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.)

Famous Funnies #65 - pt. 1

Spunky gets an unusual layout to his page here. The mine is guarded by bats and a skeleton. As fake undead, the skeleton has a chance of scaring people. There's an awful lot of gold strewn around the mine, which means easy XP for anyone who gets past being scared by the skeleton.

Also, having a goat and a turtle for Supporting Cast is pretty novel.

There's some unusual pricing information here, for rare scenarios where Heroes would have their babies photographed. More likely would be Heroes being paid to parachute somewhere (probably somewhere dangerous, which could lead into a scenario...).

Hidden in this page of Goofy Gags is the price for a cobbler to stretch your shoes. And to think I kept buying new shoes for my son all those years when he was growing up.

There's two features I like from this page of Roy Powers. One thing I like -- and an old trick many game referees has mastered, is to make sure the player characters don't get to see the monster they're facing right away. Hearing it, or catching shadowy glimpses of it, allows the player to imagine something there that might be much worse than the encounter will actually wind up being.

And then, "Witch's Acre" is just a great name for a hideout area.

Although we never see the alchemist (other creators might have given us a nice flashback scene here), and most likely the alchemist will turn out to not be real since (since this is a realistic strip), the rumor of the alchemist is a great story and sounds like it could be part of a really fun scenario.

Here's more atmosphere-building from Roy Powers. Old ruins are always fun for characters to explore. Mysterious noises are always good for luring characters in certain directions. And darkness can be a handy tool for making encounters more challenging. But I really have to take issue with how the eagle scouts see the spooky man in the shadows and just let him go. My players would be talking to him, trying to grab or tackle him, or -- heck -- some players would just shoot first and ask questions later!

I haven't included Skyroads in a long time, but I'm including this one because ordinary hoodlums with cool codenames like Scorpion is such a rarity. Plus, the definition of "service ceiling" could be handy in an aviator-themed scenario.

This page illustrates the importance of facing during aerial combat, but more importantly I think, the sidebar gives us a figure for the blast radius of a bomb. If planes need to stay more than 50' from the ground to avoid bomb blasts, then bombs must have a 50' blast radius.

From Hairbreadth Harry we learn that pirate maps are worth $10,000. Also, villains sometimes carry up to $10,000 in cash on their persons.

Harry is accosted by a hired thug. Thugs have been a statted mobster type since Day 1 of Hideouts & Hoodlums, though I don't think I ever gave them a chance to be armed with sub-machine guns, as this one appears to be.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Action Comics #10

Superman demonstrates wrecking things and the leaping power of the alien race (or the power Leap I -- more likely Leap II on the cover), despite being out of uniform, in this story. I have long felt a rule about superheroes needing to be in uniform to use their powers was important, to give players a game mechanic incentive to have their superheroes wear a uniform. But since there are examples this early of exceptions...maybe I need something else that offers the same incentive. Maybe the Superhero functions as if one level lower when out of uniform?

Chuck Dawson has pretty clever plan, where he captures a mobster, hands him an empty gun to hold, and then pretends to be the mobster's hostage, while secretly holding his own gun on him. I think I've seen that on TV.

Chuck is exploring a hideout with a peculiar trap; a section of floor that revolves and covers a pit. Which itself is not so unusual, but that the section of floor has a cot attached to it seems odd to me. What if the bad guys got tired and forgot which cot is trapped?

Scoop Scanlon, undercover and in disguise, tries to impress some hoodlums by shooting a clock without looking at it. The penalty would be the same as shooting in total darkness, -4.

After seeing so much racism in the early comics, it's nice to see at least the Persians are getting a fair and balanced showing in Marco Polo's feature.

Zatara gets a hot plot hook at an explorers club in Shanghai -- explorers clubs being a good 1930s-era place for upper class heroes to get their plot hooks at. He's handed a treasure map to the Tomb of Genghis Khan, in exchange for a portion of the profits. Which sounds like a great adventure, really.

Though it seems like Zatara could just teleport straight there, he mounts a normal expedition with hired guides, porters, and the like, offering to pay out 1% of the treasure to split among whoever comes along. Zatara's old foe, The Tigress is there in Shanghai, spots Zatara, and starts shadowing him, which he never notices.

The geography seems a little off to me, as Zatara passes through a jungle in Mongolia. I always try to do more research than that when running scenarios.  Zatara also, foolishly, likes to go to sleep outdoors without posting watches, even though he has a manservant with him who seems like he would serve exactly that purpose.

Zatara tries to get help from a witch he passes on the way, but she understandably doesn't want Zatara robbing her nation's national treasure and offers Zatara what seems like an impossible challenge in order to pass her. Zatara uses a Phantasmal Image (his favorite spell!) to make Khan speak and passes her test, but rightly feeling tricked, the witch runs off to get help stopping Zatara anyway.

Zatara casts a spell on a group of horsemen/nomads pursuing him that has me a little puzzled. As I understand it, he utters "a spell that sends their rides galloping in the wrong direction."  But is that a Mass Charm spell? A Confusion spell? A new spell that would be called Misdirect Steeds?

He also casts a spell that summons a typhoon that Zatara then rides.  I'm still having trouble wrapping my brain around that one -- but maybe what Zatara actually did was summon a water elemental that helped transport him?

Zatara casts a spell that turns the swords of the next group of horsemen against them. Even having seen the page it's hard to say what spell this is? Mass Telekinesis? That's got to be at least a 7th level spell!

A genie -- or djinni as we call them in Hideouts & Hoodlums -- waits in Khan's Tomb with three tests. The first test Zatara passes by fashioning a stone bridge for himself (Stone Shape?). The second test he passes is walking through fire by wearing a coat of ice -- but I think the coat of ice is just "flavor text" for a Resist Fire spell.  The third test is to kill the djinn.  I suppose it's a fair spoiler to say that Zatara's arch-foe/femme fatale The Tigress is responsible for shooting the djinn when Zatara doesn't feel it's the right thing to do (and it probably helped that the genie looked like a hot woman). This not only sets a precedent for djinn being susceptible to bullets (unless they were magic bullets), but also a precedent for heroes and villains to team up to loot a hideout. This way, villains can claim loot that the heroes can't touch because of alignment restrictions and then still split it with the heroes later (unless the villains betray the heroes, of course!).

Finally, Zatara casts a spell that polymorphs all the treasure into dried peas to make them easier to carry. He lets the Tigress get away with a whole handful, which is actually pretty smart. She broke no laws because it's not illegal to kill genies, and letting her get rich takes away her prime motive to commit any more crimes.

(Superman story read from Superman Action Comics Archives vol. 1, select pages read at the Babbling about DC Comics blog, the rest read in summary form here)