Zip Comics #2 - pt. 1

I'm pleased today to return to another of my favorite golden age heroes, Charles Biro's Steel Sterling. We're probably not going to skip a page of this story -- mostly because there's good content for Hideouts & Hoodlums-related discussion here, but also because it's a good adventure yarn.

And it starts fast! After a one-panel summary of Steel's origin (and a chance to see him naked), we launch straight into a prison break! But which prison? Can we find a specific prison by a river with housing nearby? It would seem a near-impossible task if I was looking at the whole country. However, in #1 I grabbed onto a tiny clue that Steel is based out of Texas. There is only one river, the Trinity River, that I can find in Texas that had jails near it. Of those four jails, are any of them near housing? Of them, Ellis County Jail looks closest to Riverside, Texas. That Riverside is 270 miles from Beeville, Texas, where I think Steel's first adventure took place, would only be an issue if Steel could not fly fast -- and we'll see that

happen very soon in this story.

We've seen Heroes pushing instead of doing damage before, but Steel pushing nine men at once is probably a first. It's certainly possible by the rules, if Steel is using the Flurry of Blows power, and choosing to make each hit a pushing attack. Normally, you would only be able to hit people in melee range with you, but for pushing, it makes sense that you could push people behind the people you're pushing.

There is zero game mechanic difference in H&H between slapping and punching, and Steel's punch would not have killed that guy.

Steel has Imperviousness activated for crossing the courtyard. Or is is Invulnerability? He may be needing that shortly...

Maybe I don't know cars well enough, but I cannot figure out what those things are on the side of the car in panel 1. Giant segmented worms? They're gone by panel 4, so...

Panels 2-3 would be tricky to replicate in H&H. The grenades wrecking the wall is easy enough, but determining where the debris goes is trickier. To be fair, I would position Steel on a map of the courtyard first, and then roll randomly between compass points to see where the majority of the debris falls.

How much damage should tons of brick and debris do when it falls on you? One of the underlying mechanics of H&H is that 30 lbs = 1 hp. If I calculated damage by weight at this rate gradually, 2 tons of debris could do a total of 133 points of damage. If I calculated it exponentially, doubling weight per point, that would be no more than 9 damage for 2 tons, so perhaps a range of 2-9. Anywhere in between those two seems
fair to me, but it seems that Steel took a major beating here if he

was only buffed with Imperviousness.

I love the flavor text in panel 5, that Steel has to use static electricity in his hair to jump start his powers. Here he's clearly using Race the Train.

Falling 300' would have done 30d6 damage, which Steel would have survived while invulnerable, but the prisoner in the car wouldn't. Instead it seems he used Feather Landing.

One nice thing about prison breaks is, you don't have to bother leaving crooks with evidence at the police station, since they already want them back.

This is a real curious first panel. Zooming "across the continent" to Alaska makes me think my Texas guesses were all wrong and Steel was on the East Coast after all.

Did Steel really zoom there with "lightning speed?" He can't arrive too quickly, because the escaped cons got there ahead of him, traveling by conventional means.

Let's still assume Steel is coming from Texas; that means the distance involved is roughly 4,000 miles (if NYC, add 360 miles to that). If he was using the Race the Plane power (which seems to make the most sense, going along with flying), it would need to last for 16 rest turns, meaning Steel would need to be a minimum of 13th level, as the duration on that power currently stands.




Of course, another possibility is that he took conventional travel most of the way to Alaska, and then "zooms" in by his own power only towards the end.

The crew is a mix of pirates and thugs, with that guy holding the harpoon gun under one arm probably being a higher-level fighter/leader. The harpoon gun definitely looks like a trophy weapon, probably doing at least 2-8 damage -- if Steel wasn't buffed with a protective power. Too bad he decides to wreck it!

Wrecking a propeller is treated only as a machine, whereas wrecking the entire boat would have been a tougher category.

In the golden age, if you meet a villain twice, he becomes your arch enemy. Repeat engagements are that rare!





Fake iceberg hideouts is very ingenious by 1940 standards, when most villains were still using warehouses. And having five polar bears in room 1 really sets this as a high-level hideout!
















In actual play, these polar bears would be a lot tougher, but because this is a golden age story, they go down quickly in one hit each. Of all the ways H&H purposely chooses not to emulate the actual practice of golden age comics, this one is probably the most dramatically different.

This page does illustrate, though, that grappling moves can be reversed between turns.

What material is that wall made out of, that it would break away like that? And the wall is so thin...

