I totally agree with your conclusion; Stan brought something to the work that made it special in a way that Kirby's previous work with other scripters, even if Kirby had plotted them, did not exhibit.

But your first point is one that has really been haunting me since I stepped into this minefield. We know that in at least some of Kirby's, Ditko's, Heck's, and Ayers' stories, according to Stan's own statements, and artists like Romita's (according to Romita's account), the plots originated primarily if not entirely with the artists. And yet we are hesitant to accept the possibility that those first installments may have also originated with the artists, and I think that's largely because Stan had stories--memorable, often-told stories--that we've heard and taken to heart. We're primed to say "Yeah, but surely Stan had the big idea in the first place, even if he didn't have the big idea in issue 3 or issue 13 or issue 26 or issue 63", because that's the version we grew up with, and it's dear to us. Where does the assumption that "he left more of the work to the artist as business grew" really come from? Stan did imply that, but there's evidence that Stan was practicing the "Marvel method" of scripting from the penciled pages long before the primacy of Marvel in the Silver Age.

It's essentially comic book heresy to suggest it, and mind you, I'm not saying that it's so; I'm not enough of a historian/detective to come to a conclusion that I can have confidence in. But what I do see is that when you do allow yourself to examine some of these stories under the premise "What if Stan didn't come up with this plot?" you can discover lots of things that you overlook when you assume "Stan knew the basics of this story long before he sat down to script it." For instance, we had a discussion about Daredevil #1 here a while back, and when I revisited that with this perspective, I saw evidence that Everett's story was saying things that Stan's script contradicted. Did Everett defy Stan's plot and Stan had to fix it, or did Stan look at Everett's plot and decided to change things? Either way, it doesn't change the appropriateness of calling both men co-creators, but it may suggest that we are wrong to assume that Stan came up with the overall premise and Everett just broke down the story into panels.

But like I said, this is a minefield. This is heresy. And it's against my better judgment that I spoke up on this, because I've seen the divisiveness it generates. But I'm a puzzle-lover, and I can't resist trying to deduce the secrets that can be unlocked from careful study of the work and the historical record. Things like the original format of the contents of FF#1, the mystery of Western Team-Up, the original name of Brother Power the Geek, and why Dr. Fate took to a half-helmet...

No, we can't know those details. But we do now have much more historical evidence from which to deduce more about the process by which Stan and his artists created the story, after those decades during which Stan's version was the primary one, decades when a mythology engrained itself in comics fandom, a mythology that Marvel devotees are loath to abandon. We have the original art, with its copious artist notes. Consider the Romita "jackpot" page:



Would Romita have had to write "Anna and Aunt May hug--Pete uncomfortable" or "Pete expects the worst-" if he were working from a detailed plot that Lee wrote?

We have the words of artists like Kirby, Ditko, Ayers, Wood discussing plotting and not being credited for it. 

We have full runs available for more careful analysis through which we can detect particular plotting differences that distinguish stories drawn by different artists, differences that aren't just a matter of staging and storytelling but a matter of themes, of character, of plot twists, of subject matter, of background knowledge.

We have Stan's own words, words that were less well known when the myth was being cemented, from fanzines and forgotten Bullpen Bulletins, where he credited Ditko with coming up with Dr. Strange, or where he specifically said Kirby, Heck, and Ayers were the primary plotters, implying that this was the norm in their stories, not the exception:



We have examples of stories that he rejected outright, like Kirby's trashed Hulk story. We have stories we now recognize as being largely replotted through the text, such as the "Hulk can fly" story or the origin of Dr. Doom. We have stories that clearly weren't used as intended, such as the origin of Galactus segments inserted into a few issues of THOR, which doesn't seem like it was plotted as a natural component of the story being told but broken out from something else Kirby turned in intended for...something, somewhere else.

Traditionally, we have viewed these stories through Lee's framing, assuming that most of them accurately reflect a plot that he assigned to his artists. Once we can divorce ourselves from that assumption, very often a significantly different plot emerges from the pictures on the page, and different orders of events become plausible. If we assume that Iron Man began with Stan's plot about Tony Stark developing the armor as a prisoner of the Viet Cong, we have a very clumsy entry two issues later when Jack Kirby comes on board and seems to telling a very different kind of story, but if we consider the possibility that Kirby's story came first, and was intended as the origin, which Stan didn't like and reworked with Don Heck, we have a plausible scenario...but it's one that requires us to accept the possibility that Kirby turned in an Iron Man story that he basically came up with on his own, not one based on a Stan Lee plot. 

