The Widow's Weed (1950)

Gordo is the kind of character who generally makes friends, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have a enemy or two. There's the Bluto-esque Goblin, and the time-beating tot Coronado de Gama, but most of Gordo's problems ar the product of the lovestruck widow Artemisia Gonzales.

Unlike most marriage-minded maidens in comic strips, the Widow isn't portrayed as desperate, homely or pathetic -- far from it, in fact!

Artemisia Gonzales is portrayed as highly intelligent, aggressively ambitious, enormously successful, hip, artistic, and pursued by scads of high-quality suitors. In other words, she's too good for Gordo -- and yet, perhaps because his love is the one thing she cannot possess, she'll move heaven and earth to marry her husky hearththrob.

In this torrid tale, Gordo falls for television wrestler Mitzi Miller, a college chum of local schoolmarm, Ms. Ruiz. His infatuation leads him to learn the secrets of the squared circle, in hopes of putting on a charity match for the underfunded local school. Unfortunately, when the Widow is alerted to Gordo's career as an amateur grappler, she digs up an opponent who might wrestle the plucky bean farmer into matrimony -- if Gordo survives, that is!  

 

August 14 - December 2, 1950