Most players would, if their Heroes saw that much gold, would immediately start thinking about how much XP all that gold is worth.

Apropos of current events, Steel is tear gassed. No doubt this was intended to show that Steel has weaknesses, but a H&H player knows this only shows he missed a saving throw vs poison.

On taking a look at that pile of chains, one could be forgiven for thinking that's overkill. I'm not sure how heavy a 7' tall pile of chains is, but I'm guessing it would be enough to pin down an ordinary man. A superhero probably doesn't need a Raise power buffing him to get that off, though; I'd either allow it instantly, or require a save vs. science, depending on the superhero concept and how strong we pictured him being. And, for non-superheroes, I would probably go with the saving throw.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

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.)

Detective Comics #36 - pt. 1

It's been awhile since we last checked in on The Batman. This is still the pre-Robin Batman that I'm not particularly fond of. Bill Finger's The Batman, probably at Bob Kane's insistence, is a dark, menacing figure who is not opposed to killing by any means at hand.

Like many a Superman adventure of the time, this scenario starts with a wandering encounter -- a dying plot hook character escapes from a speeding car within sight of the Batman.  Batman's player is smart and has him search the body for clues!

True to the tropes of the Mysteryman class, the police catch him standing over the body and assume the Batman is a murderer. They even try to shoot him down without even bothering to tell him to surrender first!

Later, as Bruce Wayne, the Batman solves a clue and figures out that Professor Hugo Strange is up to something. The description that Bruce gives to himself of Hugo Strange resembles Sherlock Holmes' Moriarty.

Now, some people feel that, since the Batman already knows of Hugo Strange, that means this story was published out of order with the next Hugo Strange tale in Batman #1, but another possibility is that readers were supposed to understand from this that Hugo's first true appearance, in the 1934 Doc Savage novel, The Monsters, was canon for Batman's world.

The Batman, aware from the G-Man's notebook where Strange's first robbery will be, takes a big risk by disguising himself as the night watchman. Had the plan been to kill the night watchman, we wouldn't have a Batman today. But it does work out perfectly for him, as the robbers relax their guard and leave only one armed while the rest move boxes -- a perfect time for the Batman to attack and get one free turn of action while the mobsters would drop their boxes and go for their weapons. Better, he gets a surprise turn, on which he decks the guard and drops him, and then wins initiative on the first regular turn and takes out two mobsters (with low hit points) with his punches (two attacks because they are unarmed). It appears he is taking out four at once, but this must be turn-compression and showing his attacks on subsequent turns as well.

After the battle ends, the Batman shoots a gun into the air to bring the police, but it is not clear if it is his gun, or if he just picked up a mobster's gun.

The next night, Hugo thinks nine-to-one odds will be enough to stop the Batman, and it almost isn't. It appears that a single lucky head blow takes him out, but it could have been a gradual reduction of hit points throughout the battle.

Bucking villain tradition, Hugo does not put the Batman in a deathtrap, but plans to torture him with a whip while chained up instead. I suppose, eventually, that could kill him, so maybe it's just not a particularly efficient deathtrap. The Batman escapes by wrecking the chains. The Batman is a perplexing man (4th level Mysteryman) by now, so for him to wreck the category of machines (for chains), he needs to only roll a 4 or higher on 2 dice. I would also rule that he only gets one chance before Strange figures out what he's trying and stops fooling around with him.

The Batman is shown keeping a vial of sleeping gas in his utility belt.


(Read in Batman Archives vol. 1.)

Zip Comics #1 - pt. 3

This is still Kalthar, and we've rejoined him just in time to find out where he hides his magic potions. Is invisible panther hair whiskers? I wonder why the grains even need to be tied to his ears, as weaving them into his hair (if it was longer) would have been much more sensible.

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Being normal size means Kalthar isn't buffed by any powers. In such a state, five guards are easily enough to take him down.

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Unlike many other strips, it is clear that not everyone is speaking English; Kalthar just happens to know all their languages. I honestly don't see much difference between that and having them all speak the same language, although we'll talk about this more on the next page...

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It's interesting that throwing spears at a Hero when he can move around is combat, but if he's tied up, it becomes a deathtrap, with the separate rules that apply to deathtraps (zero hit points means death instead of unconsciousness).

It seems like Kalthar is using some kind of power to summon apes, but if the apes are considered his SCMs, and he's just shouting for them, and they're near enough to hear it, isn't there a good chance they would just come anyway...?

