Never Bring a Puma to a Gunfight!

"The Plunderers," from Rawhide Kid #55 (December 1966) was written and drawn by Larry Lieber.  I'll admit upfront that I like Lieber's art, but I'm not usually knocked dead by it. His work is servicable and enjoyable, but doesn't particularly stand out.

But in this story, Lieber really had his game on. His script is a perfectly good one, but it's his art, with a very effective use of shifting camera angles and some well-choreographed fight scenes, that make everythying click.

The Kid meets a family of poor farmers, who assume there's a reward and arrest him. Not wanting to fight innocent people, the Kid allows himself to be taken into town.

He's not wanted in this particular county, though. But while he's in jail waiting for the sheriff to check up on him, he sees the patriarch of the farming family getting roughed up by some thugs.

When he's released, he runs to help the farmer. But the farmer assumes the Kid is working with the thugs and some of the townspeople jump him as well after also automatically assuming he must have busted out of jail.

That leads to the first of several action sequences as the Kid fist-fights his way out of town. Determined to help the farmer regardless, he rides out to their homestead. Here he discovers a rich rancher is trying to run them off the land so that he can grab it for himself.

The farmer and his two kids don't trust the Kid at first, but when the bad guys attack, they are forunate to have him around.

This leads to yet another effective action scene, in which the Kid takes out most of the rancher's gang, despite the use of a haywagon to smash into the farmer's house.

This flows into the climatic scene. Using the farmer's daughter as a hostage, the rancher flees back to his own place. The Kid pursues, so the villain releases his pet puma. This tactic quite literally comes back to bite the rancher.

The story is structured to give us one nifty fight scene after another and, because Lieber's art stands out, it works really well in this regard. It can be said that the Rawhide Kid stories were stuck in the same rut--he's always distrusted by the people he meets and this always forces him to move on in the end even if he has made a few friends. But within that framework, some very entertaining stories were told.

We've visited with Turok and Andar recently, but I've acquired an unusual multi-part story arc from that series, so we'll return to Lost Valley next week.