Wonderworld Comics #11 - pt. 1

Ah, the early Fox Comics were gorgeous! This installment of The Flame was written by Eisner and drawn by Fine, which is about as good as it gets here in (cover date) March 1940.

It scarcely requires explaining that "Kalnar" is Germany and "Rodend" is Hitler, especially not when you see "Rodend" on the last page below.

"Dorna" is a little trickier. It seems most likely Poland, given this time in the War, but the capital of "Dorna" is not yet captured in this story, while Warsaw was taken four months earlier than this was published.


For those mathematically impaired, The Flame was born in 1915. Ichang, or Yichang, is a prefecture-level city located in western Hubei province, China. It is the second largest city in the province after the capital, Wuhan.



This is surprisingly credible; the Yangzte ("Yangtse" here) is responsible for 70-75% of China's floods, flooding nearly every monsoon season.

Just like Siegel and Superman, Eisner borrows from the story of Moses here.

This seems to be Tibet, though the geography is a bit off. The Yangtze River begins in Tibet, so the flood waters would have had to somehow sweep the basket upstream.

It's interesting to wonder if the "grand high lama" is the dalai lama, or a fictional lama that supersedes the dalai and panchen lamas.

It's also worth noting that this nested origin story is being told to us by a character in the main story, who may well be an unreliable narrator.

We're given no clue how messages are sent to the Flame. Radio? Telegram? Write a note and burn it with fire?

"Quick, let's ignore the anti-aircraft guns around us (I see three) and bring him down with our small fire guns! I'm feeling like a challenge today!"

I was really surprised by how much this page reminds me of Walt Simonson's art. The layout is great, if awfully background-less, but the perspective in that final panel makes up for any imagined deficiencies.

Continuity glitch: the Flame is clearly leaping from his plane in the third panel of the previous page, but is back in his plane in panel 2 of this page, and then back on the ground by panel 4. It seems that Lou Fine had intended the plane to be immune to the fire gun and demolish the gun, but Will Eisner wanted the Flame to be responsible for destroying it and gives him credit in the caption.

Despite having only destroyed one gun and beaten up about seven soldiers, the entire army surrenders at that point. Personally, I would have made separate morale saves for each squad, three saves per platoon. But I understand this was a scenario with a short time limit.

Let's also talk about the effectiveness of a giant flame gun. I get that, thematically, it fits the title, but there's no way it could shoot fire as far as it could shoot a shell. I fail to see how this

weapon would be very effective.

I don't have much to say about this page except -- see? Hitler. Great "punch to the face" panel there, well before the famous Captain America cover of punching Hitler.















For this installment of Yarko the Great, "Anthony Brooks", aka Will Eisner, starts us off in faraway India, but how accurate is that geography? The Kabul River does empty into the Indus River near the city of Attock, in what is now Pakistan, but would have then been India. Far from isolated frontier, Attock would have been, I think, a metropolis of about 400,000 people at this time. It's typical racism of the times, though, to make other cultures look more primitive than they were.

All I have to say about this page is that the men from India must be statted as mysterymen (burning stunts), superheroes (using the Wall Climbing power), or magic-users (using the Spider Climb spell) to be able to scale a sheer wall like that.

(Spoiler: they're mysterymen; on a page I won't be showing, they use a mysteryman's weapon, a garotte.)

And that this is an awful long build-up to Yarko showing up in the story...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Fight Comics #3 - pt. 3

Oran of the Jungle is strong! He doesn't just break the ropes binding him to the wooden stake, he breaks the wooden stake. Oran is still a 1st-level fighter at this point, unless we're assigning him brevet ranks (maybe we do need to give him at least one, as he seemed so sure he had the "combat machine" ability of fighters over 1st level -- see the previous post). Let's assume he has 1 brevet rank and is actually 2nd level. Breaking the ropes would be a wrecking things roll vs. doors. Going for the stake is going to make it harder; let's say the machines category. Being a fighter, he only gets two dice for wrecking things, so he has to roll a 10 or higher to wreck the stake. Like I mentioned last time, Oran is very lucky with the dice!

