Jungle Comics #3 - pt. 3

We're back and still looking through Fiction House's Jungle Comics #3 and seeing what lessons we can apply to running or playing my RPG Hideouts & Hoodlums from it.

This is Captain Terry Thunder of the Congo Lancers. The geography seems way off here, since the Congo is in central Africa, he desert is in northern Africa, and then they somehow find swamps, followed by more desert, before coming back to the jungles. Did they just make a big circle?

Regardless, the lesson we can take away from this is that the details of travel can be glossed over to get us to the main story.

You might feel as uncomfortable as I do looking at how the Africans are colored on this page. Now, in 4-color coloring, blue highlights often accompany something that is supposed to be interpreted as all-black, but you usually don't see this applied to black people. 

That said, the natives show some clever tactics in the last panel. While Terry can do nothing but try to resist the grappling attack, the other three are all free to try and beat him with their (spiked?) clubs. Now, there is an element of risk for them as well; I would rule that, if you were trying to attack an opponent being grappled, and you miss, you have to roll again to see if you hit the grappler on your side instead. 

"Smitten from ambush?" Are the natives using Cupid's arrows on them? What strange wording.

I also checked; grass rope is a real thing.

This is Wambi the Jungle Boy. I don't think much of Wambi, but these two trappers have a super-inflated idea of his value. Worth a million, in 1940 dollars, for being able to talk to animals? I'm skeptical...

Especially since animals have no problem talking to each other, across species lines.

It's remarkable that, just from word getting through the animal grapevine that Wambi is in trouble, an elephant and at least 11 gorillas show up to rescue him. It seems unlikely that Wambi would have this many support cast member animals, but perhaps his SCMs joined up with a wandering encounter...?

 I like to share unusual disarming attacks; this could be the first time we've ever seen a man disarmed with an orange.

This is from the next story, Roy Lance. "Nyama" is the word for spirit, used by the Dogon people of Africa. Did the author, know that, or was it a lucky guess?

More evidence of natives using poisoned weapons.

You don't often hear about cattle herding in Africa, but that's legit; they do keep cattle herds over there.

The last story we'll look at today is Simba, King of Beasts -- you know, Disney's other source material for The Lion King other than Hamlet. Simba, in turn, seems to have The Jungle Book as some of its source material, so that leaves me wondering if the boy isn't paralyzed with hypnosis instead of fear, ala Kaa. Regardless, not being able to do anything is one of the eight random results of a failed morale save now, in Hideouts & Hoodlums 2nd edition, so maybe it really is fear.

Of course, that reminds us that the boy is not a played Hero in this scenario, but a Supporting Cast Member under the control of the Editor. Simba is the Hero, obviously classed as a Fighter, with the Editor allowing Lion as a playable race. The Lions special abilities are being able to attack with bite and claw attacks, and hopefully a few extra Hit Dice too, or he's toast against this wandering encounter of an angry rhino.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Science Comics #1 - pt. 3

Still plowing through the inaugural issue of Science Comics and...boy, this is becoming a tougher and tougher read! I think Electro was the best thing they had ready and quickly whipped up a bunch of sci fi filler to go around it.

Case in point, Cosmic Carson, with its near empty rooms on this page, and its almost entirely empty three panels on the last page.

That said, I do like the symmetry of that last wide panel on this page, and an empty entrance hall with a single guard manning a machine gun...well, it has merits for hideout design.

 ...As does this "acid well." I'm not sure what you would use an acid well for, but it's an interesting detail, and could make for a potent trap too.

Here we have another interplanetary adventure taking place in the future of the year 2000. It's adorable how confident we used to be in the march of progress.

The Interplanetary Transport Company reminds me of Futurama. But what, do you suppose, does it mean by "air routes?" Surely this author doesn't think there's air in space? If you can call fighters "space fighters" (which is what the class Fighter should be called in a sci-fi campaign, by the way!), then you should be able to figure out to call them "space routes."

Although the slavers are an intergalactic threat, with a base on Saturn, they look disappointingly like ordinary humans.

But there's something much fisher going on here -- if Payne is going from Earth to the Moon to refuel, how on Earth (*ahem*) does the slave ship get to the Moon just minutes later? Distances make no sense in these early comics. I'm not sure how to emulate that in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but I'm also not sure I care to.

Marga the Panther Woman is a weird one. At times looking like a Sheena rip-off, Marga is a woman in the future endowed with panther-like fighting ability by a mad scientist. After the scientist kills himself, Marga escapes and goes on this little mini-rampage, killing that poor little tiger with her claws.

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A long time ago, a suggested race for H&H was the beastman, but I never had good examples of them in comic books. Marga is the perfect example, though, and we see how beastmen would have a short list of mutations to choose from, like how she gets claws.

"Protective current" isn't clearly defined here, but probably means an electric forcefield that either greatly enhances Armor Class or buffs the ship with a defensive power, as if it was a superhero.

Although these look like spaceships, their portholes and glass cockpits and holes in the walls serving as gun ports suggest these planes fly around at lower altitudes than would require pressurization.

Now this is Dr. Doom -- but neither the Fantastic Four villain nor the International Spy we've seen reprinted in earlier comic books. This Dr. Doom is an old man/mad scientist with assistants (finally found some art for that mobstertype I can use!) and they live on some kind of colony world where there are some other humans, but so few that the assistants have to go looking for them.

Jan Swift (descendant of Tom Swift?) and Wanda are explorers in the D&D sense -- they just seem to be randomly wandering and looking for experience, instead of working for someone or towards some specific goal.

One of the two assistants has a paralysis raygun that turns the tide for them.

I believe it was Dragon magazine #111 that had a great article statting real world microscopic monsters that you could either enlarge to giant size, or shrink the characters down to microscopic size so they can encounter them.

You can see Dr. Doom's shrink ray is slow enough that Jan can be picked up with tweezers while still 2 inches tall.

It would be interesting to research how many microscopic organisms were identified before 1940 -- probably not many, admittedly, as this was a few years before the electron microscope was invented. This artist didn't do any research on that, but just made up some bizarre bird-fish, regular fish, and a "giant ameoba" (amoeba) that looks more like a donut-headed snake.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)