Funny Picture Stories v. 3 #1

These Centaur titles were largely reprinting material from not that long ago by 1939, but so much of it is largely forgettable that I can't be sure if I've read something before, sometimes.  This is supposedly the second part of a Fury of the Foreign Legion serial, but I sure don't remember part 1.

In a pre-Pearl Harbor story, if Heroes really want to get involved in foreign wars, joining the French Foreign Legion might be the way to go. Indeed, one could conceivably run a Fighters-only campaign set in Africa with the Foreign Legion. This page-long scene would be handy reference material for such a campaign.

This is from a complete story called "The Amateur Murderer" and it's a slight tale of murder undone by entirely circumstantial evidence, but is worth sharing here because of the curious item called a "time torpedo".  Modern search engines seem to have trouble uncovering any real item called a time torpedo -- and this is surely not a time torpedo such as will later appear in Doctor Who stories. Rather, it seems to just be a firecracker with a slow, 3-minute fuse, or some other sort of timing device on it that can be set to go off after 30 minutes. I'm not sure such a device really existed, but it seems plausible enough that it could be a trophy item.

This is from a complete story called "Mountain Murder". It's a pretty decent fight scene, but note how each combatant seems to get in two attacks before his opponent gets in two more licks. This seems like evidence I was on the right track with allowing two attacks per turn in unarmed combat.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Funnies #28

In Alley Oop this month, the cavemen go from trapping dinosaurs for their zoo to meeting woolly mammoths. Woolly mammoths were statted all the way back in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies!

When in foreign countries, be careful about how much you're offered in payment. Ten thousand francs, circa 1939, came to about $250 American.

This is a clever set-up for a wandering encounter. The driver cuts off the mark, takes him to the nearest house, and subtly questions him about how rich he is, if he's armed, and then the hoodlums jump him.

It looks like Mama fumbled and fell down the stairs, but that can't be because Hideouts & Hoodlums has no fumble game mechanic.  Instead, she missed and Captain Easy used a trip attack on her that sent her down the stairs.

Yeah, I don't need much of an excuse to share Captain Easy pages...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Feature Funnies #16

Forgive the graininess and (this pun) quality, but I wanted to share at least a portion of this page of Joe Palooka so I could share this idea of a "sandbox" setting for Hideouts & Hoodlums.  For those not up on all their gaming terminology, a "sandbox" setting is an open setting prepared in advance for a campaign. The adventures are keyed to set locations or set events and are only encountered if the players choose to go that way. The whole sandbox is open to play.

Now, I am on record as hating the term "sandbox", but the idea itself still intrigues me. What would a sandbox setting for H&H be like?  Well, I imagine it could be a city-based campaign -- sort of a modern-day version of Citystate of the Invincible Overlord, with a high chance of certain types of encounters on certain streets.  So, if you want down this one street like Joe Palooka did, it would be a good place for running into wandering hoodlums.

The Gallant Knight fell in a pit trap with a slight twist, a secret door in the side that lets a "great" black panther into the pit. Great is a superlative that doesn't have any game mechanic value in H&H, but perhaps it could be considered a large panther (5 HD?).

Code breakers in real life require a lot of intelligence and skill. In comic books, as this installment of The Clock Strikes reminds us, the only ability you may need is being good at unscrambling words. Of course, this is a lot easier a code to spring on your players without making them hate you too much.

I haven't got to post a map in awhile. While Low Lake seems an intriguingly named local (why is it so low?), the real mystery seems to be why so many roads converge in such a lonely stretch of woods.

I would have to say, if I were the Editor running this game, that the Clock's player is being awfully reckless and doesn't care if his Hero lives or dies. While I should probably have a good long talk with him about why he's so unhappy with the campaign after this session, in this instance I would forget about trying to computate how many dice of damage to roll based on the speed of the cars, minus the amount of dice the cars would absorb, and just have all occupants save vs. science to jump out in time or die.

In this installment of Espionage is the debut of Black X's manservant, Batu. As I discussed in Supplement IV: Captains, Magicians, and Incredible Men, Batu is a good candidate for having psionics, and definitely the first non-Magic-User psionic in comic books.

I've shown pit traps before that combine with flooding traps, but they usually imply some complex plumbing going on behind the scenes to flood the pit. Here we see the au natural option of dumping your foes into a subterranean cavern that floods with tide water. Of course, then the time of day makes a big difference in how dangerous this trap is.

