Detective Comics #37 - pt. 1

SPOILERS: This is the very last pre-Robin Batman story. 

One of the reasons I find the infallible Batman of today's comics so laughable is that he bears nothing but name and costume in common with this Batman, the Batman who gets lost and stops at a random house to ask for directions. 

In the house, a man is being tortured by three mobsters. Despite the fact that one of them gets the drop on the Batman with a pistol, the Batman is still able to go first and kicks him in the face hard enough to knock him into the mobster behind him. Two game mechanic things here: one is that there is no order of battle in Hideouts & Hoodlums, where missiles always go before melee. The Batman has won initiative, so the advantage of already pointing a gun at him disappears. The other point is the two attacks. This should only be possible if the Batman has levels in fighter and these mobsters have less than 1 Hit Die, or if he was a superhero using the Multi-Attack power. Neither should be the case here, since the Batman is obviously a mysteryman. There is one more area with some wiggle room, and if you recall the Batman's stats from Supplement IV you know I already used it; the Batman's signature move is hitting mobsters with other mobsters. This is actually borne out in the following panels; the Batman drops those first two with one kick, but it takes him two punches to drop the third one, possibly because that mobster had more hit points, but also possibly because the Batman no longer has as good an attack bonus against a single opponent. 

The first plot twist is that the tortured man, once freed, delivers a head blow that stuns the Batman (head blows are common enough that it is now a combat rule in 2nd edition). Because the Batman had already tied up the three mobsters, they are easy targets for the fourth man, Joey, when he uses a gun on them. If the tied-up men were Heroes, he would only get a +4 bonus to hit them (or at least the one who was only stunned and is awake already), but because these are just mobsters the Editor can handwave that and say they are each killed in one shot (as happens here).

The Batman's only clue as to where Joey went is that they all said they worked for a man named Turg. Later, Bruce Wayne remarks how uncommon that name is. No kidding, Bruce! Ancestry.com only lists six Turg families in Ontario, and none in the United States. But in this story, Bruce finds three in the New York City phone book and after visiting all three deduces the suspicious one is the one, Elias Turg, who opened a grocery store in a part of town without many houses in it. Most people would consider that a zoning issue, but to the Batman, it's a vital clue that turns out to be correct!

Later that night, the Batman barges into the upstairs office of the grocery store and finds Turg there with Joey and two more mobsters. He decides to intimidate them from the doorway first, spoiling any chance of a surprise attack. They are all 15-20' away, so the Batman can reach them easily for melee if he wants to, but this Batman doesn't feel infallible against four-to-one odds, so he turns off the lights and uses night-vision goggles. They aren't called night-vision goggles; the narrator calls it a "queer piece of glass," probably because the term "night-vision goggles" isn't in use yet. Night-vision devices are brand new on the battlefields of Europe, so new that I'm not sure the author (Comics.org credits Bill Finger) would even have heard of it yet and may have invented this idea independently.

After roughing them all up, the Batman does something I think is really clever; he pretends to leave and then hides before the lights come back on, so the mobsters will start to talk incriminatingly in front of him. It turns out, they aren't hoodlums but spies (or at least all of them but poor Joey, who they turn on and kill because the Batman called him out by name). 

En route to the piers to commit sabotage, Elias Turg splits off from the other spies and the Batman has to choose who to follow. He follows the other spies to the pier, where they are met by two more spies. Actually three more spies, because Carl (probably the lookout) is on the balcony of a building behind the Batman and gains a surprise attack (because he is standing separate from the others, he gets his own separate surprise roll). He drops a heavy sack full of ...something heavy on the Batman's head and it counts as a head blow attack, stunning the Batman again. Instead of just shooting him and killing him (which actually makes sense here, since they don't want to alert the ship they plan to attack), the spies put him in a sack and toss him in the water. Stunning has a very short duration and the Batman is able to cut his way out of the sack with a knife in his utility belt before drowning. 

When the Batman sneaks back up onto the pier, he switches to another favorite tactic of his, swinging on a rope to attack. It's very cinematic, but definitely would not improve his chance to hit. I think I talked about this before when he killed Jabbah this way and decided I might allow a +1 to damage for doing this, due to the additional momentum. 

