Slam-Bang Comics #1 - pt. 2

Okay, the planes going dead are explained (as if we needed it, as cliched as the rays are), but what we never get explained is how the machine guns have no effect. Bulletproof armor on the planes?

Also, take a look at the jowls on War Bird. In the Golden Age, a Hero could debut in his late 40s. 

It's nice that Von Kruhl was kind enough to write his note in English for us, despite being Serbian and writing this for Frenchmen to read.

Where is the searchlight that was on the front of the plane before? Perhaps more odd, what was holding it in place on that smooth surface?

I do like that, as hi-tech as Von Kruhl's forces are, it's an ordinary pair of binoculars that foils him.

We don't see enough of this tactic, where the hero sneaks into the enemy's hideout and, instead of engaging the enemy, wrecks their stuff. This makes especially good sense in the aviator genre.

"Look! A Frenchman!" Is the thinking there that only a Frenchman would be sabotaging their planes?

"Hammer-like blows" would normally be flavor text, except that it seems pretty clear War Bird is hitting them with a wrench, which would be heavy enough to do normal club damage.

You can probably guess that War Bird gets away and wins the day, so we'll jump into Jim Dolan. Jim is in the reporter hero genre, but with the twist that he's an editor.

The list of his past accomplishments seems like a set-up for starting him out with a brevet rank. It's also a pretty good list of scenario ideas you could add to a longer list, and the final panel illustrates the advantages of making the police chief your supporting cast (something I saw being put to good use in my last H&H campaign).

I'm not going to address everything on this page; we've talked about trip attacks and improvised weapons plenty of times. We could talk about movement and if rushing out the door should really be faster than standing up (hint: in H&H it's determined entirely by initiative rolls). But I'm mainly sharing this page because the mobsters are not only using hot irons as torture devices, but somehow have flaming hot irons. Did they soak those things in kerosene first? They look pretty fearsome; I might let them do 2-7 damage as melee weapons.

I've talked before about smoke and heat damage from trying to rescue in an arson scenario, but what's interesting here is that Jim spots a clue in the fire, when he clearly wouldn't have had time to do a search. This has to be a freebie from the Editor, as every skill check should take at least one melee turn, and in most cases should take one exploration turn. 

Does Jim have to roll to hit to land in the net? To truly be fearless, one would think he does, but it makes equal sense for the firemen to roll to hit him with the net, and as long as two of them succeed their rolls, they catch him. 

It's interesting that Jim doesn't know his Bible well enough to know the psalm without researching. His Editor could have spared him the trouble and let him have an Intelligence check to remember.

The clue seems like a bit of a stretch to me, though...

I'm not personally cool with Heroes holding guns on people's faces while interrogating them, but it does happen in games.

Swimming from the patrol board to the yacht is a smart tactic, giving him a chance at surprise he would have lost had the patrol board pulled up alongside the yacht.

We'll jump ahead to Lucky Lawton, this anthology's western feature. I could mention that the law was tougher in the Old West than many give it credit for; even in self-defense these two still have to make their case in court. Or I could mention that Pal can act without being ordered to, making me suspect that Pal the dog is actually being played as a Hero character. But what really catches my eye are the hashmarks on the wall of the jail outside the cells. What would the sheriff have been keeping track of like that, and couldn't do on a calendar...?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Science Comics #2 - pt. 2

We're still on Dynamo's story and, if you remember where we left off, Dynamo had just palmed off the entire scenario onto the FBI -- and now they drop it back in his lap where it belonged. There are arguments in gaming circles from both sides on the fudging issue. Is it right for the referee/Dungeon Master/Editor to fudge dice rolls, even if it's just to nudge the story along? Normally I would urge an Editor to fudge rolls sparingly, but when you need people to fail search results just so your player will go back and try, I think the fudging is worth it.

Here's a peculiar power. It looks like Dynamo has cast the magic-user spell version of Hold Person, but in addition, the victim is moved across the room as if under a Telekinesis spell. On one hand, the placement of the victim seems unimportant enough, in this instance, that it could just be flavor text. On the other hand, I could see a more powerful version of Hold Person that let's you choose where the victim is held at could be even more useful, like if you positioned the victim to block a doorway.

Speaking of more powerful versions of Magic-User spells...it seems like Dynamo is using the spell Shocking Grasp here, only he can use it more than once per spell.

Hoodlums almost never feel confident enough to make fun of the heroes in Golden Age comics, but here we have an unusual instance of a hoodlum making up a clever nickname for the hero.

Wow, okay, way to rub their failure in the G-Men's faces, Dynamo! But...you do know that you likely just killed all those bad guys you're turning in, right? I mean, if being immersed in molten gold didn't burn them to death, they must have quickly suffocated...

