Monday, July 21, 2014

Manic Monday Bonus--The Women Of The WildWest Were Wilder Than You Thought!

In 1948 Fox Comics debuted an exciting new title:

Let me tell you, there weren't an awful lot of women outlaws in Women Outlaws. Only the cover story was a Western, or starred a "gun gal." The rest of the issue featured standard male urban gangsters. It felt very much like a ploy by Fox to use an enticing cover as an excuse to burn off a bunch of inventory of "regular" crime comics.

Ah, but Fox wasn't done. Over 7 more issues, we got lots and lots of evil female cowgirls, all willing to kill while looking lovely:





And it wasn't just the covers--the interiors were (almost) all gun gals, all the time:


"The Man Killing Bandit Of Raton Pass"?







And those were just from the first three issues!

Ah, but in those heady post-war days, many comics trends could turn on a dime. So after 8 issues, Women Outlaws magically transmogrified into:

Same numbering, different title, different genre.

But the love trend didn't last very long, as after only 4 issues, My Love Memoirs became:

The first issue of Hunted was #13...the second was #2. Bother me no more with your petulant whining about comic companies constantly renumbering & relaunching. You kids got it easy today!

Fun fact...Wertham's Seduction Of The Innocent cited My Love Memoirs/Hunted as an example of a romance comic that switched over to a crime comic; yet he failed to mention that it had been a (Western) crime book to begin with! Oh, Wertham...

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