Smash Comics #8 - pt. 2

I don't care for any other features in Smash Comics as much as Espionage, but that doesn't mean we can't glean anything useful from them. Let's start with Abdul the Arab, our "hero"/traitor to his people, who helps the British steal his nation's oil...

We always pause to examine maps. Kuwait is not drawn by accident inside Iraq's borders; Kuwait had been annexed back into Iraq in 1938. Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia.









  
This is an unusual scenario for a RPG, since it can't be solved by violence. Abdul has to prove Holden is stealing Rice's oil (in a Western setting, you could substitute cows for oil and run the same scenario) by getting a confession or finding the hidden pipeline, and by diving the work between himself and his sidekick, he gets both.













I can't verify that there is such a thing as a Cambridge Arsenal, let alone one holding 20,000 tons of high explosives. That seems like a really dangerous building to put that close to London.

Transatlantic flights did not fly every day in 1940, which can delay a scenario that takes place across the ocean. 
 









 
Here's an image of what appears to be a briefcase-sized short wave radio. 1940 Heroes can't easily carry these on them, but if they keep them in their cars they can split up and still communicate.

Heroes can often be notoriously hard to trap when they travel overly cautious, with all their gear and trophy items with them. The trick, then, is to get them to lower their guard and feel safe. Trap them while they don't yet know they've reached the hideout.

Yeah...that is one unconvincing ghost, what with his legs sticking out under the sheet. I know I've always said disguise needs to be really easy in comic books, but I might give the mobsters a +2 bonus to their saves vs. plot to see through this one.

We're going to skip ahead into the Hugh Hazard and His Iron Man adventure that follows. All the backstory you need to know here is that the Batzis are Nazis, Hugh knows they are responsible for sabotage here in the U.S., and he figured out they are keeping in touch via radio. He lucks onto their short wave -- I can't see that being a skill check; perhaps he just has a random 1 in 6 chance of catching one of their messages per rest turn, like a wandering encounter on the radio.

Now, I don't exactly get how this works, but if you connect a super-seper iconoscope to a teleradio, you can get a visual image of the person speaking, even if that person was only recorded with sound. Who knew?

"Krautville" sounds like a racist name for any town with a large German population in it...

Bozo has the Dig power, so that means he functions as at least a 6th-level superhero. And yet...we are treated to Bozo using the "Look behind you!" trick like a grade school prankster. I would say it's amazing that the old guy doesn't hear the propeller right over his head and know that Bozo is still there, only...well, then we also have to overlook that this tiny propeller can make a large robot fly.  I guess you could give the guy a save vs. plot to see if he falls for it or not, but I think a +4 bonus seems reasonable too.

This page kind of undersells this tactic, but a time-tested method of keeping the Hero from capturing the villain until later in the scenario is to have something happen that the Hero has to leave right now to stop. A Lawful or Neutral Hero should then have to save vs. plot to stay and defeat the villain early (maybe Chaotic too, depending on how much is at stake).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #8 - pt. 1

It's good to be back around to Quality Comics again. Not that we haven't seen plenty of Will Eisner over at Fiction House and Fox, but I have a special love for Espionage, and I think Will did too. There's a lot of good anti-war messages in Eisner's early work, and here we see a pretty good summary of how terrible the war in Europe is going so far, with accurate dating for Germany's early conquests and only the curious prediction that they would move to China next.  The prediction that Germany's army would be stymied at France will turn out to be disastrously false over the course of just four days, two months after the cover date of this comic. 

Eisner put a lot of work into this story -- almost as much as he will soon into The Spirit -- so we won't skip a page of it.  Luckily, I think we can find something to talk about on every page.

Here, in the final panel, we see the value of relying on random rolls to see if anything turns up in a search. Just saying "I check the closet" shouldn't give you an automatic success, though being specific should give you a bonus.

We don't often get treated to foreign languages in American comics, but the German in panel 9 is asking "Where is the one we are looking for?"







I'm not convinced the name of the former high official of the German intelligence would have been common knowledge to an American in 1940, but we know today that this is likely General Kurt von Schleicher, who was head of the Ministry of Defense until Hitler changed it to the Ministry of War in 1935.

