The Fastest Nose in the West!

 

The Brand-New Adventures of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, 1960-61

 

Hi Guys!

It's me, Andrew the Bee, with one last holiday offering!   A couple of weeks ago, I told you about The Brand-New Adventures of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, an annual comic book put out during the holidays by DC.  These comics had an eleven-year run from 1950 to 1961, which is impressive given that the red-nose thing is pretty much a one-liner!  Even so, you can tell that the folks at DC got kinda hard-up for ideas toward the end.  Check it out and you'll see what I mean.

 

Christmas comes to Cactus Gulch.

 

Today we're gonna be talkin' about the last Rudolph comic.  Like the splash page suggests, it's a bizarre mashup of Christmas and cowpokes!  That's kind of like a banana split, except instead of a banana, you substitute a hot dog!  Now ice cream and hot dogs are great on their own, but they sure don't make much sense together!  

You gotta remember, though, in the early 1960s cowboys were huge!  They were in the movies, the comics, on TV, pretty much everywhere!  There were even theme parks like Ghost Town in the Sky, Silver Dollar City, Six-Gun City, and Wild West City, where you could go back in time to the Old West and be a cowboy yourself!  So if you were a kid in 1960, you probably didn't ask too many questions about why Rudolph would be wearing a ten-gallon hat and dragging a couple of desperadoes in the dust behind him.

 

Those toys just keep getting bigger... and heavier.

Anyhow, our story begins where most Rudolph stories begin, at the North Pole!  Rudolph and his trusty sidekick, Grover Groundhog, are helping out in Santa's workshop.  Seems that the toys just keep getting bigger and heavier every year.  Santa has been bitching about it and Rudolph wants to lighten his load!  

Helping out in the workshop is one thing, but messing around in Santa's lab...  I don't know about that.

It seems that Santa has some kind of chemistry lab on his property and so Rudolph decides to concoct something that will temporarily shrink the toys for easier delivery.

He'd better stick to guiding sleighs.

It sounds like a good idea, but Rudolph doesn't know diddly about safety protocol!  The resulting explosion blows out all the windows and hurls reindeer and groundhog  a hundred yards into the snow!

I'm with you, Grover... even if that dumb reindeer is actually shrinking.

Santa's workshop is trashed, but there's a silver lining:  Rudolph's shrinking formula seems to work!  Problem is, it shrinks Rudolph and not the toys.  

Looks like that shrinking formula caused Grover to grow two heads!

Grover figures that there might be some kind of cure in one of the books littering the floor in the ruined workshop.  But Santa, who was apparently upstairs when his workshop blew all to hell, has heard the noise and is on his way to investigate!  He sounds way pissed, too!  So Grover grabs the book and boogies away!

Cactus Juice fixes everything!

Luckily, the book just happens to be about "science" and it explains exactly what to do if you should be exposed to chemicals that make you shrink.  Yep, cactus juice is the answer!  So Rudolph and Grover decide to take a little trip south, uh, west.  You know, wherever it is that cacti grow!

But... Can't Rudolph fly faster than that?  Isn't he a magic flying reindeer?

Of course that means pissing off Santa some more, because to get there, they have to steal his helicopter!  Once in the air, Rudolph and Grover discover that neither of them knows how to fly a helicopter, yet somehow, they manage to get from the North Pole to the western desert before this becomes a serious issue!

I know what's on Santa's Xmas list:  reindeer-hide boots trimmed with groundhog fur!

The helo crash-lands and once again, our heroes are tossed through the air like rag dolls!  That silver lining kicks in, however, when Rudolph and Grover discover themselves practically in the middle of a cactus patch!  

Grover isn't touching that big Freudian cactus.  That's 'cause he's the smart one here.

 

Those cacti won't give up their juice easily, though!  And to make matters worse, a couple of outlaws have appeared on the scene!

Those are some hard-looking hombres! 

But are they really as evil as they look?  Seems like maybe they want to help Rudolph out!  Guess I shouldn't judge a book by it's cover... or should I? 