The picture that comes together is one in which Stan's routine method of creating comics seems to have been telling his artists to do the bulk of the plotting, telling him what the story was with their margin notes, and dialoguing what he got in. With that perspective, I'm seeing evidence--and this might just be confirmation bias, I admit--that he was doing the same in the days of the Atlas Westerns and jungle comics, where the characters seemed to be handled exclusively by specific artists who appear to be bringing their unique plotting techniques to the features they handled.

I have come to understand that we can, with careful study, deduce a lot about things we weren't there to witness; I recently did some training in geology, and was astounded to learn how geologists figured out things like continental drift and formations of land features based on physics happening underground where we will never be able to directly observe, and it has turned on a light bulb in my head: I realize how dismissive the public can be of history and science under the assumption that some assertions can only be guesswork because we don't understand how they were reached. I think that thanks to how much more we know now, not just the stories themselves and the corporate-blessed recounting, but from all of the sources that exist now that comic book historianism has become "a thing".

In SWAMP THING #47, The Parliament of Trees included almost every swamp creature ever to appear in comics (and some from the movies) including, naturally, Man-Thing:


(and that's The Heap from Hillman above ol' Manny!)

This happened in AQUAMAN #56:



So this is a very subtle appearance of Aquaman a few years later in SUB-MARINER #72:



Both written by Steve Skeates, and both the final issues of their run.

MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL #29 (1984) and #34 (1984).





I’m sampling two issues of MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL because both of these were also published as individual standalone “microseries” of two issues each: issue 29 was reprinted as TARZAN OF THE APES #1-2 (July and August 1984) and issue 34 reprinted as SHEENA #1-2 (December 1984 and January 1985). This was the usual practice for most issues of this series, which specialized in adaptations of current movies in all but 11 of its 41 issues. MSS was magazine sized and full color. These two issues were the only ones that could be categorized as jungle comics.


The Tarzan issue, written by Sharman DiVono and Mark Evanier and drawn by Dan Spiegle, was published to capitalize on the release of the film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, which was a highly anticipated film, the first “serious” attempt at a Tarzan film in decades. Greystoke was the film debut of actress Andie MacDowell as Jane Porter, and the American film debut of Christopher Lambert, best known as the star of cult favorite, Highlander. Both this comic and the film told the origin of Tarzan, so there are similarities, at least so far as the film followed Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel, to which the comics adaptation was faithful.


Although Greystoke was not the blockbuster Warner Brothers hoped for, the potential lured Columbia into having its own jungle adventure film ready to follow, with Sheena starring Tanya Roberts adapting comics’ greatest jungle queen. Sheena was an even bigger dud than Greystoke—I took my four-year-old niece to see it and she was begging to leave the film early, and I wish I had given in to her request. Fortunately for me, she forgot this utterly forgettable film experience. Sheena was adapted by scripter Cary Burkett and artist Gray Morrow.

With two of my favorite artists on board, I’m already declaring these two Jungle Gems. Veteran artist Dan Spiegle was at the height of his skills in the mid-80’s, delivering luxuriously rich settings, and characters that demonstrated personality and expression far beyond the capability of the typical superhero comics artist to render. Gray Morrow has never been topped as the best “good girl artist” in comics; I like my illustrated females to look like the real thing, not the distorted parodies of the human form that artists of more recent decades tend to produce. Morrow’s ladies look like the best looking women you could actually see out in the real world. And like Spiegle, Morrow could render convincing, detailed sets and believable flora and fauna. His work on this comic is admittedly sketchier than his best efforts, but that’s plenty good enough in service to adapting a tedious and unengaging film.

