Tip Top Comics #42, 46

We'll start again with Hawkshaw the Detective, not because I believe that you could really use a magnet to detect a concealed sword cane (or at least no ordinary-sized magnet), but because this is the first time I've ever seen "corporation" used as a slang term for a fat stomach (apparently that's a real thing).

 Is $15 reasonable for a watchdog in 1940, or is it a bargain?

I think I can relate to Phil Fumble. Maybe not literally, but I've had days that felt like this.

Anyway, it's interesting to see the number of threats you can encounter in a farm setting, from runaway pigs, biting geese, charging bulls, terrorizing hawks, swarming bees, racing dogs, and butting goats. Of them, pigs, bulls, dogs, and goats are statted for the game. I really don't think a goose, a hawk, or a bunch of bees is enough of a threat for Heroes.

This is the first new feature in Tip Top Comics since I started reading these! We know Hal Forrest from Tailspin Tommy, another aviator strip that wasn't very good. I suspect he got so much work in comics because his name was so close to Hal Foster, the legend behind the Prince Valiant comic strip.

Anyway, here we learn that the license number for planes (like VINs on cars) are hidden on the underside of wings and you can check with the Dept. of Commerce to find out who owns them (actually, I think we learned at least most of this from another strip before; I just don't remember the numbers being on the wings).

Two points here: one, if I'm really serious about making half-pints an official H&H Hero race, I need to think about setting more strict encumbrance restrictions on them than for full-grown adults. What's a good weight limit for a 10 year old? 50 lbs.?

And the other issue is the very real issue of child labor that I keep seeing in these strips (I almost brought this up earlier this week, with evidence from another strip). It seems like any unsavory character could get away with charging a kid just $1-2 a week.

I'm even more concerned about this short strip, and the cheap availability of poison in 1940. It might tempt players to go out and buy 50 cents worth of rat poison if it can make hoodlums sick, but this seems very un-Heroic behavior to me and should trigger a save vs. plot to carry out.

And, lastly, Ella Cinders teaches us that balcony seats are just 40 cents. And the robber shows us an uncommon stick-up method (I feel like I've seen that in a movie before, but I can't remember which!).

And that's it! I am done with Tip Top Comics for quite some time!  Woo! Next time, we go back to More Fun Comics and the debut of the Spectre!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Marvel Mystery Comics #4 - pt. 1

The Human Torch has apparently stayed in Texas since last issue, as he's just coming back to New York now. New York is under martial law because of the attack of the green flames. The green flames are said to be goblin-like creatures with ice-cold green flame all around them. Their cold flame paralyzes and kills, but real heat kills them quickly. It's almost a shame that the "green flames" are actually just hoodlums in chemically treated asbestos suits that become surrounded by the green flame.

The Torch makes up the alias Jim Hamond (initially spelled with one m) in this story.  He also uses some now-familiar powers -- Wreck at Range, Leap II (he clears at least 60' vertically), and -- of course -- wrecking things (by melting).

The Torch is aided by Johnson -- an undercover cop who has helped the Torch before -- and a lady undercover cop named Mazie. Mazie worked undercover with Dr. Manyac, the creator of the green flame. Dr. Manyac only seems to have a gang of six, none tougher than gangsters, which hardly seems like it would be threatening enough to force the temporary evacuation of New York City -- yet somehow hysteria spread to the point where it did.

The Torch gets doused in water and doesn't get his flame extinguished in this story.  Evidence that he should get to save vs. plot for all possible vulnerabilities?

The Torch demonstrates a power again where he can hit someone with a fireball from far away. This time, though, he's shown to have so much control over the fireball that it can go around one target to hit another. That seems a lot like Magic Missile to me...

The Angel's story opens in a kitchen...well, not that kitchen, exactly, but a slummy area of Manhattan here called "The Devil's Playground." Avoiding real life place names allows the writer some latitude for swapping out the poverty that really defined the Clinton neighborhood and replacing it with mob corruption.

The mob has a new enforcer named Butch, a giant (from panel to panel his height seems to vary between 8'-12') that appears to be bulletproof. Now, my first thought was to stat Butch as an ogre and bullets just can't get past his decent Armor Class; but later, when armed militias start patrolling the streets searching for him and meet Butch, they throw "machines guns, revolvers, rifles, and grenades" at him with no effect. That means Butch has to be an evil superhero with some major defensive-buffing powers, possibly as good as Invulnerability. For some reason, though, the Angel's punches make Butch fail a morale save and flee. Is Butch confused, as the narrator says, or is he aware that the duration is about to end on his buffing power?

