In which an ironmonger rather unwisely assaults Thirty/Thirty.
During a routine confrontation with a bunch of dingoes, Thirty/Thirty injures his knee. “Injures” is perhaps a mild way of putting it. In fact, he snaps it in two. Displaying less tact than a Daily Mail editorial about immigration, BraveStarr announces that he’s going to take Thirty/Thirty straight to Ironarm the ironmonger’s and get him fixed. This gives way to a hilarious scene in which Thirty/Thirty is strapped into a chair and tortured with a blowtorch, after which BraveStarr says, “When you’re feeling down, the important thing is to feel better.” Well, wow, BraveStarr, with material like that at your disposal, why aren’t you running some inspirational self-improvement sessions?
Meanwhile, McBride is out in a settlement called New Shyan, where a mysterious affliction is hitting a field of aquapods. It seems aquapods produce water and are thus crucial for the continuation of life on New Texas, so once McBride realises there’s something wrong, he summons BraveStarr straight away. He then gets chatting to two farmers, Caleb and Will, who voice the opinion that the only thing that could cause such damage to the aquapods is a giant apecat.
McBride dismisses this as complete rubbish, since apecats don’t live in this part of New Texas, but then Caleb and Will reveal that one of their neighbours, Jeb, has a daughter named Amy, who has a pet apecat called Rascal. Amy insists that Rascal wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything, but Caleb doesn’t believe her. Rascal’s case is not helped by the fact that he has escaped his pen and is currently lurking among the aquapods.
BraveStarr arrives at this point and encounters Rascal, who has somehow got his paw stuck in a trap, from which BraveStarr releases him and earns an instant friend. BraveStarr then carries Rascal back to town, where he runs into Caleb and a collection of townsfolk who have organised themselves into a mob with the intention of killing Rascal to prevent further attacks on the aquapods.
Not being a terribly skilled orator, BraveStarr proves less than competent at talking the mob down, but luckily they realise that Rascal isn’t responsible for the aquapod savagings when another, much larger, apecat appears. It turns out, of course, that the big apecat is Rascal’s mother, and she’s simply come along to take Rascal home. There’s a superficial attempt to explain why Mummy Apecat was ripping up the aquapods, but it’s not a very good reason, so we’ll just gloss over that.
In today’s adventure…
BraveStarr gives us a stirring little speech on the importance of not keeping big wild animals as pets, and finishes up by suggesting that we should get a pet that’s already used to living around humans. This instantly brought various vermin to my mind, but I suspect that’s not what BraveStarr meant.
Character checklist
A small and boring collection today, including BraveStarr, Thirty/Thirty, McBride, Fuzz, Molly, Ironarm, Caleb, Will, Jeb, Amy, Rascal, Mummy Apecat, and the dingoes.
Unnecessarily Violent Horse
Thirty/Thirty’s been relatively quiet of late, but he makes up for his recent lack of activity by indulging in some pretty serious acts of violence against the dingo outlaws in the opening scenes. He’s definitely a prime candidate for an in-depth study by Internal Investigations.
Insults
The opening scene sees the dingoes get their usual insults: Thirty/Thirty refers to them as “varmints” and BraveStarr says they are “blasted dingoes”. A dingo then refers to his vehicle as a “bucket of bolts”, an expression which Ironarm evidently likes, since he expands it to “hard-headed bucket of bolts” to describe Thirty/Thirty. Finally, a random townsperson describes Rascal as a “varmint”, and Caleb says Rascal is a “bland critter”, or something that sounds very much like that.
Strength of the Bear
BraveStarr uses the strength of the bear to punch a dingo’s vehicle to smithereens, which seems to be an almost entirely gratuitous action. He also, slightly more justifiably, uses the bear strength to release Rascal from the trap, and then twice more to take on the bigger apecat.
Speed of the Puma
After Thirty/Thirty injures his leg while pursuing the dingoes, BraveStarr doesn’t bother to hang around to see if he’s okay. Instead, he gets his puma speed on and chases after the rogue dingo. I must say, I don’t think I’d want BraveStarr to be my friend, if this is the degree of concern he shows. The speed of the puma comes out again later, when BraveStarr wants to get to New Shyan in a hurry, and yet again during the final confrontation with the big apecat.
Starr Rating
This one’s a fairly average outing, with a not especially exciting storyline and some slightly clunky dialogue in places. The only particularly odd bit is the early scene in which Thirty/Thirty injures his knee; I really can’t begin to guess what this section is in the episode for. I had assumed it would become relevant towards the end, but it seemed to have no purpose whatsoever. In summary, it’s not great, but it isn’t irritating either, which is pretty much all I’m asking from BraveStarr these days.
BraveStarr Episode Review Site 