Guest Post | Marga the Panther Woman

By GW Thomas

Jungle lords were nothing new in 1940. Edgar Rice Burroughs created Tarzan in 1914. Johnny Weissmuller had been playing him in the movies since 1932. Tarzan knock-offs like Bomba, Og, Son of Fire, Jungle Girl, Jan of the Jungle, Kwa of the Jungle, Kaspa the Lion Man, Sorak, Hawk of the Wilderness, Bantan, and Jaragu of the Jungle filled magazines and books. So why was there a sudden spike in jungle comics in 1940?

The biggest reason for the increase in characters was the creation of a sister book for Fiction House's Jumbo Comics that featured Will Eisner's Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. The new comic was called Jungle Comics and it followed its name, featuring only jungle characters. It ran for 163 issues from January 1940 to Summer 1954. In the first year, Jungle Comics offered Kaanga, Wambi the Jungle Boy, White Panther, Tabu, Camilla, Captain Terry Thunder, Simba, King of the Beasts, Drums of the Leopard Men, White Hunters of the African Safari, Roy Lance, and Fantomah. Some of these characters were so popular they spawned comics of their own like Wambi Jungle Boy #1-18 (Spring 1942-Winter 1952) and Kaanga #1-20 (Spring 1949-Summer 1954).

All of Fiction House's competitors took notice and jungle lords and ladies began to show up shortly afterwards in many comics. Fox’s Science Comics #1 (February 1940) largely filled with costumed heroes, created their first jungle gal, Marga the Panther Woman. (This was seven or eight years before Rulah, Jo-Jo Jungle King, Zago, Tegra, and Fox's other jungle denizens.) Marga and also Hillman's awful Blanda the Jungle Queen were the first out of the gates in the race for the comic jungle. The comic's author and artist, James T Royal is not known, though it may have been Emil Gershwin using a pseudonym. Louis Cazeneuve is known to have inked other people's pencils on the strip.

Since Marga appeared in a comic dedicated to "Science" her origin had to be scientific. Marga possesses real panther abilities, such as speed and strength, along with wicked claws, because mad physio-biologist Von Dorf wanted to create a race of panther-people. Once Marga is transformed, she tries to kill the doctor so that no one else should be subjected to the treatment. She leaves, thinking him dead. Von Dorf revives, then proceeds to blow himself up out of some desire to keep his secret process from others. In the end, Marga alone will possess the panther-like abilities. As a Pre-Code comic, Marga's first adventures are violent and the tone is harsh and unfriendly.

Again, since Marga appeared in a science fiction comic, her next adventure is in a weird, futuristic city where brave flyers like Ted Grant face off against the evil Uchunko and his spaceship marauders. Marga takes a back seat as Tom rescues her from a pit filled with snakes. The story ends and the next time we see Marga, she is living in the jungle like any self-respecting jungle lady. No more sky pirates or spaceships. From now on, Marga will be a terrestrial (if highly unusual) earth dweller.

The next story was obviously inspired by the film The Wizard of Oz, because an evil scientist named Professor Meier is capturing animals and turning them into winged monkeys that he can control with his mind. The winged attackers capture Marga, and the Professor plans to make her into the general of the army of flying beasts. The serum he gives her does not turn her into a drone, but increases her already super powers. With the help of a rogue flying monkey that she calls Homer, she goes to the army of the nearby city and destroys Meier. An antidote is given to the animals and she returns them to their natural state. Homer turns out to be a police dog; now Marga's bosom companion (though we never see him again!)

After defeating the Professor, Marga gets a chance to join the circus. She becomes the star of the show with her tiger-wrestling and -throttling act. The evil Dr Borgia wants Marga, but she spurns his advances. When rival circus owner Randler wants to buy Marga out, he joins forces with Borgia to implant lion essence in the tiger, so that it will kill Marga. Marga defeats the savage beast only to become one herself, killing Borgia and Randler. She goes to trial for her crimes but the judge won't sentence her. She is free to return to the circus but chooses instead to return to the jungle. This installment is particularly noteworthy for its cartoony and inconsistent artwork.

