FIREBRAND WITH A FIERY BRAND

 

FLOWERS OF EVIL

 

An Old-West botanist becomes fascinated with rare flowers consecrated by an Indian god of evil. He sees (or imagines) the flowers becoming women, and he becomes so besotted with them that his jealous wife tries to destroy the blooms. The botanist kills her, but the murdered woman appears among the flower-harem and kills him-- though the "realistic" explanation is that he was killed by breathing poisonous fumes.  

MICHELLE LANIA

 

WESTWARD HOS

 I've remarked on OUROBOROS DREAMS that there are barely any noteworthy Native American characters in pop fiction, but a Belgian comic, SILVERARROW, featured a tough-and-ready Indian maiden named Moonbeam.

 

WESTWARD HOS

 Michelle Lania with "Two-Gun Lil" and "Kit West."

A BEE IN HER BONNET

 In what might be called a "true crime of the West," "The Two Gun Gal" charts the rise and fall of tough gang-leader Jeanne Bonnet, seen here catfighting with a saloon girl named Lu-Lu.

  

WESTWARD HOS

 A roundup of KITTY CARSON capers.

WHIPPED AND CREAMED

 Belle Dubois whips it good.

RING THAT BELLE! PART 2

 The rest of the decent BUFFALO BELLE scenes.

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.