Last thing I want to say about Oran of the Jungle - as much as I have problems with the story, I really like the art. Comics.org's experts think the artist might be August Froehlich, but they're not sure.

Now we're going to jump into the debut of a new feature, Rip Regan the Power-Man. This is very much an origin story, with Rip just being a class-less nobody at this point. For reasons we don't know -- we'll just have to trust his judgement -- Dr. Austin has chosen Rip out of all the people he knows to wear this power suit he invented. Unless...say, could Dr. Austin have invented more than one and doled them out to other do-gooders, without telling each of them about the others? Sort of hedging his bets?

Dr. Austin just might be prankster enough to do something like that. I am not convinced that it was more discrete to tell them through a loudspeaker to lay on a trapdoor than it would have been to just send them a note that tells them where the door to the stairs was. It's unclear who is laughing in panel 3, but my guess is that it's Austin laughing at them.

As for the suit itself, we're dealing with comic book science

 here, so we have to accept that chemically treated metal can make someone weightless. Or maybe Austin is pranking him again, because we don't see him weightless once in this feature once he's wearing it. Maybe what Austin means is that the suit is weightless; adds nothing to his encumbrance.

As hard as it is to take the power suit seriously, the explanation for how the electric eye sounds an alarm is quite reasonable. The prank chute appeals to my sense of hideout design too.

I'm less interested in the scenario that follows than in Rip's unusual motive for fighting crime -- essentially, the anti-crime fund is paying Rip to work for them the moment he accepts the power suit they funded.

The suit gives Rip the Super-Tough Skin power. That gives us two choices for statting Rip; he is either a fighter wearing a trophy item that gives him the Super-Tough Skin power once per day, or he is a superhero with two brevet ranks, making him high enough to take the Super-Tough Skin power on his own.

Moving on, this is Strut Warren. I thought the slang being thrown around might need some explanation. A leatherneck is a military slang term for a member of the United States Marine Corps, or of the Corps of Royal Marines. A rubberneck is a tourist. "Sloppysocks" is a little trickier. I asked the Golden Age Facebook group about this yesterday and the consensus was this either refers to their loose-fitting trousers, or the actions a lonely sailor might take alone in his hammock.

I really had this guy pegged as one of those brain transplant-type mad scientists, so that he wants to bleed Strut dry to make explosives from his blood is both novel and creepy, if not good science.

It's rare for a Hero to get robbed, but Strut's money here goes to the mobsters who attacked him (even if he was just holding it for someone else).

That's a really awkward third panel. Leglock may need to be added to an extended grappling results table, especially if you can get in extra kick attacks while leglocked.

Flasks in mad science labs make great grenade-like missiles!

Whoa, whoa, whoa -- yes, both the Germans and the Japanese made overtures to the Tibetans from 1938-'39, but that doesn't mean the Tibetans actually planned to help them. This feature is unusual because, while Mongolians were usually treated as savages and the Chinese as fools, Tibetans were always treated like wise mystics in the comics. These warlike Tibetans are still racist, but at least it goes against the cliches.

Just when I think I'm sure aerial combat should be determined by complications, here is more evidence it needs to be settled by hit points. Having your wing riddled shouldn't force a landing, unless hits are just abstractions and hp loss is the real indicator of when you need to land.

"Their hospitality enhanced by rifles" is a good, sarcastic turn of phrase.

We also see a rare instance of a Hero hung by his thumbs. I wonder how many points of damage that would do over time...?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing-Man Comics #10 - pt. 1

For my 800th post (!), we're back to Centaur Comics and this issue of Amazing-Man Comics has a theme of getting places. Particularly since Bill Everett's lead feature is all about getting Amazing Man to his next adventure.

Two things about this page -- one is that John Aman, the Amazing Man, is "unaffected by intense heat," suggesting he's activated the 2nd-level Fire Resistance power.

The other is that "the pilot is unaware that flames have seared and damaged his parachute." Does that mean John is aware of it? And he still threw the man out of the plane?