The following story is better drawn in places (with small cribs from the Sunday funnies Tarzan) but almost lacks any real logic. The local Africans are trying to kill a rogue elephant, but Marga intervenes. With the elephant's help she rescues the village warriors. The person who was aggravating the pachyderm (not really sure who that is?) is killed, so all is well again.

The artwork up to this point has been inconsistent, with the style and conventions for speech bubbles and lettering changing each time. Now that the strip was being drawn by a single team, a standard opening was created for Marga: "Inoculated with the traits of a black panther, MARGA, an attractive white girl, joins aviator TED GRANT on an expedition into the jungle fastness." Ted Grant, now an African adventurer rather than a spaceship captain.

Shortly after this, Marga moved from Science Comics to Weird Comics where she did her thing side-by-side with The Sorceress of Zoom, Dr Mortal, and The Eagle, once again a jungle gal in a superhero magazine. But this time Marga settled into her groove with evil hunters, an occasional caveman or dinosaur, and plenty of obvious evil baddies. She rescues Ted, Ted rescues her, and nothing much changes in the jungle for a dozen more similar tales. Marga's blue-black dress is now red and her less vicious attributes (no longer a man-killer) and plots are as time-worn as bad Hollywood B-movies. And so Marga went out, not with a savage jungle yell, but with a wave and an unfulfilled promise for more adventures.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Lena Thorul, Jungle Princess [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The 1960s get a lot of press for being a time of civil unrest, counter culture, and music. Another thing it was, was a time of experimentation with alternative ideas, such as yoga, meditation, the Bermuda Triangle, and the Beatles meeting the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and adopting Asian beliefs (or in some cases, just the clothes). It was a time of astral projection and pyramid power. It was also the age of ESP.

Let's forget that science fiction had driven that bandwagon over a decade earlier. It took ten years for everyone else to catch up. And the comic books were no different. Jack Kirby at Marvel created Professor X for X-Men #1 (September 1963). Psychics came two years earlier to the Superman franchise, specifically Supergirl, with the telepathic character of Lena Thorul, who was secretly Lex Luthor's sister. Beginning February 1961 in "The Curse of Lena Thorul," she was brought to life by Superman's original creator, Jerry Siegel.

Lena helped Supergirl with her powers until the cat got out of the bag in Action Comics #313 (June 1964), written by Leo Dorfman and drawn by Jim Mooney. What could possibly happen to the lovely Lena if she found out? Amnesia, of course. Followed by life in the jungle and some zebra underwear. If it worked for Lois Lane in 1959, why not Lena Luthor five years later?

What chance did Lena have, being telepathic and having to interview Lex as part of her FBI application? The truth slips from Lex's mind and snap. Off Lena runs to anywhere - Africa - where she acquires a movie starlet's costume for a film that is being made. Without memory, she adopts the clothing and with her amazing abilities she tames the jungle animals around her. She becomes a legend of the jungle, the Jungle Princess! When a stray bullet creases Lena's head, giving her back her memory, she goes back to Metropolis to perform with her lions and elephants. There she also cuts into Supergirl's business, rescuing some people from a collapsing balcony with the help of her savage friends.

During Lena's premiere she is once again tortured by the idea of being ridiculed as Lex Luthor's sister. She can't perform, so Supergirl takes her place. Since she can't control the animals with her mind, it is Supergirl's strength that saves her from the lion's mouth and the elephant's foot. As Superman saved Lois Lane from harm in "Lois Lane, Jungle Princess," Supergirl does the same for her friend this time.

Meanwhile back in prison, Lex Luthor has become the "Plant of Metropolois Prison." With Supergirl's innocent help, he gets quantities of "Vitagron" and "Energite" (nothing suspicious there!) and grows a vine down the walls of the prison. He comes to the theater, expecting Lena, but is captured by Supergirl. The green flowers he has brought for his sibling are special, having the power to erase Lena's bad memories, which they do. (Lex wisely guards himself from the fumes with a handkerchief, pretending to have a cold.) Heading back to prison, Lex is happy he has been able to help his sister forget his terrible legacy.

