Comic book collectors often refer to comic books as having been published during certain "ages", though the span of years covered in that ages can vary widely depending on who you talk to. The Golden Age of Comic Books is typically said to begin with the debut of Superman in 1938 and run somewhere between 1950-1955. For H&H purposes, I wanted to start in 1935 with the first comic book dedicated to all original material (both starting issues were from the same company, incidentally). I haven't needed an end date yet, because as I've been going through the old comic books, studying them one at a time to figure out how best to emulate them in a RPG, I'm only at the tail end of 1941 so far. 

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So what kind of stories would you see in the Golden Age of Comic Books? I go through a lot of them on my blog, The Larcenous Lexicon, but some examples include:

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Captain Easy is captured by savage natives, but scares them off with smoke bombs and the static from his radio (Famous Funnies #19).

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Don Drake is captured, but his guards promise to free him and their other captives if Don can defeat the horrible land monster attacking the alien city (More Fun #12).

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Scorchy Smith, investigating the mysterious gassing of an entire village, flies to Washington, D.C. to consult an expert and see if the gas can be identified (Famous Funnies #28).

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Bob Phantom's assistant escapes from kidnappers and he has to hide her before dealing with them

(Star Comics #1).

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Dan Dunn has to figure out how Dake's gang escaped his dragnet and, upon asking around, learns of

the freight tunnel under the building (The Funnies #7).

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Skippy gets savagely pranked when he follows signs to a rope that says to be pulled, and the rope

pulls a bucket of tar onto his head (Popular Comics #18).

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And all this is well before the debut of Superman! What we see here is that comics covered a wide

range of adventure handled in a wide range of ways. These scenarios were solved not just by combat

(and sometimes not at all by combat), but by relying on morale saves, consulting supporting cast

members, skills, or just good role-playing to win the day. And the good guys don't always win, like

poor Skippy.

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(Scorchy Smith page courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

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