Definitely not your typical western! The story opens with a girl in a cage trying not to be eaten. Then an English lady with a rifle comes along and confronts a Native American girl with a bow. In the end they work on saving the girl. They enlist a retired school teacher and end up with a prostitute who ran away with her boss's till helping them get the tools to break open the cage and the medicine to heal her. But when a posse of men egged on by a slave hunter come out to confront the women and retrieve the slave, conflict ensues! Mind you, the men should not have come in shooting the way they did , but women improvise nicely with tools at hand and helps fill Boot Hill. As one character said, "I shudder to think what they'd do if they had guns." A fun quick adventure with a hint of more to come.

I've enjoyed Westerns in the past while disliking and being discomfited by many of the tropes around women and people of color. Ladies with Guns takes those tropes and challenges them. This story follows the adventures of five women, each with complicated cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, in a Wild West that is patriarchal and openly hostile. Bocquet and Anlor do not shy away from violence or gore. Some readers may want a content warning. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about these kick-ass heroines who are able to rise up against adversity.

Ladies With Guns, predictably, has a female lead cast and it sure is an interesting bunch of characters! I loved that the cast was diverse and that they were all completely badass, but I also loved that each character stood out on their own with their own backstories etc.

This is a great setup with some brilliant artwork and I'm excited to see more!

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

Ladies with Guns - Tome 1 is a graphic novel about a group of five, bad-ass women fighting whilst male supremacy and acting out against a world against them due to gender and race. Each of the five women is of a different ethnicity with their own background, history and personality. This book sets the foundation for a new female , vigilante graphic novel/comic book series for adults. The artwork is great and does great justice to the story but is a bit grey in places. Definitely not a book for kids! I'll definitely give the next book in the series a read to find out more about each character.

"Ladies with Guns" is the adult graphic novel I didn't know I needed. This book has it all. Heroic, rough-and-tumble, eclectic female leads, action and adventure galore, a Western setting, and a punchy vibe that made it a joy to read.

Olivier Bocquet packed a ton of backstory and nuance into this short installment and laid a great foundation for what will hopefully be a long-lived series. The art is impeccably drawn and helps to create a quirky, wholesome, and thoroughly badass universe that I cannot wait to revisit.

Thank you so much Netgalley and European Comics for the advanced copy!

I dived into this book without any expectations and loved every bit of it. Five women with very different personalities and backgrounds came together to fight against a world dominated by man. To me, it felt like a strong statement of how much women can achieve and how deadly they can be when they stick together. The artwork very vibrant and expressive. Highly recommend!

So there's the one about the prim white girl, the vicious yet careful Indian, the coloured slave girl in a cage, the bossy ol' ma'am character – and the hooker – and some guns. And some revenge-minded blokes. This series does sound like a joke, but it's a joke delivered by Quentin Tarantino, so yeah – if that's your taste this will be a revisionist hoot.

Special thanks to NetGalley for allowing me access to this wonderful piece in exchange for an honest review!

Ladies with Guns is a graphic novel about 5 women in the Wild West. It is gritty, dark, gory, violent, and an absolute treasure to experience! As the title says, this is about Ladies with Guns!

The story is dark, but not unheard of for the time period it is set in. Although a LOT of violence happens, as a woman it felt almost like a "revenge" type piece for the many years of suffering women definitely went through during the Wild West. I was enamored with the artistry of the piece, and each character is well thought out and thoroughly "their own" in this world.

The illustrations in this are absolutely stunning. The way action is shown in still panels leads you to SEE what is happening, you don't feel like scenes are missing or key story line, you can easily follow the story and almost forget you're looking at artwork and NOT a full length movie.

Like most graphic novels, I am sad that it was over when it ended, BUT I am excited for the next one! This is definitely a story I want to continue to keep up on and will be purchasing these as they drop. I cannot wait to see what happens next!!

That was infuriating but not in the bad way.
5 ladies who's tired of the way their life happened decided to worked together
- a black girl that was a slave
- 2 white woman, one was a teacher, one was a wife
- a native Indian
- and a woman of color, that was a prostitute
And together they eradicated all the men that hunted them down bc they being women is already a crime.

The graphics was pretty gore and disturbing, but it depicted the horror real good. And I always adore strong women so there's no problem in the story itself. Overall I liked it

3.5/5
••e-ARC provided by NetGalley and Europe Comics in exchange for an honest review••

In this adult graphic novel, we follow Kathleen, Abigail, Daisy, Chumani, and Cassie and they are indeed ladies with guns. Their paths cross in their own ways and we watch them try to free Abigail from the cage she is stuck in and cure her but their mission is disrupted by the attack from the men of the town who got fired up because of the big reward Abigail's captors offered.

This graphic novel does a good job introducing the characters and setting the tone but I would still prefer it to be a little longer. Especially towards the end, it was full of action and the art style does a great job at conveying the action, tension, and pressure. In the beginning, there were multiple moments when I was confused about what was going on. The ending made me think about the sequels because what will happen in them? Will they always be on the run? Will they get into more trouble? Or will it focus more on the relationships and dynamics between our ladies with guns?

It was okay and I would recommend it if this seems up your alley. But I don't think I will read its future sequels.

Fun little western comic, with women as the leads. It's an interesting group of characters, and there's an excellently drawn shoot-out towards the end. It also feels like it's own story, not just the set-up for a series (which it undoubtedly also is).