Now we're on Cosmic Carson. Here we have a twist on the "ray that freezes your motor" -- the ray that literally freezes your whole ship -- and I think we've seen this twist only once before (always in sci-fi stories).

We don't know how much time passes between panels 5 and 6, but it seems like Carson has just arrived at the planet and immediately spots the lost rocket. Unless he's locked onto a transponder signal or some such, there's no way it should be possible to visually inspect a planet in less than weeks.

Also curious is that Carson's rocket gets much closer to the planet before being detected than the first ship. Are the aliens relying on visual detection too?

Thermo-rays look an awful lot like acetylene torches. In future settings, you can rename ordinary objects and make them seem futuristic.

It's interesting how they capture Carson, but just leave him trapped for hours, as if the aliens got too busy and didn't have time to take care of him.












Late in the story, we're finally told that the aliens are skull-men. They don't seem to be native to this world, since we only ever see four of them. They must be pretty good in a fight, since it only takes three of them to capture Carson. I'd say they have at least 1+1 Hit Dice.

This is likely the earliest reference to Popeye in a comic book not to feature him. Popeye has been getting stronger by eating spinach since mid-1931.

Clever strategy for convincing the bad guys to destroy their own weapons, but most Heroes simply capture the raygun and turn it against the enemy. Instead, Carson is content to fight with his fists, and the prisoners he rescued have to use clubs.

The reference to skull-men being weak doesn't jive with how they took down Carson earlier.

"No one will miss them, so it's okay that we killed them! Besides, they were weak!"

Hey, Carson, you're free now -- you can put a shirt back on!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Science Comics #2 - pt. 1

Now we come back around to Fox Comics and what was surely their weakest anthology, Science Comics. One look at the Eagle and his comical get-up that makes his antecedent, Black Condor, look positively conservative in comparison should tell you all you need to know about what I think about Science Comics. That said, we can always glean something useful from even the worst of comic stories.

Like on this page, we have a television able to view distant images without any camera in that location. It seems like a lot of heroes and villains have invented these, as impossible as they are (at least until we have Star Trek-level technology), and yet...what if there was a mysterious seller of these items, targeting specific recipients? A time traveler, perhaps? What starts out as just bad science could wind up being an intriguing plot hook!

Don't forget to roll for wandering encounter checks, even if just traveling between points A and B. No need to get them to B too quickly (unless you really don't want that scenario to run more than one session).

It shouldn't be hard to spot what the pilot does wrong here. Had he simply left his cockpit shut, the Eagle would have been powerless to do anything but stand on his wing. The pilot could have gone into a roll, to smack the Eagle with the wing. Or tried to slow down and turn so that the propellers come back and tear him apart.

Sometimes a player is just going to do something really stupid, like dive-bomb the bad guys in clear daylight from a great distance. Then, as Editor of the game, it's up to you to decide -- do you let his hero suffer the consequences and have the mobsters be armed? Or do you let him off easy and say not one of them has a weapon?

Nice bold font on that title!

The unnamed fort where the gold is kept is almost surely Fort Knox.

Now we go from a hero who doesn't wear enough clothing to one who wears too much.

This is also the most elaborate "flavor text" to go along with searching for secret doors I've ever seen. I like behind that giant block is just a little recessed space with an exposed lock.

That's a really long tunnel; I believe the closest stone quarry to Fort Knox is 41 miles away (where Quarry Road is). This is why authors like to use fictitious sites in their stories, so guys like me can't look this stuff up and fact check them.

Traveling on a beam of light is some funky science, but something that is fast becoming a trope in the superhero genre (Steel Sterling rides electromagnetism as well through the air). The important thing is that your flavor text for explaining how your powers work doesn't have to make a lot of sense.

There seems to be a plot inconsistency between pages; in the last page we learned that the gold was being broken into nuggets to conceal in with the quarried stone, but on this page the gold is still in ingot form.

This strikes me as really weird, that a Hero would find out where the villains' hideout is, but then send the authorities to handle the villains instead. I could see, if the player was meta-gaming, and thought the hideout was going to be too tough for him alone to handle, that he would recruit some federal men to come with him. But to then not come with them...?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Champion Comics #5 - pt. 1

After a long time away we come back to the first Harvey Comic and the continuing adventures of The Champ. This is a nice first page, with just a little recap, and launches us right into some action where the last chapter left off -- but I'm not sharing this page for any of that. I'm sharing it share with you the unusual word "wetting." It means the act of making something wet, and usually applies to urination, but not always and clearly doesn't here.

The guy with the motorboat is just a handy wandering encounter.

