Dell Four Color #1091
Cover by Jack Mendelsohn based on his King Features Syndicate comic strip Jacky's Diary:

Can you imagine how much more painful that would be on the eyes if it actually had some mid-90's superhero figures on it?

Oh, the Legion are the ideal test subjects for this thought experiment!
Triplicate Girl - I assume there are some convenient definitions of how her power works, but before accepting it in real life, I'd want to know what happens if one body is injured when you reunite? If the composite body is restored to health, that would be a separate power from triplicating. If injuries are retained, that triples the risk to the whole. It's established that if one body dies, the remaining two can unite, but can two unite if all three are alive? If not, there's a risk that one body could be imprisoned, or lost, or comatose, forcing the others to live separately, which at the least would double the grocery bill.
Matter-Eater Lad - Grocery bills are of course no problem, but depending on "HOW WOULD THIS EVEN WORK???", the power might be a liability to the general public as a threat to the sanitation system!
Brainiac 5 - Agreed, that one probably wouldn't get you killed, and could potentially be financially beneficial via ethical applications, but getting too far beyond current genius levels could be just as maddening as Dream Girl's powers. I'd imagine a "12th Level Intelligence" would be capable of nearly identical prognostication, analyzing current states to predict outcomes of nearly everything, including your own actions. But assuming it's just being really smart about science and history and arts, I wouldn't be as scared of it as most other powers. I wouldn't volunteer for that kind of intellectual leap, though.
Chameleon Boy - Used judiciously, probably safe enough, but as I recall, he could also transform into very large or very small animals, risking the same consequences as Colossal Boy or Shrinking Violet face.
Princess Projectra - Agreed, safe if used wisely, and potentially financially beneficial in, say, a magic act.
Cosmic Boy - The danger here is the inability of a magnetic field to discriminate. While you're grabbing that gun away--which would imply a very strong magnetic field!--you're also yanking out medical implants from people's bodies, nails out of structures, and lots of easily-imagined magnetically-susceptible metals the displacement of which would be disastrous.
Saturn Girl - It's hard to think of an ethical application of that power. In criminal investigations, it could potentially reveal details that could be confirmed via hard evidence, identify witness, and clarify the timeline of events to refute defenses. But if you've got the wrong guy, mind-reading would be a gross personal violation, right?
Timber Wolf - He needs a combination of powers to be safe, I would think. Exercising the enhanced agility without the strength to weather things like landing impacts could be risky.
Invulnerability - Potentially extremely dangerous unless you can turn it off at will. Bummer about the appendicitis, man, but we can't get to it.

The first literal 1st issue I bought of any comic was:




I liked THE DEMON a lot, but not enough to commit to every issue. My dimes were judiciously allocated as a kid, and this title often had to be cut from the budget. 

The first issue 1st issue I bought and then bought the entire run of off the stands was:



SWAMP THING was simply a must-buy for me. The final days were a sad disappointment, but I had to stick with it. 

The first issue of a comic that drew me in for the long haul, resulting in my buying every following issue (including the Giant-Size run, Annual, and related issues) for over a decade was:



Somehow, this became my first long-term committed relationship with the comics racks. I wasn't a particularly big fan of any of the leads, but I was fascinated by the dynamics of this "non-team". This one was, obviously, not the literal first issue, but my first. You can of course be sure that I eventually picked up the first three issues and MARVEL FEATURE 1-3!

(This cover, by the way, was one of my proudest accomplishments in our weekly Classic Cover Contest. For a while, I gave myself the challenge of entering covers that satisfied both the current week's contest and the prior week's contest. I thought I would have to give it up when Favorite John Buscema Cover and Favorite Jim Starlin Cover were back-to-back topics--in some order, I can't recall which came first. But I managed to find this one, which is John Buscema finishes over a Jim Starlin layout. It's not only the sole instance I could find of a Buscema/Starlin cover collaboration, but was literally a true favorite of mine: a great cover with personal significance to my comic book collecting hobby!) 

