Thanks to an excellent article on the history of Ace Comics by one Mark Carlton-Ghost in ALTER EGO #144, I went curiosity-hunting in the six-issue run of Ace's WESTERN ADVENTURES (1948-49). None of the stories therein bear close analysis, but as an overall phenomenon, they comprise an interesting variation on western themes.
The feature included a few cross-genre products, such as "western romances" and "western true crime stories," but most of the stories feature cover-starring hero "The Cross-Draw Kid," whose specialty was confusing his enemies with a cross-drawing technique, as well as inciting pitter-patter in the hearts of numerous fillies to whom he barely paid attention. His enemies included a couple of very minor masked villains, hardly a match for the more distinctive villains in Ace's superhero line, and one mundane owlhoot who shared the name of the villain in the 2011 cartoon film RANGO: the name of "Rattlesnake Jake."
But the most amusing moment in Cross-Draw's short history was the one time he did seem interested in a girl, it was one who hadn't been a woman for very long. Early in the story he says he hasn't seen young Dorothea since "she was in pigtails," and that when he meets her as a mostly grown woman, he says he "always figgered you'd grow up cute." And if she's "frontier jailbait," at least the feeling goes both ways, since fawning Dorothea makes it clear she's had her eye on him as well. None of the fully adult women inspire such mutual affection in Cross-Draw's world-- though of course at the end of the story the cowboy once again rides off in the company of his horse.
The standout feature in WESTERN, though, was the story of an independent young western woman, Sally Starr, who accepted the job of sheriff of her town, and so became SHERIFF SAL for all six issues of WA. Now, there had been many female heroes in comics since 1938, and most of them were written by male authors. Not many of these heroines can be fairly called "feminist"-- "feminist-adjacent" might be more accurate, inasmuch as such features were meant to hold some appeal for female purchasers. But SHERIFF SAL really was feminist. Not only did Sal defeat all of her outlaw challengers, and resist the attempts of her boyfriend Flash to get her to quit her job and marry him, three times she called on help from other women in the town-- an idea that almost never comes up in any westerns in any medium.
Barely any Ace Comics credit authors, but since the Carlton-Ghost article mentions that one prominent female writer he tracked down was one Isabel Mangum, she's a likely candidate for having scripted SHERIFF SAL. The above dialogue about "intuition" doesn't sound to me like just another male writer voicing sentiments for the sake of a paycheck.
As a western adventure, WESTERN ADVENTURES flopped, and its publisher rebranded it as a western romance comic, which died after three issues. Sheriff Sal had her last adventure in issue #7, in which she gave up her heroic independence for the married life. I didn't closely read any of the romance stories, but I did come across one that took the same egalitarian stance as SAL, and might've have come from the same writer. Rodeo girl Dallas loves manly man Tal, but can't help embarrassing him with her skills. He tries to make her jealous with another woman, but Tal ends up teaming up with Dallas to corral a loco steer, a feat which is clearly said to require both of them working in tandem. So even as romance killed off Sheriff Sal's stance of independence, at least one love-tale still put across a slight feminist touch or two.
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