Somehow, Butch's mob is raking in $5 million a day, though we're given no explanation as to how that's possible.

Butch dies when he plows through an exterior wall on an upper floor and falls, perhaps no more than 40'.

In the Sub-Mariner's story, Namor draws a line -- he's fine with war and killing, but won't abide any nation preventing the delivery of food or medicine to other nations. To show the world how much that bothers him, he's going back to Antarctica to summon an army of sub-mariners and wipe out all the warring countries.

So Namor swims back -- that's over 8,300 miles from New York City, or over 9,000 miles from the English Channel, depending on where he actually was last issue. That's a lot of stamina, or another example of the Teleport through Focus power.

In Antarctica, we see more of the Sub-Mariner's kindgom, The palace is carved out from an anchored iceberg. The realm is ruled -- not by a king, but by an emperor. The emperor has a "court of three," who could themselves be king-vassals of the emperor, and perhaps one of them is brother to Namor's mother. The emperor is held to be a holy figure.

The mermen who are not half-human like Namor and Dorma have large saucer eyes and catfish mustaches, They appear to be blue-skinned, but Namor is colored blue when underwater too.

What power does Namor have over the Emperor? Intervening in the wars of the surface world is apparently against the rules of the empire, yet the Emperor breaks the law and gives Namor carte blanche to do just that. In a week, he has a fleet of "hundreds" of submarines that can also fly via steam jets, and fire steam weapons (instead of direct hits, the weapons create hot clouds of steam and the victims are driven into the clouds).  The metal of their hulls has a "repellent quality", whatever that means. Magnetic repulsion? Probably means a low AC for the planes.

Namor, normally happy to parade around in trunks, wears a full-dress uniform while commander-in-chief of his naval air force.

The narrator makes some rather hard-to-believe assertions, like the aerial-subs move at the "speed of light" and Namor can telepathically communicate with the other ships (is it that hard to use a radio?).

"Great sharks!" is Namor's next colorful exclamation.

(Read at Marvel Unlimited.)

Crackajack Funnies #19 - pt. 2

This is still Stratosphere Jim...

The trophy transportation section in the Hideouts & Hoodlums Basic book has a list of upgrades to vehicles that qualify them as trophy items, and one of them is being bulletproof.

Heroes at any level might think about setting up a hideout for themselves. Here's some sound advice on picking a location with a hard-to-reach entrance, concealing the entrance, and stocking the hideout.

At the rate I go through months' worth of comics now, it takes way too long for me to come back around to Wash Tubbs. Here, we learn that a swanky nightclub could clear $450 in profit in two nights.

You also have to get past the racist nickname of Lucifer for a black man.

And then there's the large-scale ride-on train -- my dad works on those! (true story)

Two things to point out here. Captain Easy could probably handle these racketeers a lot quicker than Wash is, but Wash chooses to do it on his own because combat is dangerous and innocent people could be hurt. That is a Lawful Hero.

Secondly, when Wash has an important decision to make, he gets five different opinions offered to him, four of them from clearly non-Hero characters under the Editor's control. The Editor has to be careful in situations like this not to appear to be guiding the player(s) by making one option sound much better than the other options on the table.

This is Clyde Beatty, who I've already learned was a real person who just happened to get his own comic strip. What I took away from this page is a) not even a cruise ship is too unlikely a location to run into a lion that needs taming, and b) if you spray big cats with water, they need to make morale saves.

Bolton's got a map! I wonder if they would consider opening the flood gates and broadening the Waterfall of Tahar, to wash away the climbing attacking forces...?  Let's see!

Woo, called that one!  But -- what? "My job is done"? You weren't even the one who opened the flood gates, Bolton, all you did was stand around and watch!

A new plane is a pretty sweet reward for him...but I guess it's like giving the player who's Hero was knocked down to 1 hp and couldn't do much all session a full share of treasure.

More evidence of how "bandit" almost always means Hispanic. Other than that, the scenario of rescuing a prisoner from the bandits is much more interesting to me than a "defeat the bandits" scenario.

That is one risky rescue plan; it apparently all came down to Jack beating the bandits at initiative. Otherwise, Whitey was going to have to survive a hail of bullets before that tear gas gun went off.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Amazing Man Comics #7 - pt. 2

Dinosaur Forest puts forward an intriguing premise -- what if dinosaurs were common enough still that you didn't need to find a lost world setting to find dinosaurs? Here, Jay and Ronald are already following dinosaur tracks in South America as if that was the most natural thing in the world.