RAMAR OF THE JUNGLE #4, April 1956, Charlton Comics



As you might note over the logo on this cover by the talented Maurice Whitman, this features “TV’s King of Jungle Adventure”—it’s a licensed comic based on a syndicated tv series starring Jon Hall that aired in 1952-1954, so this came out while the series was in reruns. I’d never heard of this series, which focused on an American physician named Dr. Tom Reynolds. “Ramar” is the native word for a white medicine man, according to the Wikipedia article, but since the series had episodes set in both Africa and India, I don’t know which native language inspired the name, or even if it’s an authentic term in any language. 52 episodes were made, 13 of which were in India, and the rest in Africa. Here’s an example episode.



I couldn’t make it through the whole thing, but if you want to sample Ramar, it’s certain to be a better experience than reading this comic, which you can do, if you are so inclined, at
comicbookplus.com

But I don’t advise it. Let me take the bullet for you on this one.


The first of four Ramar stories in this issue is “Guerilla Chief”, with art by Charles Nicholas and Rocke Mastroserio. And boy, is it a trivial one! The Mbola tribe in the Upper Congo is being attacked by white men with machine guns. The natives assumed the men were authorities because they were wearing uniforms, but Ramar has them tail one of the soldiers after he snipes one of the natives.



They are tracked to a pillbox left over after the war, from which the bad guys are fending off enemies with their chatterbox. Ramar heroically makes his way into the villains’ fortress and confronts what I presume are Nazis. The natives come to the rescue as Ramar is held at gunpoint, and the enemy is taken captive to face the district police. Ramar ends the story with an admonition to rely on the local authorities, or on Ramar, himself:



Well, we’re off to a bad start, because that story was garbage. Ignorant natives, paternal attitude, boring art, minimal plot, and pointlessly ambiguous villains. This is not a promising sign in the lead story…

Ramar stars next in “Danger from a Doll”, again from Nicholas and Mastroserio. And of course we have voodoo dolls. The natives are arguing about whether Ramar is good or evil. He’s been treating the natives, but one guy got sick after his injured arm was healed. The witch doctor Mbali wants Ramar gone—after all, his white man’s medicine is threatening Mbali’s traditional healing—and Mbali has a voodoo doll with which to harm Ramar. It actually seems to work, but Ramar realizes it’s a set-up, with tricks like accomplices poking him in the back with a knife at the same time Mbali pokes the doll.

In the end, Ramar reveals Mbali as a troublemaker who was bribed by…uhh, someone…to discredit Ramar, who leaves Mbali’s punishment up to the tribe.



This comic isn’t getting any better, and the art, like every single story in this issue, renders prominent foreground figures as silhouette, an obvious hack to get these pages done with as quickly as possible. (We saw Vince Colletta taking the same shortcut over Joe Sinnott’s pencils on JUNGLE WAR.)

Trader Tom is a humorous one-pager (another installment appears on the inside front cover) set in a trading post in the jungle. The gag is not worth the full page setup, nor worth sharing.

“Movies in the Jungle” is the text feature, a two page story about a director with a reputation for going to great lengths for authenticity in his jungle movies.


“Idol Chatter” is the next Ramar story, with Sal Trapani now inking Nicholas’ work. Things are tense in the jungle while Ramar treats natives in his dispensary. Chief Mbaa of the Wambali tribe seems hostile despite being formally deferential to the white doctor’s medical services, warning that the Mau Mau tribesmen resent him and want to drive him out.
That night, Ramar’s clinic is attacked by warriors who claim that the Mau Mau idol has been speaking to them, telling them to run the doctor out. The doctor figures out it’s just his pet parrot who’s been repeating inflammatory talk…where did he learn such language?!



Ramar and Charlie eavesdrop on the Mau Mau and break in on their council threatening the supposed idol—obviously a man in a mask—at gunpoint!



It’s Chief Mbaa, and he’s been claiming that the chattering parrot, which Mbaa has evidently taught to repeat death orders, is the voice of Koali the idol. Ramar punches out the fraud and a caption hastily reports that “the natives sought out their own criminals—a long stream of the secret terrorist society started for the capital near the coast and Ramar went back to treating the sick.”

For a 5 page story, that was really hard to follow. I had to re-read it to decipher everything, but I assume the penultimate panel caption is saying that the natives led the conspirators to the capitol to face justice, not that Ramar went back to business as usual while the bad guys advanced on the head of government!