There's some reallly curious physics going on here. Now, if John had assumed a proper diving position and reduced his wind resistance, there was a chance of him falling faster and catching up to the pilot. But if he's transformed into green mist, there's no way he should be falling faster than a solid object.

In the final panel, John is using the Feather Landing power. The expanded explanation for that power in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums even accounts for this use (it's the 2nd function under the power).

Smothering Cloud might need to be a new power, as I can't think of any game mechanic I currently have in H&H that would handle this, other than Control Fire, a 3rd-level power.

I'm not sure if we need a power that handles protection from rare air/high altitude...but I'll consider it.

Usually it's the villains who unerringly find the Heroes' weaknesses, but here John just stumbles onto the fact that his mist form can be frozen!

 ...but he isn't totally vulnerable in this state, as he can still control his movement completely, just as he could when his mist form was gaseous. What we can gather from this, though, is that he can't change back to human form from a different solid state.

Now, I'm wondering here if we can pin down anymore closely where this super-isolated village is. It's not a very big plateau if it only has the one village on it. Otherwise, it really sounds like Tibet, with how it's encircled by seemingly impassable mountains. Perhaps this is just one corner of Tibet.

If John already is in Tibet, that would explain how this secret passage gets him back to the Tibetan monastery so quickly.

I'm not sure how strong 100 elephants are, but if this means he could lift 100 elephants, that would be 600 tons, making him by far the strongest superhero yet (Superman and Captain Marvel are still years away from being able to lift 600 tons). In fact, that would currently be like an 8th-level Raise power. But I suspect an unreliable narrator again, as those boulders don't look nearly that heavy.

I wasn't impressed with this western story, hastily drawn and supposedly by Joe Simon (though he had to have really hacked this out fast!), and will only share this one page from "Ranch Dude." I share this because counting to 2 or 3 in a gunfight makes no difference by H&H rules; both sides still roll randomly, with highest roll going first.

We'll probably come back and look at The Magician from Mars more next time, but two things about this page -- yes, it really does say she got her powers from being exposed to a cathode ray, and cathode rays really are just the beam of electrons you'd find in a (now) old-fashioned television set.

The other thing is the Moderni Airport. There is no real Moderni Airport that I can find evidence of, but this is likely a Mars location anyway.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Mystic Comics #1 - pt. 1

We're back to Timely Comics and their newest title in 1940. But don't expect any Bill Everett, Jack Kirby, or Joe Simon goodness in this one; this is pure 2nd rate-Chesler shop filler, cranked out because Martin Goodman wanted another Timely title on the shelves to capitalize on this new superhero craze.

So what does it give us first? Flexo the Rubber Man. Yes, Will Harr and Jack Binder took one look around the burgeoning crowd of superheroes in the field and said...Bozo the Iron Man looks like a winner; let's take that concept and make it even sillier. In a decision that would make for a hundred off-color jokes if this wasn't a family blog, the narrator tells us that Flexo is made of "living rubber" and filled with "secret gas." This rubber/gas combo somehow allows Flexo to outrun bullets (in Hideouts & Hoodlums, the Race the Bullet power), gives it the strength of an ox (wrecking things and Raise Car power?), and the ability to zoom through the air like a bird (Fly II power?). But narrators often exaggerate for new superheroes, so let's see if the story follows up on any of that.

Oh, and to make matters worse, the scientists who invented Flexo had to steal the supplies from the cancer hospital they work in. Nice job, leaving those cancer patients without the treatment equipment they need, jerks. It's almost a pleasure to see these two tied up by a mobster and his vamp/moll, who then steal radium from the two men. The mobster works for a mad scientist who need the radium for his death ray, of course. In one informative panel, the mobster explains that he would bump them off with a gun, but "the professor likes to wipe out his victims in fancy, scientific style," which basically explains every supervillain's deathtrap ever.

