If anybody can explain to me how the cough drops help I will be impressed

The mountain lion’s speech bubble does not have quotation marks in it. Also whoever wrote this has no idea what sounds cats make at all because S-C-R-E-E-C-H is most decidedly avian sound. Unless the cowboy a still live bird the cougar had just eaten, they must be in some freak universe where cats sound like birds.

Reply

I propose that the real cherry taste also produces a real cherry smell. So the lion didn’t smell the human scent and thought it was only a cherry tree sneaking up on it, which – as we all know – is no threat to fully grown mountain lions.

Reply

Well, here is the script without the Ludens:

[Pg 1, Pan 1: a YOUNG, WHITE LAD and YOUNG, WHITE LASS, crisp and innocent, are having a delightful picnic in an out-of-the-way canyon, far from the watchful eyes of adults, with a grown man carrying live ammunition and dressed as a cowboy: WILD WEST CHARLIE. As they dine on apples and milk, a herd of cattle passes scenically by, while in the foreground, a mountain lion whose love of fresh, organic beef is only eclipsed by his love for Saved by the Bell, paws carefully down the sharp incline.]

YOUNG, WHITE LAD: “Look! A mountain lion!”

WILD WEST CHARLIE: “He’ll kill the cattle!”

[Pg 1, Panel 2: Sensibly, WILD WEST CHARLIE, his pistol drawn, takes LAD and LASS with him to go shoot the mountain lion in the back of the head. They follow him carefully behind as he maneuvers around the craggy hills.]

WILD WEST CHARLIE: “Shhhh don’t cough kids!”

[Pg 1, Panel 3: WILD WEST CHARLIE leans over the hills, carefully aims as the mountain lion reposes, oblivious, and thinks about which Saved by the Bell character he would prefer to eviscerate.]

YOUNG, WHITE LASS (off-panel): (SFX) COUGH-COUGH!

[Pg 1, Panel 4 (splash): The carnage is unknowable (ed. note: remember to check with comics code authority, re: LASS reaching out to chew on revealed entrails of WILD WEST CHARLIE in an attempt to shock herself into unconsciousness so she will not be awake when the mountain lion attends to her; is probably OK given today’s standards but run it by them anyway)]

Reply

What kind of cowboy shoots someone execution style from the back?

Reply

“What kind of cowboy shoots someone execution style from the back?”

A sensible one.

Reply

I… I don’t know how they help. But Rex the Wonder Dog is involved somehow.

Reply

Will no one speak the truth?

Has no one seen that “Wild West Charlie” dresses in pink and yellow and looks like Glenn Close?

OBVIOUSLY, the quotes are in the deceptively-innocuously-named “speech bubbles” to draw attention that the entire sick tableau is CODE and EUPHEMISM!

We must act NOW, before our red-blodded children THEMSELVES become curious about what “sucking on Ludens” and “bagging mountain lions” are really like!

Reply

“Don’t cough kids”? Is Charlie giving advice to the youth or the cougar? Also, doesn’t it look like the bullet went through the puma and possibly into – at least – one of the CATTLE?

Reply

They speak in quotation marks because they know they’re being watched.

Reply