Thrilling Comics #3 - pt. 6

It's hard to believe there is so much we need to go over from this one issue, but here we are, squeezing out a few more pages for a 6th post!

We're still on the Rio Kid. I like this one story detail, where Keller has been trying to legally acquire that land all this time, but when he faces a last minute inconvenience his true nature is revealed and he tries to bully his way past it.

I can't be certain, as I've seen that trick shot stunt in a lot of cowboy stories, but this might be the first time I've seen a pen shot out of someone's hand. Considering that the Rio Kid is maybe five feet away from Keller, at most, and could simpy grab the pen away, makes me think Rio is just showing off. 

Panel 6 is confusing, as Rio appears to be gunning down Keller, but it is just someone else wearing the same shirt as Keller, because Keller shows up again in panel 7. It also looks like Rio is shooting the bad guys in the back as they're fleeing, but it's really just that one guy who has his gun in his hand. Rio "generously" allows the others to escape because they are unarmed. 

Panel 7 has several examples of hard cover. 

I had to look up "cayuse." According to Wikipedia, "Cayuse is an archaic term used in the American West, originally referring to a small landrace horse, often noted for unruly temperament. The name came from the horses of the Cayuse people of the Pacific Northwest."

If I was to do a cowboy-themed supplement someday -- which I've not ever fully ruled out -- I wonder if tough cowhands would need to be statted. They definitely are weaker than deputies.

Panel 6 confuses me. Does Kid Rio have some past with Keller we don't know about? Because it seems like Green has a score to settle with Keller, not Rio.

Bear with me on this -- this final feature is ridiculously racist -- but it is actually the first appearance of a pegasus in a comic book, not counting the pegasus-unicorns in Action Comics #6.

I like the quest - to bring back milk for undernourished children everywhere - and it seems very appropriate for a high fantasy scenario with half-pint protagonists. 

I'm also willing to forgive the racism on this page.  Assuming this is all in Marco's imagination, including Snowball, and Marco's only exposure to black people is from comic books, then it is entirely possible that he would imagine a black person looks like this.

I can't resist commenting on this page. For one thing, Ice Cream Mountains is wonderfully evocative and would be a good addition to a Candyland-themed campaign setting.  While the narrator calls them the Ice Cream Mountains, Snowball calls them the Tutti-Frutti Mountains. My first thought was that Snowball is using the term as a euphemism for an expletive (like "rassum-frassum"), but I see no evidence that tutti-fruitti was ever used as an adjective with negative connotations before the 1970s.  Tutti-frutti, as an ice cream flavor, has been around since the 1860s.

I also had to look up if there had been a particularly bad blizzard in 1899 or if that was a made-up detail. Sure enough, it was real!

I am tempted to stat snowmen as a mobstertype...

5,000 miles is just a fraction of the distance to the Moon. Not that the snowman is wrong; since we are already in the Milky Way Galaxy, you are there whether you go 5,000 miles or 1 mile.

The idea of an alien species that simply chooses not to age is an interesting one, more so than the Libertarian fantasy of a utopia the goat-riding baby alien espouses. Also more interesting is that the alien is riding a goat at all, which makes me think of Thor and his goat-drawn chariot.

Final feature! Now how the robbers think thousands of dollars is "the world's richest haul." This is entirely appropriate for a non-serious scenario.

$1,000 is a very generous reward for the theft of thousands of dollars and quite the xp boost for Buddy Braver. We also learn that a box of candy costs 50 cents. 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)