After activating Flexo to rescue them, we are told Flexo is running at the speed of a bullet, but that's our suspicious narrator again without any real proof. Flexo does leap -- very clearly leaping instead of flying -- and given the height of his leaps I would call this a very clear example of the Leap I power. When shot at, his rubbery hide provides the Nigh-Invulnerable Skin power. Then he uses Multi-Attack to grapple three mobsters at once. It takes a little bit more of a (ahem) stretch to see how stretching himself between the car and a telephone pole counts as a power, but since the purpose is to stop the car from moving, that seems to be the same as using the Raise Car power.

To find their missing radium, the unnamed scientists borrow a radium detector, or what we might call a Geiger counter, from the hospital. This Geiger counter has a really good range on it, though, because it can sense radiation from an airplane.

At the hideout, Flexo has to fight two electrically-charged robots. Flexo does really well at his wrecking things rolls vs. the robots, and demonstrates Electrical Resistance, his first level 3 power. In fact, since he hasn't even demonstrated a level 2 power yet, I'm wondering if he isn't demonstrating a power at all, but simply had enough hit points to take the hits from their electrical fields.

The hideout has a simple portcullis trap, but Flexo's solution to it, squeezing through the bars, might be our first instance of him breaking the H&H rules. Normally, I would call this flavor text for wrecking things, except that the bars are still intact and trapping the scientists even after Flexo squeezes through. For this, then, we would need a new power, perhaps some weaker version of Passwall, like a 2nd-level power called Pass through Small Openings.

Flexo defeats the mad scientist and his three hoodlums by spurting gas at them, which either does damage or puts them to sleep -- the story isn't clear. However, giving this robot a "breath weapon" is just like how I handled robots in 1st edition H&H, suggesting to me that maybe Flexo should be statted as a mobster, and a Supporting Cast Member, to the scientists, instead of a Hero with a race and class. This would eliminate any difficulties in statting him as an android superhero. But if Flexo is an android superhero, what level? One of his 1st level powers demonstrated could be his android ability, meaning he's demonstrated two 1st level powers and 1 2nd level power -- Flexo must have two brevet ranks, allowing him to start as a level 3 superhero, an extraordinary man.

Next up is Blue Blaze. This story starts in 1852 at Midwest College. It was difficult to pin down a specific college with so generic a name, but then my first assumption would be that Midwest College would be in the Midwest. What gets the story moving, though, is the tornado that sweeps through the campus and kills 85% of the people there. Finding out when major tornado touchdowns happened is easily done on the Internet these days and, possibly not by coincidence, a deadly tornado had ripped through downtown Arlington, Massachusetts only the previous year. I have commented before (see Whiz Comics #3) about comic book writers taking inspiration from headlines in the recent news.

While believed dead after the tornado and buried, Spencer is struck with "substrata dermatic rays" during his 88 years of hibernation, which is a term that doesn't really mean anything, but suggests that the rays are striking him under his skin. Is this how the author says radiation? If the narrator is to be believed, his strength increases 1,000-fold, which would make him able to lift/press about 50 tons -- or access to 5th-level Raise powers in H&H terms.  More incredulously, Spencer was supposedly buried in a skin-tight costume with attached cowl and a riveted girdle. and these were the clothes he died in.

Upon digging himself out of his grave, BB immediately encounters two superstitious hoodlums. They both fail their morale saves after he activates his Super-Tough Skin power. One of them "has a heart attack," but you know how those pesky narrators keep exaggerating, and there is a result of "faints" on the morale failure table. The other one simply surrenders.

The hoodlums were digging up bodies for a professor with a super-cool hideout, accessible by a secret elevator in an inn on the edge of town, miles below ground. The elevator lets out in a foyer which accesses a huge entry hall through a Dr. Suess-shaped archway. The hall looks posh at this end with checkerboard tile flooring and thick columns. Either at the far end, or perhaps in a side hall, the columns are thinner and decorated with skull motifs.

There are also traps. Red gems spaced around the hideout activate "tension beams," like a Hold Person spell. Then the rays whisk their prisoners on a high-speed tour of some nearby laboratories (the professor is quite the show-off) to Professor Maluski's audience hall (a "receiving" gem ends the tour here). Near the audience hall is a dungeon where 50 zombies are kept. The zombies are not supernatural, but controlled by ray receptors sewn into their shrouds. Maluski is armed with a "new type automatic," which seems to be a way of saying a Gun +1 to me. The zombies turn on Maluski with the control tube is smashed, which is conveniently keeps in the dungeon with the zombies. There is also an access to an subterranean stream in the dungeon.