Here's where requiring Heroes to know different languages might actually be useful in the game -- because knowing the language can form a connection with someone, and give you a bonus (+1?) to your encounter reaction roll.

Kalthar can clearly speak with animals as well. I do not want to give this ability all Heroes, and in fact brought up on this blog a long time ago that the Explorer class should get the speak with animals ability. Maybe Kalthar is multi-classed?

And last on this page is a rare example of an elephant being able to wreck through a stone wall. Elephants sure are strong!

Here, for the first time, we learn that Kalthar grows 15' tall when he's activating his powers, which seems to include Nigh-Invulnerable Skin and Multi-Attack.

This feature is War Eagles. Six am seems awful early to start playing Dawn Patrol (TSR joke there).

One of the nice things about this strip is that it includes the name of each plane at the bottom. I don't have to compare the drawings to photos and guess anymore!

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If I ever manage to write my own aerial combat rules, trying to gain control of the facing of your opponents will be a critical function in combat.

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Always make sure there is some downtime in your campaign for role-playing. Friendly rivalries are a good role-playing opportunity. Romances are a little more challenging for most roleplayers.

It seems almost too good to be coincidence that the twins like a Helen Carter, like Captain America would later like a Sharon Carter.

Again, we get the name of a plane to help with research, though that is awfully hard to read...

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A lot of the H&H rules still can apply to aerial combat, including using skills to move silently and gaining surprise before combat -- just occurring at much faster movement rates.

...and yet there still seems to be a need for specific aerial stunts that work more like they used to for the 1st edition Aviator class. Here we see the stunt Power Dive in use.

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This is also a prime example of the amount of carnage that can go on in a war-themed campaign. The goal seems to be accruing the highest possible death toll -- which is perfect for racking up XP in a campaign where finding treasure and trophies is not the goal.

Here we have a villain turn up. You can identify villains by their ability to make return appearances; so, basically, anyone who survives going up against the Heroes could be a villain. The problem here is, the twins haven't actually met or interacted with Anton Schultz, so there's no fun in making him a villain.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Top-Notch Comics #3 - pt. 2

We'll continue today with  Dick Storm - and, yes, I still think that's funny.

Speaking of names...considering how important Kang the Conqueror is going to be for Marvel Comics in 24 years, it's interesting to see the first use of "K'ang" in a comic book.

Dick tries to trick/bluff K'ang, but K'ang isn't buying it; K'ang may have made a save vs. plot here, which I think is a more appropriate mechanic than a skill check to persuade someone. Of course, the Editor can always disregard mechanics and rule on persuasion based on role-playing skill.

Six-to-one odds is too great for Dick.

It's an unusual variant on the "get the guard to rush into your cell strategy," choking the woman in the cell with you, and there's a certain amount of extra danger here if the guard doesn't fall for it soon enough.

Dick is also really trusting of this woman who just happened to be in the same cell with him. If it was me, I would worry that she was a plant, put in there to pump me for information.

Moving on, this is Bob Phantom (another character who's name I often make fun of).

There's an unusual quality to this story where Bob doesn't seem to be an actual character in it, but is just turning up, Phantom Stranger-like, and warning the bad guys about the decisions they are making.

And he's clearly using the spell Poof! to do it.

It really looks like Bob is catching the bullet in his mouth, but the caption tells me he is blowing the bullet back. That seems too powerful for Gust of Wind. It's more likely the power Turn Gun on Bad Guy, but that's a 4th level spell, and we only need to use that if there was really a good chance of the mobster being hit by it. Or, this could just be flavor text explaining how the bullet missed Bob at such short range.

Walls of fire are very hard to get through. Just passing through fire is going to do damage, which should vary based on the size and intensity of the fire. At the low end is jumping through a campfire, which would do maybe 1 point of damage. At the high end is the magic-user spell Wall of Fire which does...well, I don't have my books handy, but I believe it's a lot of damage. Walking through a line of burning kerosene would likely do 1-8 points of damage. Walking through the inferno of a burning oil field, that seems like it would be more like the spell.

Bikini cut, Bob? Really?

Speaking of intensity, starting a cyclone is pretty intense. The weight of a shack is way beyond the lift capacity of a Telekinesis spell, so that's not what Bob is using. Maybe

Control Weather? Or we need a new power or spell for Create Cyclone.

Now we're moving on to our next feature, Stacey Knight, M. D. Here we see the benefit of keeping a sedative and syringe with you.

It seems a lot less risky a tactic than jumping out a third story window to grapple someone below you. For one thing, I wouldn't even allow the jumping and the grappling on the same turn; you can jump and try to land on the mobster to half your falling damage (and give him full damage) and then on the following turn begin grappling.