Despite beating all five spies in melee combat, they still managed to start the moto launch rigged with TNT that will blow up the docked steamer that was their target. The Batman tells his feet to run like they've "never run before," perhaps burning his first stunt of the night to run faster so he can reach the end of the pier in time to jump on board. Once he's on board, the cutting of the ropes holding the steering wheel and turning the wheel in time takes four panels, but there are no game mechanics in play anymore to resolve this, only stated intentions.  

The story could have been over at this point, but there are two additional pages that seem rushed, as if tacked on. Joey had given the Batman the phone number for The Head (as in, the head of the operation) before dying, so the Batman finds out who's number that is and goes to his house. It's someone named Count Grutt and the Batman is either genuinely surprised or being sarcastic when he seems astonished that someone named Count Grutt is a foreign agent. Grutt is actually Turg without a disguise on (notice how the name is reversed; semi-clever, but if Grutt had gone by the name Smith, the Batman never would have found him). 

Grutt/Turg has super-strength, able to throw a sword across a room with enough force that it goes halfway through a door. Count Grutt must be a supervillain, buffed with ...Extend Missile Range? Then the Batman pummels Grutt until he's down to zero hit points. With his last punch, the Batman must have pulled his punch a little and transferred some points of damage into pushing Grutt back, because Grutt falls back into the sword, which kills him, since he just took more damage while at zero hp. The Batman doesn't seem concerned.

(Read in Batman Archives vol. 1.)

  

Feature Comics #30 - pt. 1

It's been a long time since we last checked in with Quality Comics' flagship title. Here, the Clock (sans mask) investigates how a car was tricked into careening off the road, and anticipates the movie Goldfinger by 24 years.

That the Clock wakes up after 30 minutes suggests that he was simply stunned and recovers 1-6 turns later, but the Editor has decided to make those 10-minute exploration turns (which the Editor can do, at his discretion).

Monogrammed cigarettes must have been a novelty item of decades past.

That's also quiet an expose in the newspaper, that the dead man was a FBI man with secret industrial mobilization plans on him. I bet the FBI was wanting to keep that a secret. Industrial mobilization was, of course, a real thing, and had been ongoing since Sept. 1939 in the U.S.

I've seen this in games before, paying kids to run messages for you. In a pre-modern age it can be more reliable than technology for communication, though it could put the kids in danger.

Panel 3 is a good example of how easy it is for Heroes to scale walls, even in dress shoes and tuxedos, while carrying canes in one hand.

This is Lena Pry and we haven't looked in on this comic strip in a dog's age. I include this bit because of the discussion of relief checks, which was another real thing. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land.

The Great Bear Lake is a real lake. It is the largest lake entirely in Canada, the fourth-largest in North America, and the eighth-largest in the world. Moose Creek is also real, running through Ontario.

There really is a Nugget City in the Yukon, but it's a RV park and, I suspect, doesn't date back as far as 1940. It's possible that "Nugget City" is a euphemism for the Town of Dawson, which was at the center of the Klondike Gold Rush.

This is Spin Shaw and Spin is in an unusual gaming situation that I've only seen once before in a Star Wars session; Spin is "grounded" by a captain who doesn't want him involved in the scenario, so part of the scenario becomes finding a way to get into the rest of the scenario. Here, Spin's player wisely finds a use for his plane that nothing else can do, forcing the captain's hand to let him take off. No dice rolls should be needed to judge a situation like this, and the player should certainly be rewarded for ingenuity.

Unlike Reynolds of the Mounted, which was surprisingly easy to place in the real world, San Luray seems to be entirely fictional. There actually is an archipelago called the Barren Islands -- but it's in Alaska, and it's very unlikely that this adventure takes place there. "Barren Islands" was surely meant to sound evocative, but also generic enough that they could be anywhere.

The cliche of the hollow statue that can be made to appear to be talking to its worshipers is as old as racism in adventure fiction. I include this example, though, because of the added details, like the density of the foliage concealing the entrance (find as secret door?), the fact that the entrance is a "queer opening" because it's much smaller than a normal door, and the shots of the interior show that the body has just one hollow column leading up to a small floored room in the head.

Eisner makes a point of showing us that Dollman is a good fighter at full-size to explain how he is still so capable at tiny size. Why I share this particular page, though, is for the use of "tomahawk" to describe a sap/blackjack. This may be purely a joke, as I can find no evidence that tomahawk was ever a slang term for a sap or blackjack.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Crackajack Funnies #21 - pt. 2

We're still looking at Wash Tubbs and, boy, there's an unsettling mix of realistic and cartoony violence in there -- which is actually pretty much my Editing style when running Hideouts & Hoodlums.

