Rocket Comics #2 - pt. 2

We're still on the Phantom Ranger and so are all the bad guys. We have a Lion King-like deathtrap here, where the hero is put in the path of a stampede. Will Demon reach him in time and get him out?

What a shock, he made it! There's an interesting thing about panel 2, where dragging him across the ground loosened the ropes. Did he take damage, and the damage wrecked the ropes? How much damage should it take to wreck something? I can't imagine being dragged doing more than 3 points of damage, so 3 points of damage = chance of wrecking at the doors category?

Now we're jumping into Red Roberts, the Electro Man, where a random traffic accident leads to a startling discovery. But, in between, Red uses what appears to be the spell Poof! to emerge from his car, and takes down the two sailors with what appear to be four Magic Missiles. It is unclear, from both this page and the next, if Red's electricity rendered them unconscious or killed them, or if Red even cared either way. 

Anyway, it's interesting to think of a hi-tech superhero being statted as a magic-user, but I think it fits because so many of the standard superhero tropes are missing, as well as his abilities being better statted with known spells than powers.

Now this one is curious. Red appears to be using Teleport through Focus, the power that heroes like the Flame use to move quickly. For the Flame, it's to anywhere there's fire, where as here it's to anywhere there's electricity (which is basically everywhere). 

But there seems to be something else going on here too. There is no reason for Red to have intentionally chosen this particular room in this particular building; he just seems to show up at random right where a plot hook character is waiting for him. 

So, if you're not actively trying to get to a Point B, but just anywhere from Point A, should that even count as a use of your power, or is that just flavor text? Because if he just kept randomly walking in any direction, eventually he could have wound up somewhere else the Editor could have placed this encounter.

I'm going to take this first panel as more evidence of Magic Missile spells being cast. Normally it is dangerous to cast missiles into a melee situation, but if he is using the auto-hit method of the MM spell, he doesn't have to worry about hitting this girl. 

Wrecking the guns seems like a superhero mechanic again, but I've already included a wrecking spell into the game for situations just like this, when a character who otherwise appears to be a magic-user is able to wreck things.

I like it when bad guys have names that make it obvious they are bad guys. This guy in the brown suit is Stumpy Jake, which isn't particularly nefarious-sounding, but his colleagues that you don't see pictured here are Blackie Skull and Bones Wilson. This naming convention also extends to boats, so if you ever come across the S.S. Ghost, you just know it's going to have bad guys on it. 

I'm not sure, but I think we once read a story with opium stuffed in fish before. I can't verify this, but it's likely from a pulp fiction story that both comic book authors stole from.

To keep from embarrassing Red, I spared him from showing you the page where he's knocked unconscious by a net-full of fish landing on his head. 

That alone isn't actually all that unusual for a comic book hero -- but what is really unusual is being drugged with opium afterwards. In a Hideouts & Hoodlums scenario, this could solve the problem of superheroes being able to wreck themselves out of deathtraps too quickly, but here Red seems to instantly recover from the opium as soon as he regains consciousness. 

The story also tosses away all sympathy we had for the Chinese prisoners when they willingly agree to torture Red for the bad guys. 

I kind of like how this story completely skips over the hitting that happens between panels 1 and 2. 

I'm less inclined to accept this use of teleport as flavor text, since it is not only an intentional destination, but bypasses the rest of the hideout around Scarface's ...living room, I'm guessing. My question is, how does Red navigate the wires? Does he have some kind of instinctive telelocation power - and does that need to be its own power? - or is he somehow able to eavesdrop on phone operators and navigate the system that way...?

When your master criminal jumps out a window to his death - that's a really botched morale check.

 

And what is up with those last panels, where the dialogue takes place in captions? That's just weird and confusing to read.

Lastly, we're going to take a peek at the next story, about the villainous Steel Shark (it's one of those features named after the recurring villain). 

I don't know what it was about television at the time, but it seems like most every comic book writer wanted to come up with their own name for it. Televisions already were a thing by 1940, though they had not caught on to widespread use yet. Did these writers think the word "television" wasn't going to catch on either?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Prize Comics #2 - pt. 1

Oh boy. We're visiting with Power Nelson again in his Buck Rogers-esque "future" of 1982 and, boy, the racism practically jumps off the page and pokes you in the eye. 

