Comics #3 - pt. 3

This is still Blazing Scarab. The Curtain of Ammon is a magic item that functions like a...well, it's a television set with color and sound. Karnak is a real place.

 Memthet seems to be a fictional location.

Revenge of the Zombies is a serial probably based on the 1932 classic White Zombie.  Here, for the first time, we see undead zombies instead of space zombies or green hairy zombies. We also see Voodoo Charms, which act like a Charm Person spell on anyone wearing them.

The story is surprisingly dark, what with the dead goat left on the doorstep here, and later a dead pig is thrown as a distraction.

This serial is called Yacqui Gold. Yacqui is an Indian people indigenous to the southern Sonora state, on the west coast of Mexico. The art is by an obscure artist, Roland (or Romana?) Patenaude. Most of the art looks rushed, but the inking on that fifth panel is gorgeous.

Here is an encounter with a cougar (puma), and another example of a mobstertype being killed in one hit. 

Weakness from loss of blood is not a game mechanic in Hideouts & Hoodlums, though needing to sleep is an implied mechanic and perhaps he was also just really tired.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #11 - pt. 2

I have a new mobster type called the hag already in H&H 2nd ed., but this might be just a magic-user being called a hag. She finds a pendant that seems to work only for her; there is precedent in H&H (and That Other Game) for magic items that only work for particular classes.

The Cat's Eye Talisman has the power to age or de-age anyone it touches. It seems like it can age 50 years at a touch, which is really powerful. I might make it 10-40 years (with a save vs. spells to resist entirely).

Ooo -- the future of 2009! Behold the wonders of jet planes (called rocket planes here and, really, in most comic books of the time)!  Read of the international secret service active in the future!

Cutaway map! That's one big atomic space-ship.

I've posted before about how to dress up ordinary things to appear futuristic. Here, we have an ordinary electric eye trap turned into a proton ray that deals agonizing amounts of damage (or maybe a save vs. science or die).

Ooo, portable TV sets in the future of 2009! Still in black and white, I see.

Not sure I plan to do anything with this, but...stories where a vehicle swerves and mobsters are knocked out with centrifugal force. I really hesitate to do this because the game mechanic would be pretty nightmarish - some complex formula that took speed and angle of turn into account in computing damage.

In 2009, businessmen will show up for work in sweatsuits! (Actually not that far off from accurate...)

And lastly, this is Speed Centaur. The closest power to what he's using is Extend Missile Range III, but those boulders look like they far exceed the weight limit for that power. However...maybe the Raise powers should be stackable with the Extend Missile Range powers to increase damage.  I'm not sure how to work that out yet, and it seems like it would be confusing to mix and match powers that can be found at four different levels for Raise powers and three different levels for Extend Missile Range powers.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Detective Comics #32 - pt. 1

Batman returns in part 2 of his adventure vs. The Monk. He's in Hungary, or the Latin Hungaria, as it's called here. Batman uses another sleeping gas pellet, thinking that he's using it on The Monk. It's unclear if Batman suspected The Monk was a werewolf yet, though the reader certainly had plenty of clues.

It was actually a woman named Dala that Batman gassed and, not being at all suspicious that Dala was in The Monk's carriage, he brings her to his hotel and lets her bunk with Julie Madison, who is safe now and under Batman's protection. But no one is safe from Dala; she bonks Batman on the head with a statuette and stuns him "momentarily." This would be 2nd ed. Hideouts & Hoodlums' new rule about head blows doing more damage in a surprise attack, Batman being brought down to zero hit points (he is still a low-level Mysteryman at this point), but making his save vs. plot to avoid a longer spell of being unconscious.

It turns out that Dala is a vampire, from which Batman (correctly) infers that The Monk is one too. Dala tells Batman where to find The Monk -- Gardner Fox plays fast-and-loose with geography here, saying that The Monk's castle is by the Dess River, which isn't an actual thing in Hungary.

Batman's autogyro is referred to as a "Batplane" in this story, making it the first Batplane.

The Monk uses a magic silver net that can stretch into the sky, snag the Batplane, and pull it to the ground. Now, the autogyro is just over the tree tops, so maybe the net can only stretch 100-120'. And it stretches pretty fast, because it was probably going at least 30 MPH. And it's plenty strong too; if it can pull a plane out of the air, then non-superhero Heroes will likely be pulled down without so much as a saving throw.