I think it's interesting that Black X refuses to take on the same plot hook from one character, but will take it if given by another. This reminds me of a player I have right now.

Saarbrücken is the capital and largest city of the state of Saarland, Germany. Saarbrücken is Saarland's administrative, commercial and cultural centre and is next to the French border.

There are great details here, from the strategy of substituting for a corpse to get on an ambulance (I'm guessing he let them make sure the man was dead first, then created a distraction and replaced the corpse on the stretcher), to needing to shave because it took so many days just to cross the French-German border. Panels 1-3 are great action scenes, while panels 8 and 9 are dramatically angled. And yet, despite 12-panel pages, it hardly feels crowded on the page.

Koblenz, spelled Coblenz before 1926, is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine where it is joined by the Moselle.

When the secrets Gale is carrying are revealed, they don't sound that valuable to me.

It seems incredible that Madam Doom just happens to be hanging out at this particular guardpost when Black X happens by. Still, it's very comic book-y if you insert a recurring villain into your wandering encounter table every so often.

I wouldn't say it's incredible, but perhaps remarkable (forgive me, I've been playing more Marvel Super Heroes lately) that the shrapnel blast somehow misses both Gale and Black X, but does enough damage to kill the driver. I suppose they were outside the "save for half" radius and in a "save for none" radius.

 Batu uses...the Phantasmal Image spell? It's been a loooong time since I first discussed in Supplement IV if Batu is an example of psionics or not, and we don't have to revisit that here. Just enjoy some delightful character moments, followed by one of Eisner's signature anti-war messages direct to the reader in the final panel.

And, as an added bonus...it's been a long time since I last shared single panel comic strips. I like these two, particularly the one on the right. I had to think about it about as long as that girl is...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 4

We're back for one more installment of perusing this issue of Mystery Men Comics and seeing what we can apply to the Hideouts & Hoodlums role-playing game (you could try and apply these observations to other RPGs -- but why would you?).

Anyway, we're still in the middle of Denny Scott and the Bengal Lancers' story. Our unnamed lady sees through Denny's disguise (save vs. plot on her part?) and outs him.

The rug trick might be one of the few exceptions to when I would allow a stunt to be used in a combat situation. He's essentially making two grappling attacks at once, but the only result he's going for is to knock them prone.

I'm not sure what game mechanic would account for "perceiving something wrong." I almost hate to make save vs. plot too big of a catch-all, and yet it works perfectly for situations like this when it's difficult for the Editor to make the call.

Now I'm going to talk about just how confusing this story was. The lady -- is she a femme fatale? A spy? On who's side? It seems like she was planted here to take down Khan's operation from the inside, but she takes no action until she can frame Denny to make it look like he took down Khan instead. For what purpose? Could she have known Denny was coming?

And -- as much as I personally loathe Heroes solving problems with guns...why does Denny sneak into Khan's audience chamber with guns if not to shoot him? Was the whole gun-selling ruse to get some kind of evidence against Khan? Or trick him into becoming an ally? Maybe the alliance is what our unnamed spy is trying to stop.

Part of the fun of these golden age stories is that they are often so incomplete, we have to read the story between the panels!

We're going to be talking about locations for much of the rest of this post. Secret Agent D-13 starts out with the destination of Scapa Flow. And, as much as that sounds like a medical condition, Scapa Flow is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay, and Hoy. This bridge would hold no great strategic value, but a student of WWI might know why this would have meaning for the Germans; Scapa Flow is where the remains of the German Navy was scuttled after WWI. 

I believe the UK Armed Forces uses "No. 3" instead of "3rd" to designate this squadron, if I'm correct and this refers to the No. 3 (Fighter) Squadron. It was first formed on 13 May 1912 as one of the first squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps – being the first to fly heavier than air aircraft.

