TRUE FAT

TRUE GRIT (1969)
dir: Henry Hathaway

TRUE FAT
MAD #133, March 1970
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

In this western, Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) sees father (John Pickard) killed by Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey) and travels to Fort Smith, Arkansas to seek his capture with the aid of Marshal Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne). To get the money, she sells the property to Col. Stonehill (Strother Martin).

Mattie tracks down Rooster to talk business with him and convinces him with money and her persistence. He initially doesn't want her to join him but she wears him down. At the boarding house where she's staying, she meets LaBoeuf (Glen Campbell) a Texas Ranger who is also after Cheney. He wants to join them, teams up with Rooster, they keep trying to ditch Maddie, but she keeps catching up to them.

They get information about Chaney from members of his gang that are holed up in a shack. LaBoeuf feels Maddie is in the way while they're on Chaney's trail and tries to spank her, but Rooster intervenes. In the morning, when Maddie goes to the river to fetch some water, she falls down a hill, finds Tom Chaney himself, and shoots him with her father's gun that he had with her.

The rest of Chaney's gang comes after them and Rooster kills them off single-handedly. LaBoeuf is killed in the fracas. Tom Chaney is brought back home to justice and Maddie shows Rooster Cogburn her family graveyard, telling him she wants him to be buried in it when he goes. Rooster politely declines and rides off into the sunset. The last panel in this is a commentary on the increasing backlash against John Wayne.