There are some interesting things going on here and on the previous page. From the previous page (I'll just summarize it for you), Frankie Slaughter beats up one of Wash's employees just to intimidate everyone present into not telling the police he was ever there.

Slaughter tries all the angles to get what he wants, as low as beating Wash half to death and threatening to do the same to his girlfriend. But he makes the mistake of trusting Wash is frightened enough to comply and doesn't send one of his boys with Wash to the bank.

Frankie Slaughter is a great villain name.

Wash, for his part, threatens Frankie with a gun (on the page I didn't share), but I was relieved to find out it wasn't loaded. Keeping the lease at the bank was very smart on his part.

Speaking of smart, Frankie again shows good tactics, trying to trick Wash into unloading the lease to a stranger, and then establishing an alibi (and having a secret exit from locations that aren't even his hideout!).

Red Ryder is knocked unconscious by the explosion. In D&D, when a PC wakes up, they can immediately get up and rejoin the battle with no ill effects (other than maybe still functioning at reduced hp). Here, Red is stunned for at least 1 turn after waking up; a more gradual transition to being fight-ready and something I'm considering adding as an optional rule now.

I'm normally far from a gun advocate, but if Red was looking to finish this fight most effectively, I think he would have gone with his gun rather than throwing sand in Carr's face. Apparently the sand gives him such an advantage that he easily wins the fight off-panel, so maybe I'm wrong? Let's review; how I would handle this is an attack roll, ignoring any armor but not DEX bonus or cover, then a saving throw vs science from the target. Failure means temporarily blinded and at a -4 to hit penalty for the next 1-4 turns. So, I guess that's a pretty good advantage, but not a sure win.

This has to be the most verbose feature I've reviewed yet for this blog, and I'm not even showing you the pages that are almost solid text. It's not really that complex a plot, but the author seems to think it is.

A monogrammed lace handkerchief and the smell of perfume are good clues, but the knife in the back is the best one of all and they don't even talk about it.

Noticing that someone else has the same initials is not a clue I would normally make someone roll for, expecting the players to catch it themselves. The smell of the perfume the players could not tell on their own, so for that I might allow an Intelligence check to recall it smelling the same; I don't see that being a skill, unless we treat perfume identification as a skill. There is generally a lower chance to make a skill check than an ability score check, so I guess it depends on how hard you think recognizing the perfume should be.

The Scarlet is an unusual name for a villain for two reasons: one, Scarlet isn't a noun, and two, you normally associate Scarlet with a female.

A fountain pen that shoots out stunning gas that can affect 1-2 people is a handy minor trophy item.

Smashing a window seems an unusual signal. What if The Scarlet had used bulletproof glass in his windows?

Complicating the story was the fact that Dorn's sister provided Ed with wrong information, and Dorn was purposely feeding people false stories to throw them off. Players need to be reminded sometimes that they can't trust all the information they receive in-character.

I'm not sure, but I suspect that "200 suspected cases of espionage a day" was just a guess and not a fact I could look

up and verify.

I never thought we'd be looking at Apple Mary again for adventure ideas, but a $5,000 reward to search for a missing item is a plot hook worthy of a fun treasure hunt.

From this page we learn that psychics charged $5, and a book can sell for as little as 50 cents (maybe from a used book store?).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #4 - pt. 3

I know, I left you with a real cliffhanger last time. Would the Golden Knight really climb down the well? Well, he does, and it's a way loonier adventure than you ever would have expected at the start of this story!

The well has become an entrance to the underworld, and a deep entrance it is! The drop to that ledge looks like it would have been at least 40', so it's a good thing he was most of the way there when the rope snapped. That the cave mouth is at the level of the ledge suggests that this is level 1, with at least one more level further down.

The first set encounter on level 1 is a giant scorpion! And not just a realistic giant scorpion, but one with tentacle-like legs, no apparent stinger, and spins webs like a spider! Look out, there's two of them!

"Horde?" I only saw two. I wonder how many were watching from a distance and then failed their morale save...

That the constrictor snake encounter comes so fast on the heels of the scorpion battle suggests to me that it was a wandering encounter, attracted by the noise of the first combat.

And then we get more violence against animals. Oh joy...