The Tarzan adaptation is very faithful to the novel, at least to the small portion that it adapts, the first 11 chapters (out of 28). It covers Tarzan’s origin, from his birth in the jungle to the stranded John, Lord Greystoke, and his wife the Lady Alice, his upbringing by the Great Apes, his first contact with humanity, to his killing of the vicious ape Kerchak and his coming into the kingship of the Apes. I believe this story was prepared for the European market, and Marvel took the opportunity to license it for publication in the US, hence there is no "editor" listed, only a "production coordinator", "traffic manager", "executive editor", and "editor in chief". Apparently Marvel was not renewing its license to produce new ongoing Tarzan comics from ERB, just to package this story for release to the US market. 

Dan Spiegle was not an artist who took a lot of shortcuts. His sets were authentically rendered:



His wildlife was authentic to nature, his jungles were rendered lushly and evocatively:



His page compositions had a terrific sense of depth:



The Sheena issue adapts the movie script, and I’m not going to suffer through synopsizing that! The film’s scripter, David Newman (who had written for the Superman film franchise) was apparently under no compulsion to be faithful in anything but the very loosest of adaptations of the comic book character. They wanted the name, the look, and the very generic premise: a gorgeous blonde female Tarzan. The Sheena issue is padded with text articles promoting the film with its female focus and ambitions toward Raiders of the Lost Ark-type tone, augmented with behind-the-scene photos and film shots. So I think I’ll just be satisfied with sampling some imagery from Gray Morrow’s pages...

Sheena swings from jungle vines:



Sheena has the power to mentally command jungle animals:



Sheena rides zebras:



Why you can’t ride zebras:



Finally, a look at the smaller-format reprints Marvel put on the stands:





Again, Jungle Gems primarily for the artwork, but the Tarzan adaptation is as faithful and detailed as you're ever going to get in comics format. 

JUNGLE ACTION #2, December 1954. Jungle fatigue is setting in, so I’m giving myself a reliable serving of more of Marvel’s mid-50’s offerings, since they are reliably competent at the least, digestible in small doses thanks to the shortness of the stories, and frequently a lot more fun than the standard jungle fare of the 50’s.



This issue features:

Lo-Zar, Lord of the Jungle in “Red Poison” with art from Joe Maneely
Jungle Boy in “The Mystery of Kula Mountain!”, penciled and inked by John Romita
“Jungle Magic”, a two-page text story
Man-Oo the Mighty in “Cry in the Night!”, illustrated by George Tuska
Leopard Girl in “The Flames of Terror!”, drawn by Al Hartley
Don Rico is, according to the GCD, the scripter of all the comics stories; the author of “Jungle Magic” is unknown.

Most of us here are probably more familiar with Marvel’s revival of the “Jungle Action” trademark as a reprint title in the early 70’s, before it became home to new stories starring the Black Panther. I’ve already sampled its early reprint period, where we previously met Lo-Zar, with a red hair dye job and the less risible new name of “Tharn”.

“Red Poison” opens with a preview of Lo-Zar battling a crocodile as a villainous intruder poisons the local rivers, but the story begins as an African native summons Lo-Zar to bemoan the death of his cattle, after drinking from the river.



Lo-Zar’s about to test the waters with a sip, himself, when he sees a hawk drink and immediately die, giving him good reason to alert the locals, warning them not to drink from the poisoned waters.

Mr. Egres is the white hunter behind the poisonings, but Lo-Zar doesn’t know that, and warns the man not to drink or bathe, but Egres boasts that he carries his own, safe water. Suddenly the natives arrive to alert Lo-Zar to the crocodiles, who have gone mad and are attacking the village. Time for some croc-fighting…meanwhile, Egres continues to pour poison into the waters, and his thought balloon reveals he is acting under the command of the Kremlin. Egres fails to notice a newspaper that drops from his gear into the river…



With the aid of the natives, Lo-Zar defeats the crocs, and discovers the paper, a clipping about a Commie spit named “Serge” who has a reputation for international sabotage. When a burning leaf falls on the paper, it chars the photo of Serge, revealing him to be—surprise, surprise—“Egres”. Get it? “Serge” spelled backwards…

At this point, it’s pretty easy for Lo-Zar to put two and two together, and he heads after the poisoner, defeating him despite Egres having the advantage of a pistol. In their tussle, Egres takes a plunge into the river, where the maddened crocodiles deliver justice. A native finds an antidote for the poison in Egres’s camp, and Lo-Zar has him pour it into the river, restoring the peace of the jungle.