The cliche of the whirpool is to see them big enough to swallow a ship, but this is a small whirpool only large enough to unsettle a raft.

The crocodile is pretty unsettling too, but like all opponents in comic books it seems easily dispatched. And with just a knife, no less.

This page makes the knife fight even more extraordinary, as the crocodile is now a "great crocodile" -- which I'm guessing means larger than normal.

This is the second allosaurus in comics.

Or is it an allosaurus? Because that's clearly a triceratops, and the two species didn't live at the same time. But then, we're also imagining that it's normal for them to still be around in 1939, so...

This is from a story called "The King of the South Seas." It posits that a pearl diving company could make $25,000 a month collecting pearls.

The manservant is a pretty awful stereotype, but the lookout is a strong ethnic character. Lookouts will turn up as a mobster-type in H&H later, though it's cut from the 2nd edition basic book for now.  Maybe it needs to have some skill or ability about signalling others over long distances.

That looks like an autocannon/anti-aircraft gun/heavy machine gun on the deck of the pirate ship -- and, by my research, there seems to have been little difference between those three circa 1939. I mention it because anti-aircraft gun is getting an entry in the H&H 2nd ed. basic book.

Three stories in, we not only get an origin story for Iron Skull, but we finally find out when his stories take place. This is a pretty bleak alternate future, where WWII dragged on at least until 1950, and it is now the "future" of 1960.

The Iron Skull sounds like a cyborg, but "android" works just as well and is the race he'd be in H&H. Other than him, color TV is the only other advanced technology so far...

In the future, you don't need to pick up a source from multiple directions to triangulate its source -- you just use a radio direction finder. They must be hard to come by, though, since Iron Skull has one but the police force doesn't.

Iron Skull is a superhero, but he doesn't wreck his way in, even though he easily could. Going for stealth, he uses a window like a mysteryman.

I need to give at least one of the robot types in H&H a self-destruct option.

It only takes Iron Skull minutes to recover, though it isn't clear if he was unconscious or just stunned somehow.

Giants being create-able through mad science needs to be reflected in their mobster stat entry.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #45 - pt. 1

A little tip here from The Masked Pilot's men -- there was an air bureau you could contact to look up a pilot's registration number, confirming who a plane belonged to, or that the number he gave you was fake.

From the map, we learn that the Masked Pilot is in Texas. We also see that it's fairly easy for him to get help/helpers from the Coast Guard.

Now here's a new one. I've talked a lot about disguise -- Heroes disguising themselves, mobsters disguising themselves -- but what about Heroes disguising their planes?  Does this warrant the same save vs. plot mechanic here? Should it be an aviator stunt to camouflage a plane so that it's findable only like a concealed door?

Also note how long they wait for a wandering encounter.

From Gangbusters, we learn that apprentice robber is a low-paying job -- $10 a week. That's only 200 apples!

Apprentice robber is a position that lasts two years.

Note that carrying two guns gives the young hoodlum no advantage -- he's still losing the fight with the beat cop.

Thrown canned goods as improvised missile weapons? Let's say 1-3 points of damage.

We return here to The Mystery of Mr. Wong Featuring Boris Karloff.  Here, Wong manages some sleight of hand, pocketing a clue in a crowded room with no one noticing. Now, that's a pretty advanced skill and I would give it a 1 in 6 chance of success normally. Though, everyone seems to be looking away at the moment so, if there was some diversion going on, I would double his chances.

In both movies and comic books, characters seem to be able to react to guns being fired from hearing them fired. Of course, science tells us the bullet has already passed you before you hear the sound, so Wong is here dodging a second shot, not the first. Also note that the bushes will only serve as soft cover (-1 to hit) -- unless he drops behind them completely to hide, in which case he is effectively invisible and -4 to be hit.

Our first giant turtle?

Note how much more quickly the Hurricane Kids can fix a boat than the Professor on Gilligan's Island...

I like how this isn't just a giant shark, or even a giant prehistoric shark, but the "father of all sharks".

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Feature Comics #26

I've talked before about how easy disguise needs to be in Hideouts & Hoodlums, and how easy it should be for Heroes to disguise themselves as mobsters. But here we see how easy it is for mobsters to disguise themselves as mobsters too!

Captain Fortune stops to woo a maiden in the street. Because he's such a lady's man? No, so she'll be moved to lie about seeing him! Given the conventions of the genre, it should only take a positive encounter reaction result to get a fair maiden to do that for you.

From Mickey Finn we learn that you could make up to $10 a day selling brushes door to door.

