Women Outlaws
Fox Feature Syndicate, July 1948.
There's a major problem with this issue, and that is the stories, all but one, fail to match what the issue is supposed to be about – women outlaws.
Cattle Kate: A True Western Crime Story. The story is about Kate Maxwell who was a cattle rustler, a card cheat, and a prostitute (according to one source I read). (Her real name was Ella Watson). She and a guy set up a cattle-stealing ring and do some stealing themselves. In the end, though, the law of the rope meets up with them.
Jack Zutta, Chicago's brutal killer. It's difficult to figure why this story is included, since this is supposed to be WOMEN outlaws, not men, and a woman plays a very minor role in the story.
Gang Leaders: Frankie Yale. Again, this is supposed to be about WOMEN, not men.
Gang Leaders: Bugsy Goldstein. Did the people responsible for this issue ever pass elementary biology?
Larry Baccia and his Five Brother Stooges. Yet again, a story centered on the wrong gender.
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Women Outlaws #2
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Sept. 1948. Fox Feature Syndicate.
Hattie Long-Beautiful Blonde Bandit: A vicious woman who kills with no hesitation at all teams up with a guy who never carries a gun and his gang to knock over a bunch of banks. She gets cursed by one of the guys she kills and finds out that, ultimately, crime does not pay.
Belle Star: Belle is selfish. She leaves home and teams up with Quantrill. She teams up with others to form her own mob and rob people, even robbing trains. She also kills quite freely. A member of the mob later betrays one of them by killing him. She eventually teams up with another outlaw. She eventually is killed in an ambush.
A Slug for the Sheriff (text): A guy shoots and kills his partner in gold mining and then plans to kill the sheriff when he shows up but things don't quite work out the way he expected them to.
Killer at Large: This one is about a man who just out of prison ends up killing a woman because she won't go out with him. He gets caught. Problem: this is supposed to be a comic about women outlaws, and not men outlaws.
Sailor's Haven: This one is about Shanghai Mary. Basically she drugs drinks and does other things to get men to sail on various ships. She is setting them up to be kidnapped by unscrupulous captains. In the end she pays for what she has done.
Little Rick, Wild Gal of the West: A fifteen year old girl and her brother rob Chinese gold-mining camps. Because the Chinese kill her brother during a robbery she decides to start killing every single Chinese person she can and commit other crimes at the same time. Some white vigilantes kill her, though.
Poker Annie: Um, this story doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Trigger Tess: A woman outlaw gets caught because she doesn't know certain details about guns.
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Women Outlaws #3
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1948. Fox Features Syndicate.
Cowboy Maggie, Queen of the Barbary Coast: Right off she's making out with a guy who's not her husband. Her husband comes and moves to attack the guy but she shoots her husband and kills him. Later she gets a gang together to rustle cattle. Her new boyfriend cheats on her and she kills him. Things continue, and she dies in a very historic event.
(One interesting thing about the drawing of the various women outlaws; they are all drawn as very beautiful, large breasted, never wearing glasses, and always wearing outfits that look really good on them.)
Vickey Kelley: She and her gang rustle cattle and rob banks and she kills people freely. The situation gets so bad that troops are called in to work with the law to stop her.
The Female of the Species (text): A woman tries to claim that her husband was murdered by intruders, but the police don't believe her story.
The True Story of Stella Mae Irwin: Like one of the other female outlaws she also started her life of crime at the age of fifteen. She ends up in prison.
'Bluff' Poker: The story is about a male crook, not a female.
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