Vampires (or at least The Monk) are shown to be able to hypnotize others and control their charm victims over many miles, but the vampire's control is measured in a broad range of turns (he can control Julie for days, but Batman only for hours). He can also change into a wolf (which is why The Monk still calls himself a werewolf, even though the cat's out of the bag now that he's also a vampire -- vampiric werewolf?). In wolf form, a vampire can summon at least 1-4 wolves. Like vampires, vampiric werewolves have to sleep in coffins during the daytime. Like werewolves, they can be killed by silver weapons.

Batman's gas pellets can affect up to four targets in a 10' radius. He can toss his silk rope upwards about 15' alone, or more like 30' with a Batarang attached to it (though it took him about 12 hours to figure that out).

In Spy, Bart Regan is trapped in the back seat of a car that can fill with sleeping gas (likely stolen from the Raymond Chandler story "Nevada Gas"). Then his death trap is being placed in a giant bell jar that can have the air vacuumed out of it. The spy who trapped him is stupid and let's Bart out when he promises to talk. Bart, in turn, uses the same trap but keeps the spy inside until after he's talked.

Later, when Bart is being shot at, he ducks behind a desk. Somehow, he is able to sneak around the desk without being seen, come up behind the two spies shooting at him, and get surprise on them. Without being able to turn invisible, I don't see that as being possible in H&H.

I don't have much to say about this month's Buck Marshall story, except that Buck makes a disparaging comment about some outlaws, calling them "mail-order bad men."  Which is actually a better story idea than the counterfeiting scheme he really stumbles into.  But the real mystery in this installment of Buck Marshall is the curious use of the word "jigger" to refer to someone Buck knocks out. I am having trouble finding any cowboy-related use of the term. It could refer to a certain type of fisherman, but that's not relevant to the story. It was also once a variation on a certain offensive term for blacks, but the man in the story is colored white, so...

Larry Steele, Private Detective, rescues a damsel in distress on the road and takes her to an old man's house in the country. When Larry goes to call the police, the man says he'll be lucky to catch the operator awake. Back in the days before switchboard automation, this could have been a legitimate concern. Maybe Heroes who need to connect a call quickly should have to make a save vs. plot to succeed when away from the major cities.

Once again, the villain does something stupid to make it easier for the Hero -- this time, a killer implicates himself by accidentally driving to the scene of the murder when he was asked to, without being told where to go.

Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator, starts on a mystery with a great hook -- young women are being found dead on seashores, always with an ivory skull lying somewhere near the body.  And Speed gets a pretty cool villain to battle too -- Skull-Face, who even has a caveman right-hand man. Skull-Face is a mad scientist with a potion that makes women prettier, but it also compels them to immerse themselves in water. The more of the potion they buy from him, the more they are compelled until they eventually drown themselves.

(Batman story read in The Batman Archives v. 1, the rest read at readcomics.net.)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v.2 #9

We rejoin the Fantom of the Fair as he's chillin', just watching a circus act, when ...well, let's think about what's happening here.

The Fantom somehow senses that something is amiss, but we don't know how. Perhaps he was using Super-Hearing for some reason and overheard the man at the tank, far below, over the din of the crowd. Perhaps the Fantom just has a really good sense of volume and figured out that the water was low from looking at it. Or maybe he was using some kind of heretofore unknown Detect Danger power/spell (or would Find Traps duplicate that?).

Then The Fantom defies physics by leaping after Jane, and less aerodynamically than Jane (and with the drag of the cape no less), and still manages to hit the water before her. Some new power called Fall Faster?

There's more going on, unsaid, here too. The Fantom claims this man looked suspicious because he was standing around nearby. But this is the 1939 World's Fair -- there should be hundreds of people standing around nearby! So this has to be The Fantom using Detect Evil to sense the wrongdoer.

And then there's The Fantom throwing the guy and him landing dead. In Hideouts & Hoodlums you cannot kill in one hit, no matter how much damage it does. I could change that rule -- say, adding an amendment where if you do 10 or 20 points of damage more than what would drop you to zero hit points, then it can be an instant kill, but this is a throw attack that shouldn't possibly do that much damage. Unless The Fantom is using some new power called Super-Throw (with increased grappling damage), or Killing Blow (that gets around the not killed at "zero hp" rule).