Nice art from Maneely, reminiscent of EC’s Will Elder and John Severin, but it can’t save a dud of a story. Egres’s goals aren’t very convincing: he wants to drive men and animals away so that they—the Communists, presumably—can take over. Rico further muddies the story by Lo-Zar’s supposition that the Russians have turned against their reliable tool, Egres. The key moment in the story, when the burned paper mimics a beard on the photo, revealing Egres’s true identity, doesn’t ring true to anyone who’s ever seen newsprint burn.

Jungle Boy starts out promising, as JB spots curious tracks, then sees a winged demon carrying off a victim. JB hurries off to tell his dad; evidently, JB is the son of “white hunter” (obviously!) Jack Spears. Jungle Boy’s no Tarzan-talking, ape-raised orphan, he’s the conventionally-intelligible son of a hunter who likes to adventure wearing only a pair of shorts and a stone hammer and call himself “Jungle Boy” (even his dad calls him that!).



Dad and his hunters receive JB’s report and go off in search of the monster, warning JB to stay safe back at camp. But JB doubts the men’s ability to trail something that flies, so he decides he will let the monster take him, and conveniently, the creature arrives and does just that, flying JB to the craggy top of Kula Mountain, an impossibly high peak that has never been reached by humans.



Not so fast, there, Jungle Boy! When the creature deposits him atop the peak, he finds a savage, club-wielding cave man watching over a pit filled with natives! Before you know it, JB is matching his small stone hammer against the brute’s bigger bludgeon:



JB’s superior agility resolves the conflict in his favor, as he dodges before a single blow is dealt. The cave man plunges helplessly off the cliff. But the coast is not yet clear! Threatened by both a leopard and a boar, JB ducks into a crevasse for some “Let’s you and him fight!”

He escapes while the animals engage with each other and finds himself at gunpoint: an “ex-circus man...animal trainer” is there, and he explains his scheme to wipe out the native population by injecting his wild animals with a serum that will make them go berserk. Once the natives are cleared out, he can collect more animals, chemically induce them to madness, and use those as weapons against American soldiers in support of the Communist cause. Oh, and the bat monster and cave man were “circus freaks”:



A daft plan…

JB cripples his enemy under an easily-rolled boulder, the bat monster arrives and picks up the man, since it’s trained to carry fallen enemies to the “valley of skeletons”. JB escorts the natives down the mountain, and after Dad scoffs at his unlikely story, JB rationalizes that the bat will no longer be a problem, since there’s no one on the mountain to give it orders any more.

Wow, between this and the Lo-Zar story, it’s clear they were struggling to somehow tag the Communists as being behind as many acts of jungle villainy as they could. Both plans were pretty crazy ones involving depopulating a region for reasons of dubious benefit to the Communist cause.

Jungle Boy doesn’t really do anything other than roll a big rock over his enemy’s leg, but he’s treated as a big hero. The story requires a lot of post analysis to make even the slightest sense of, but the best I can figure is that the bat was bringing natives to the mountain-top pit, where they would be stranded, allowing the unnamed villain to later take control of the region, but I guess the bat had to be ordered to perform each individual abduction. But the bat didn’t need orders to dispose of the fallen by taking them to the valley of skeletons. And I assume the giant long-tailed bat was just a freakishly large trained animal, not a mutated human or unknown species. But the way Romita draws it suggests he didn’t have any good reference material on bats…

“Jungle Magic” is a strange little text piece that sees a white hunter and his native guide captured by an unfriendly tribe and challenged to prove the magic of the white people and their black friends is more powerful than that of the isolationist N’Gembi tribe. The N’Gembi witch doctor performs an easily-detected trick where he appears to revive three dead frogs via their substitution with live ones hidden in the false bottom of a basket. The white hunter’s native aid makes the more impressive show by using his bwana’s watch battery to cause one of the dead frogs to twitch its legs, demonstrating him to be a true “master of life and death.” Not a bad example of the mandatory short text story.

Next up is Man-Oo the Mighty. Man-Oo is probably not the only “regular” gorilla to headline his own comics feature, but I don’t remember seeing any others. It wasn’t that uncommon for animals to star in their own adventure comics in the 50’s: Trigger and Rex the Wonder Dog also saw issues of their own comics hit the stands the same month as JUNGLE ACTION #2.

