To start out their new Rangers Comics title which was supposed to show the "positive" side of colonialism, Fiction House had the first few issues of their pioneer-themed anthology starring the Rangers Of Freedom, so much so that the genuine title of the first seven issues was Rangers Of Freedom until they changed it to simply Rangers Comics in Issue #8. This was enterprising for a comics publisher to introduce an entire team of heroes during the fall of 1941 just before America joined in WWII. Biff Barkley, Peter Cabot, and Tex Russell were showing off their physiques at a public demonstration just as lunatics were busting out of asylums and radicals are using the chaos to protest American democracy. After getting a thanks from the recently crowned Miss America, the boys are hired by the FBI to become a special squadron called the Rangers of Freedom to fight this madness solely based on the fact that they're all physically fit and thus somehow immune to the mental waves of craziness that ordinary citizens are stricken with. The new recruits are given patriotic costumes with short blue briefs and strange caps with a fin that makes them look like space cadets. Their uniforms had the plus side of being bulletproof even though that wouldn't help if they got shot in the face or bare arms and legs. The Rangers help bust up a swarm of random maniacs attacking some military machines and then get captured by them after being gassed. They awake captured by the huge-skulled villain called Super-Brain who tries to hypnotize the Rangers into kidnapping the President. His mind control tech doesn't work on the boys, but they fake being brainwashed because the large-lobed creep also nabbed Miss America to marry her. The Rangers take out their crazy cohorts and arrange for a double of the President to act as their bait. Once back at Super-Brain's hideout, their bluff is called and are locked up with the fake President. The heroes get let out by an FBI agent pretending to be one of Super-Brain's madmen, and they smash the mind control machine foiling the cabbagehead crook's plans as he makes his escape to annoy them in future issues. The Rangers eventually get Miss America, aka: Gloria Travers, to join them as Ranger Girl, the team's designated pilot. In Issue #5, the original Rangers leave Ranger Girl behind and ditch the superhero threads for standard army gear to kick some Axis. They travel to Malaysia to be under the command of their leader Captain Morgan(not a pirate), along with the token minority character of John Red Hawk and the recently orphaned Peter Rogers as their bugle boy. The Ranger Boys eventually became lost in the fold of the other background soldiers, and the segment was completely retitled to U.S. Rangers. From super-soldiers to just regular soldiers, the Rangers of Freedom had an offbeat career as comic book heroes, but certainly memorable as they helped push the flag-waving angle Captain America had already started, even though the term of freedom rangers probably makes people think more about poultry than actual superheroics. As for what happened to the sinister Super-Brain after his final conflict with the Rangers...that is another story!
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