Time to bite the bullet, I guess.
I’m telling myself that this is a much-loved, highly respected run among many comics fans of my generation. Surely, there is something of great entertainment and/or artistic merit here, perhaps some insightful perspective on the human condition, something that will reward my finally granting it my careful attention and evaluation.
But…
…I can’t erase the impression left by an article in some magazine, probably The Comics Journal, years ago, an article that brutally trashed this comic’s writer style, opening my eyes to criticisms that I had never bothered to form on my own, but after exposure I could never unsee: the monolithic blocks of text, the awkward, pretentious story titles which so often managed to find ways to make
alliteration sound graceless and unpleasant…
Please understand, heavy amounts of text don’t deter me; I’ve relished all 719 pages of The Matilda Hunter Murder, by notoriously “bad” author Harry Stephen Keeler, read through Mark Z. Danielewski’s five 800+ page volumes of The Familiar more than four times, rank the 1000+ pages of Haruki Murakari’s 1Q84 as one of the best reading experiences of my life. Text-heavy comics pages are not my favorites, no, but I do still have the Russ Cochran edition of the complete EC PSYCHOANALYSIS on my shelf, and I was able to slog through the tediously overwritten ESSENTIAL SGT. FURY Volume 1.
I can do this. I can read JUNGLE ACTION #11 from Marvel Comics, September 1974. “Panther’s Rage: Once You Slay the Dragon!” by Don McGregor, Billy Graham and Klaus Janson is going to be great. It’s finally going to open my eyes, and I’ll understand why this series was so revered. Right? Please, someone, tell me it’s going to be great…?
Yes, maybe you really need to read the whole thing. Maybe my approach of sampling a single issue is not an appropriate way to develop an appreciation for this. But its quality should be apparent from a representative issue, one that’s past the initial “finding its footing” installments. This is the sixth issue from Don McGregor, who had the honor of writing The Black Panther’s very first solo stories (following an Avengers reprint in issue 5 that masqueraded as a Black Panther story).
I selected this issue to sample because many of the other installments appeared to be set outside of the jungle environment: snowy mountains, modern American city streets. So, bring on the jungle action, boys!
So, we start with a poetic splash in which our hero jumps down a hill accompanied by flowery narration—“as he flexes and springs fluidly from one rocky outcropping to the next, the burdens of nobility are fleetingly lifted”—you know it’s good writing when it’s got plenty of adverbs!
T’Challa, the Black Panther, and his warriors are approaching the village of N’Jadaka, which is named after its leader, who has since changed his name to Erik Killmonger who is the big villain of this arc. Killmonger is behind a violent insurrection in Wakanda. The Panther’s men W’Kabi and Taku have caught up, and the Panther is coordinating an eminent attack. He regrets that he couldn’t capture Killmonger’s aids Baron Macabre and King Cadaver, but he
does have Venomm, real name Horatio. Quite a name dump here.
And then on the next page, we meet Tayete and Kazibe eating Matoke inside the bad guys’ village discussing Lord Karnaj, who will be summoning them soon. I think they are supposed to be comic relief, but they only get a page of “comedy” before the Panther drops in, his eyes burning in “amber agony. This is not a day for happy memories!” The Wakandan invasion of N’Jadaka has begun, but the taking will not be so easy. Nor will it be easy for the lazy reader to parse the next few panels. Let’s all play…
“Can You Spot the Errors?”
Answers:
First panel:
Confusing sequence of dialog: “They [strange weapons] aren’t! And they[generic collective reference to humanity]’ve yet to build a weapon that will not kill!”
Exaggeration: Many weapons have been built that will not kill, except in the sense that, through creative misuse, virtually any physical object can kill.
Goofy nomenclature: “Automatic Devestationers”?
Panels 3-4:
Clumsy writing: Lord Karnaj awkwardly interrupts his self-introduction for expository monolog that disrupts the dramatic tone.
Artistic fumble: Lord Karnaj changes capes mid-monolog…GOTCHA! This is not technically an error! A careful eye will find that scripter McGregor has cleverly patched over this error with a bottom-of-the-page text box! Lord Karnaj was wearing a cape
over his cape which he “thrusts aside” in the panel gutters!