The next feature is Zephyr Jones; despite this being a first issue, Zephyr has crossed over from Daring Mystery Comics #2. Zephyr and Corky are now making routine trips to Mars in the near future, when they are hijacked by a mad scientist and his daughter at gunpoint. "The Mad Astronomer" wants them to take him to Cygni, by which we can assume he means Cygni 61, a star 11.4 light years away. This is going to be an extremely long story if not for faster-than-light travel. And when they call him mad, they aren't kidding. He thinks there is stardust on stars that can cure any illness. No explanation for why they have to go to a star so far away to get that instead of our own star.

The science is wonkier than that; apparently the author thinks there are "lesser stars" between Earth and Mars, by which he seems to mean comets. These stars are covered with gasses and Zephyr figures out that if he can combust the atmosphere of a comet, it will propel the ship away at faster-than-light speed. This actually works, devastating the number of known comets in near space and somehow fails to destroy their spaceship every time they try it. En route they almost hit a moon, but are traveling so fast that they pass right through it. This reminds me of the Silver Age Flash vibrating through solid matter at super-fast speeds, but it does beg the question how they are interacting with comets to gain speed from them if they are effectively immaterial.

(Read at readcomicsonline.to)

Silver Streak Comics #3 - pt. 1

With this issue, Silver Streak Comics finally gets its own feature called Silver Streak! Doubly important, this serves as a long origin story for the superhero Silver Streak, so long that we never see him in costume yet in this installment -- making this the longest origin story for a superhero published so far.

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Okay, Hideouts & Hoodlums hat on...it's hard to take this giant fly seriously. Besides looking seriously cartoony, I prefer to cap my giant animals at 8x normal size, which would put a giant fly at less than 1 hit point. Further weirdness comes in this fly's special features, like a ...breakaway proboscis that can impale people...?

What the swami does is the equivalent of a D&D campaign where a powerful wizard puts a Geas spell on the entire party and makes them go on his quest for him. Nobody likes that. Still, in this instance, it also explains how Silver Streak gets his powers.

Speaking of weird features on this giant fly...tentacles? Where? Aren't those just legs?

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Oh dear...swamis are Hindus, not Muslims, so it seems unlikely this one would be invoking Allah by name. It's also pretty unclear how being hypnotized kept our Hero from dying in the car crash.

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Back to gaming talk; can a target hurl away two men trying to grapple him at the same time? Here we have to consider the impact of this on the combat. If combat is being affected, then we should be careful not to invoke "flavor text" on this, and it does appear that, since the two men are knocked prone, this allows Silver Streak to leave the area without them getting free back attacks on him as he flees.

On the other hand, this could be appropriate flavor text if SS is buffed with the Untackleable power.

It's hard to imagine the police are baffled without a clue, when a fly the size of a car must keep flying away from the scene of each crime. How hard can that be to follow?

This may be the earliest example in a comic of the main villain not even being mentioned until the second half of the story. Of course, because this is a golden age comic, the villain is a mad scientist, but a mad zoologist is a new twist.

$20 million dollars is one of the steeper ransoms we've found in these early comics.

Silver Streak has not really demonstrated any traditional superpowers yet (though Feign Death appears to be one of them earlier), but here he clearly uses the Leap I power to reach the giant fly and grapple it.

I'm going to include giant flies now in the Mobster Manual...but am going to cap them at 3 Hit Dice.

No, he's not Bruce Wayne or even John Wayne, but Bill Wayne, and this is one of the earliest cowboys to have a vigilante name not itself a blatant rip-off of The Lone Ranger.

Mesa Bluff seems like there should be a real Mesa Bluff out there somewhere, but while I could find examples of streets and neighborhoods called that, I couldn't find that there is any real town called Mesa Bluff anywhere. 

