Number 2254: Gun-mad Lil gets revenge!

Lilly is a young bride, heading West on a stagecoach, which is stopped and robbed by a couple of road agents. Lilly’s husband is killed. She buries her husband in Gunville, then spots the murderers as she is talking to the sheriff! She tells the sheriff to do his duty, but he does not go into action, rather telling her while the killers ride away that Gunville is a town that believes in law and order. His idea of law and order seems to run along the lines of not chasing down criminals and holding them accountable.

Lilly goes on a rampage. Her mind must’ve snapped because she not only kills bad guys, she kills witnesses to her killing bad guys. By then becoming a murderer herself, she has law and order visited upon her.

The story, “Gun-Mad Lil,” appeared in Saddle Justice #7 (1949), an EC publication, done when EC was still following trends rather than creating them, as they later did with horror comics, Harvey Kurtzman’s war comics and later Mad.

The story was drawn by Ed Waldman, who signed his name in tiny letters on the bottom of the splash panel. Waldman was a journeyman comic book man who did some freelance work at EC during the forties.

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