Uncooperative cast: Why, after T’Challa orders his men to ready their weapons, do they refrain from firing as a metal wall rises to allow a horde of armed men to swarm through, especially while Lord Karnaj is going on and on to explain what we’re seeing?
Panel 5:
Abuse of poetic language: Come on, “the morn air”?
Inconsistency: Text box describes a bloody death, as opposed to “antiseptic fantasy land”, while the art depicts a death that might accurately be described as “antiseptic fantasy.”
Panel 6:
Grammatical ambiguity: Are the sonic disruptors (ha ha!) superior to both the automatic devestationers
and to the spears, or are the sonic disruptors superior to the automatic devestationers which are themselves, as T’Challa claimed, superior to spears?
Editing error: McGregor includes here an “alternate take” of Karnaj introducing himself and crediting his unlikely monicker to Erik, forgetting that Karnaj had already shared that information with T’Challa on the previous page.
Okay, okay, I’m picking on this too hard, maybe. I could probably level much of this sort of criticism at any other superhero comic released that month. But—and I knew this would happen—my anti-McGregor bias spurs me to justify my dissatisfaction, perhaps to excess.
Baron Macabre now creeps up behind W’Kabi as the battle begins, although you have to be a careful reader (or a returning reader) to know who he is, as another bottom-of-the-page caption explains who this is and that, despite what the art and pose would suggest, he is armed with deadly laser wristbands aimed at W’Kabi!
The Panther saves his lieutenant with a move that allows him to deliver three blows to Macabre’s face in but two punches. Cool stuff!
T’Challa has re-earned W’Kabi’s respect, and we pause for a flashback, with a look at T'Challas’s “mind-images”, which I think means memories. BP’s also got a good memory for dialog, apparently:
Then we flash forward while remaining in flashback, to a time when W’Kabi and T’Challa were tussling, then were lurking in wait for the murderer of Zatama, whoever that was. He catches a woman named Tanzika, confronting her with the shish kebab stick that she took from the serving woman Monica, framed with Monica’s fingerprints. Tanzika is burying evidence of her romantic dalliance with Zatama and we fade back to the present, leaving this reader completely baffled as to the significance of all this.
The battle is still raging, and now enters a woman called “Malice” who’s armed with something that McGregor refers to as a “trident”, for some inexplicable reason:
Ahh, the letters page, “Jungle Re-Actions”, intrudes as a palette cleanser. This full page of type probably reads faster than a single page of the preceding story. The pseudonymous letter writer “OSIRISI” has cleverly deduced the solution to the Zatama murder, revealing that the necessary information to appreciate the prior flashback was to be found back in issue #9. Thanks, OSI!
Oh, boy, the letters page is a generous
two pages! Future pro Ralph Macchio weighs in with highly positive thoughts, the this issue’s Marvel Value Stamp is number 43, with what looks to me to be a Marie Severin Enchantress drawing, but maybe it was an early Barry Smith, hard to say in this context and without knowing from whence it was sourced.
Now—do I
have to?—back to the story…
A double page splash has Karnaj trash-talking the Panther, even though he’s destroying his own property when he misses with the sonic disruptor (which looks to be some kind of blaster, not a sound-based weapon, but maybe the name is some kind of clever misdirection!). McGregor reminds us that “War, at times, is very cosmopolitan!” Whatever you say, Don…
Wait, what is this? What is this? Has the text overload damaged my vision, leaving me with blind spots? No, no, this entire page has a single, nine-word sentence!
I’d forgotten all about Taku. He’s the one whacking Karnaj, not the dead kid. Surprisingly, McGregor doesn’t even provide a
single name for the deceased.
Evidently, Team Wakanda has won this battle, and T’Challa prevents Taku from killing Karnaj. But gentle Taku has been changed by the experience, and T’Challa leaves us with wisdom:
“…once you slay the dragon, it’s blood stains more than your hands!”
I didn’t care much for this one.
I won’t call it Jungle Junk, it resonates with too many fans whose opinion I respect. Maybe it seems worse in retrospect, I’m sure the less experienced, more naïve MW would have read through it and maybe gotten a kick out of the florid language. But I don’t regret not buying this series past the first two issues back in the 70’s, nor catching up with it in later years.