This is the first and, as far as I know, the last mention of La Grange, Illinois in any comic book.Curiously, there was never an airport in La Grange, so why this relatively obscure town got name-dropped, when there were plenty of towns with airports near Chicago, like Evanston, Park Ridge, and Wheeling, that could have been named instead, is a mystery to me.

Hideouts & Hoodlums has no guidelines for learning skills; all Heroes are meant to be naturals in any subject the moment they make their first successful skill check.

I'm amused by this comic book logic. "It's okay that the Army is giving me a fighter plane to use over U.S. soil, because I'll have an Army Reserve pilot with me and I've been deputized by a local police chief." This is so crazy, and yet so perfectly encapsulates the "anything-can-happen" feel of the Golden Age of Comics.

I wish I could identify this fighter plane. It looks realistic enough that it probably based on a photo reference.

We never do get an explanation for why the Champ's hunch turns out to be right. I would have thought that, 24 hours later, the blimp would be miles away instead of sitting there, hoping for a rematch.

Rays that can stop motors are a dime a dozen in these early comics and should have the best chance of being encountered of any mad science invention. But the real icing on the cake here is being able to broadcast onto your enemy's radio to taunt them as you're killing their motor. And then have your men take potshots at them before they plummet to their deaths, just to rub it in!

I particularly like this page. Rescuing people off a mountain in a blizzard might seem like a subplot that takes The Champ in a totally different direction, but put the scientist he needs to talk to in that blizzard and suddenly it becomes an important complication in the main plot. The Editor, just like a good writer, needs to carefully plan the placement of his characters.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but The Champ is an interesting bridge between the sports genre and the superhero genre. The Champ seems to be able to do anything he sets his mind to, but within the confines of sports (and aviation also, apparently).

Game mechanically, though, the easiest way to explain super-skiing is with the stunts of the Mysteryman class. Another possibility is a Strength check to ski while holding someone, followed by Dexterity check for each crevasse and gully.

Searching for concealed things in the sky is more difficult than you'd think. It seems like they get a new roll to spot the blimp every 1,000 feet.

How does The Champ know the "infernal ray" will set off grenades? Wouldn't they more likely not function, like motors?

Climbing the dangling cable isn't anymore difficult because of how high they are, but it certainly would end the campaign for him if he fell. I do think there needs to be a common sense maximum possible damage limit, if you take this much damage you're dead even if it's not a deathtrap scenario, though rather than having a set amount in the rules I'd rather that be left to the Editor's discretion.

This first panel makes me wonder if it should be an optional rule to let the player decide if he wants to take physical damage or be moved back a number of feet from the combat. I would very rarely allow this, but I could see it being a good thing for keeping a solo game going.

Panel 2 has me confused, though. How exactly is The Champ trapped in the flaming gondola? It looks like the fire is mostly in front of him, licking a little bit at his flanks, but not keeping him from running out onto the catwalk at all.

Should explosives do more damage on a direct hit? Something to consider.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Crackajack Funnies #21 - pt. 1

It feels like forever since I last reviewed a Dell Comic, so it's pretty exciting to come back around to Crackajack Funnies and all the comic strip reprints here.

First up is Don Winslow of the Navy. I always share a page that shows a code in use, but this one also shows that a code stencil is a random item you might pick out of a hoodlum's pockets someday.

 After that stirring anti-war speech, Admiral Warburton uses "scotch" as a verb in a way I'm not familiar with. This use is defined as "decisively put an end to."

It's also real handy, being given an assignment by your commanding officer, and finding out the hard work of getting started has already been done for him. This makes a lot of sense in a comic strip format, when things have to move quickly, or a home campaign when you don't have many hours to play per session.

Innocent soul that I am, I had to look up "half-caste" to see if that was an actual thing. It's just another way of saying "half-breed," or "a person whose parents are of different races." Yeah, it's pretty racist.

The main reason you're seeing this page, though, is for the idea of tucking your secret notes into the visor of your hat. Noticing the thickness of the visor and thinking that's suspicious enough to investigate is like rolling a 1 for a secret door.

I'm not going to make you look at very much of Looney Luke this time, as it's really insulting towards American Indians.

There are some peculiar features to this page worth pointing out. One is Luke going all the way back to the 14th century to meet Indians; I wonder how Wingsmith happened to choose that century.

Despite these appearing to be Plains Indians, they have a mix of teepee and pueblo housing.

I don't think this is right, Indians practicing mummification. Indian mummies have been found, but mummified through natural processes. The most famous may be the Spirit Cave Mummy found in Nevada -- but that was in 1940, and these reprints usually run two years behind their original newspaper runs. So I wonder what earlier mummy was found that inspired this strip.

Interrupting the melodrama of Myra North is this explanation of a verbal code between mobsters. Myra was even nice enough to write out the explanation for us!