The Clock and this thug/robber tell us that this lone mobster managed to net $250,000 over three robberies. That's an awful lot of money to leave in a hideout as recoverable loot. I've tried before to deal with a solid demarcation between recoverable loot and claimable treasure, but the line remains frustratingly blurry, particularly with Heroes of different Alignments.

Back when I first read this story, I thought "Oh, how unusual -- a mysteryman knows hypnotism!" It was the first indication (there will be more) that The Clock doesn't fit just the mysteryman class. It was also an early example that the mysteryman class was varied enough and led to my adopting the concept of stunts for them instead of set skills.

By now, though, I've read every kind of character practice hypnotism and it's not so big a deal anymore...

This is Rance Kean's strip, but the real star of this page is the sharpshooting outlaw Dirk Purdue who managed to shoot half the mustache off a man through an open window.

Now, there is the fact that this only happened to a supporting cast member, was not crucial to a combat or a life-or-death situation, and so the Editor could choose to hand-wave game mechanics in instances like these and just say that happened. However, doing this sets a precedent for "impossible shots" being possible in your game and players will ask to try the same things eventually.

I would require a natural 20 on the attack roll for an impossible shot like that (giving a generous 5% chance of success).

This is from a filler page called Off-Side.  I include it mainly for the gag on the right, which is what I feel like whenever people around me are talking about sports.

This is a well-equipped Charlie Chan, with a miner's helmet and gas mask, but even those aren't enough to save him from a cave-in. Cave-ins are tricky, mechanics-wise. The damage from the falling weight alone should be enough to render Charlie unconscious, and then the continuing damage from having that weight on top of him should kill him. Perhaps a generous Editor would allow two saves here -- a save vs. missiles to avoid the initial falling damage and a save vs. science to avoid the continuing damage (assuming the rubble all became miraculously balanced over him).

Here, Charlie beats a dynamite stick in initiative and gets the chance to toss it away; dynamite sticks get thrown at the end of the turn, ignoring normal procedure for missiles, and don't go off until their opportunity in the next turn.

It's unclear what Kirk is doing, but it seems he's shooting the second dynamite stick in mid-air. While not an impossible shot, I'd be inclined to make a dynamite stick thrown in the dark to be AC 2 or even 1...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Mystery Men Comics #4 - pt. 2

Rex Dexter is lucky that this large robot (copper or brass?) has such a terrible failsafe in it -- all you have to do is speak to it in Martian and it overrides any programmed orders it already had.

Richard Kendall is after Chen Chang again, or will be after this quick ride in a rickshaw. When he's clubbed on the back of the head and knocked out, the hoodlums seem to think it's reasonable to expect him to be out for only 20 minutes. That doesn't match with Hideouts & Hoodlums' recovery rules, in any version, so far.

This poison has a 10-minute onset time -- exactly 10, apparently. You would think Constitution might play a part in resisting the poison, maybe make the onset time more variable...but, to be honest, I don't think we need the extra mechanics for that.

Oh sure, I could bring up that this page has a "look over there!" tactic on it, requiring the guard to save vs. plot to avoid falling for it -- or is it just flavor text to explain how Richard won initiative even when the gun was pointed right at him?

And sure, I could just point out how dynamic the art is here, with figures flying around the panels almost like a wuxia film.

But no, my main interest is in the obscure word "portiere", for a curtain that hangs over a door.

Wing Turner is in South America, "among the head-hunters." Wikipedia tells me that there used to be headhunters in both Brazil and Peru. Fancy that!

I've written before about my article "Planes in the Sky: Aerial Trophies for H&H" in The Trophy Case v. 2 #8. I had 20 entries on the plane mishap table in that article, but none of them were "the feed line's jammed!"

"Horde" seems to apply to just five natives here. Some of the natives are armed with bows and spears, but my money's on the dude with a six pack who plans to beat Wing Turner to a pulp with a wooden club.

Assuming that sixty smackers means 60 dollars, Jake Bossen is actually offering Lt. Drake of Naval Intelligence an annual salary about 2.4 times the national average. Drake has to be thinking about that one twice!

Yeah, I'm not statting black widow spiders as a mobster type. I would consider the spider a poisonous trap, in this instance. Realistically, there would be little chance of death from a black widow spider bite -- +5 to save, maybe? A success save would mean only swelling, pain, cramping, and sweating.

We finally see Blue Beetle the way we're used to seeing him. Giving people special whistles with a distinctive sound may be good strategy -- if you plan to always stick to one area, always less than a mile away...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)