I would also not combine attacks with wrecking; you can hit the mobster with the gun or you can try to break the gun, but not both at the same time.

Now, the main reason I would not allow these things is that, in a group setting, you need to leave things for the other players to do. If this was solo play, I might be more lenient on combining effects.

I'm including this page of Wings Johnson of the Air Patrol because I want to remind players to always know where the exits are, and be prepared to use non-traditional exits. And, a note to Editors, include more things like laundry chutes in your game. Vertical transportation keeps your players thinking in three dimensions.

The 2nd edition basic book has suggestions for ramming damage with different vehicle types, and both editions of Hideouts & Hoodlums have rules for wrecking things. But what about when you want to ram a conning tower with your plane to wreck it? A good rule of thumb is that, for every 10 points of damage the vehicle ramming can do (not necessarily what you roll for damage), assign 1 level in superhero for wrecking.

It seems really implausible that your nemesis just happens to be on the first submarine you crash into in that entire theater of war, but if you want to get your story moving along sometimes...

I'm not going to bother talking about the "knock out the guard and steal his uniform" tactic again, but returning to the same building you just escaped from to hide is certainly an interesting tactic.

I have a feeling that, despite how poor Wings thinks his German is, that he would understand whatever the commandant tells him to do.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Pep Comics #2 - pt. 2

Next up is Jack Cole's second installment of The Comet. The Comet is on the trail of a master criminal who appears to have magical powers -- he can make his face appear in the clouds at giant size, and he can make armored cars leap into the air and disappear. Spoiler -- all this is going to be explained by the end, as he's actually just another mad scientist.

The adventure takes place in the Everglades -- coincidentally where RT2 Adventures in Fun World, the third published Hideouts & Hoodlums adventure, takes place.

If the armored car companies are keeping the disappearances a secret, then how does The Comet know where each of the cars disappeared, accurately enough to put on a map...?

Usually, when you see 11 x's on a map, you can triangulate to some central point, or see some other pattern involved. In this case, The Comet still has to spend a whole two weeks flying around, just hoping to spot a clue from above.

A phone booth concealed in a tree is a pretty good clue. Wireless communication would have made it a lot harder to follow this clue. Also, had The Comet just kept flying instead of using the boat, he would have missed the hideout altogether. Maybe it's because the duration ran out on his fly power...?

It's unclear if The Comet was hurt and stunned by the whirlpool, or if the two thugs succeeded in winning the initiative and getting their grappling attacks in first.

Noiseless electronic motors might count as a mad science invention by 1940 standards.

Here we get the explanation for the giant face in the sky. I've written before about how much more convincing two-dimensional projections must be in a comic book universe (metaphysical commentary on the two-dimensional nature of their universe?). Projecting onto clouds would fool no one in the real world.

The Comet has a much different idea of what "success" is than I do; I would be much less cavalier about nearly smashing my own eye to a pulp. Just looking at that panel makes me a little woozy!

Oh, one last spoiler -- the armored cars are being lifted into the sky via magnets on cables that no one sees because it's dark.

So now we're moving on to the next feature, which is Rocket and the Queen of Diamonds. Rocket is a Flash Gordon clone, although one who never seems to think it's appropriate to put on a shirt or pants. Maybe he thinks that's okay because his bad guys wear midriffs, cutoffs, and starfish on their heads.

This was written by prolific author Manly Wade Wellman, who will go on to do better things.

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A few game mechanics points here: the guy with the baby rattle delivering a knockout headblow just by outflanking Rocket, which I am not comfortable with. I'm going to keep the headblow to just surprise attacks.

I can imagine there are some positions one could chain someone

up in that would limit their ability to use leverage; this doesn't look like one of them. Since Rocket can just push against the floor to break his bonds, I might even give him a bonus in this case.

I don't show you the page where the drugged Rocket attacks the queen because he doesn't know what he's doing, but the injected drug reminds me a lot of the Confusion spell.

Rocket rather cleverly creates a crowbar for himself using his wrecking things, and I could see rewarding that ingenuity with a +1 bonus to his wrecking things roll (and this time he'll need it to get through a stone wall).

Giant water bugs belong in the Mobster Manual, though they do pop apart awfully easy. They look pretty fierce, though...maybe 1+1 Hit Dice?  

I think panel 1 clearly shows giant water-bugs being encountered in a group of eight.

False walls are found the same as secret doors.

