Outlaw Pants

As you know, I tell you every time I read a book with an owl in it for secret reasons that no one except we (as I believe is gramatically correct) will ever understand. As you also know, Tom Franklin brought me a bunch of old comic books when I was in the hospital, and in one of them, the masked cowboy known as Vigilante met up with some real rascals (spoiler alert! they were reformed and had been framed!) known colloquially as "owlhoots." I don't suppose any of us will ever forget that. But what you DIDN'T know was that after I got home from the hospital, Tom brought over a fresh stack of old comic books! I was lying in bed reading one of the new batch last night and this character the Two-Gun Kid shoots Jesse James's pants off him! He does it in order to embarrass Jesse James in front of a bunch of schoolchildren. It's an odd choice, but hey, he's the Two-Gun Kid. He uses his two guns to shoot off Jesse James's pants, what's the big deal? Here, let me give you a direct quotation from the Two-Gun Kid himself: "LOOK, YOUNGSTERS! THE OWLHOOT WHO HOLDS UP STAGES IS HAVING TROUBLE HOLDING UP HIS JEANS! AND NOW, JESSE... DANCE!" What may we conclude? Let us consider: Vigilante is a DC character, while the Two-Gun Kid was created by Marvel. Therefore, though these mighty giants of comics publishing were adversarial in every other way, the term "owlhoot" was universal enough to bridge the immense gap between them. Can't we all learn a lesson from that in these trying times? Sidenote: I was going to title this "post" "I Shot Jesse James...'s Pants," an allusion to the Samuel Fuller film I SHOT JESSE JAMES, but no one would have understood or, had they understood, cared.