This story has a really unusual ending. A British pilot and a German pilot both die in this story, on the same field, and are both labeled as heroes for their respective countries. D-13 waxes nostalgic about how he doesn't want to see Americans made into heroes in the same way. Bob Powell did the art on this; the writing is likely either Powell himself, or perhaps Will Eisner, who is known for deeper stories. Regardless, two years from now this would have been denounced as isolationist dogma

Again, we're looking at this story for the locations it names. The Paracel Islands are real; also known as Xisha Islands and Hoang Sa Archipelago, they are a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. 

This story is also prophetic; the Japanese invade the Philippines for real in December 1941. Clearly, it was common knowledge as early as the beginning of 1940 what countries Japan would target next if they expanded their conquests beyond China.

Lastly, we have an unusual morality tale from usual artist George Tuska and, again, likely Eisner as auteur. The backstory you've missed is that Zanzibar followed this mobster onto a cruise ship, and the mobster said he was going to turn himself in, but instead he blows up the boat. The mobster is one of the people who survives and winds up in this lifeboat, and that's when Zanzibar teleports onboard (or maybe even just the Poof! spell if he was actually nearby in the water).

The ghost ship is seemingly a random wandering encounter, unless Zanzibar somehow summoned it to test the passengers. I'm skeptical of the latter, since the others are innocents and only one person deserves what happens.

Three undead skeletons turn up. Easy XP! Not so...these guys are not only tougher to kill, but if they kill you, they turn you into an undead skeleton! Do I need to toughen up the stats on skeletons? Or...are the skeletons just the physical manifestation of a powerful curse spell? It seems only Zanzibar knows!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 3

Whew, today's post is going to be a little difficult for a modern audience to get through, and I'll be sharing your discomfort as I rant about a whole lot of racism in these stories.

We're picking up with Chen Chang, the story of a villainous mongol, so already we're in dangerous racism territory.

How big, I wonder, was Hong Kong's white settlement in 1940? Hong Kong was a huge city of 1,640,000 people in 1941. Today, the percentage of whites is 0.8%. If the same held true then, that would mean 13,120 people. Half of that means, well, that would be one huge theatre! The Auditorium Theater in Chicago can only seat 3,875.

That is a horrible plot! If that disobedient servant wasn't so afraid of Chen, maybe he would mention how throwing the bomb into the audience would be a lot simpler than swinging over the audience and dropping it.

This page is pretty painful to read for several reasons. There is the derision and then fear of Mongols, just for being Mongols, that they encounter even before they start strangling people. But perhaps more disturbing is the child in the audience yelling "Him him, Mama! I'm Scared! Hit him!" Have beatings taught this boy that violence is the solution to everything...?

Well, it didn't take a fortune-teller to predict that swinging out over the audience with a bomb was going to end disastrously for either one or both parties involved. What I don't get is how the bomb fails to go off. Does it have a lit fuse that is snuffed by his sleeve?

Note how Richard has nothing to do with saving all these people, only dumb luck does. When a scenario goes horribly wrong, it's up to the Editor to decide if everyone (in the game) has to live with the consequences or not.

Coolie is a very weird term to be using here. For one it's just plain racist, but more importantly, it was typically used to describe unskilled laborers from China in America, and it seems dubious that it would have been used for them in their own homeland.

Moving on, though not escaping from racism, we find Lt. Drake lounging around Hawaii undercover. We see some natives and...well, those better be swimsuits they are wearing, because Hawaiians were definitely wearing modern clothing in 1940.

Drake knocked out that guy with the rifle quickly and recognized him as Japanese. Investigating, he finds some unconscious natives by opium pipes (the old racist trope that non-whites are easily talked into getting drunk or high) and finally the Japanese guy's boat.

Now, all Drake has to do here is explain that this isn't his boat and they're on the same side, but instead he decides he's going to teach them what happens to people who speak with poor diction! Drake gets in some unlucky dice rolls, though, because the two natives make short work of him.

Now how is...Drake was just tossed into the water from the shore on the previous page. The current should be taking him back in towards the shore, not further out to see. Yet here Drake is underwater, surrounded by sharks already. And five sharks at that...that's a lot.

I do like the detail of following a telephone line to the hideout. That's a good way to find concealed hideouts in the modern age!

