Leave it to a woman to overcomplicate things. Sometimes a gun is just a plain old penis substitute. Dan Cushman’s 1953 novel Jungle She features plenty of those, as his franchise man’s-man Frisco Dougherty helps an escaped “half caste” damsel in distress return to the locale of her captivity on a Borneo plantation to try and steal the tyrannical owner Van Hoog’s hidden fortune. That’s supposed to be her in John Floherty, Jr.’s cover art, and if you’re thinking to yourself she looks inclined to use the gun on Frisco, well—spoiler alert—she actually does shoot him, but he survives to confront Van Hoog in a vertiginous rope bridge climax. If you want to buy any of Cushman’s jungle adventures you’ll probably find them expensive—up to $100 for this one. But be patient. We also saw it for eight bucks.
1967—Ché Executed in Bolivia
A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed in Bolivia. In an attempt to make it appear as though he had been killed resisting Bolivian troops, the executioner shoots Guevara with a machine gun, wounding him nine times in the legs, arm, shoulder, throat, and chest.