I'll spare you the whole story, as it's not very good, but the set-up here is the old chestnut of the voice in the statue talking to the gullible natives and making them give over their treasure. The wrinkle here is that there's actually a bit of a hideout here -- a concealed cave that connects to a cabin, with a tunnel that leads under the cabin and back to the big hollow totem, which has a secret door entrance in it.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)






        

Jumbo Comics #5

Welcome to 1939!  We start the year off returning to Fiction House already and their premier title, Jumbo Comics. What can we learn from this issue that we can apply to Hideouts & Hoodlums?

In Hawks of the Seas, Will Eisner was reinventing the pacing of comic book stories. Here we see one of, if not the, first use of a cutaway scene within a page to something else going on that the reader needs to see, but the main character has no knowledge of.

These intermissions are a useful narrative tool, but a H&H Editor will have to think hard about whether to use them in a campaign. Will the players benefit from understanding the Editor's story better, without using their player knowledge to their advantage? It takes a mature group of players to be able to play that way.

Further, this issue marks the first time we've really had a good sense of where Hawks of the Seas takes place. It always seemed to be the West Indies, but now we can narrow it down to the Bahamas.

Dr. Snyde here kills one of his own henchmen with a single blow, which should be impossible in H&H -- he would be unconscious and need a second blow to kill him. Of course, perhaps a second blow occurs between panels. Or maybe the "not yet dead at zero hp" rule needs to be amended so it does not apply to non-Heroes. Or, maybe this needs to be a special rule where master criminals can kill their own henchmen automatically.

It seems clear that Budah is meant to be a djinn, which means that djinn cannot be hit by normal weapons (or at least Budah can't).

It's interesting that the trap can be deactivated and escaped just by touching sections of the wall.  It seems particularly odd since people trapped in a flooding room would naturally be touching the walls, either trying to find a way out or try to climb out. I would allow two search rolls in this case, one for each spot (opening the door without turning off the water first could make for a very wet hideout!).

I've previously discussed what to call the type of thing that Zula is. He was called a bogeyman previously by another character, but in this issue the narrator specifically calls him a monsterman.

There is a lot of visual detail here for describing the dressing in a mad scientist's laboratory.

The robot here is said to be 30' tall, but it seems even the narrator is exaggerating, because it only appears to be twice as tall as Zula. Since the robot can shoot lightning, I would suggest it is a huge version of a copper robot, as detailed in Book II: Mobsters and Trophies).

Though scientists suspected the moon was barren and lifeless in 1939, it couldn't prove this was true yet. That left a lot of leeway for making the moon anything you wanted it to be. If you want there to be valleys filled with cream cheese and giant lettuce plants, or just wind, water, and trees like on Earth, then you can do that in a Golden Age campaign.

This is clearly not Will Eisner, but I wonder if it inspired his strip, Espionage, for Quality?  ZX-5 acts a lot like Black X here, and his exchange with the unnamed highness reminds me of the chemistry between Black X and Madam Doom.

For H&H purposes, I want to point out the battle of bluffs going on here. In certain editions of certain games, one would resolve this with rolling dice, higher bluff roll wins. I am glad H&H isn't like that. I am much more interested in seeing how a player responds to a bluff, and how well he or she can bluff back. I would probably still roll an encounter reaction roll, but try to factor that in to a reasonable response to the bluff in that situation.

Here we seem to have examples -- albeit racist ones -- of bloodthirsty hoodlums (which first appeared in The Trophy Case, but also snuck into one earlier printing of Book II).  Ali Pasha also seems to be demonstrating psionics; it looks a lot like Mass Domination.  Am I going to have to include psionics in 2nd edition?

 Lastly, this is from Wilton of the West, and we get to see that old chestnut -- the "shoot your own arrow" trick. Lucky dice rolling, or flavor text? This would be up to the Editor. Is it important to the story that Wilton split his arrow to impress the other guests? Then his player could be asked to roll to attack the target (with the same AC to hit the bulls-eye as it was the first time).  If not, then this is just something to do while waiting for the encounter at the end of the page and can be hand-waved as successful.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Adventure Comics #33

Last issue I'll be looking at from 1938!

In Anchors Aweigh, we're reminded that natives are often depicted as being expert trackers (though in the wilderness, not necessarily in urban environments), and should have some kind of bonus for doing that (or be treated like the explorer class for tracking).

Tom Brent's adventure apparently takes place in a real city in China, Ningbo. Tom pulls the ol' pull-the-rug-out trick on his attacker, which is so commonplace that it should probably only require a straight save vs. plot to avoid. Further, Tom shows remarkable ingenuity at searching bodies for treasure -- even looking inside somebody's glass eye for a missing diamond (and finding it there!).

This issue's Federal Men adventure is the first time in comic books that a starring character suffers amnesia. I suppose every comic book character gets amnesia eventually -- but I would hesitate to allow even a 1% chance per injury of player-Heroes suffering amnesia, as it is difficult to roleplay and disruptive to ongoing scenarios.