This second trip to the jungle doesn't have as much "jungle-ness" to it, but it still gets in some minor Tarzania. Lena, when she speaks to her animal friends (more for effect than need, as she can control them silently) she speaks the "jungle language," which the animals can understand, including "Urtah! Itay! Kabray! Despite sounding like Pig Latin, it is descended from Tarzan's "Bundalo" and "Kreegah!" that is familiar to fans of both the comics and original stories. Typical to most jungle queen stories, Lena uses her amazing powers to stop poachers who are stealing from the Elephant's Graveyard. She also directs one of her apes to rescue a man from quicksand.

Once again DC Comics showed a lasting interest in the heritage of the jungle. Or were they simply catching the rising tide? Ballantine Books was selling millions of copies with their new Tarzan editions in 1963-64. This new wave of Tarzan fever would see Ron Ely play the ape man on TV in 1966. DC would have loved some of that jungle action, but Western Comics would keep the Burroughs' properties until the early 1970s. Still, a good, generic jungle princess now and then couldn't hurt.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Lois Lane: Jungle Girl [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The early days of superheroes were pretty simple. You created a weird character and you threw villains at him. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman; they just had to punch their way out. But by the late 1950s this had changed. What had been one title had become many. Action Comics for example had become Action Comics, Superman, Superman's Best Friend Jimmy Olson, Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane, Superboy, Supergirl, and so on. What this did was allow the writers to pen different kinds of stories. Action Comics and Superman still had the basic rough and tumble formula, but some of these other titles delved into more private aspects of the superhero's life.

Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane is a perfect example. Marketed towards the female reader, most of the plots hinge on Lois's emotional connection to Superman. Not quite a romance comic, it did explore her feelings of love (and jealousy) towards the Man of Steel. And finding a new way to do that issue after issue was quite a challenge with 137 issues from 1959 to 1974. Some sample ideas from just the first twenty-four issues include Lois becoming a witch, adopting a super-baby, getting really fat, going to prison, singing a hit song with Pat Boone, becoming a baby herself, wearing a lead box on her head to hide her face from Superman, falling for Batman, getting kryptonite vision by accident, marrying Astounding Man, getting X-Ray vision, and any number of plots involving Lana Lang's getting the upper hand on Lois for Superman's affections. And that's just the first 24 of 137.

Issue #11 (August 1959) is a my favorite of them all. "The Leopard Girl of the Jungle" was written by Bill Finger and drawn by Kurt Schaffenburger. In this story, Lana Lang wants to see Lois. Lois, being ever jealous of Superman's first girlfriend, thinks the worst. But what Lana really wants is for Lois to read her new novel. It's a jungle thriller that's been rejected because it's too far-fetched. Lois reads the book, but has an interview in Africa, so she hops a plane. Which, of course, crashes and Lois loses her memory. She thinks she is a leopard girl and takes up with pack of leopards. (We'll come back to that one.) Superman finds her and restores her memory but Lois refuses to leave the jungle. She is determined to prove that a jungle girl can do all the things that Lana wrote about. Lois goes on a dangerous jungle crusade and accomplishes all of Lana's jungle adventures (with Superman always ready to surreptitiously save her, like pulling the crocodiles down in the river so they can't attack the swimming jungle queen and her furry companions). She returns with her proof and Lana's book becomes a bestseller. Superman is impressed by Lois's kindness to Lana (which Lois only admits to herself is why she did all those crazy jungle stunts.)

Now Bill Finger could have done some research and learned that leopards don't live in packs. And he could have acquired more in-depth, African geographical and political knowledge. Except that would have ruined the whole thing. Because Finger didn't want to write a real jungle adventure. He wanted to write something that harkened back to the jungle queens of old, like Sheena, Rulah, Camilla, and Cave Girl. And this is exactly what he does. Lois wears leopard skins. She escapes stampeding elephants and raging grass fires. She swims in crocodile-infested waters. The only thing she doesn't do is use a knife. This might have been a Comics Code issue or simply because Superman is continuously acting as her security blanket.