I've never seen a Hero take advantage of a thatched roof by going through the roof before! That's a "thinking outside the box" style of play I like to see at the table.

I suspect Drake is able to hold them off with just 12 bullets for a whole hour because the agents outside keep failing morale checks.

I'm not a Denny Scott fan, but I thought I should talk about the locations mentioned on these pages. The mountain range mentioned here could be the Karakoram, or possibly the Hindu Kush range. It is unlikely the Himalayas, as the northwest is the one direction north of India where the Himalayas can be found least.

According to an old Encyclopedia Brittanica, there used to be a Kutom in India; it seems to be renamed today, but I haven't been able to track down what it is now.

Kafir, however, is not a real place; "kafir: being an Islamic word for infidels.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 2

Today we're looking at Cynde's behind in a bathing suit -- I mean, Rex Dexter of Mars!

Okay, I get why Rex is stripped down to his skivvies, because that's what you do to your prisoners to make sure they don't have hidden weapons or utility belts full of lockpicks on them, but Cynde is feeling unusually confident, or just hoping to catch some rays while saving Rex.

Actually, I further get that Dick Briefer could have been inspired by Burroughs' John Carter novels, wherein everyone on Mars feels more comfortable naked.

All that said, a deathtrap where you are just hung out in the sun and the bad guys wait for you to dry up and die - well, those are real patient bad guys! That's at least three days for Rex to have come up with an escape plan.

So, Reyni gave her a freeze-ray gun...that worked? Does that mean Reyni gave Rex one that didn't work, like as a prank? Or does Cynde (as a typical 1940-era woman, even in the future) think it's surprising anyone would give her a working gun?

Really unsure how that lever reverses the ozone layer depletion back on Earth so quickly, but it's good to know buildings aren't blowing up from the heat anymore.

"Surprised, Rex darling?"

"I'll say -- how did he install this shattering-ray on my ship without my knowing it, or noticing it on the way here? And why are you just telling me about it now? We could have blown up their lab before I went in there, got captured, and stripped down to my civvies!"

Shattering-rays, obviously use the wrecking things mechanic.

Anyway, we're going to jump into the Green Mask story in progress. Now, don't cry over spilled milk. I'm not; I'm wondering instead if milk operators protective associations were real things. Well, there was a Wisconsin Dairy Protective Association at least as late as the 1920s, so as much as this sounds like a shake-down racket, it seems to have been a legitimate thing.

I'm also wondering what Green Mask was doing in the district attorney's closet, and how long he was hiding in there.

Is part of that picture missing? Because that doesn't look like a hand to me. I suspect "Black Hand" might be a stand-in for "Brownshirts," particularly since it is said to be a foreign organization.

Even though Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson," it was already a catchphrase before 1940 and possibly even before its first known instance in print, back in 1909.

Putin's government still uses this same scheme today.

That cop is all bluster; Green Mask just stands there, daring him to arrest him, and the cop does nothing but stand there and watch him climb out the window.

What would be on the ledge for GM to hook his wire to? Does he visit the district attorney's closet so often that he's had time to screw a hook into the ledge?

Is a convertible really a good idea for being out for a drive when you're wearing a mask?

That said, I like how the hideout requires passes, and the skull is an interesting decoration for the business table. I wonder if it has any function, like a microphone connected to a dictaphone hidden inside. 

J.J. Ratfield was the head of the protective association -- so it was a shake-down racket after all!

Look at that panel 6 -- how is GM even keeping his foot on the gas while leaning out the far side of the car, let alone control the wheel? How embarrassing it would have been had he crashed into an oncoming car or ramped over the sidewalk while trying to do his cool move.

The note, I'll grant, is pretty clever. By offering himself as bait, it gives the police more incentive to come to this midnight rendezvous. He just has to hope they are more interested in catching him than they seemed at the window.

The Green Mask gets a surprise attack, though it looks like two surprise attacks here. I'm not comfortable with allowing a grappling attack and a punch on a separate opponent in the same turn in Hideouts & Hoodlums. I don't know what advantage the leap gives him either.

