Jungle Gems or Jungle Junk? Today: Pines Backup Features
Sept 8, 2024 7:00:44 GMT -5
Hoosier X likes this
Post by MWGallaher on Sept 8, 2024 7:00:44 GMT -5
I missed one in the previous entry on jungle backup features in Better/Nedor/Standard/Pines comics. Tygra of the Flame People appeared in STARTLING COMICS #45 (May 1947) through #53 (September 1948). In addition to the nine Tygra comics stories—85 pages of comics—she was the subject of three 2-page text stories. While “space detective” Lance Lewis was the cover feature throughout this run, boosted by magnificent (and in one instance, iconic) Alex Schomburg covers, Tygra’s was the opening story in the comic from her fourth appearance to her last, after which STARTLING COMICS was cancelled.
Tygra is Lynn Thomas, daughter and assistant to her father, a medical missionary in the Congo. While returning from London with a vial of “autorene”, a synthetic vitamin created by Prof. Terry Wilton to stave off an epidemic in Africa, her plane crashes in the land of the wandering Flame People. She drinks what she thinks is “beef extract” for sustenance, but it’s really the autorene, which imparts super powers of strength and invulnerability. She is made ruler of the Flame People, tasked with leading them back to their long-lost home, but she longs for the coming of Prof. Wilton, who had become her lover in London, and who has promised to join her in Africa.
Her second appearance, in STARTLING COMICS #46, features “The Menace of the Baboons”, possible written by Joe Greene and drawn by an as-yet unidentified artist.
The story starts with Lynn reflecting on the events that led to her limitless strength and her new responsibilities as the leader of a thousand warriors of the Flame People. One of those warriors, Tomboto, has left his assignment to guard against “the roving ape-demons” to put some romantic moves on the new queen. When Tygra rebukes him with a humiliating slap, he vows that “When Tomboto becomes an enemy, there shall be no queen!” Mercifully, she sentences Tomboto to exile rather than death, as the other tribesmen had expected.
Back in London, Terry Wilton has heard word of Lynn’s disappearance, and plans to deliver autorene to her father and then to search the flight route in hopes of finding her. He spots the plane’s wreckage and parachutes down to the jungle. There he finds the empty autorene vial, confirming he is on the right path, and then spots baboons carrying a native man:
When Terry fires on the baboons, Tygra recognizes the sound of gunfire and races to it, where she is reunited with her lover. She fills him in on what’s happened, explains that the native was Tomboto, who is collaborating with the “ape-demons”, and finally, defends this newcomer from the suspicious Flame Warriors:
The clever Terry spots the physostigma venenosum plant, from which he can get the poisonous calabar bean. The warriors gather mangoes, Terry poisons the fruit, and they lay it out for the baboons to eat, which they do. The poison affects the animals’ vision and nervous system, allowing them to be defeated. Tygra mercifully allows the repentant Tomboto back into the tribe, so that “with Tygra’s courage and strength—and with Terry’s wisdom and powerful medicine—the Flame Warriors shall yet find their jungle homeland.”
It's a bit awkwardly executed, with perhaps a little too much plot to squeeze into its 9 story pages (discounting the splash), and it’s rather crudely drawn, but I still had some fun reading this one. The Flame People are evidently so called due to a reddish skin tone, which is subtle enough that even with Terry’s comment that Tomboto is “red from head to foot” it didn’t initially register with me. While there are supposed to be a thousand of the Flame People, that number is never clearly implied by any of the drawings, and I note that there appear to be no women or children among them, which goes a long way toward explaining Tomboto’s offensive randiness at the start of the story.
I’m willing to read more of this feature, and a skim of the following issues looks promising, if derivative: there are lost Roman outposts and other lost civilizations, dinosaurs (in a story shamelessly titled “the Land That Time Forgot”), but there is some greatly improved art (including more impressive signed Artie Saaf work), with mixed-case caption lettering suggesting a Quality Comics influence, and some interesting science fiction elements that crop up in “The Stone Man From Space!” The Flame People become colored a more natural brown than sunburn pink, and the quest to find the home of the Flame People seems to be dropped. Tygra does not seem to be sidelined the way Kara was, with Terry used more as the brains of the operation, not the muscle.
Tygra is Lynn Thomas, daughter and assistant to her father, a medical missionary in the Congo. While returning from London with a vial of “autorene”, a synthetic vitamin created by Prof. Terry Wilton to stave off an epidemic in Africa, her plane crashes in the land of the wandering Flame People. She drinks what she thinks is “beef extract” for sustenance, but it’s really the autorene, which imparts super powers of strength and invulnerability. She is made ruler of the Flame People, tasked with leading them back to their long-lost home, but she longs for the coming of Prof. Wilton, who had become her lover in London, and who has promised to join her in Africa.
Her second appearance, in STARTLING COMICS #46, features “The Menace of the Baboons”, possible written by Joe Greene and drawn by an as-yet unidentified artist.
The story starts with Lynn reflecting on the events that led to her limitless strength and her new responsibilities as the leader of a thousand warriors of the Flame People. One of those warriors, Tomboto, has left his assignment to guard against “the roving ape-demons” to put some romantic moves on the new queen. When Tygra rebukes him with a humiliating slap, he vows that “When Tomboto becomes an enemy, there shall be no queen!” Mercifully, she sentences Tomboto to exile rather than death, as the other tribesmen had expected.
Back in London, Terry Wilton has heard word of Lynn’s disappearance, and plans to deliver autorene to her father and then to search the flight route in hopes of finding her. He spots the plane’s wreckage and parachutes down to the jungle. There he finds the empty autorene vial, confirming he is on the right path, and then spots baboons carrying a native man:
When Terry fires on the baboons, Tygra recognizes the sound of gunfire and races to it, where she is reunited with her lover. She fills him in on what’s happened, explains that the native was Tomboto, who is collaborating with the “ape-demons”, and finally, defends this newcomer from the suspicious Flame Warriors:
The clever Terry spots the physostigma venenosum plant, from which he can get the poisonous calabar bean. The warriors gather mangoes, Terry poisons the fruit, and they lay it out for the baboons to eat, which they do. The poison affects the animals’ vision and nervous system, allowing them to be defeated. Tygra mercifully allows the repentant Tomboto back into the tribe, so that “with Tygra’s courage and strength—and with Terry’s wisdom and powerful medicine—the Flame Warriors shall yet find their jungle homeland.”
It's a bit awkwardly executed, with perhaps a little too much plot to squeeze into its 9 story pages (discounting the splash), and it’s rather crudely drawn, but I still had some fun reading this one. The Flame People are evidently so called due to a reddish skin tone, which is subtle enough that even with Terry’s comment that Tomboto is “red from head to foot” it didn’t initially register with me. While there are supposed to be a thousand of the Flame People, that number is never clearly implied by any of the drawings, and I note that there appear to be no women or children among them, which goes a long way toward explaining Tomboto’s offensive randiness at the start of the story.
I’m willing to read more of this feature, and a skim of the following issues looks promising, if derivative: there are lost Roman outposts and other lost civilizations, dinosaurs (in a story shamelessly titled “the Land That Time Forgot”), but there is some greatly improved art (including more impressive signed Artie Saaf work), with mixed-case caption lettering suggesting a Quality Comics influence, and some interesting science fiction elements that crop up in “The Stone Man From Space!” The Flame People become colored a more natural brown than sunburn pink, and the quest to find the home of the Flame People seems to be dropped. Tygra does not seem to be sidelined the way Kara was, with Terry used more as the brains of the operation, not the muscle.