Star Ranger Funnies v. 2 #4

Today, we rejoin the first frontier-era Mysteryman, The Ermine. Or is he a Mysteryman? This ability to talk to animals puzzles me (not as much as where he produced that duck harness from, but that's less relevant to our game mechanics discussion). Except for The Ermine, there's really no reason to give this special ability to the Mysteryman class. But the Explorer class -- modeled after Heroes in Tarzan's mold -- that would make sense to give this ability to. If I resurrect the Explorer class (currently still only an optional class from The Trophy Case), I'd definitely give it this ability.

This is also the only time in comic book history where the "Hero" is saved by a duck pulling a dead muskrat. Soak it in, folks.

The Erskine makes friendly with a puma/cougar (see Supplement III for stats), but hates the Red Man. Racist much, Erskine?

"Blood on the Rio Grande" is a one-shot story played serious, even though it's drawn by one of Centaur's funny book artists in the same style. The machine gun isn't actually shown until the next page, but yes, the bad guys really do have a machine gun -- and are hesitant to use it because the good guy has cover from a tree. It's making me wonder if I don't give cover enough of a game mechanic benefit...

I've always liked bison. I like them so much that when I first statted them in this post, I may have been a little overgenerous. Let's give them 5 Hit Dice instead, with 10-sided dice. Coyotes I would stat as dogs.

Some of these Centaur stories are just so awful....This is "Pot o' Gold". A slick hoodlum sells a played-out gold mine to a sucker. The sucker sticks around, ambushes the hoodlum, and shoots him through the neck. Then -- oops! Our Hero was only looking on the wrong side of the mine; there's gold there after all! So he was never scammed and committed murder for nothing.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)