Lava boils at a temperature of 1,292-2,192 degrees F. If Golden Knight failed that extremely risky leap, he would be taking about 6-24 points of damage from the heat alone, plus should probably be bumped up higher for the toxic fumes and suffocation damage -- so let's say he's risking 8-32 points of damage.

The Editor has a choice of game mechanics for the actual leaping. There is a skill check (I would call that an expert skill check, for leaping that far in heavy mail), or a save vs. science, or even something unofficial like a Strength check.

Things get even crazier on this page, as our hero encounters winged people who, from a medieval perspective, must look an awful lot like angels, yet GK has no compunctions against trying to kill them as soon as they come towards him. On the next page, which I didn't bother sharing, GK acts like the winged men attacked him first, but it sure doesn't look like it on this page.

Moving on, this is Yank Wilson, Super Spy Q-4. Comics.org's experts put question marks by who did this one, and it does look like a quick fill-in job by someone in the Eisner shop, but I'm not sure who either.

We've got a really unusual hideout design here, with a castle built into the side of a cliff (you can see the front of it on the next page), a standalone spiral staircase around a tall column in a really tall laboratory, a skylight-covered hangar above the castle, and a back door exit from the hangar in the cliff behind the castle.








Super-explosives are a dime-a-dozen in comic books already, but what's new is that we know how much this one is worth.

Now, there's a few really weird things about this page, and not just the ridiculously high entrance to the castle. One is that Terro has the audacity to test out the explosive on the village that is basically outside the front door to his castle. I mean, he is taking zero steps to conceal his involvement here, particularly since he just flew a plane from the castle over the village in broad daylight.

But more strangely, Yank leaves Washington, D.C. for Terro's castle before the wounded have all been taken away and, as you can see on the next page, before Terro's guests have even had time to leave. How close is that castle to Washington, D.C.? Does Yank have access to Samson's transporter?

"What?! That's absurd! How could you follow the painfully obvious clues leading here?"

Yank folds like a house of cards. Critical hit? Chance of stun from head blow? It doesn't have to be a surprise attack because he swings at Yank from right in front of him.

Terro's aviator look is pretty cool, and unusual for a mad scientist.

"Pell mell" is a rare term meaning "in a confused, rushed, or disorderly manner."

Yank was only stunned, hence his quick recovery.

The 2nd edition rules for grenades includes a note about catching them before they go off.

It's a little convenient that Terro just had to gas up his plane before takeoff, but what really doesn't make sense is using it on Von Garoff. Isn't it more useful for spies to follow other spies than to kill them?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Prize Comics #1 - pt. 5

I haven't tackled a five-parter in a long time, but I had a lot to say about this issue.

We're going to pick up not long after where I left off with K the Unknown and we will, as usual, discuss it in terms of RPG game mechanics. As anyone who's ever read a previous post knows, I wrote the RPG Hideouts & Hoodlums and feel it does a spectacular job of  emulating the early history of comic books -- which I prove post after post on this blog.

And yet...K, getting stunned on the first hit by a thrown paperweight just doesn't match up with the hit point model of incremental defeat that H&H uses. It seems more like every hit has a random chance of delivering a stun. And, as I think about it, I see this all the time against bad guys and animals; only Heroes are usually incrementally defeated. And it does give me pause.

This page also highlights the importance of checking every mobster you defeat for disguises.

I'll give K this, the finale is worthy of a James Bond movie, with the hero and villain struggling upright on a speeding bobsled -- in fact, it predates the bobsled chase in On Her Majesty's Secret Service by 23 years!

I would think that two men grappling on a moving bobsled would wind up getting thrown off almost immediately, but in-game would be fine with giving each a save vs. science each turn to stay put, with a penalty to their save on the hairpin curve.

If Buck Brady of the F.B.I. seems science fictional, it's because of the absence of 1,000-dollar bills out there today. The U.S. government stopped making the bills by 1946, and finally recalled them all in 1969, so I've never seen one in my life.

I decided to share this page to talk about players choosing the direction of the scenario, because I read this I couldn't help but think, if this was a game I was playing, I would have had Buck follow the car rather than search her room. Now, if I was the Editor instead, I could leave a clue in the room telling the player where the old lady was going, and hopefully the player will get the hint that it's important to go to that location...

In this case, the Editor seems to have decided to move the planned encounter back to the hotel room. On one hand, it makes the villain seem smarter, guessing Buck was coming, but on the other hand it makes the Editor seem like he's unfairly using his knowledge of the player's actions against them. A way around that might be to let the player attempt to save vs. plot to find the hotel room abandoned.