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Bill is clearly getting two attacks in the same turn with his guns here. I've previously ruled out getting a bonus attack by carrying a second weapon, which means Bill must be at least a level 3 cowboy/fighter to get that many shots with single-shot firearms. Since Bill Wayne is debuting in this story and should not be third level yet, this could be our first confirmed instance of a fighter class getting (two) brevet ranks.

Lastly, let's revisit the curious intersection of physics and game mechanics. If you throw yourself down a flight of stairs at a group of people all bunched up together, can you defy the "one attack per turn" guideline for H&H combat? I would still be inclined to say no...and yet...I have previously encouraged Editors to go easy on their players in solo play and make more allowances than the rulebooks suggest. And, in this case, the Editor could offset the bonus with some serious repercussions. For example, the player might get only one chance to hit the whole group, and a miss means taking 1 point of damage on the stairs, plus lying prone for that turn, plus losing initiative on the following turn. A player would have to think about how lucky he was feeling before making that call...

Or, this could just be an example of a third-level fighter getting to use the combat machine special ability, giving him three attacks in combat against non-classed opponents.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Fantastic Comics #4 - pt. 5

This is the last page from Captain Kidd, and the gorilla turning out to be hot babe in a bathing suit in a gorilla costume is a twist worthy of Shyamalan. Use it to keep your players on their toes!

Professor Fiend is surprisingly relevant again, with an explanation for how "undead" skeletons might come about through chemistry instead of magic (using comic book logic, of course!).

Although -- spoiler -- this story doesn't end well for the skeleton, it does make a curiously effective origin story for an undead superhero.

And now we get to the second Fletcher Hanks feature in this issue, Stardust. The unnamed mad scientist, called only "A mad giant experimenter" here, is one of the first physically imposing supervillains, even if he has neither a name nor long pants.

No one has ever come close to reaching the center of the Earth; 7.5 miles down is the deepest anyone has ever drilled.

This is likely the first reference to Lake Michigan in all of comic books. There is no way a volcano could form under Lake Michigan; the geologic prerequisites just are not there. A tiny volcano, Hicks Dome, does exist at the southern end of Illinois, but it is a volcanic pipe powered by gas. Volcanoes do throw up lava bombs, like pictured here, but while lava bombs are dangerous if they land on someone, the real danger from volcanoes is the ash plume they send out. If this really happened, Chicago would be buried in it, lots of people and animals would suffocate, and the city would need evacuating. 

Hideouts & Hoodlums has a wrecking things game mechanic, a Wreck at Range power, and a Mass Wrecking power at higher levels. What Stardust seems to be using in panel 2 is an as-yet unwritten Mass Wrecking at Range power.

At high-levels, a superhero needs to be able to not just wreck things into fragments, but to destroy them utterly, like Stardust does in panel 3.

How does Stardust know where the chemicals that made the volcano came from? Not for the first time, Stardust seems to be using some advanced version of the Detect Evil power that functions more like divination magic.

I find it comical that Stardust would be known as a "crime-buster" instead of the most dangerously powerful being in the universe.

I'm intrigued by how anti-ray rockets would work. Do they somehow home in on energy, like a heat-seeking missile? And how do the rockets make him lose control of his raybelt? We've never seen Stardust rely on buttons or knobs on his belt before. Maybe it requires concentration.

Wall of Dust is an unusual spell with what I would consider a limited degree of usefulness. One, it might throw off missiles that are tracking you, like chaff. Two, it might trick your enemies into thinking you've been turned to dust. I would treat this as a 2nd level spell.

Lastly, Stardust uses Teleport through Focus to step out of the dust in the room.

The "boomerang ray" works exactly like the power Turn Gun on Bad Guy.

Wrecking a chemical plant, in this context, is just wrecking a generator, since they are inside the castle and not talking about wrecking an entire building.

Who are the interplanetary police? If only we'd learn more!

Here we see a hi-tech trophy item (mad science category) give Sub the Water Breathing ability, as per the spell.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Prize Comics #1 - pt. 1

Today we're going to be looking at just the first feature from Prize Comics' flagship title.