This page I include for trivia. From Jane's comments at the end, coupled with the clear outline of a face on The Fantom -- I'm beginning to suspect that The Fantom isn't wearing a mask at all. Rather, his face is always masked in shadow, thanks to magic, and we're just seeing him in silhouette.

A prototype for Marvel Comics' High Evolutionary. More proof that Carl Burgos invented the Silver Age of Marvel Comics back in 1939...?

Now I'm trying to decide if rocket cars needs to be a trophy item. A commonplace rocket car might seem futuristic, but a rocket car held the land speed record (345 MPH) as of 1938. Maybe the Thunderbolt (#7 on this list) will get a stat.

I think I've just solved my problem of how to justify keeping the acetylene torch on the trophy list. A "blue ray" acetylene torch makes it seem more exotic, and could maybe justify boosting the damage it causes a little.

A note to myself that a large transport plane can be a trophy item. A large transport plane has several benefits for a group of Heroes -- it can easily transport them all in one trip, as well as storing all the supplies they might need on adventures (you can see how the interior side of this plane is set up like an armory).

This is Don Dixon. Don't drink was apparently drugged with a Potion of Madness. It makes him gibber and sound like an egomaniac.  Hmm...did someone slip this to Donald Trump?

Oh, Speed Centaur, you goofy feature! I guess Speed cut off his arms in order to fit his torso into that fake horse head? The lesson here is that you don't have to think too hard about disguise for it to work in H&H.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Adventure Comics #41 - pt. 2

Anchors Aweigh starts with a wandering encounter instead of a plot hook -- a known spy just happens to walk by! But it's to lure Lt. Com. Don Kerry and Red into a trap. It's a goofy sort of trap, though, as they run into a glass wall that somehow knocks them unconscious. How fast were they running?

Don and Red wake up in a deathtrap an hour later. Sin Yen, the spy, has them in an arena where they'll have to fight monstrous beasts until Don tells Sin what he wants to know. The first opponent is a large ape; at 7' tall, the ape should be 4 or 4+1 HD (being halfway in size between an ordinary ape and a prehistoric ape). Other opponents include a spider-snake (it's a huge spider with a snake tail, I guess, not sure what the advantage of that combination is!), and an octo-dile (a crocodile with eight tentacles -- new version of a carrion crawler, anyone?).  Further complicating the trap is more traps within the trap, including spiked pit traps, and a glass wall that slides down so one half of the arena can be flooded with water.

Skip Schuyler is given an interesting scenario to problem solve his way through: hi-tech cattle rustlers are using planes to make cattle stampede away from ranches, and then rounding the cattle into trucks, and guarding the trucks with machine guns. Interestingly, Skip doesn't even try to stop all the rustlers; he considers the pilot the weak link and goes after the rustler's plane. He engages the pilot repeatedly in a recklessly dangerous game of chicken with a plane of his own and causes enough failed morale saves that he forces the pilot to land. Then Skip hits the pilot with a rock and ignites the gas in the plane so the rustlers can't use it anymore. Skip is apparently fine with letting the local law handle the guys with machine guns...

In Rusty and His Pals, Rusty and his pals are lost at sea and spend three days drifting until a ship bound for Liverpool passes them and picks them up. Plot contrivance, or random encounter? Could the Editor have planned for several options, or even just rolled randomly between a choice of ports? Or was the next adventure pre-set for Liverpool?

I suspect the last option, as there's a bad guy waiting for them in Liverpool with a connection to their last adventure. Indeed, it's often a good idea to have at least one bad guy per scenario with a connection to the last adventure, as it helps keeps the adventures linked into an overarching campaign.

Cotton Carver meets a priestess who takes him through a secret door from the Shrine of Dagan to an underground river and a magic boat that travels on its own with just a command. They reach a magic gate that also opens when a command word is spoken (should I treat that as a trophy item too?). Elara the Priestess takes Cotton to a castle and a tomb where she gives him a magic sword called "Malar". Malar is the only weapon that can kill the Scarlet Seeress -- and that is the quest she gives him! She also gives him a "good luck" bracelet (a luckstone?).

