THE FIRST SERIAL FEMME FORMIDABLE?

 I chanced across this internet reprint of the following sequence of a strip that began in 1908, DOCTOR PEACH AND HER MODERN METHODS.

Happily there was one resource online that provided some in-depth material on this vintage strip: the 2-9-2024 post on the blog STRIPPER'S GUIDE. Blogger Allan Holtz notes that the strip, about a comely lady doctor making her way near the turn of the century, was advanced for its time given the favorable depiction of this female professional. That didn't keep the strip from petering out in the same year it debuted, though. Holtz also reprints a "health improvement" strip similar to the one I showed above.

There had certainly been isolated depictions of women being able to duke it out with men in one way or another prior to 1908, but I don't know of any *serial* examples. There was a dime novel series about Calamity Jane in the 1870s, at a time when the real frontierswoman was still alive. But as I've read none of them, Jane may or may not fit my definition of a femme formidable. 

But maybe Doctor Peach is the first serial type in the 20th century at least. The year she was published, Hollywood was making lots of shorts, often on western themes. The earliest attestation I find to another series character was a series of 15 shorts, beginning in 1912 or 1913, about a western gal, Calamity ANNE (played by Louise Lester). But none of these are readily available either. Ditto another series, beginning in 1919, starring cowgirl Tempest Cody (Marie Walcamp). And of course the 1910s also marked the rise of American silent serials, many of which starred female characters, like the well-known 1914's PERILS OF PAULINE-- though one often can't also take for granted the formidability of these heroines either.

As long as I'm spotlighting heroines of this period, the punchiest I've come across is the one-shot film ROWDY ANN (1919), in which tomboy Ann (Fay Tincher) hits, lassos or shoots at four or five opponents, including donning boxing gloves to beat one cowboy. (She does cheat a little by stomping on his bare feet.)