The end result is an homage strategically placed in the jungle girl history. Most of the jungle comics and movies were done by the early '50s. The only significant one was in 1959 with Audrey Hepburn playing Rima the Jungle Girl in Green Mansions. That premiered around the same time this issue of Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane appeared. Coincidence? Probably not. DC had no jungle comics in 1959. (In 1972 Joe Kubert would take over Tarzan and would even adapt Green Mansions as a seven-part mini-series called Rima the Jungle Girl in 1974. But back in 1959? Nada.) Bill Finger's tale is a swan song to an era of liana-swinging gals in leopard bikinis. The 1960s would be the decade that gave us Ron Ely on TV, Jack Benny and Gilligan parodies, George of the Jungle, and Ray Stevens singing "Guitarzan." We had become too sophisticated for Nyoka serials or Irish McCalla as Sheena.

Good bye, jungle girls. And thank you, Metropolis, for one last swing.

If you'd like to read the entire comic you can at Benny Drinnon's Ominous Octopus Omnibus blog. I'd also like to thank Benny Drinnon for directing my attention to this story.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Trader Horn (1931)

Who's In It: Harry Carey (Angel and the Badman, Red River), Edwina Booth (1932's The Last of the Mohicans), and Duncan Renaldo (The Cisco Kid)

What It's About: A seasoned jungle trader (Carey) teaches a young hunter (Renaldo) about the beauties and dangers of Africa as they search for the missing daughter (Booth) of missionaries.

How It Is: Impressive, but tough to watch for several reasons. It's a Product of Its Time not only in the way the white leads treat and talk about indigenous Africans, but also in the way the filmmakers actually shot the movie. There are at least a couple of animal deaths that were filmed and rumor has it that an actual human death made it into the final cut, though I couldn't pick it out.

Trader Horn was the first non-documentary Hollywood film to be shot on location in Africa and it's infamous for the harsh conditions of its shoot. Crewmembers contracted malaria and sunstroke and everyone battled flash floods, locusts, tse-tse flies, ants, and crocodiles. The filming inspired Edgar Rice Burroughs to write Tarzan and the Lion Man, about a similarly troubled movie production in Africa.

For all the behind-the-scenes notoriety though, the filmmakers did get some spectacular shots and Trader Horn was a huge success. Audiences saw images of landscapes, wildlife, and people that they'd never seen before. The film was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and was financially successful enough to directly lead to MGM's pursuing the rights for a Tarzan series.

But while racism and animal cruelty are the most serious offenses of Trader Horn, they're not the only ones. The movie is heavy on filming its unique subjects, but light on story. I'm reminded of movies like Thunderball and Star Trek: The Motion Picture that include long sequences of underwater photography and special effects shots that excited their original audiences, but slow down those movies when watched today. The main characters' expedition to find a missing woman in Trader Horn is just an excuse; a flimsy hanger on which to drape all the location footage.

That becomes especially obvious when the movie tries to shoehorn in some drama by having the two men fight over the young woman when they find her. There's never an indication that she's interested in the older man, but he seems to think he's got some kind of equal shot at her.

Except for that though, I do like the characters quite a bit. Carey's Aloysius Horn is a brave and affable veteran of the country and I like his relationship with Renaldo's naively eager Peru. And Booth does a great job as Nina, one of the first jungle women to appear on film. She plays brave and frightened with equal conviction and she's especially convincing with the language she speaks. I don't know if it's a real language or not, but she makes me believe that it could be and that she's fluent with it.

Finally, Mutia Omoolu plays Rencharo, Horn's gun bearer and closest friend. Omoolu wasn't a professional actor, but I not only bought Rencharo's friendship with Horn, I was also touched by it. Horn has some unflattering things to say about Rencharo during the early parts of the film, but hindsight reveals it to be nothing more than affectionate teasing, especially as the dangers increase and we learn how much the two men mean to each other.