The "bonk heads" attack sees a lot of action in the early comic books, which makes it frustrating that it's hard to model with the Hideouts & Hoodlums combat rules. This could be the Multi-Attack power for superheroes, or it could be grappling one opponent and then using the first one as a clubbing weapon against the other in the following turn. 

This might be the first time we've seen a gun backfire against its holder. This is even harder to model in the rules and is likely just a freebie to the player. 

These stratosphere freighters look awfully un-flightworthy to me. What keeps them from rolling in flight? 

It's hard to say how terrific a leap that is. It seems that Nelson is higher than the skyscrapers, so this could be Leap II. The steel plates on top of the plane probably wreck as if a generator, though this could be "futuristic" steel and wreck one level higher.

It was tough to say what the raygun did, but we get some clues here about them being heat rays. If it is, that means Nelson is buffed with the Fire Resistance power here.

Ugh...Prince Ugi can't be very good at piloting if his fighter can't outmaneuver a freighter. Nelson might be out-piloting him in skill checks despite rolling at a penalty, or maybe he is high enough in level to have a stunt (higher-level superheroes will get those in the Advanced H&H Heroes Handbook, if I ever get it done).

The result of the wrecking things seems plausible, given its a heat ray.

The first three panels are good here, with Nelson improvising a weapon and coupling it with a buffing power (Extend Missile Range -- but at which level? We can't tell the distance from these panels) to solve the problem. 

The rest of the page is crazy. A planetoid/giant meteor just happens to show up out of nowhere for the fighter to crash into? That should be like a 1 in 1,000 chance on a wandering encounter chart, at best.

More crazily, the planetoid comes into our atmosphere -- and then leaves, like some kind of boomerang meteor.

Take a careful look at these first two panels. Although it's attached to something (a recharger on his belt maybe?) by wires, Nelson is using a pocket sending-receiving set -- a cellphone. 

Again, the rest of the page is crazy, or let's say deeply flawed, at least. If the gun is designed to fire a message to Mars, but it would atomize Nelson, what would the message be made out of...?

Okay, I can't let this page go without ranting. 

Oh, you won't be blown to bits because you...can breathe? In what way does that make sense? Are empty lungs his Achilles' heel? 

And what is he packing his robot-repair kit in? The atomizing-proof shell the message for Mars was going to be shot in? 

And what kind of space-gun is fired by pulling a lanyard? Is it a gun or a convention-goer?

Yeah, I've had enough of that. We're going to jump into the next feature, Ted O'Neil the Barnstormer. Here we see that a low-level aviator might have to take dangerous jobs for only $100.

Whoa -- I knew we had a tight southern border for people coming north over it, but I wonder if we ever really had a time when we would shoot down American planes trying to fly into Mexico? 

(Scans courtesy of ComicBookPlus.)

Colossus Comics #1 - pt. 3

We're back and this is still "The Gold of Gartok," an incredibly poorly drawn comic book feature, but one with some interesting concepts in it, as we discussed last time.

Here, we see another example of early superheroes having no problems with killing, as the Tulpa picks up a guard and casually chucks him down a well to die. 

Why would grey eyes be forbidden? 

Lama Tsang has some variant of the Message spell that can reach someone in their dreams -- though, since this was cast between two non-Hero characters, this sort of detail can be hand-waved as flavor text.

Note the use of hourglasses to synchronize, when watches are not available.

I don't have anything game mechanic-related to say here, but -- what a master negotiator Shia is. He's staring down the barrel of a sub-machine gun pointed at him, and he still manages to convince the good guy to bribe him to surrender! And not just with loose coinage, but an entire bag of gold. It makes me think about if I ever wanted to play a campaign where all money transactions were handled by trading bags of gold, ala the Talisman board game. It would certainly take the place of nuanced price lists for equipment; it would be more like 1 bag of gold = all your starting equipment.

Huh. I guess I thought of something game mechanic-y to talk about after all...

