I could do any jungle comic. After the success of the Tarzan movies they were a popular genre. Now only Tarzan and the Phantom seem to hang out in the jungles these days, probably because we know more about the jungles of Africa and South America than we did in the 1950s thanks to better communication between countries, documentaries that weren’t meant to sensationalize these regions for a good story, and magazines like National Geographic that showcased these areas and somehow got away with showing tribal women boobs when you couldn’t get away with that with women otherwise. (There’s a joke that went on for years that some guys bought the mag just to see naked breasts, so at least you know they weren’t against interracial copulation. That term scientific enough for you?) Around the 1950s however this was unknown territory except to some traders and slavers and of course diamond thieves and poachers. It was these latter two that the jungle hero would fight against.

Of course there is the problem that all of them were white but we didn’t get a black hero until the cowboy Lobo a decade or so later, and a white hero would be more appealing to the target audience. Because goodness knows they weren’t thinking of black people back then. Even good guys like Whitewash Jones and Ebony White were kind of racist in their depiction, especially Whitewash (just by the name alone). And a lot of those jungle heroes were women. I even grew up with one in the 1970s, as I’ve discussed Jana Of The Jungle in the past. (Here’s a link to the Saturday Night Showcase I did but I still can’t find a replacement for the video that was taken down as of this writing. I’m limited to YouTube and Dailymotion but none of them have anything besides the intro.) Probably the most popular, or at least one that got her own movie, is Sheena, Queen Of The Jungle, which was made into a movie in 1984 with Tanya Roberts in the title role. If any other “jungle girl” got her own movie or TV show I’m not currently aware of it. She’s also appeared in a number of  TV series and was even featured in a song by The Ramones, “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker“. She’s also been revived in numerous comics.

The first “jungle girl” was actually in the realm of prose that Wertham insists comics damage. Rima the Jungle Girl was introduced in the 1904 book Green Mansions and was featured in a number of books after that. But we know Wertham had zero interest in the history of comics, don’t we Superman? Speaking of which Rima actually appears in three episodes of Super Friends as DC was publishing stories based on her, which I assume is in public domain. It’s not like the Phantom joined the Super Friends at any point. Which would have been cool. Sheena first appeared in the pages of the British magazine Wags, which is interesting since we looked at the reaction to comics in the UK this week. Created by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, Sheena predates Wonder Woman in the comics, appearing the US in 1938, a year after her British debut, in the pages of Jumbo Comics. Tonight we will be looking at her first solo title, the final issue of which came out in 1953, just before Wertham would have started putting his thesis together into book form. So how dangerous is she to the minds of young Americans?

“Alright, fine, we’ll watch The Jungle Book!”

Sheena, Queen Of The Jungle #18

FINAL ISSUE

Fiction House (Winter, 1952-1953)

[uploaded to Comic Book Plus by WildBlueZero]

COVER PENCILER: Maurice Whitman

COVER INKER: Maurice Whitman

Click here to read along with me. Like so many comics of the time this featured more than one story, which does make it hard to world-build or create a more suspenseful story with character development and continuity. Those would come in time. We have four comic stories, a prose story, and a side story with King Of The Congo. But I want to start with this:

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