Having the drivers help out in the fight was a lucky break to make it go faster. Their cooperativeness could have been determined by an encounter reaction roll, even though GM didn't ask them to help him.

That's a really good ruse, so long as Ratfield falls for it. I would give him a save vs. plot to see if he's suspicious, unless GM uses a skill check for voice mimicry to sound like one of the hoodlums out on the road.

I'm not showing you the next page, but all you're missing is that GM puts the receiver to a dictaphone to record the confession.

We have just enough time left to peek in on the next story of Chen Chang. It seems pretty bold to kill the watchman outside the theatre, even if it is nighttime. But what I have a problem with is two men at the same time falling for the fake door over the 75' drop. One man, maybe, but...were they both going through the door at the same time? Is there more to the trap, like someone comes up behind them and pushes?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Mystery Men Comics #8 - pt. 1

After a long spell we check in Fox Comics again and the first feature here is Blue Beetle.

Blue Beetle does what most of my players have always done, try to get to the location before the bad guys. But here the location works against him; with the wide open spaces, the mobsters are too far apart and the second one has an easy free shot at range.

Now, one bullet shouldn't be enough to stop BB; it usually isn't in comics. I have been wondering recently, though, if bullets should do exploding damage to account for instances like this...but on the other hand, firearms are already really deadly in Hideouts & Hoodlums and I hesitate to make them more so.

BB has a temporary Supporting Cast Member in this story; you won't see anymore of Tom.

BB has to take off his heavy mail costume; for the first time a comic book acknowledges that encumbrance can hamper skill checks.

BB must be using a power to keep up with a motorboat, that has a head start, while swimming. I hesitate to create a new swimming-related power, though, when activating Race the Train would accomplish this same thing.

It seems to me that the first mob to use an autogyro to escape from robberies is really smart, but after that people would always be on the lookout for it. The real mistake of this mob is to stay in the air so long that a plane that hadn't even taken off yet when they left the warehouse has time to catch them.

So, in addition to the autogyro, these bank robbers can afford three fighter planes. This reminds me of a lot of Silver Age stories where the super-gizmos the supervillains employ must have been so expensive that there's no way they'll come out ahead from robbing a bank. But that's not comic book logic for you!

It looks like Wing performs two Immelmann turns to get the height advantage on his pursuers, giving him a +1 bonus to hit after performing an expert skill check. As difficult as this seems to be for just a +1, it's more likely that aviators should be able to perform stunts as a free action before attacking.

Catching fire needs to be a common complication for dogfighting.

Panels 3-5 are what a fighting withdrawal looks like after a gunner fails his morale check aboard a plane.

There is currently no game mechanic for whether chutes open.

The atmosphere grows thinner, intensifying the sun's rays and causing terrific heat? Sounds like Dick Briefer predicted the ozone layer depletion! This is Rex Dexter of Mars!

What on Earth was it that exploded that took out two skyscrapers?

Ooo, I'm statting these monsters! Sadly, there is no name for these monsters given other than "new horror." The Tauromen that Reyni is referring to are actually human-like aliens controlling the new horrors, but Tauromen is a pretty cool name and I might keep it for these things instead.

They're pretty big floating heads with three long tentacles and Dumbo-like ears. Are they flapping their ears to fly, or levitating? It's not clear what those dots on the end of their tentacles are for, but I'm going to guess they are little mouths for sucking blood. And those big tusks in their mouths mean fierce bite damage. Let's assign them...6 Hit Dice? Blood drain for 1-8 damage per tentacle? Bites for 2-12? Given their scaly hides, I think we can give them an AC of at least 6, maybe 5 because they can use their tentacles as shields too.

Reyni is one great contact; not only does he hand out plot hooks, but he hands out space charts for how to get there, trophy weapons, and paints your ship!

There is no indication of how fast "zooming" is, but unless this trip takes years, "zooming" must involve folding space, warping space, accessing hyperspace, or creating a stargate.

Despite being called living chains, I'm real hesitant to stat them as mobsters; more likely, this is some technological trap, where the chains ensnare as if alive (attacking as a high HD mobster?). They might even be linked to some kind of computer intelligence that can sense enemies.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)