Space Western Comics: Spurs Sees Red!

By now, you know the drill, I hope. (If not, hit the "Space Western Comics" label, and find out!)

We start at an "isolated" radar "tracking" post...

The excessive "use" of "quotation marks" in the "narration" and "dialogue" makes me "raise" my "eyebrow."

Anyway, in a less sarcastic vein, the fact that their radar screen seems to be showing a silhouette of a spaceship cracks me up. They are unable to identify the craft as any known type of vehicle, so they phone it in.

Oh, no! Not a farm!

The mystery craft seems to handle a landing at 400+ miles an hour awfully well...

...if completely without anything resembling grace. Ah, well.

So are we about to get a look at just what kind of crazy persons were piloting that ship?

No. But we do see their handiwork.

Those jerks! They killed some old guy!

His daughter sees what happened from the house, and flees in her car. Where does she go?

Why, to Spurs Jackson's house, of course!

She looks suspiciously like one version of Thula, and she's on a first name basis with Spurs. Peculiar.

Are you wondering just what kind of highly advanced craft Spurs is taking to investigate?

Sorry, but apparently the government got tired of all those darned cowboys just tearing off in rockets whenever their wanderlust hit. So Spurs is stuck in a plane. (There's actually an earlier story where he takes a plane around, too, but I'm saving that one for last. Next week.)

He wants to investigate, and seeing a gaping hole in the side of the barn down there makes him decide to be as cautious and stealthy as possible.

This doesn't work very well...

Spurs claims that his luck's run out, but even considering that in a consecutive panel he hides his gunbelt so that theoretically they'll never suspect he was carrying a piece in the first place, I'd say he's pretty darned lucky yet, seeing as how...

...he's stumbling on a secret Communist Russian mission with half a dozen soldiers with assault rifles, and he somehow lives even though they see him.

There goes plausible deniability.

Also, seeing as how an old man who got shot in the heart earlier is somehow still alive and apparently completely unhurt, there goes plausibility.

We get a very small glimpse under the "saucer's" hood...

Next up, the villain ball!

What do you do when you have a guy at your mercy in Space Western Comics?

Tell them your whole entire plan in detail!

He plans to cover it up...

...but it would have been easier to cover it up by just killing Spurs right off the bat.

No wonder the Soviet Union collapsed, huh?

The old man's reaction is amusing.

Especially since he makes an oblique statement alluding to Jesse James's ghost, which if taken literally might mean that the old man worships Wild West outlaws. Which is actually awesome in a stupid kind of way.

Then, the cavalry shows up.

So the call that guy made earlier wasn't completely pointless, just mostly pointless.

Considering the disappointing quality of this story (primarily the total lack of totally insane nonsense science talk), I was hesitant to present this one. Fortunately, there was a short Space Western Comics feature in the same issue which was worthy of attacking.

In and of itself, this whole "frumious Bandersnatch" thing wouldn't be so bad.

No, the thing that really gets me is that, in the other issue, this spot was taken up by what claims to be a historical account. (I thought I had heard a similar account before; however, a quick Google search turns up nothing relevant. This site describes what would have been somewhat similar encounters in the same time period, give or take a bit.)

I guess the writers just like screwing with science.

-Signing off.