Rating: Three out of five jungle girls.

Dawn of Time

I've had Michael Stearns' webcomic Dawn of Time bookmarked to read for a while now and have finally had a chance to finish it. This post isn't a full review, but it's definitely a recommendation.

The strip is about a prehistoric girl named Dawn who hangs out with a triceratops named Blue. It's not just a bunch of cute adventures (though it has those, too), but Stearns builds an actual, epic story featuring Victorian time travelers, alien gods, and the relatively more civilized people of Dawn's world. It's fantasy, not science-based (as if her living side by side with dinosaurs isn't clue enough), but that's a big part of what keeps it fun. Since Stearns' imagination trumps everything else, anything can happen and usually does.

It's a complete strip - Stearns wrapped it up in 2011 - and there's enough to it to make it worth investing time in, but there's not so much material to make it daunting to start from the beginning. It's a really great read, so do yourself a favor and check it out.

Kaänga and Ann hate cephalopods

From Jungle Comics #105. Read the whole story at The Catacombs.

Saturday Matinee | Queen of the Amazons (1947)

Who's in it?: Robert Lowery (Batman in the 1949 Batman and Robin serial), Patricia Morrison (Tarzan and the Huntress, Song of the Thin Man), J.E. Bromberg (The Mark of Zorro, Son of Dracula), and John Miljan (The Ten Commandments).

What's it about?: A woman (Morrison) leads a safari into Africa to learn the whereabouts of her fiance who disappeared on an earlier expedition. But will she still want to marry her man after spending so much time with Gary the jungle guide (Lowery)? And will her man want to marry her after so much time among the Amazon women he's been living with?

How is it?: Pretty dreadful. There are some outdoor shots of the cast, but way too much of the movie is just them standing on generic sets and commenting on action going on in stock footage. The story moves from India to Africa for no other reason than the filmmakers' having footage from both places they wanted to use.

None of the characters have any depth and none of the actors have any chemistry, so the movie's only redeeming qualities are its jungle setting in general, the Amazons concept, and a half-baked mystery about a murderous ivory poacher who may have infiltrated one of the safaris. Jungles and Amazons go a long way with me though, and mystery plots are always welcome. It was also fun to see Lowery in a different role, since I like him as Batman.

Grade: C-

Daily Panel | Agu the Giant

From Lorna, the Jungle Queen #1, by Don Rico and Werner Roth.

Birthdays are jungle days

My birthday was last week and a couple of dear friends helped me celebrate with these awesome sketches. The one on top is by Jess Hickman and the bottom one is by Uko Smith. Obviously, they know what I like.

Tarzan 101 | Tarzan and the City of Gold

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Tarzan and the City of Gold sounds like reheated material at first. There's another lost city with another white queen who falls in love with Tarzan, but the novel goes beyond that concept in a couple of interesting ways. First, Tarzan is genuinely fascinated with Queen Nemone in a way that should make Jane fans nervous, but the book also focuses on palace intrigue in a cool way as the city's nobility seek to get rid of Tarzan and take more power and influence for themselves.

There are actually two cities in the novel, the titular one as well as a City of Ivory that Burroughs intended to spin off into a sequel. The second story was never written, but the cities of Cathne and Athne did eventually return in Tarzan the Magnificent.

Griffin includes a supplemental chapter called "Femmes Fatales" that isn't exactly about what the title suggests. It does include some dangerous women, but is really about all of Tarzan's romantic interests over the years. Three of them (Countess Olga de Coude, a nameless dancing girl, and La of Opar) appeared in The Return of Tarzan while the ape-man was separated (forever, as far as he knew) from Jane, but the list continues even after Tarzan and Jane were married. In addition to Nemone, there's German spy Bertha Kircher, whom Tarzan met in Tarzan the Untamed when he thought Jane was dead, and Teeka, the ape with whom Tarzan fell in love in Jungle Tales.

