Space Western Comics: The Sun Masters

I've decided, after having a lot of fun mocking-er, documenting-Space Western Comics the other day, that I ought to explore a few of their other stories.

Prepare for craziness.

This story is from the Spurs Jackson and his Space Vigilantes feature in #42-strictly speaking, the title is "meets the Sun Masters." And so they do:

I find it kind of funny that they have all these rockets and things, and Palomar observatory is still their number one spotting station. Of course, this is a comic about cowboys who fly around in rockets, so "kind of funny" is par for the course.

Also, I love the Sun Masters' spacesuits, even though this is the only panel we get a look at them:

What a liar. And you'd think that a guy with a faster-than-light spacecraft would know better than to call a star a "fire orb." Though maybe he thinks we're just stupid monkeys who don't know better than that ourselves...

Anyway, Spurs and the army are suspicious.

Unfortunately, their suspicions are falling on deaf ears...

Spurs and that guy enter the lab, but are forced to take a guided tour rather than actually be allowed to explore.

Which brings us to this:

Y'know, if I didn't know better, I'd suspect that the Solarine there was some kind of product placement...

Anyhow, the generically pretty lab assistant tells Spurs that there's a room that the Sun Masters won't let her and the scientist into, which is rather suspicious. But meanwhile...

Hank Roper (yes, the same one from the Hank Roper feature-there are a bunch of different features in the comic, but they all have the same characters) spots a star that mysteriously got brighter, and points it out to Spurs and the general.

What up with that?

It's awfully peculiar to instantly jump to the conclusion that those dudes were from that star just because you happen to see it nova after they show up, huh?

Note that this means the Sun Masters are somewhere approaching Type II on the Kardashev scale. Oh, man, we're doomed now.

By the way, this leads to the best moment in the story, in my opinion:

Good grief, an actual intelligent use of actual science in Space Western Comics! (Sorta.) Is this possible?

Don't worry, it promptly goes insane again.

We learn that the Sun Masters plan to wipe out Earth's population by making the Sun heat up until we all die, letting them take over. (Doesn't seem like that good a plan, does it? What are they going to do with a too-hot-to-live-in Earth?)

The only one who can stop them is Spurs Jackson! So what does he do?

He embraces the nuclear option! But why can't the general give him the bomb?

He won't say.

Seriously, he won't.

Spurs won't listen, though.

He just won't take no for an answer, will he?

And here he comes on his bombing run...

Does his plan work?

Yes.

That seems... anticlimactic.

Even with the big explosion.

Chances are, there was more to it than that... So let's look at the last two panels of the last page of the story.

Do you realize what just happened there?

He dropped a 1000-pound bomb on a gigantic, faster-than-light capable, Type II on the Kardashev scale, frikkin' able to escape an exploding star spaceship. And it blew it right up.

Did the Sun Masters not invent armor or something?

-Signing off.