Rocket Comics #1 - pt. 2

We're still looking at the first comic book of March 1940, from Hillman!

Hurricane Hart, High Seas Hellion, is noteworthy because of this note, or more specifically the riddle on it. My players have always hated riddles, and they wouldn't like this one any better.  Indeed, I doubt many of them would have figured this one out.

Spoilers abound on this page for the riddle.

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Also note that, in Hideouts & Hoodlums terms, the monetary value in that treasure chest probably just bumped Hart up a level.

More riddle spoilers. The tide was so strong, it pulled his pants off between panels 1 and 3!

Moving on to the next story, this is Red Robert, the Electro Man. This guy kind of resembles Spider-Man's future foe, Electro too, though Red completely foregoes any kind of costume, and the Marvel comics version was over-the-top gaudy (in a good way).

Red is more powerful than Marvel's future Electro too, as in addition to (in H&H terms) Get Tough and wrecking things, Red can turn into electricity and travel through power lines, via the high-level power Teleport through Focus (more like DC's future Atom). Electro Man must be buffed a lot of brevet ranks.










Although buffed to the gills with brevet rank-enabled powers, Red is still a starting-level Hero and has starting-level funds; hence, his needing to borrow a car from his sister. And why would someone who can effectively teleport through power lines need to borrow a car? Because his H&H player wants to conserve his high-but-still-limited number of powers he can use per day for the big fights ahead.

Panel 4 is very confusing, as if panels are missing Where did that paper come from and what does it have to do with being too afraid to fight?

The villains' hideout just happens to be stocked with a vacuum-bell-drops-from-the-ceiling trap. Very dangerous, as long as one of the Heroes happens to step in just the right 5' x 5' square and -- oops, hasn't already demonstrated the ability to wreck things.

I need an invisibility power for superheroes besides Invisibly Fast...

Jumping ahead, this is The Steel Shark, which is the name of the villain, while the Hero is Lt. Dick Jones. You know you're dealing with a villainous mysteryman when they have a signature move like leaving a submarine-shape cut where they hit you.

Comics.org lists "?" for artist on this story, but I'll be darned if this doesn't look like our old friend John Paterson, so prolific at Centaur back in '38.

Bear in mind this was a coded message that's already been decoded; the decoders bothered leaving the "stop" words used in telegrams, instead of just writing periods.

I wonder if we should have a mobstertype called a suicide jockey -- a mobster who's not particularly tough, but never needs to check morale and will kill himself in the most spectacular way possible at the first sign of trouble.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Planet Comics #2 - pt. 1

If this issue looks familiar, it's because I reviewed Fox's Science Comics not too long ago, and both were farmed out to the Eisner/Iger shop -- and both done on the cheap. Although four-panel pages are not so rare nowadays, in 1940, this was purely a cost-saving measure to stretch out stories to fill more pages. You'll see much more of that on the pages to follow. Indeed, much of this post will be more of a rant than any constructive discussion of how to emulate golden age comic books with Hideouts & Hoodlums.

For instance, it's impossible to ignore the blatant plagiarism in these early comic books, particularly when it comes to swiping from successful comic strips. Here we have hawkmen, straight out of Flash Gordon. 

This feature is a new one, by the way, Planet Payson. Is Planet his first name, I wonder? I doubt we'll ever know.

Despite my rantings, there are interesting fantasy elements here -- the completely impossible castles in the clouds, and the mythological aspect of explaining how thunder and lightning happen.

The artist here is George Tuska, practically the Sal Buscema of 1940, given how prolific his work was. You can see he was fast by how much empty space he leaves, giant panels he uses, and sometimes appalling lack of detail. Like panel 2, with the nearly empty spaceship. Planet is standing behind the steering column, with no seat. There's a door, some...air vents over the door? ...and that weird row of rivets that runs down the wall and into the floor (and that was clearly a mistake left in, since there's no change in perspective for the rivets on the floor). And yet, George still found time to draw Planet's personal masseuse giving him a shoulder rub...

The proportions look all off on that one-man tank, like there is only a head inside it (maybe there is...?), but a one-man tank should be a good trophy item. Unfortunately, it's slow to turn at corners, so corners must be the best place to ambush them from.