Griffin mentions a bunch of other women too, most of whom had feelings for Tarzan that were unrequited by him, like Janzara from Ant Men, Mentheb from Forbidden City, and Itzl Cha and Patricia Leigh-Burden from Castaways. Griffin also includes a thumbnail gallery of nine paintings by Joe Jusko that depict women from the Tarzan novels, including Balza (Lion Man), Janette Laon (Castaways), Rhonda Terry (Lion Man), Magra (Forbidden City), and Meriem (Son of Tarzan), in addition to some of the others he discussed in the chapter.

Rulah hates cephalopods

I'm pretty sure I've featured this gorgeous Matt Baker cover before, but Mike DeStasio reminded me of it and it's one of my favorites, so here it is again.

Shazam and Sheena on DVD

My nerd heart is beating faster today knowing that Shazam! is coming to DVD on October 23. I haven't seen it as an adult and I remember that it wasn't at all faithful to the source material, but I have fond memories of watching this as a kid alongside The Secrets of Isis as part of the Shazam/Isis Hour or whatever it was called. Curious to see how it holds up. All 28 episodes will be available on a 3-disc set for $34.95.



I've never seen the early 2000s Sheena series starring Gena Lee Nolin, but the first couple of seasons of that are on DVD too through Warner Brothers' Made-to-Order program at $39.95 per season. Someone will have to tell me if it's worth getting.

Uko Smith draws a mean jungle team

Remember that project that Jess Hickman, Uko Smith, and I came up with after SpringCon last month? Well, Uko's been doing some thinking about it too and it inspired him to draw this. I've started making some inquiries about how to pull off what we have in mind, so stayed tuned for more info.

In the meantime, if you wanna see more of Uko's work, I can hook you up.

The White Goddess hates cephalopods

By HJ Ward. [Pulp Covers]

SpringCon and fur bikinis

If I wait until I download the pictures from my camera, my SpringCon report will never happen, so here are a couple I snagged with my iPod on Saturday. The one above is right before the show and David's stapling his copies of Hulkasaurus. You can also see a Transformer (we make it fight Godzilla on the table) and the pile of candy the convention always has waiting for creators. That's Darla Ecklund in the background, but more on her in a minute.

David sold three copies of his comic before the show even started (and he continued to outsell me the whole show). The first sale was to the awesome Sam Hiti. Sam is extremely supportive of young artists and for several years has had a protege or two at his table. They've left the nest now, but Sam's enthusiasm for David and his book show that he still has a huge heart for kids who cartoon.



Saturday morning was very busy and the line to get into the show was enormous even a couple of hours after we opened. The crowd thinned out a little as the day progressed, but it never got small. There were always lots of people around and even when my table was slow, there was plenty of people-watching to do. Sunday's line wasn't quite as long, but it was still impressive and the show buzzed and hummed all weekend.

I sat between my friends Grant Gould and Darla Ecklund. Grant always draws a crowd to his table with his great Star Wars art and his awesome sketchbook covers. Darla had a great show too and was working on some samples for an upcoming pirate festival she's going to in Wisconsin. She and a writer friend will have a table where Darla will sketch you as a pirate on a special card and her friend will write an excerpt from your "legend" on the back. It's a cool idea and even though her friend wasn't at SpringCon, I asked Darla to draw me.



I didn't sell a ton of comics, but everything I had for actual sale was material that's been out for a while. I did give away all of my Artist Alley preview ashcans, so that (and David's experience with his book) made the show successful for me.

Well, that and that I met Bill Willingham without turning into a slackjawed fool. He signed the first two Fables collections for me and I think I managed to not be awkward as I pointed out that I wrote one of the review quotes on the back of Volume 2. He was awesome.