I love how comic book villains think. "Our bullets are bouncing right off him -- let's try our fists instead!" Though, to be fair, it's possible that the mobsters are trying to overbear and pin the Tulpa -- we really can't tell anything for sure from this terrible art -- and maybe they think he is invulnerable, but not super-strong. 

I would call Wolfgang's bluff, Bart. If being buried under an avalanche of bags of gold didn't set off that vial, it's probably not nitroglycerine he's holding. 

Now we're jumping right into the next feature, Blond Garth... you know, to distinguish him from all the other Garths in the South Seas. It's your typical white savior racist fare, but transported from Africa to the South Seas. I share this page to illustrate that you can expect your enemies to have concealed weapons hidden anywhere -- even in their loincloths. "Is that a dagger you've got in your pocket, Blond Garth...? Oh...I guess it was a dagger..."

In case you're wondering, he's going to shove the shell into the shark's mouth and make it choke; a pretty risky gamble and one I'm having trouble coping with game mechanically. I guess...he has to roll to hit, then make a save vs. plot to make the opportunity for the choking to happen, which forces a save vs. science for the shark to resist choking. Game mechanically, you'd think he would have been better off just punching the shark, but I agree this makes for a more suspenseful page than that.

This is a ...honestly, I can't tell with this issue when I'm looking at filler or if I'm looking at a feature. This is called Ruggey and it is, mercifully, the last feature in this book. It seems to be someone's riff on Will Eisner's Archie O'Toole, about a simple man who becomes a king. I share this page because, well, it's still early in 1940, and making fun of Hitler is not a full-time occupation in the funny pages yet. This one is pretty subtle, but promising you peace while stealing your sandwich seems like a "ha ha, that's Hitler for you" kind of joke that would sit well with me if I didn't have future knowledge that he was also committing genocide on the side.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Colossus Comics #1 - pt. 1

Wow! I have been reviewing comic books from only the cover date of March 1940 since August 2019. It's hard to believe it's taken this long, and makes me a little fearful of how long it's going to take to get through April! But now we are on the final issue available to me from this month, the one and only issue of Colossus Comics from Sun Publications (one of only two comic books they ever produced). It reads like a cheaper knock-off of Planet Comics...but I'm getting ahead of myself!

First we get a glimpse of the 27th century. We know from this page that mankind has colonized the solar system at least as far as Jupiter's moons by then, and that we've gone back to manned, moon-bound telescopes instead of automated satellite telescopes. Because this is the second attack of the Plantaliens -- vicious-looking Mr. Potato Heads with spaghetti-like green tentacles -- we get a "oh no, not again!" reaction and not a "we've finally encountered other life in the universe!" reaction. So we don't know from this story if this is the only other intelligent species out there. 

Getting permission from a patient before injecting an untested drug into them is apparently not a thing anymore in the future. Darn you, lax medical malpractice laws!   

Oh, girls are so ditzy! How can you expect them to notice the difference between 2/100th of a part of a catalyst and a portion 10,000 times larger?

 2,000' tall may or may not be a record for largest giant in a comic book to this point; the moon giants in Flip Falcon would definitely give him a run for his money. Thank goodness his clothes (somehow) grow with him!

That's right, technology has still not replaced the zipper by the 27th century -- unless Zenith just likes to wear super-retro clothes. Incidentally, if 20th century clothes were the retro-fashion of the 27th century, that would be akin to people dressing in 13th century garb in the 20th century to look retro.

I'm curious about that threat that he could crush them with his breath. I don't know how even the Mythbusters team would test that one. If we accepted this at face value, we'd have to assign damage to his breath, since Hideouts & Hoodlums currently has no wind-based powers that do damage.

Urbania is either a renamed city or a city that doesn't exist in our time. 

In the future they still have televisions with poor color quality, and use telegrams instead of, oh, an electronic version that transmits over some electronic device.

Here we see the Colossus using his breath to Wreck at Range, though at a distance of 2,000' it's more of an inconvenience than a threat.

You know, it's really annoying that we never get any frame of reference for the size of the Plantaliens. I'm tempted to stat them like a D&D roper, but what if they are only 2' tall?

So, these are fleets? I'm seeing 5 vs. 6. 