"Ladies With Guns" is an adult grafic novel filled with a lot of violence, blood and gore. It was quite a short comic, and even though a lot happened, I found it a bit difficult to follow what actually was going on, as well as find what the story is about.

I like that the main characters all are women, and some women of colour, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that there's still some rasist stereotypes and bad words used.

I probably won’t recommend this book, but if someone I know is looking for a gory comic, I might recommend it to them.

This book was given to me in exchange for an honest review

TW: misogynistic men, violence towards women, gun use, racism.

A runaway black slave, a white widow, a black pleasure provider, an Indian warrior, and an elder irish woman. What do they have in common?

Guns

"...I shudder to think what they'd have done if they had guns."


These five women find themselves on the same path and they have no choice but to align their goals together to survive to see another day.

Characters:

I loved how 5 women from different race and backgrounds came together to help each other and even risked their lives for one another.

While trying to escape from a town of misogynistic men set out to kill them. These 5 women will turn to the one thing that can protect them, guns and their skills.

I enjoyed this story but it might get a little too violent for someone who can't handle violence towards women. But it's an amazing story.

The art style is really unique and it fits the narrative and even the setting in way I can't explain.

It may be because I didn't read the description clearly enough... But this was not what I was expecting...

I was expecting a post apocalyptic situation with 5 women fighting to survive in a wasteland. Instead it was 5 women in colonial America fighting against the oppression that women faced at that time

It was interesting and had some good ments but I was not prepared for what it was going to be and that did dampen my enjoyment a fair bit

First off, I loved this book. Secondly, my only wish was that it was longer!

Ladies with Guns, book 1, is definitely a graphic novel for a more mature readers. The Illustrator pulls no punches on the gore and the author has included some rather truthful, but disturbing facts from the past. Facts such as the cruelty towards slaves, including children and how poorly women were treated in general (and the worth/respect they have being completely reliant on their husband’s position). There’s a lot of violence, including gun violence, some racial slurs, attempted sexual assault of a youth, violence against a child, violence in general, misogyny, arson, etc.

The graphic novel covers the ‘coming together’ of five women, Kathleen a newly widowed woman from London, Abigail a young, escaped slave girl trapped in a cage, Daisy a retired schoolteacher who makes the choice to lend a hand, Chumani an Indigenous woman grieving the loss of her brother who also decides to lend a hand, and Cassie and ‘exotic’ em, lady of the night, so to speak. The four older ladies basically come together to try and help Abigail escape from her cage and then to hopefully save her life.

I enjoyed how each woman is very distinct in her origins and personality. The author lays down some pretty good groundwork for future volumes.

Conclusion?

Um, it’s awesome!!!

It’s a short read so I did it all in one quick sitting. I really hope there is another volume coming out soon!

Blood, guts and badass women pretty much describes this book perfectly. Really dark with bits of humor thrown in this book is exactly what I look for in a graphic novel. A group of women thrown together by circumstance, they are strangers and even possible enemies, band together to protect each other. I really enjoyed this and can't wait to see what else is in store for these ladies. That being said this book is very graphic and contains slavery, violence, and sexual assault so I wouldn't recommend reading this if that is something you want to avoid seeing.

A Wild West-style adventure focusing on five women from different backgrounds, who must band together to survive in a violent, misogynistic world and against a mercenary out for blood.

Rife with racism, misogyny and graphic violence against women, I hesitate to say that the first graphic novel in this series deals with any of those themes all that well. It certainly does feel like the tone of the setting is correct, however it left me uncomfortable as a whole. The two white women were the only women of social standing (a doctor's wife and a retired school teacher), while the three WOC characters were an escaped slave, a thieving prostitute and an Indigenous woman. I felt that these were quite generic character types, and the motivations of some of them felt a little flimsy. There was really nothing that made me feel invested in any of the women or in the story as a whole.

While I am generally a fan of media that provides me with diverse women who are kicking absolute ass, there was just something about this one that felt off. I don't think that I will return for the second installment.

Some good art, great use of colour, and dialogue bubbles were set up really well.

This book is heavy on topics of misogyny and honestly, I think everyone needs to read this book because It's heavy and the topics here even if it's set in the past and wild west have topics that are in the real world today. That being said I do recommend being at least an older teen before reading this book, as it can be quite violent.

This book is one that I should have liked. The art is exciting, colorful and action filled. Unfortunately it has some issues I couldn’t get past. First, this book falls into a trap I’ve seen in other #girlpower books. Every single man (except the dead husband) is a monster. This is really frustrating. It is possible to create stories featuring strong and well developed female characters that don’t feel the need to drag men in the process.
I also could not suspend my disbelief while reading this. A Black slave would not be so snarky to a White person’s face. Any slave exhibiting that sort of behavior would not have made it to age 14. On top of that, all the women band together extremely quickly, despite the fact some of them come from cultures that are enemies. Such friendships could be possible, but not at the speed this book shows. This series has potential, but this first volume did not work for me.

I like the idea of the book but I just really could not handle the amount of racism and misogyny. There’s a pretty diverse cast: black, indigenous (Native American), plus-size and POC. There’s a lot of racial slurs, body horror and violence that I just really didn’t like it. It just wasn’t for me

TW/CWs - Blood; Animal attack; Gun; Racism; Body horror; Gore; Dismemberment; Misogyny; Violence; Fire/Fire Injury; Knives; Slavery; Paedophilia; Attempted Rape; Child abuse; Racial slurs; Murder; Whipping scars; Prostitution