The Dale Daring adventure seems remarkable only in that the natives are armed with guns for a change, instead of primitive weapons.

(Summaries of this issue's stories read at DC Wikia)

Detective Comics #22

The Crimson Avenger makes a very rare cover appearance here.

So far, in my experience running Hideouts & Hoodlums, not too many players put any effort into concealing their other identities. And while it's true that maintaining a secret identity can be a liability during an adventure, it at least seems like it could be a fun thing to roleplay about during downtime.

Since Slam Bradley's adventure is "The Return of Fui Onyui", this might be a good time to talk about racism in Golden Age comic books again. I like to think that I'm pretty good at understanding historical racism in context and not be offended by it -- but even I can't stand the insult names many Chinese characters got. Maybe if you think of them as codenames, intentionally chosen by Chinese agents out of a sense of irony, it could be palatable.

The other way to combat the racist elements, while not leaving them entirely out of your game, is to make sure there is equal representation of good guys to bad from each minority group. This Slam Bradley story does that, teaming Slam up with good guy Yat Sin to battle Fui Onyui.

One more point to consider here is that Fui Onyui is a returning villain -- the first ever in a non-serialized comic book adventure. When Jerry Siegel referenced a story from 21 issues earlier, it was a huge leap of faith that his readership extended back that far -- but in doing so he invented comic book continuity.

I have almost never used returning villains, so far, in H&H (and my one exception only occurred in a sub-plot). For one thing, H&H players I've gamed with tend to be brutal dispensers of justice and leave little room for returning villains. But further than that... while familiar characters are fun to see in comic books, I fear there is a lessening of dramatic impact every time you see a villain return, when the Heroes already know they can beat him because they have before. I'll be testing this theory in my Justice Society campaign later, when they start running into recurring villains, like Brain Wave...

Slam buys a three-cent newspaper and drives a red convertible 100 MPH to try to find out if Shorty is okay. He has a make-up kit in his apartment, which is in an eight-story building.

Slam busts a locked door in with just his shoulder. Do fighters need a chance to wreck things, limited to doors only?

Slam is attacked by assassins, which may become a mobster type. Assassins seem to prefer attacking from the rear and have a chance to sneak up on people stealthily from behind.

Fui Onyui uses a chemical that induces suspended animation ("the living death") in Shorty.

Incidentally, the dentist office behind Slam at the beginning of this story is a Dr. Siegel.

Larry Steele is on one of those adventures where he has to seek shelter in a spooky old house from a storm -- but with the further incentive that the road ahead of him is washed out, so he can't reach his destination. The house has no electricity and the owner sees by candlelight. There are bats living upstairs and this one dark staircase ends at a pit trap. There is a laboratory with two entrances and volatile chemicals inside that can blow up the whole room (but not the whole house). A mad scientist and three madmen (new mobster type?) lurk in the house, though after an hour the madmen turn on the scientist and kill him. In the cellar is a locked cell with the scientist's pretty niece locked in it.

In The Crimson Avenger, Lee Travis deals with the issue of protecting secret identities and hits on what seems like a pretty good idea: offer a $5,000 reward for information on your own secret identity so that, if anyone is getting close to learning who you are, they might come forward. Of course, you're also incentivizing people to try to figure it out, so there's trade-offs there. When everyone thinks the D.A. has information on The Crimson, the mob shows up to lay claim to it.

Bruce Nelson solves a murder mystery where the murder weapon is poisoned throat spray. Instead of a random onset time, this poison always takes effect during the same time during a play.

(Read at ReadComics.net)

Crackajack Funnies #7

That horrible Rico is using Jean as a living shield! Or is he? Jean is, interestingly, not in a direct line of fire between Rico and any of the shooters, yet they are hesitant to shoot at Rico. That's because of how dangerous it is to shoot into melee in Hideouts & Hoodlums; on a miss, there's always a chance of hitting a random other person.

If there's a ten to one shot of dropping from a fast-moving plane onto a fast-moving boat, then Hawks needs a 19 or 20 on his attack roll.

This is from Don Winslow. There's some implied violence here that's quite surprising -- the plane's propeller is being used to attack the sharks in the water. I guess this could be resolved as a simple attack, treating the plane as a weapon. The propeller might do...2-16 points of damage?

I don't think these are appropriate starting equipment items, but they could make for good low-powered trophies -- a flare gun and a collapsible rubber life raft (complete with bottle of pressured carbon dioxide).

I'm not sure how this torture device works. A light beam in the eyes apparently forces him to make a save vs. plot every 10-minute turn or tell a villain everything he wants to hear.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)