WESTWARD HOS

 Apparently "gal sheriff" Kitty Carson appeared just once in WESTERN FRONTIER #3, with art attributed to one Richard Case. There had been an earlier Kitty Carson who'd appeared maybe a dozen times in Harvey Comics' KERRY DRAKE comic but the two are unrelated except for the "Kit Carson" pun. If KITTY had managed to become a series apparently a regular feature would've been the "quarreling lovers" trope seen here.

    

WESTWARD HOS

 KIT WEST had a feature in Avon's COW PUNCHER COMICS and then appeared in various other Avon comics, such as this fake story of her origins in the one-shot WHITE CHIEF OF THE PAWNEE INDIANS. 

These three are from COW PUNCHER.

WESTWARD HOS

 

RENEGADE GIRL stars Ann Savage as Jean Shelby, an outlaw girl who falls in with Quantrill's Raiders after the Civil War. The movie's a fairly simple B-western drama, but Jean is pretty gutsy and good at both riding and handling a gun. In one scene, a male outlaw tries to crawl into her bedroll with her, and she puts him to sleep with her gun-butt. 

WESTWARD HOS

 One of the most iconic acts of frontier femme empowerment in my book is an early scene in THE PALEFACE. Some owlhoot assassins attempt to bushwack Jane Russell's Calamity Jane in a women's bathhouse. She decoys them by letting them find her garments and then appears behind them in her petticoats and gunbelt, shooting all of the killers to death without mercy.                                                                                              

SON OF PALEFACE isn't nearly as good but they did some posed shots of Russell treating Bob Hope to some frontier B&D.                           

 

WESTWARD HOS

 Just Christine McIntyre winding up for one of the many slug-scenes in PUNCHY COWPUNCHERS.                                                                      

WESTWARD HOS

 If LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING supplies the most glamorous western catfight, the 1975 GONE WITH THE WEST provides the most grueling one-- and maybe the most extreme in any genre.              

WESTWARD HOS

I've long been impressed with how often American westerns have shown women in atypical positions of power and/or aggression. I may not be able to find many actual screenshots of such depictions, but I'll take a shot and maybe mix in this or that comics panel wherever I please. Having said all that about American westerns, my first example actually comes from a country that wasn't big on making western films but did know how to conjure with feminine images, La Belle France.             

From LES PETROLEUSES (it's an involved French pun, which got translated to THE LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING over here), here's Claudia Cardinale giving Brigitte Bardot a facial.                               

    Then Le Bardot returns the favor.                                                             

Then Michael J. Polland learns why you never get between girls giving each other a makeover.

RING THAT BELLE!

 

Here's Buffalo Belle, making an owlhoot's head do the ringing. I also note that she has a somewhat more impressive rack than most comics-females of the period. She appeared in most/all issues of ACG's BLAZING WEST.                                                                                                                                                                                  Added later:                                                                                                 

         

SALOON SLUGFEST

 Since I mentioned the 1950 DALTONS' WOMEN elsewhere, I may as well include here the oater's only good scene: a lively saloon catfight between performers Jacqueline Fontaine and June Benbow.

THE FIRST SERIAL FEMME FORMIDABLE?

 I chanced across this internet reprint of the following sequence of a strip that began (and ended) 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.)

WESTERN WALLOPS

Here's the Cross-Draw Kid getting his skull creased by Naughty Nita:

And the Kid's co-feature Sheriff Sal slammed around various skunks, the last looking like she's both punching the guy at the same time she pistol whips him.

SILLY SOCK

 From CRAZY, Atlas/Marvel's 1950s attempt to chisel in on the success of EC's MAD.