Here is the oddly-already-a-cliche of the man dressed as an old woman, but with the switcheroo that the Hero then uses the same disguise.

I'm impressed by the daring involved in piloting your boat into a police boat just to get their attention. A mean Editor could well give you a chance of sinking the police boat, and then where will you be?

The final story we're going to look at is Storm Curtis of the U.S. Coast Guard. I'm showing you this page for two reasons: one, it's more fun playing a character with interests other than crime-fighting 24/7. Give your Hero a hobby, either one you already know about, or one you're willing to research.

And two, check out that grappling hook gun! This is much closer to what a real grapple gun looks like than what Batman has carried since the 1980s, though I'm not convinced grapple guns were that small and handheld in 1940; there could still be some artistic license at play here.

Paper and pencils are good things to find on a defeated mobster, as are cigarettes.

Note the use of "espy" in panel 2, a word I don't think was even in common usage then!

Those are really convenient clues to find in someone's pocket!

Personally, I find the chief spy encounter anticlimactic, but it's certainly surprising and good to pull on your players once.

I think it's amusing how Curtis sort of bumbled into this whole spy ring, like a player getting a lot of railroading help from his Editor.

Comics.org doesn't say who the artist is here, but I suspect Dick Briefer. What do you think?

(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.)

Wonderworld Comics #10 - pt. 3

Bob Powell really seemed to enjoy working on Dr. Fung, as he put his best early work into this feature.

Here we get to see a rare cutaway view map in a comic book panel, showing an underground tunnel complex. Note the tunnels at different levels, as evidenced in the last panel, where you have the dry level up above, and a water-lined tunnel at the lower level.

Hideouts & Hoodlums has lots of stats for giant fish in it already, but maybe there's room for one more. I'm not an expert on fish identification and the narration doesn't help. Is that a giant carp?

Dan's pretty funny.

I'm not sure how Dr. Fung knows the guard has the keys on him. Just a good guess? An expert skill check to notice things?

Dan is a 3rd-level fighter (sergeant) by now, which is how he's able to plow through sentries so fast with just his bare hands. He uses his surprise attack disarming the sentry. It appears that Dan can punch at the same time as being grappled, instead of grappling back, going against the grappling rules I wrote for 2nd edition. Stop that, Dan!

Sort of like the keys earlier, it seems like a big leap to say that a volcanic eruption is about to happen just because a subterranean river is getting warmer.

Powell must have become too busy in mid-feature, as we went abruptly from seven high-quality panels a page to this three-panel rush job. I can see what he was trying to do in the second panel, with the scientific accoutrements in the extreme foreground and the figures in the extreme background, but it also makes it look like the Chess Man is inside a giant glass sphere. Which is not a bad defense, if you know your opponents are coming in unarmed. Interestingly, Dan never bothered taking the sentry's rifle (or shirt).

I've seen lots of disarming attacks in comic books so far, but snapping a sweaty handkerchief in someone's face has got to be the most improbable yet. Maybe Karno has a flashback to being snapped with towels in gym class and freezes up. And then his guard is so shocked at Dr. Fung's sheer audacity that he does nothing to stop him. And then the other three guards are so shocked that the first guard was shocked that they don't bother attacking as Dan lunges at them (initiative rules are very loose in these situations for a reason).

Munson Paddock continues to set new artistic ground, this issue with his Tex Maxon feature. Note the creative way he illustrates a roundhouse kick in panel 2, a method that I've never seen duplicated since. And I love that insult in panel 4 -- "You insinuatin' snake!"

We've seen lots of examples of people recovering quickly from being temporarily stunned in comics -- so much so that I had to relent and put stunning rules in 2nd edition -- but this could be the fastest recovery in panel 2, as the outlaws revive while the fight is still going on and get back into it.

It's rare to see a comic book character stick around while the stolen loot is being identified, but the sheriff gives us a good excuse for why when he claims his own share "fer doin' th' work" -- which seems a likely excuse players would come up with.

This is Spark Stevens and, I'm curious, how Spark knows that those are secret Navy plans. I mean, maybe it's something super obvious and they say "TOP SECRET" across the top of them. He seems very sure of their authenticity at just a glance (skill check?).

It's interesting how they loosen the hinges first, to give them a bonus modifier to their open doors check. I wonder what they used on the screws, though -- their fingernails?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)