It's never mentioned what race Buzzlark's people are. It's tempting to say the buzzard-men vs. the hawk-men, but the "buzzard-men" have no birdlike features.

Roland has never heard of honor in combat; although the guard is running up to him unarmed, Roland still shoots him in the face at point blank range with his rifle (it looks like the helmet is melting from it -- heat ray?). At least Planet turns his gun around to use as a clubbing weapon.

Four-to-one odds are too much for Planet, which makes sense, with him being a 1st-level fighter/beat cop.

At first it seems odd that the "buzzard-men" stripped Planet and Roland down to their underwear before putting them in the "electro tubes." But then, when I think about how often good guys have managed to escape with concealed gadgets, maybe this makes a lot of sense.

Electricity doesn't, technically, dissolve things. I wonder why they aren't just in acid tubes if they wanted to do that.

A sting ray gun is a curious thing. Does the ray somehow project poison into the target? 

This is from inside the next feature, Flint Baker. Flint is an Earth man on Mars, having to deal with problems like this four-armed giant. Although not white, the influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs' white apes is unmistakable, and the size of this thing oddly presages the white apes in the 2012 John Carter movie more closely than the book versions do.

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White apes are 4 Hit Dice. If we applied the large/huge/giant structure to that, then giant white apes would be 16 HD, which is indeed pretty fearsome.

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10 miles per minute is 600 MPH. A car won't go this fast until 1970, and of course most cars still don't go this fast today.

I'm going to spare you the gruesome page of how they kill the giant "white" ape...but you may be able to guess it by the trajectory of the spaceship...

This page highlights some of Flint's equipment, including "rocket-propelled degravitation rods" that look suspiciously like pogo sticks. Or maybe they operate more like vertical witches' broomsticks?

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The rayguns seem to allow to wreck at range, which we've seen before. Being able to crumble the ground, even if the ground was thin at that point, should require being able to wreck as a 4th-level superhero, at least. Of course, this could be the Dig power instead (and might make more sense to be).

This page poses an interesting game mechanics problem. If you're trying to move a giant object -- like a dead hand -- what do you roll for that? It can't be grappling, because the dead hand can't grapple you back. It *could* be pushing, moving the hand 1' per point of damage, but that rule assumes your opponent is roughly your size or smaller. Although I'm not a big fan of ability score checks, I think a Strength check -- rolling your STR or less on 1d20 -- is the best way to go with this.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Wonderworld Comics #10 - pt. 2

This is only Yarko the Great's eighth story, but already his second trip to the land of the dead -- and surprisingly his way there is entirely different this time. Instead of transitioning through a Dante-lite version of the afterlife, Yarko is able to transport himself (Plane Shift spell?) directly to the Valley of Shadows, or an area of it that is more desolate and uninhabited than when we last saw it. Interestingly, Yarko needs an item belonging to the Baron in order to track him across the planes; one could interpret from this that Yarko would wind up in some random space on the same plane without the sword to attract him to the Baron.

Shining Knight, no! (Just kidding; the old knight just has the same coloration as the Shining Knight will have a year or two from now).

Here we see Yarko fighting with a sword, and fighting well, invalidating the "magic-users can only fight with daggers" conceit.

We also get a good example of why we want to put powerful Heroes in environments where they can't use their full range of spells or powers. We know Yarko can still cast spells in the Afterlife, but there must be anti-magic zones throughout and Yarko had temporarily stepped into one.

Yarko's spell -- conjuring the ghosts of his past victims to attack him -- reminds me of the Phantasmal Killer spell.

This is Shorty Shortcake, and those are some really big germs flying out of that watch case! Rigging something to release tear gas -- or "crying germs", as it's called here -- is not a bad trap.

Hideouts & Hoodlums has rules for pushing opponents, but pulling them? That's trickier, I think. It would probably be a grappling attack and then, if successful, I would allow the grappler to make half-moves and pull the victim along, so long as the grappler had the higher Strength score.

While grappling your opponent, if you have a strong enough hold on them (that means at the Editor's discretion), you could roll to make another attack and put a hat on your opponent's head, if that was really something you wanted to do. I'm definitely not opposed to giving free attacks if they're used to do something in-character, but not actually harm anyone.