I was right!  These guys suck!

Turns out that these guys are rotten through and through, but they've got some original ways of entertaining themselves!  For fun, they slice up some cactus chunks and huck them at our heroes!  Rudolph gets smacked right in the pazookus -- man, that's gotta hurt!

It wouldn't be my nose that glowed if that happened to me!

But yet again, there's a silver lining!  As that spiky projectile smashes into Rudolph's rump, it delivers the cactus juice that he has been so avidly seeking!   

Cactus juice, huh?  Who knew!

 

Just as the science book said, the juice causes Rudolph to grow back to his normal size!  But there's no time to celebrate -- those outlaws are right behind them!  So Rudolph and Grover push deeper into the cave...

So *that's* where the Post Office has been putting them...

 

Our heroes don't get far when they stumble across a massive hoard of Christmas gifts!  But how did all those packages wind up in this out-of-the-way cavern?  Well, it seems that this is the outlaws' lair and that they have been piling up stolen presents here!  

Before Rudolph and Grover can figure out what to do, they are cornered by Tweedledee and Tweedledum!  The bandits have run out of cactus and now it's looking like they'll be throwing lead!  

Sorry Rudolph, but these guys have been on Santa's shit list for a long time now!

In a desperate gambit, Rudolph and Grover threaten to tell Santa about being murdered!  It's no good, though... These guys are hardened jerks!  It looks like curtains for our brave duo, but the outlaws have other plans...

Let there be light!

Seems their cave is pretty dark, so they decide to use Rudolph as a living chandelier!  Kinda clever when you think about it.  As for Grover, they probably want to use him for a living muff when it gets colder -- but for now, they just tie him up!

I'd be ticked off too if I were strung up like a pinata!

 

Having had their daily dose of fun, the outlaws take off to rob a few more ranches.  Meanwhile, Rudolph decides that he's had enough!  Using his nose like a blowtorch, he burns through the rope and frees himself and Grover!  I don't recall Rudolph's nose being able to do anything other than glow, but that's hella convenient, wouldn't you say?

Rudolph won't settle for being free, though -- He's pretty mad about that stolen Christmas gift thing!  So he's bound and determined to catch those slimy outlaws and make them pay! 

Yes indeed.  Grover really is the smart one here.

Grover tries to talk sense into the reindeer's head, but no dice!  So like a good sidekick, the groundhog decides to throw his life away along with Rudolph's!  

I wonder what the horses have to say about all of this?

Our heroes head the outlaws off at the pass as they careen down the trail with a wagonload of freshly purloined presents!  Rudolph, who seems to have learned nothing from his previous encounter, attempts to stop the bad men in their tracks through the sheer force of his personality!  Fortunately for the brave but stupid reindeer, an armed posse shows up in the nick of time!  

Rudolph the bad-assed reindeer!

The outlaws are captured, but Rudolph doesn't know when to quit!  He goads Black-Hat into a duel, forgetting that reindeer can't handle shooting irons!  No one can save him now, not even the sheriff's men, because the Law of the West is inviolable -- and it's written in hot lead!

Looks to me like Rudolph might be soiling his britches!

Well, once again, Rudolph's nose saves the day.  Squeezing out every ounce of power in his schnoz, Rudolph beams its light into Black-Hat's face, blinding him just long enough for the plucky reindeer to knock the gun out of the outlaw's hand!  The jig's truly up this time and the bad men are put away for good! 

All's well that ends well!

 

Best of all, Santa's not pissed any more -- I guess that's why they call him "Santa" in the first place!  He shows up out of nowhere and gives Rudolph some kind of sheriff's badge.  Then both our heroes get a free ride home on one of the Big Man's doe-powered sleighs!  

Remember that, kids!  Reckless and ill-advised behavior always scores big with Santa!  And probably your parents too!  So go without fear into this crazy, crazy world and grab life by the horns!    

That's all for now -- See you next time!

 

Yippee-Aye-Ay!

 

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