YEAR 1949: KYRA ZELAS

The Stanley G. Weinbaum short story was adapted once for radio and three times for television.  As I'm not dealing with radio productions on this blog, there's nothing I can say about the first television adaptation on STUDIO ONE because, as this reference notes, the original is "lost forever." 

Versions of Weinbaum's story later appeared on the low-budget anthology serials TALES OF TOMORROW and SCIENCE FICTION THEATER, but as I recall, neither of these were particularly noteworthy.  The short story's peculiar use of science and translation of the Frankenstein theme into the sexual-fantasy sphere comes across somewhat better in the 1957 film adaptation SHE-DEVIL, but not by very much.

YEAR 1949: TWO-GUN LIL

In the medium of cinema, tough cowgirls of one stripe or another dated back to the silent era.  In comic books, however, most of them didn't make it as headliners.  Western heroines made minor though constant appearances in an assortment of comic books, but always, like TWO-GUN LIL, as backup characters. Thanks to having a reprint or two of her adventures by Americomics, Two-Gun Lil is one of the few of these sagebrush-backups who can be seen without purchasing original Golden Age comics.

I've only read a handful of these stories of fast-drawing Lil Peters, who seemed content to stick around one particular podunk town and guard its inhabitants from outlaws for a healthy enough run of about 20 issues in Quality Comics' CRACK WESTERN #63-84.  Not having read her first tale, I've no idea how she got to be tough as nails and fast with a gun.  The stories I've seen, rendered by artists like Gill Fox and Pete Morisi, are usually very competent but simple done-in-one tales.  The drawing above shows an anachronistic quality given the shortness of Lil's skirt during the western era, but compared to a later western heroine like "Lady Rawhide," Lil's positively demure here.