The only disappointment about the show was that Jessica Hickman couldn't make it. One of her cats was ill and needed care, so Jess took care of that. But our friend Uko Smith, who drove in from Ohio, and I were able to catch up with her after the show on Sunday and grab some Mexican food. One of the things that always makes a show for me is sitting next to Jess and laughing as we brainstorm crazy ideas for future projects. We didn't get to do that at the convention this year, but we sure did it at dinner. Jess, Uko, and I came up with a great idea with the working title Fur Bikini. That's all I can say about it now, except that Jess went home afterwards and - inspired by the project - drew this.



And that's all you need to know.

Writing update | Monsters killed; girl needs jungle

Just a quick writing update today. Last week I finished the first draft of the complete script for Kill All Monsters. Or for the first volume of Kill All Monsters, anyway. I'm not saying whether or not the Kill Team succeeds in its mission to take out all the monsters, but I will say that there's definitely room for a sequel if the first book does well. That first book is a complete story though, with a definite end, and that end is now written. That's a huge deal for me.

Our editor, James Powell is looking over the draft and there will be rewriting, but in the meantime, I'm able to move on to others things. I have four projects in the queue and the first is a short text story for a jungle girl anthology. I don't want to say what it's about yet, but I will say that the book's editor sent me the above Alberto Vargas painting with a note that it reminded him of my story. And I can totally see why.

Jungle Girls Attack! | Communist natives and giant griffins

I've been catching up on a folder full of links to jungle girl comics. Amongst the standard, natives-on-the-rampage and white-people-ruin-everything plots I found a couple with some noteworthy differences:

Cave Girl vs the Mau Mau Killers



Cave Girl trails a gang of ruthless natives to save a baby, but I like how these aren't just your typical baby-killing savages. Oh no...



...these are Soviet-trained, baby-killing savages. Never change, Cold War.

Nyoka, the Jungle Girl and the Sinister Jungle Myth



This one's interesting because Nyoka's not your typical, fur-wearing jungle girl. I usually prefer loincloth-wearing vine-swingers to modern safari-leaders (that goes for dudes as well; I'm looking at you, Jungle Jim), but after all the cookie-cutter jungle girls from the '40s, it's refreshing to see a different type. As Chuck Wells from The Comic Book Catacombs points out, the comic version is based on the movie serial and not the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that supposedly inspired them both, but it's still cool. Especially since this story has Nyoka trying to clear her name by hunting giant griffins.



Though I'm kind of shocked at how she chooses to resolve the problem. I don't want to spoil anything before you go read it, but seriously...there had to have been a better way.

Savage Beauty #1 now on sale!

I'm embarrassed, but I totally whiffed on mentioning last week that you could've bought a comic with writing by me in it. I didn't write the comic itself, but in the back of Savage Beauty #1 is a text piece I wrote about jungle fiction in general and jungle girl stories in particular. 

The reason I forgot to bring it up here was that I was busy getting my interview with Savage Beauty's real writer, Mike Bullock, ready to go for Robot 6. Part of my fascination with modern jungle comics is how writers avoid the offensiveness of some of the genre's tropes. I talked to Mike about how he balances fun adventure with the horrific, real-world elements that he weaved into The Phantom and now Savage Beauty.

Check and see if your store has a copy of Savage Beauty #1. It promises to be a cool, interesting series.

Art Show: Cat Women

Skorpion



By Rick Burchett. [From the graphic novel he's working on with writer Christopher Mills]

Fanciful Submarines



By Andrew George Brown. [Lots more at Etsy by way of Wondermark]

From the Depths



By Matt Wiegle. [Seriously, if you're not reading his and Sean T Collins Destructor webcomic - from which this is a page - you're missing out.]

Aquaman: King of the Seas



By Braden D Lamb.

A Naiad



By John William Waterhouse. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Princess Pantha



By Alex Schomburg. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Ka-Zar, Shanna, and Zabu



By Brent Anderson. [Giant-Size Marvel]

Jungle Girl



By Red LYUBA. [More here]

Tigra



By Jason Barton.

Art Show: Mrs. Ghost Rider

Plural vs. Singular



By Mattias Adolfsson.

Isle of 100,000 Graves



By Jason.

Underwater Ghost Rider and Friends



By Kerry Callen.