The range on those ground ray batteries/electric rayguns is fantastic; they can reach from ground level to the upper atmosphere.

It's not clear from this story if the Martians and Venusians are Earth colonists or aliens.

As odd a futuristic story as Colossus AD 2640 was, the Educational Adventures of Panda-Lin is much weirder. Why does the panda have a P on his chest? Who knows.

I'm showing you this page because of the unusual flying carpet that's a split bamboo mat. Magic items can be shaped to fit the culture they came from.

We're going to end today with just this one page from Lucky Lucifer, Flyer of Fortune. The artwork is so terrible I'm almost embarrassed to have it on my blog; I could find 5th graders who can draw better than this. I share it for two things. One is the concept of Heroes having an emblem on their vehicles that identifies them -- this is long before Batman gets his Batmobile. 

The other is the concept of a direct hit. Critical hits are a house rule almost as old as D&D itself, and in any d20-based game using criticals, it is usually treated as a natural (unmodified) roll of 20 on the die. But what if a direct hit was rolling the exact target number for the Armor Class? Against a live opponent, your direct hit might do +1 damage, or against a vehicle automatically cause a complication (like here, where the engine catches on fire).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

 

Popular Comics #49 - pt. 2

I believe I had given the Power Dive stunt a bonus to hit when I made the Aviator class, but I've since learned in playing Dawn Patrol that power dives are for gaining speed, as done here. I don't presently have a rule to cover this, other than how a piloting skill check allows you to go a little faster than normal.

Once again, we're given a teasing clue that the Masked Pilot is either someone very famous or very influential, or both. Or he's carrying Doctor Who's psychic papers.

Penguin Pete, which is really a better adventure strip than it has any business being, reminds us that a "miss" in combat doesn't necessarily mean you missed your target, it's just that you caused no damage. Although I could have arrows do less damage to alligators...?

Don't forget that mobsters can wreck things, just like any non-superhero Heroes, with just two dice instead of three. That should be enough to smash a rowboat...though I could give them a +1 bonus when wrecking with their tails, or just mention that alligators can wreck things behind them with their tails.

We're going to spend the rest of this blog post spending more time looking at Captain Tornado than it probably deserves, but maybe we'll learn something about creating fictional civilizations.

Rule #1: Dress the natives exotically. Don't be afraid to make your Heroes confront a male guide wearing a thong-backed banana hammock.

Rule #2:  Rather than try to imagine new technologies, you can recreate modern conveniences through different means and still make a society look advanced. Here is a mechanical elevator. Also note the locals live in a place that resembles the courtyard of a fancy hotel.

Phosphorescence is a real thing, of course, but some unknown process must amplify it so it operates as sunlight. Of course, it's also possible that all the grass in this cave is astroturf, and the trees are fake sculptures, just to give them the feel of being aboveground. 

That the door "mysteriously opens" feels somewhat laughable today when every store has automatic sliding doors, but while the concept of automatic sliding doors is very old, the way to make this work electronically was not invented until 1954 -- so this is actually "futuristic" tech in 1940!

Note the trope of how visitors always get to visit rulers directly, instead of being made to interact with some underling who reports back to the ruler (which seems like it would keep the ruler much safer).  

Holy cow, this page is pretty terrible. "I'm free, white, and 18 and he can't boss me"? Really Jane? 

And while that's pretty overtly racist, that's nothing to how terrible this alien caste system is, with its two slave castes who either get their tongues cut out or aren't allowed to ever see light. 

If I didn't already hate this evil alien race enough, now we find out that they rip the wings off of giant butterflies and wear them. I guess we also find out from this that these aliens are hollow-boned, allowing them to fly.

The concept of species degenerating to the point where they no longer understand their ancestors' technology can be traced at least as far back as H.G. Well's Morlocks.

And we learn from this page that water pressure, instead of electricity, is how they work their technology. I wonder if water pressure could run a plane...?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Prize Comics #1 - pt. 3

Today we start with the third feature, Jupiter the Master Magician. He's our second alien magic-user after Magician from Mars (in fact, the inspiration should be obvious).

Is Jupiter using magic words, or just talking in his native tongue?

