The worst genre for female comics-characters

[Gothos]

It's gotta be westerns.

Be they heroines, villainesses, or just regular support-cast, female characters in western comics seem to me more negligible than in any other genre.

How many good ones, or at least noteworthy ones, can you list? You can include "fantastic westerns" if you please.

[Grazzt]

Madame .44 seemed pretty cool.

Although I admit that's based solely on her Who's Who entry. :o

[Lone Ranger]

Although there aren't too many female Western characters, I can think of a few strong ones.

Madame .44 was indeed pretty darned cool. She is basically Catwoman to Johnny Thunder's Batman.

During the late 40s/early 50s, All-American Western featured a good strip entitled Overland Coach featuring Tony Barrett - who took on all sorts of evil doers while trying to deliver people and packages to their destinations.

Staying with DC - Cinammon was introduced in the 70s and was a pretty strong character. She has been undersed, IMHO.

Fiction House's Firehair kicked all kinds of ass - with great artwork by the likes of Jack Kamen, Bob Lubbers and Lee Elias.

[InfoBroker]

er ummm...

If we measure female characters in quality rather than qauntity, then Mother Delilah from Boy's Ranch pretty much keeps western's outta last place.

-jb the gun-slingin' ib-

[Gothos]

I did belatedly come up with one genre in which female characters are probably even more under-represented: the war comic. Now there's a genre where it's even hard to think of very many memorable female characters even in the film medium.

I do feel, though, that early western comics lagged way behind western films in depicting interesting females. I suppose it's because so many comics imitated the B-oaters of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, where the hero just rides in, solves some problem and then rides out.

I was pretty sure Madame .44 and Cimarron would get mentioned, and am glad someone remembered the original Firehair.

I suppose there might be a few more rounded (hah) women in comic strips, where stories could be a little more dramatically drawn-out, but the only one I recall is the humorously-named "Gaye Abandon" from RICK O'SHAY.

[Lone Ranger]

You are quite right that war comics don't feature many women, but Mlle. Marie is a great character regardless of gender.

There's also Lady Blackhawk, but it wasn't much of a war comic by the time she came on the scene.

Although she was more of a spy, Fiction House's Senorita Rio operated during WW2- her stories were in Fight Comics, IIRC.

There was also the Jane Martin strip in Fiction House's Wings Comics.

[Rob Allen]

One artist doesn't count as a genre, usually, but - women don't fare too well in Robert Crumb's work. Is there a single normal-looking, normal-behaving woman in any Crumb strip?

[Jonathan Bogart]

One artist doesn't count as a genre, usually, but - women don't fare too well in Robert Crumb's work. Is there a single normal-looking, normal-behaving woman in any Crumb strip?
I suppose it depends on your definition of normal-looking and normal-behaving, but whenever his wife, Aline Kominsky, appears in his comics she seems like a reasonable person. (Much more reasonable than in her own strips.) But I really only know Crumb from the 80s on; most people think of his 60s and 70s work first.

I suppose I should make the inevitable crack about war and western comics at least not putting their few female characters through the misogynistic psychosexual paces that current superhero comics delight in. Not to mention that women get to dress fairly sensibly in war and western comics.

[Aaron King]

I actually hate the general portrayal of women in superhero comics. Naturally, in such a large field, there are tons of exceptions, but it's pretty bad.

[prince hal]

Westerns and war came to mind immediately. I especially love Mlle. Marie. She was nearly in my Top 12 list, but I felt that I just hadn't read enough of her stories to put her up there.