Cotton journeys through an underground forest (how does that work? Is this a hollow world setting?). He is caught in a trap (a giant glass jar) and ...hypnotized? Charmed? ... by the Scarlet Seeress. The Seeress just leaves then to go lead her army towards world domination. Later, an old man uses a magic divining plate (like a crystal ball) to show Cotton where his sword went to while he was asleep, then offers to drive Cotton after the Seeress in his magic flying ...car?

I don't know what to make out of the "dark horde" the Seeress leads. Dark-skinned men? Demons? It's so hard working from summaries!

(Read as summaries at DC Wikia.)

Adventure Comics #37 - pt. 1

Poor hippo!  I hate this cover...

Barry O'Neill and Fang Gow definitely hate each other. Ol' Fang has Barry in a familiar death trap --  "the 'Water Cure' - drops slowly fall on his forehead, which will eventually cause insanity, then death."  I have never understood how that would actually work, but it's enough of a genre staple that it must at least work in Hideouts & Hoodlums. But how, exactly? Since it's obviously not an impatient man's trap, I'd say the victim would have to save vs. plot every four hours to avoid going temporarily insane. Then the victim would have to save vs. plot every four hours to avoid going permanently insane. Then the victim would have to save vs. plot every four hours to escape death.

Fang Gow's followers are described as bandits.

Cotton Carver and Volor the Dwarf are overwhelmed by the "reed men", so called because their skin is green like reeds. In situations like this, when "new" mobster types are clearly just "reskinned" humans, I do not plan to give them their own stats; reed men sound an awful lot like natives to me.

The bigger issue is, how to overwhelm foes with superior numbers in H&H?  If, say, 100 natives all try to pile onto a Hero, do you only roll to attack for the 9 who can immediately surround him, or take the collective pushing force, weight, and mass of the whole crowd into account? I here propose rolling to attack for all of them, and giving the Hero a -1 penalty to save vs. science for every hit after the first to avoid being pinned. Even high-level Heroes will have to avoid confronting huge mobs now!

Steve Carson of Federal Men is being led out into a field by three gunmen who plan to shoot him down. No slow death trap, no source of cover -- it looks like Steve's Editor has either decided to stop going easy on him or is ready to end the solo campaign! But Steve's player is smart and comes up with a good plan, to ask the hoodlums which is in charge and get them to fight each other. Given the life-and-death nature of the situation, I might just give him a win and let the trick fool the hoodlums, to reward him for his creativity. But if I was feeling less merciful, I might roll a save vs. plot for the hoodlums to determine if they fall for it or not.

Tod Hunter runs afoul of a jealous wizard with a new magic potion -- Potion of Suggestion (makes him vulnerable to everything said to him, as if the Suggestion spell) -- and a new spell, Life Link. I'd say this spell has to be maybe 7th level, as it's pretty powerful; the Magic-User links his life to someone else and if one dies, the other dies too. Tod gets Dispel Magic cast on him too.

Dale Daring seems a little useless in her scenario; she's surrounded by a company of fighters of up to 4th level (F4 = lieutenant). Still, every good die roll can be important in a scenario, and Dale is able to make the listen check that everyone else fails and allows her to hear the poachers coming.

Captain Desmo is hidden world-exploring and encounters a "prehistoric crocodile."  I'm not sure how big it looks in the comic book, but prehistoric crocodiles could weigh up to 8 tons -- we're talking maybe a 30 Hit Die crocodile here. I'm guessing the author had something less dangerous in mind -- maybe a giant crocodile should only go up to 15 Hit Dice? Regardless, Desmo and Gabby wisely run from it.

The human natives need Desmo's help against giants called the Mudas -- and the summary writer wasn't kidding when he called them giants. One of them apparently picks up Desmo in his hand! So we're talking frost giant size here, if not cloud giant size. And yet...the natives manage to bring these giants down with mostly spears? Something seems amiss here to me. I would probably stat the Mudas as hill giants to make them more killable. And I do plan on weeding out some of the giant types from H&H, so it'll be important to watch how many I recognize here in the blog.

Tom Brent, in a rare stand-alone story...is captured by an old man with a shotgun and misses out on most of his own scenario, as the local police catch the smugglers who threatened him. If you ever have a session of H&H that goes badly for you, you can take some consolation if it didn't go Tom Brent-level bad.