Since Jupiter is "sent" to Earth, we don't have to speculate about what spell he used to cover   628,743,036 km. Perhaps it is some super-teleporter that his people have back at home. 

That Jupiter is "in his visible form" means that people from Jupiter are naturally invisible. This does not conform to the alien race available to players...but then, we never see him invisible, so perhaps this is just flavor text.

It's hard to blame this passerby for being suspicious. For one thing, your name being the same as the planet you're from is just plain weird, like being an Earth magician called Earth. Weirder still are those antennae that look like tiny pencils on his forehead.

---

Jupiter appears to be using a Telekinesis spell to move about 400 tons of railroad cars -- which is way, way beyond what the Telekinesis spell can currently move in Hideouts & Hoodlums. We might need some new variations of Telekinesis, like:

Telekinesis I (1st-level spell): Can move 30 lbs.

Telekinesis II: (2nd-level spell): Can move 300 lbs. 

Telekinesis III (3rd-level spell): Can move 1 ton.

Telekinesis IV: Can move 6 tons.

Telekinesis V: Can move 50 tons.

Telekinesis VI: Can move 400 tons.

This goes a long way towards balancing out spells to powers, with powers currently being much more powerful. However...I'm not comfortable enough with this yet to make it official.

Of course, this also means Jupiter has a whopping 11 brevet ranks.

The super-fast flying that takes place between panels 3 and 4 could just be Teleport.

Jupiter either has a Crystal Ball as a magic item, or this is flavor text accompanying the use of a Clairvoyance spell.

As uncomfortable as I am with Telekinesis being as powerful as I made it above, I'm about equally uncomfortable with the caster not needing line-of-sight with what he's mentally moving.

*Sigh* Am I going to need a new spell called Crack Mountain? Actually, the 7th level spell Earthquake might account for this geological behavior, but that still puts Jupiter in Stardust territory for being ridiculously overpowered.

It amazes me that a mob boss can hear that Jupiter split a mountain in half, and then is ballsy enough to think siccing three hit men on Jupiter is going to be sufficient to deal with him. I'm not saying Golden Age mobsters are all dumb, but they are incredibly naive about the risks they are dealing with.

How to determine when torture is effective? Jim Johnson could get a save vs. science to resist the pain of the foot toasting, but if he's supporting cast and no Hero is present, I would probably just wing the results.

This time, Jupiter seems to be scrying through a real Crystal Ball, as the Clairvoyance spell would not let him find a person far away like that.

There's so much wrong with this -- is Jupiter sure he has the right address? Is he sure no innocents live -- lived -- in that building?

Mechanics-wise, he's either cast Earthquake again, or...perhaps like Stardust, Jupiter needs to be statted as a Magic-User/Superhero and has used wrecking things on the building.

So, when someone says invisible in this story, what they really mean is intangible. This makes me think we should stat Jupiter as a ghost instead of an alien.








Wall of Steel isn't a far cry from the 5th level spell we already have, Wall of Iron.

That is one strange-looking emergency chute -- is it lined with copper wire? Also, where was it? Behind a secret door?


Jupiter makes some cryptic comments about Jim being able to learn magic someday. The H&H rules deal with sharing XP with your Supporting Cast when they have a Hero class, but what if they don't? The rules don't deal with how long it takes to become a classed character, and this is entirely left to the discretion of the Editor. Unless future issues actually show Jim learning magic, we don't even have an example of this yet to emulate with the rules. 





It's completely unclear what spell Jupiter casts that makes them lose control of their car. What is clear is that Jupiter can casts spells through the Crystal Ball, making that one very powerful Crystal Ball.

Lastly, for today, we're going to take a peek at the next story, Jaxon of the Jungle, by Tarpe Mills.

Let's discuss what a "portable wireless set" would be in 1940. It looks pretty clear from the picture that it is a wireless telegraph, and that tech has been around since 1830. Wireless radio has been around since 1900. 

It's interesting reverse psychology to have a non-Hero character try to stop your Heroes from pursuing the scenario at gunpoint. It might make them all the more determined to finish the scenario -- or they might just beat up this first guy and think they're done!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)