I'm glad I've never statted giant bats as having very many hit points, as these giant vampire bats (simply called vampire bats here, but the scale is always way off in a Shorty Shortcake adventure -- oh, I wonder if that is a feature I should talk about?) fall easily after just being hit with a rubber-band ball (an improvised weapon, doing no more than 1-3 points of damage, if ever there was one).

I'm kind of surprised that I've never seen a Hero track a bad guy by his cigar ash until this point.

This is also the first time I can recall seeing one trophy item specifically able to counteract another trophy item.

This is Patty O'Day, so naturally I'm going to focus on her partner Ham being awesome instead. Here it takes not one, but two head blows to knock him out, demonstrating that head blows are not automatic knockouts.

We also get a glimpse of a secret door concealed as a wall panel.

How long, in game time, should it take for eyes to become accustomed to the dimness? It probably doesn't matter for this scene, but if combat was about to begin it could be relevant. Or maybe not; I'd probably ignore the issue, unless Patty lost initiative, and then I could use the "eyes adjusting" thing as an excuse to explain why.

It's a smart tactic to keep the rope you were tied up in. Awesome Ham has figured out a use for it already!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Champion Comics #4 - pt. 3

This is from Blazing Scarab and...what's this? An immortal league of assassins? How can this not be where the idea for Batman nemesis Ra's al-Ghul came from?

The immortal city of Baracs, full of immortal assassins, is just begging for a Hideouts & Hoodlums adventure module. Who's going to volunteer to write it for me?

I'm also curious about this condition where, if they lose their heart or their brain, they live on, but lost their "identity" (all levels in their class/es lost?), and become only half-visible.

Here's an interesting description of how the magic portal to Baracs works, and why humans (and human-like races, I suppose) are the only ones who can cross through the portal.

This is Jungleman, who has a ridiculously large army of animals working for him, but what really gets me is that crazy spelling of orangutan. Orang-outang? Did someone not have a dictionary handy, or was the spelling that non-standardized by 1940?

A rare instance of a Hero using a blowgun as a weapon. The implication seems to be that the dart is poisoned, but we're never actually told that. Maybe he's just trying to distract the chief?

I'm amused that Louise immediately thanks Jungleman, but look how hard those monkeys have to work to take down the pygmies! And without knives, no less!

The death toll of animals in this feature is pretty staggering. Tigers, snakes -- they all bite it trying to protect Jungleman.

"Monkey-like people" seems to stink of racism a bit. I hope the gibbon men in H&H don't have the same odor...

This is Revenge of the Zombies. We're treated to a pretty standard pit trap (nice that there's a ladder at the bottom!), and an adventuring party that wisely puts their best fighters in the lead, the light source in the second rank, and keep to their marching order.

Giant death head moths are now definitely going into the AH&H Mobster Manual. I guess under D? They'll probably have only 1 hit point, and can only drain 1 hp, but when encountered by dozens or a hundred at a time, would be quite deadly.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Popular Comics #47 - pt. 1

Thinking this was their answer to Superman, Martan the Marvel Man is now the lead feature in Popular Comics.  Here we find them still joyriding around Earth before their first big scenario, and we see their ship has a cruising speed of 12,000 MPH, or Mach 15.

There is interesting moral philosophizing going on here, reminiscent of a future Silver Surfer.

Given how powerful Martan and Vana's tech is, let's not kid ourselves -- this protective forcefield is probably as powerful as the Wall of Force 5th level spell.

There is something here at the beginning about Martan's commands making the soldiers stop, and this is because non-Hero characters can recognize the level of a Hero and respect that authority.

Or maybe they're just surprised at how well Martan wears a skirt.

How a superhero wrecks things has always been flavor text for the player to decide. In this case, instead of wrecking with his bare hands, Martan can shoot a ray that melts things into the ground.

That Martan can melt/wreck tanks means that he functions as at least a 4th level superhero, and probably several levels higher because of how easily he wrecks the tank.

Also it's worth noting that the soldiers are obviously drawn to be Japanese, meaning the unnamed war Martan is stopping is the Japanese invasion of China.