(Summaries read at DC Wikia)

Action Comics #5 - part 2

In Tex Thompson's new adventure, he takes a chance on sneaking into the villain's hideout and challenging him directly to a duel, rather than fight his way through the villain's henchmen. Should the villain accept? If it makes the story work better, he should accept. If the Editor doesn't have a good deathtrap planed for the villain to place the Hero in, he should accept. Otherwise, the Editor can use an encounter reaction roll, with a positive result meaning that he takes the challenge.

Scoop Scanlon, Five Star Reporter, has an unusual dilemma -- he's after a robber who is hiding out in the hill country, but he's been so generous to the poor locals that they all work together to hide him. This could be a good scenario for Heroes, forcing them to deal with innocent locals on the wrong side of the law without (hopefully) shooting them or beating them up.

Zatara, Master Magician, likes throwing around a lot of spells in his adventures, and we can almost always count on some new ones. Here, he casts a new spell, Invisibility 5' Radius, so that anyone standing right next to him becomes invisible too.  He uses Detect Thoughts on an unconscious person -- the spell description says nothing about if this would work or not, so it seems like a call left to the Editor's discretion (I like leaving things up to one's own discretion).  He also casts Passwall, Dancing Lights, Knock, Phantasmal Force, and Fly on himself. He casts a "suspended animation" spell on Tong, but this might just be Hold Person. The new wrinkle is that, apparently, if you have Hold Person cast on you, you don't need to breath.

He casts the new spell Spirit Projection -- which seems to be his favorite spell! -- and we find out something new, that high-level Magic-Users have a chance of detecting the invisible spirit form (or maybe it's an incremental chance that goes up by level?).  He casts the new spell we've seen him before that Polymorphs an object, temporarily, into another object or animal (a mirror into a snake -- or is this an illusion?).  Zatara casts another new spell that seems like Mass Fly -- everyone in a 30' x 30' area grows wings that let them move at twice normal speed? The narrator makes it seem like the spell is even more potent than that, but I'd hesitate to let it go even faster. Even now, I'd probably make this a 5th level spell.

Polymorph spells is going to be a tricky issue. Polymorph magic is currently just high-level stuff in H&H, even just to turn into an animal. But what about a spell that can turn someone else into a flower? I think we can bring that down to 5th-level magic, if it's temporary -- maybe lower if it was really temporary.  He also Mass Polymorphs five men into birds.

In Egypt, Zatara explores the inside of a pyramid that can only be entered by touching, and then merging, with the hieroglyphs on the statue outside the pyramid. Inside, he and Tong encounter at least six "ferocious guardians" that look like little green men, some with just one eye; they sort of resemble goblins to me.  Zatara casts a spell on them that "makes them disappear in a puff of smoke".  Maybe it's a spell that transports them all a short distance away -- or maybe he just cast Sleep on them, and they fell to the floor really quick and are out of sight.

In the next room, metal sticks move on their own accord and constrict Zatara and Tong. Magic items...or Hold Person with a lot of flavor text?  Zatara casts another new spell that Conjures Flame, enough to fill at least a 5' Radius (1-8 points of damage to anyone inside it?). This could be a 1st-level spell.

Behind a curtain and down some steps is a large seated statue of Isis that transforms anyone gazing on it (and a missed saving throw vs. spells) to stone.  Zatara either casts three Stone to Flesh spells, or perhaps they are under a curse or magic spell he can remove with Remove Curse or Dispel Magic instead.

When Zatara leaves and comes back to the pyramid, a Wall of Force blocks him from re-entering (though his Spirit Projection works through it).  Zatara's spirit form is attacked with Gust of Wind and Magic Missile (5 arrows, so he's up against a 9th level caster!) spells, though I don't really see how those would affect him in spirit form. Finally, the statue of Isis animates and attacks him (maybe it's a golem and can affect his spirit form because it can be hit by spells or enchanted creatures), but Zatara casts a Melting spell that works an awful lot like wrecking things.

The evil sorcerer carries a new magic item, a Staff of Smoke that releases a smoke screen (Fog Cloud?) out of the eyes of the cat face on the head of the staff.

Lastly, the evil sorcerer plans to cast Disintegrate on Tong, but Zatara reflect it back with a Spell Turning spell that can be cast on anyone, not just the caster.

(You can read this issue at Comic Book Archives)