For a feature with "stratosphere" in the title, it's surprising to find them exploring caves this month.

In Hideouts & Hoodlums, you don't have to be a dwarf or gnome to detect sloping passages (I would make it a basic skill check).

The science here isn't terrible -- it is most likely that the Native Americans originated in Asia, maybe 20,000 years ago. The big question is, would primitive people from the stone age have been able to carve out a tunnel that smooth and carve idols like that? Probably not.

It takes them a few days to build a shack (how handy that their plane was full of nails!). It takes them almost a week to repair a radio transmitter. Useful to know if I ever revise my inventing things rules.

This feature went from cave exploring to an aerial dogfight so fast I think I have whiplash!

A cowling is the removable covering of a vehicle's engine, most often found on automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, and on outboard boat motors. On planes, cowlings are used to reduce drag and to cool the engine.

Ah, Roy Crane, how I've missed you!

Here we learn that Flo's skirt is just the right length. I mean -- we learn that it's a good idea, if you're a hero running a business, or just staffing your secret lair with ordinary people, to wire-tap your own phones in case one of your own people turns disloyal. Boy, that Roy Crane art is distracting!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Zip Comics #2 - pt. 5

Mr. Satan returns and, expectations aside, he's still a good guy! Ed Ashe's artwork here is growing on me. I love the cryptic letter-plot hook and the use of shadows on this page. There's a real sense of menace here, despite the fact it looks suspiciously like the monster has a periscope. Can this story live up to the art...?

Actually, things are going great halfway through page 2. They start to go weird when Mr. Satan, wondering why Mrs. Heaslip locked Blake's door, decides he'll get the answer by investigating at the pond, rather than following her, or just saying, "Hey, Mrs. Heaslip! Why did you lock Blake's door?"

Satan is lured out onto the lake by a scream. First his canoe is capsized (I skipped showing you that page) and then the Monster tries to grapple him and misses. Rather than surface right away, Satan dives deeper to escape the Monster...in its natural element. That's a creepy third panel, with the three corpses floating in the whirlpool. Satan either makes a save vs science or a Strength check to pull free from the whirlpool (I would accept either mechanic).

It seems curious to me that he can see the three scientists clearly underwater, at night, but he can't see the Monster, but I suppose this is bound to happen sometimes from random search rolls.

The "bomb" looked like a grenade (I skipped that page too) and while it isn't explained to us why it went off too soon, the implication is that his wife rigged it to happen to kill him.

I think this is the first mention of the radium ray, unless I missed it in there somewhere. It's hard to believe that monster costume would fool anyone; Scooby Doo villains get more convincing monster costumes than that.

The motive of the affair is surprisingly adult.

It may seem ridiculous to suggest there can be a newly discovered planet, but remember that Pluto was not discovered until 1930, and for many years afterwards people wondered if there might not be more planets further out. The Mount Wilson Observatory in California was the largest telescope in the world in 1940, unless this is a fictional rival.

It's pretty hard to take "Stargaze" seriously as a surname; it must be a nickname?

Every time someone calls out for help anywhere, Zambini's "radioscopic" mind picks it up? Is he hearing voices constantly, then? Although, it actually says "any" distress calls, not "all." So maybe it's random or, more likely, happens whenever the Editor wants to drop him a plot hook.

His first cast spell must be a reverse of Word of Recall, where the spell teleports you from home to where ever you sense danger.

Some sort of low-level Untying spell, or simply Unseen Servant?

Oh boy...now, magic-user comic books tend to always err on the side of the ridiculous...but the magic tree that grows over 3 billion miles tall overnight is waaaaay crazy. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the tree is made of glass? That's not even flexible! How did this make sense to the people who made this?

The best part of this story is the glass men, living robots made of glass, hard to surprise because of their telescopic eyes, and immune to heat and fire.

Maybe the second best part is the name Zambini's Shower Ring, which seems like a great name for a spell. It may be a unique spell too, as I can't think of any Resist Fire 5' Radius spells out there -- which this seems to be, with some flavor text added.

It almost goes without saying that Zambini casts a Polymorph any Object spell in this story. H&H really needs a low-level version.

The glass men are called Inferians here, which does seem like a better name.

It's ...interesting how Zambini chooses to polymorph the Inferian into a hunky guy in short shorts. Is this for his benefit or the girl's? We never do learn the girl's name. Apparently the radius of Zambini's Shower Ring is so narrow that there was no room for their prisoner, and Zambini had no problem with handing out a death sentence, even though the Inferian cooperated.

Is that a fern in the king's chamber? How would any vegetation grow on this planet?

Will Zambini survive the lava flow? Of course he will. He's a golden age magic-user; he'll probably turn all the lava into butterflies or something.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)