This is from Shark Egan. I had to look this up, as I didn't think acetylene torches would work underwater, but sure enough they do!

This is Captain Tornado, still dealing with giant ants. There are at least a dozen giant ants here.

There are at least 21 giant white ants here, but there's no reason yet to assign white ants different game mechanics from red ants, or even different Alignments.

Jane has every reason to be smarting after that landslide. Wearing shorts, I can't imagine how she's not bruised all over her legs. But that's realism; in comic book terms, sliding does no damage like falling does.

The giant ants are shown to be intelligent. At this point, there is no reason not to stat them as ant men.

This is Between Two Fires, and it's an unusual scenario because the boys are actively resisting getting involved in the combat going on around them. They are able to for almost three whole pages, when the Editor has to chuck a grenade at them and leave them no alternative but to act. In that way the scenario is already a failure, if their goal was really to avoid fighting for the whole session.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Silver Streak Comics #2 - pt. 1

Back when I was working on Supplement IV: Captains, Magicians, and Incredible Men, Steve Lopez volunteered to read and stat all the Lev Gleason characters. So this is only the second issue of Silver Streak Comics I've ever read.

This is The Claw, and I love that map!  I feel like I should put out an adventure module based on The Claw's hideout now. Noo, more work to do!!

It's curious that the invader nation The Claw contacts is distant Germany and not the much closer Japan. Of course, in 1940, Germany was on American minds more than Japan. Give them two more years.

Okay, let's try to figure out what this is. It's a series of submarine-tanks, being pulled by one submarine, like a train? And how large is it? Recall that the cabin of a train engine is only wide enough for two people to work side-by-side; this train has four people working side-by-side at the controls. So it's twice as wide as a train, or 20'.  The 1939-launched USS Seawolf had a beam width of 26', so that seems legit.

Unlike normal tank turrets, these turrets must be able to shoot straight up. That means they can't be full-sized tank guns, or the recoil would surely damage the roofs of the tanks.

Interesting. Either these are special recoilless tank guns or some other weapons have been set up underwater. Actually, it no longer makes sense for us to be talking about tank guns with this kind of range; a tank gun is good for over a mile away, but not 50 miles away. Indeed, that's really good for even a 1940-era rocket launcher. These must be trophy weapons -- Rocket Launcher +3 or better!

Hard to believe that in just a few issues the original Daredevil is going to be beating this guy up with a boomerang!

So, apparently The Claw can grow to at least 1,000' tall. That puts him well outside the height I gave clawed giants way back in Book II: Mobsters and Trophies.  In fact, the only other giants we've seen this size are the recently seen Martian slave giants in Fantastic Comics!  Could The Claw be a rogue Martian giant, with some mutant trait of megalomania instead of obsequiousness?  It is an interesting question to mull over!

Oh, and The Claw can use Control Weather, apparently on a global scale. As just a special ability.  I'm increasingly wary of statting clawed giants like this and treating The Claw as an unique individual.

This may be the loopiest page Jack Cole ever drew. Apparently, Jerry Morris invented a...flashlight that stops the motion of water molecules? There is no way this makes sense, even by comic book science standards!

So let's think about this one. Light bulbs do heat up when turned on. That could, in theory, catalyze a gas contained in the bulb. I still don't get how that causes the light from the bulb to freeze liquids.

It seems unlikely that Jerry, just a passenger on board, is able to command the captain and the crew of the ship so quickly, but in the midst of a global crisis, I guess they figure they'll throw their lot in with anyone who's got a plan.

At least the snow tires are believable!

I'm having trouble letting go of this.  So...at its shallowest, the average depth of the Atlantic Ocean is just shy of 12,000'.  This freezing ray, then, has a range of 12'000', and freezes colder and faster than something at absolute zero does to its surroundings.

The ice sleds remind me of how Iceman gets around in later X-Men stories.

At least dumping acid down into the whirlpool is a smart tactic -- though environmentally unfriendly!

Acid bullets have been a trophy item in Hideouts & Hoodlums since Book II: Mobsters & Trophies, but was never diagrammed until this very panel!

Evidence that clawed giants (slave giants?) regenerate, even after death!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comics Museum.)