Without dialog and thought balloons, “Cry In the Night!” feels like reading a very heavily illustrated text story, with captions above every panel. George Tuska draws pretty good simians, but the pages as a whole don’t make for an especially attractive composition: it all just looks like random pictures of apes scattered on the page. The story has Man-Oo rescuing a baby gorilla from hyenas, but in so doing, gives the baby’s parents the mistaken impression that he was responsible for the young one’s cries of distress. He resolves the misunderstanding without harming anyone, then returns home, where the captions explain that the whole situation had been intentionally coordinate by Man-Oo’s rival Kago:



Man-Oo’s too smart for the wicked Kago, and surprises his enemy by approaching in an unexpected direction, leaving Kago trapped in his own snare:



I'm not going to complain about an ongoing backup starring a jungle gorilla! 

Finally, we have Leopard Girl, who sports what looks to be the least comfortable garb I’ve seen any jungle adventurer wear: a full-body leopard-spotted suit with her face poking through the mouth of a leopard head, and with only her hands likewise exposed. At least she has the benefit of footgear, although it appears no more substantial than ballerina slippers.

The story sees an old man named Hans Kreitzer retiring to the jungle to “think, study, and write” away from the bustle of civilization, with the assistance of his newly-hired typist, Gwen. On thing he intends to study is the legend of the “Leopard Girl”.



After explaining his intentions, we see his real plan is not quite that mundane: he is “bringing together certain nuclear reactions” to “rejuvenate the spirit of the Flame Witch”! When his experiments immediate flame out of control, Gwen ducks off, doffs her glasses, and returns to save Kreitzer in her secret identity of, you guessed it, Leopard Girl!

(OK, this calls for a quick look back at issue 1, where we learn that the lovely Gwen is working for a white couple who have for some unexplained reason set up a domicile in the jungle, hiring Gwen as their cook/secretary. Gwen spreads the myth of the Leopard Girl, supposedly orphaned—of course!—and raised by leopards in the jungle. Um, that doesn’t answer all my questions, but we’ll just take it that Gwen works in various domestic and clerical capacities for other whites in the jungle, but is secretly the mysterious Leopard Girl.)

Back to our story, Kreitzer is ticked that the Flame Witch didn’t show, and Leopard Girl leaves him safe in a cave, from the runaway fire, but warning him that he won’t be safe from the Flame Witch. Yeah, the Flame Witch is apparently a real entity, who will “try to get to Mr. Krietzer for bringing her back!” What kind of gratitude is that?

The Flame Witch is responsible for that raging fire, and Leopard Girl escapes from the witch’s fiery trap with the help of a condor: “First time a condor ever came in handy!” (What’s with the anti-condor sentiment?)



Leopard Girl must ultimately come to the rescue of the old man, using a hidden spring inside the cave to douse the witch, sending her back to wherever she came from. Hans Kreitzer has been uneasy under the protection of a lion and its cubs, thanks to Leopard Girl, who resumes her identity as Gwen, returning to receive Kreitzer’s orders to destroy his equipment; he’s learned not to, in Gwen’s words, “trifle with jungle things!”

This doesn’t strike me as a very well thought-out premise for a series: is Gwen going to find a new and unlikely job working for foreigners every issue? This calls for a glance through the few remaining issues of Leopard Girl’s career (JUNGLE ACTION was cancelled with issue 6).

In JA #3, Gwen is still working as Kreitzer’s secretary, sharing a house with him and “Peter”, another white guy who’s been around since issue 1. But as of issue 4, Al Hartley left the strip, and Leopard Girl appears to have operated in costume full time from then on, dropping the Gwen identity. Kreitzer was gone, Peter was now good friends with Leopard Girl, and the feature was much more conventional jungle fare. I have to wonder if Al Hartley was plotting, since these changes coincided with his departure.

I do give this story some extra credit for including some straight-up fantasy/supernatural elements in the form of the Fire Witch. Most of these Atlas jungle comics seemed to have shied away from “real” magical menaces.

While far from the best of the Atlas jungle comics I’ve sampled, JUNGLE ACTION delivers enough variety, clarity, and fun to rank as a Jungle Gem, although a semiprecious one at best.