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This is supposedly by Charles Biro, but if he drew this, it had to be a rush job and far from his best work.

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Snipers are statted as assassins in the Mobster Manual.

Here and on the next page we get a rare example -- outside the cowboy genre, anyway -- of using fire to trigger a morale save.

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I can't say I ever sympathized with a Nazi guard in a comic book before, but this poor guy who doesn't know how he wound up this way, but just wants to pet a kitten, this guy I wish had at least gotten a fair fight against Boyle.

As per the rules for guards in all fiction, the stolen uniform has to be exactly the right size to fit.

That is a terrible secret code. However, if you want your players to feel like they're deciphering a code, without having to put any real work into it, this might be the code for you.

I like the compass! We almost never get a sense of direction in our comic book panels.

Boyle demonstrates the save vs. missiles and how that applies to guns here.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Tip Top Comics #22, 23

Or, v. 2, no. 10 and 11, from Feb. and Mar. 1938.

And we'll start with The Captain and the Kids, one of, if not the oldest, comic strip to be republished in comic book form, having begun back in 1914 (though called Hans und Fritz until 1918). For such a superficially Germanic feature, it's odd how long the strip was based in various parts of Africa.

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Game notes: Well...um...still trying to wrap my head around gluing pants to a tree. Would it really be easier to climb out of the pants rather than rip the pants? Climbing out of your pants is normally too easy to roll for, but under these

conditions, I would treat it as an expert skill check just to not tear them accidentally. And wrecking a pair of pants would be much easier than wrecking a door -- same mechanic, but with a +1 or +2 bonus.

Then there's the other issue of running with a barrel over your head and not falling over. Save vs. science to keep your balance? But how often to force rolls? I guess that depends on terrain - maybe once every 360' on level terrain, but every 180' on lightly wooded, flat terrain?

On to Jim Hardy. I'm not interesting in game mechanics for torture, as I've said here before, but I share this page because of the efforts to use a tool to break down the door, which begs the question, should that plank of wood give him some kind of bonus? If Jim had a big sledge hammer in his hands, I'd consider a +1, but awkwardly hitting the door with a wooden

plank in his hands? I think he's more likely to give himself a splinter than to knock that door down.

And then there's the other issue, of how he sees the rocks piled behind the door, even though he couldn't budge the door an inch just a panel earlier. I can't explain that one, but I can explain that the rocks would make it much harder to wreck through the door. Essentially, it is not a door anymore, but a stone wall, much harder to wreck.

In the debut of Frankie Doodle on this blog, we see some new prices -- 98 cents for boys sweaters (gosh!), boys overcoats for ...is that $4.98? And, of course, the joke is that Frankie fails to see sodas are 5 cents.

Chris Crusty learns the advantage - and disadvantage - of wearing a fake deputy badge. I suspect Heroes would not object to this disadvantage, though, and would welcome the chance for danger that it brings. Lawful Heroes would need to save vs. plot to carry badges they know are phonies.

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No real game content here, but I never knew the origin of the word tuxedo before. Remarkable!


And now, we return to Peter Pat, which I had initially enjoyed for its dramatic story, but it really strains credulity for the amount of stuff this little boy can do. I mean, he's like an Olympic-level athlete sometimes.

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Here we have a different kind of ape man. Usually, ape men are just men drawn to look more like apes, and is sometimes dangerously close to just looking like a racist caricature. This ape man is most definitely a gorilla, yet one with human intelligence (and modesty).

We know Peter was at least 10' high in the tree, because you need to fall at least 10' to take falling damage.

Here, our little Olympian uses a trip attack, and then gets tripped, all on the same page, making this the first time I've seen tripping happen twice in the same combat.

Peter also establishes that you can pick up two dropped items in the same melee turn.

And we learn this ape man can talk!

I shared this page because boxing a kangaroo for $5 seems like it would be a fun first scenario for 1st-level Heroes, and give them a good sense for how vulnerable they are at the beginning of their careers.

I have room enough for one page from the next issue I have access to, and it brings us back around to The Captain and the Kids again, this time giving me two ideas for a trap. One is, someone opens the door, and the log swings down and hits the person in the doorway. The other idea -- and it's more in line with what you see in this page -- is that the log swings down, hits a cutout in the door, and the cutout comes out and strikes the person in front of the door. The first version could do a lot of damage, depending on how heavy the log is. The second version would do less damage, as a lot of kinetic energy would get lost in the transference to the cutout, and I'd have that do maybe 1-4 points of damage.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)