Arizona Annie

First Appearance: Wild West #1 (Spring 1948).
Appearances: Wild West #1-2, Wild Western #3-4, Tex Morgan #3-4, Tex Taylor #3, Two-Gun Kid #5.
Years Active: 1870s-?

Arizona Annie is a light-hearted cowgal with no origin that I've ever read. She was accompanied by her two sidekicks, Slim (the tall cowboytoy) and Cal (the goofily-dressed city slicker). Neither was a boyfriend to her, however; she was too cheerily independent for that sort of thing. She actually acts more as the older sister to both of them. Naturally, she is a crack shot and quite capable in every way. She's also very headstrong and even fiery; when Slim makes fun of her for not hitting everything she sees with a warped rifle, she whacks him on the head with it. In other stories, when men mouth off to her, they regret it, getting punched in the gut or having their belts shot off them. In fact, she's downright spunky; she's extremely independent (when told in one story that a frontier school keeps losing teachers because "they ALL get married!" she responds, "They do, eh? Well, that's no job for ME!") and...well...she makes a point of saying "I DON'T LIKE MEN!" (Perhaps she's a member of the Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers Association?) In the story with the frontier school, she fills in as a substitute teacher and thoroughly cows the crowd of marriage-hungry men who have shoved aside the kids; she punches them and shoots their suspenders off, and when the more sullen and mischievous kids get mouthy, she shoots their ink bottles, staining their shirts. Annie's a hoot, is what she is.

Notes: The Arizona Annie stories are mostly set in the Old West, but they have the occasional moment of Roy Rogers-like time-bending, such as the story set in a circus where Slim and Cal end up driving little go-carfs.