Unmasking a religious leader at gunpoint and telling the congregation that the talking bird is a scam is not likely to win over the worshippers. Regardless, it’s a pretty ugly depiction of the natives as ignorant primitives easily deluded and easily won over by the cleverness of the white man in exposing the fraud.

This issue’s last Ramar story is “The Gunless Hunter”, with art tentatively attributed to Pete Morisi and Jon D’Agostino. I can definitely see some P.A.M. in these pages.

In the Belgian Congo, the natives ask Ramar for his help with white hunters who are trophy-hunting, something they consider evil. Ramar answers that he has no authority to stop licensed hunters, but will try talking to the men. He sympathizes, though, and bemoans the nuisance of the trigger-happy tourists as he and his aide Charlie motor off to have a chat with the hunter.

The lead man, Justin, refuses to refrain from his fully legal hunting, and won’t stop until he bags an elephant. Ramar and Charlie next consult the Commissioner, whose is willing to have Justin’s license revoked. In return, he requests that Ramar guide Bob, the photographer (the “gunless hunter” of the story title).

Justin is quite riled at losing his license, and vows to “fix” Dr. Reynolds. While Bob hunts photographic subject, Justin conspires with aspiring native man Ubangag. The next day, Ubangag poisons a deer and blames the current chief for allowing Bob to photograph the animal, claiming the camera is some kind of weapon. Ramar pleads that the chief allow Bob to prove the camera is harmless by photographing more animals, and the chief agrees…but he will pick the subject animals!

So he picks the water buffalo, by many measures the most dangerous of all African wildlife! Ramar overhears Justin plotting to shoot the buffalo, making the camera appear dangerous, so that Ubangag can become the new chief and that the charging buffalo will kill Bob and Ramar. A good plan, but one that is foiled by the sodium in alcohol-fueled explosion that Dr. “Ramar” Reynolds concocts from his medicine kit.



Bringing up the rear is “Jungle Road”, providing a one-shot, non-Ramar back-up. The GCD attributes the art to Bill Molno and Sal Trapani. The first-person narrator, O’Hara, has been contracted by the British Army to build a road through a monsoon-prone region in the Far East. O’Hara has gone 48 hours with no sleep as he supervises construction, so he crashes in his bunk, ignoring orders to report to Major Kraft-Nichols, the man in charge.

Nichols isn’t one to take being ignored, and wakes O’Hara with a thermos of tea, ordering him to get back to work at the river site. O’Hara objects, not wanting to wake the workers, and dismisses the Major as a pampered man who doesn’t appreciate the toil of the crew. O’Hara finally agrees, since the monsoon is expected to break tonight. But his commitment can’t compensate for his exhaustion, and he passes out again immediately.



(So you thought I was exaggerating about the silhouettes?)

When he wakes, he finds himself in the middle of a monsoon, and he struggles to reach the workers who, camping on lower ground, are at risk of drowning. When he reaches their level, he finds floodlights blazing and men stacking sandbags!

When part of the sandbag wall gives way, a worker falls in, and the conscientious O’Hara dives in to save him. He pulls off the rescue, only to discover that the worker being swept away was Major Kraft-Nichols himself!

After the monsoon, the Major expresses gratitude, and O’Hara, whose road was so well built that it survived the storm intact, apologizes for misjudging the tea-drinking Major.

Jungle Junk. RAMAR’s most consistent theme seems to be the importance of trusting in the authorities, in particular, the white Belgian authorities in control of the country at the time. The storytelling is at best pedestrian and at worst incompetent, the rendering is rushed, hacked, and drab, the premise is uninteresting, the lead character is bland. The best thing about the comic is the backup story.

On licensed properties like this, I’ve usually assumed that the comics company sought out and purchased the rights, but that’s a perspective informed by modern times. It occurs to me that it may have been the other way around, that the distributors of the syndicated series hired Charlton to put out the book to help promote sales of the reruns to local tv stations. Charlton certainly wasn’t invested in publishing a quality comic here.

I’m going to have to seek out something special to sample next time. I need a Jungle Gem to keep me inspired to continue this project after such a miserable comic.