Power Nelson is Superman transposed to Buck Rogers' setting -- the sort of mash-up one normally expects to see in fanfiction, but was quite common in the Golden Age of Comics, when creators routinely stole from each other.

So, according to this, we've already had WWIII by 1982. That doesn't seem so far-fetched, as far as the Cold War had escalated by 1980-1982. What's far-fetched is that the "Mongols" (long since subsumed into Chinese, so it would really be China invading us) were in any position to do this by 1982. Now, by 2020...

Remember when New York looked like this in 1982?

Did I saw Superman crossed with Buck Rogers? Well, this origin story also anticipates Captain America, though with Cap we were told why there would only be one man endowed with his abilities. Here, we're told "only one" can be given these powers, with no further explanation. Did they run out of ingredients for super-soldier serum...?

I love the last panel on this page. The Mongol Army is supposedly this all-powerful world-conquering force, but they make their soldiers pay for their own weapons. First chink in the armor revealed!

The author of this story remains unknown, but he is well-versed in pulp literature, including John Carter. From A Princess of Mars we learned the code of the futuristic soldier, always using the sword first before the rocket pistol.

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We don't get to see the rocket pistol in action, but if it can really blast someone to atoms then that would be a "save or die" situation, most likely, rather than dealing points of damage.

Power uses the power Extend Missile Range here, to throw the soldier so high in the air.

Power is going to slowly go through the Superman catalog of powers, as all the initial superheroes in comic books did...though, while others will try to show Superman up, Power under-performs. Instead of Raise Car, he only hefts a motorcycle -- I mean, a rocket cycle over his head. Now, I can't tell how heavy these cycles are supposed to be, but I suspect they might fall within the generous encumbrance rules for Hideouts & Hoodlums, and not require an actual power expenditure.

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I also like that first panel, and how it looks like a Shriner parade!

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Let's start our discussion of this page with the number of attackers who can surround you in melee. There are eight positions for man-sized attackers around a target. If the target's back is to a wall, that number drops to five. So, sure, seven members of the famous Death's Head Division can stand around Nelson and try to block him from moving, but they can't all attack him at once.

So, how does "blocking him from moving" work, as a game mechanic? If five of them were pressed into melee range around him, they would all get free bonus attacks on him as he tried to move out of that position. However, since they are outside of melee, he can move towards a corner of their semi-circle where no more than four would be within sword reach.

Complicating matters is that some of the soldiers have guns instead of swords. Guns give them the advantage that they don't have to be within melee range to attack, but they lose the advantage of the free bonus attack if he tries to move past a missile weapon.

On the other hand, it gives them the advantage after moving past them that they can simply turn and shoot once he's outside of melee again without having to chase after him.

And before moving on to this next page, I want to talk about the cool rocket-roller tank. We don't know much about it, but I'm guessing that's a forward-mounted raygun, since the barrel is too narrow for any kind of significant missile. Since it's rocket-powered, it must move much faster than a real tank (maybe a 75 Move?) And that roller is probably a little more effective than normal treads for running people over (+1 to hit?), and clearly has an intimidation factor to it, but since most of the weight of the tank isn't resting directly above it, I would say damage might be as low as 4-24 points.

I'll keep it brief about this page: nobody in 1940 seemed to have a clue how powerful atomic weapons would be. Here it takes three to damage a city block.

In any campaign based on 1940-era science,atomic weapons will be just powerful explosives, maybe doing twice the damage of a grenade.

"What a man!" Some of these panels are just unintentionally hilarious.

Let's talk about why Power doesn't just bust out of those chains and attack the emperor on the spot. Can he? By H&H rules, when you recover from being stunned, your wrecking things ability returns to you at full-strength. Is that not the case here, or is Power simply biding his time? It might make sense to do so if he is out of defensive buffing powers (or simply had none prepared for the day) and down to 6 hp or less.

In a futuristic setting, it's fun to take familiar landmarks and turn them into something else; and Yankee Stadium as a gladiatorial arena is quite brilliant, I think.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)