WILD BOY OF THE CONGO #10 [1], Ziff-Davis, 1950
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Well, this looks promising! That’s confirmed as a Norm Saunders painting on the cover, with a weapon-wielding “gorilla-god” being restrained from whacking an enchained beauty, courtesy of the Wild Boy of the title. Let’s dig in and see if this really does deliver the promised “breathless jungle thrills”!
The inside front cover is devoted to a page of Jungle Oddities. It’s presented like many other pages of unusual facts readers often found, but these sound a little dubious to me. The rare Malagasy tree “captures and eats men”?! The Liana vine of South America will “twine itself around a man, lift him from the ground, and hang him”?!
Paul Hodge provides the art for our introduction to “Wild Boy, Prince of the Jungle.” This looks to be an origin story, opening with young blond David, wearing a red-striped shirt, in Africa with his uncle Clyde. The uncle is plotting with the sleazy “Mr. Wilson” to have the boy killed along the safari so that Clyde can collect the lad’s inheritance. They’ve recruited the native Wabotu to attack the safari, but only to kill the boy. David foils the plan by running off into the jungle alone before the spear hits him.
From hiding, David overhears his uncle’s intent and tries to escape, but he’s cornered and doomed…but then an earthquake brings down boulders around him and his assailants. David alone survives, but he is trapped in a secluded valley, in the ruins of an ancient city, under the watchful eyes of a giant stone idol.
Four years later, David has become a capable young man of the jungle, swinging from vines, talking to his monkey companion Kimba, and earning the friendship of a panther by saving him from the grips of a giant snake.
Venturing out days later with his new panther ally Daro, Wild Boy spots, from a great distance, a peaceful village on fire. The village has been raided by the savage Muttu tribe in order to gather slaves, but a young native boy, Keeto, escapes, reaching the golden temple in Wild Boy’s Lost City before Wild Boy who bids the lad gather the survivors to the great temple.
The carvings on the temple wall seem to represent Wild Boy, who is considered the fulfillment of a prophecy of a “mighty boy, half hunter, half spirit”, who “would return and protect us in our hour of need!”
The Muttu have followed the villagers to Wild Boy’s temple, and Wild Boy sends the villagers into hiding, while he sets a fire inside the idol, making it appear to breathe smoke.
Wild Boy reveals himself, then blows a ram’s horn to summon the mightiest beasts of the jungle to his aid. The evil Muttu are mostly slaughtered, and the peaceful villagers are able to return to their home, safe and grateful to Wild Boy. Wild Boy invites Keeto to drop by any time and hang out.
A good origin story, and one can’t help but notice that we have here a blond boy wearing a striped shirt menaced by a “Mr. Wilson”! There is some interesting imagery available thanks to establishing the Lost City as Wild Boy’s base of operations, we get a pair of intelligent and valuable animal companions, and a human supporting character for Wild Boy to interact with. The ability of jungle heroes to communicate with animals is typical, and this story doesn’t bother to explain how David is able to develop that skill, but readers of the time were probably expectant of that from their jungle heroes.
Next up is the cover story, “The Gorilla God!”, again illustrated by Paul Hodge.
Wild Boy heads off to investigate the newly active volcano, leaving his friend Keeto behind to cook breakfast. Keeto is unaware that a savage enemy tribe is watching him from the brush. The savages abduct Keeto for use as a sacrifice to the gorilla god, so the monkey Kimba rushes away to inform Wild Boy.
Evidently, Wild Boy can very literally talk with the animals: “What’s wrong, Kimba? I understand…bad men have taken Keeto for the gorilla god! Lead on…I’ll follow!” The gorilla god is legendary around this area, and Kimba leads Wild Boy and Daro the panther to a land new to them, an area reputed to be the domain of the gorilla god. Unfortunately, Wild Boy drops into a pitfall trap, just as gunfire is heard, so he orders Kimba and Daro to flee to safety. The shooters are white hunters in search of the gorilla god, hoping to exhibit the giant in Europe to great profit, so they grab Wild Boy from the pit they’ve dug, hoping he can lead them to their prey:
Their scheme is foiled when they return to their tent, allowing Wild Boy the opportunity to summon Kimba and Daro to free him from his wooden cage. Our hero has no time to waste now that he has escaped his captors; saving Keeto is top priority, so they get back to tracking him!
Wild Boy finds Keeto trussed up as a sacrifice before the massive gorilla god, but the rescue proves very easy:
And of course, here’s where the wicked white men catch up. When they dare to assault Wild Boy, the gorilla god attacks, savagely attacking the Europeans who threaten his friend. The gorilla thrashes the men to death, but he also dies from bullet wounds.
This enrages the tribe who kidnapped Keeto, since their god has died before their very eyes. They pursue our heroes as they flee, leading their pursuers to the edge of the volcano. Wild Boy summons elephants, and his enemies suffer death from trampling as well as volcanic eruption:
I’m struck with how jam-packed this story is in its short 6 pages. A few years later, Atlas/Marvel would be publishing jungle comics with similarly short tales, but never with as much action as this. The storytelling is compressed, sure, but it doesn’t feel rushed, even with two sets of enemies, a gorilla god rampage, an elephant attack, an erupting volcano, a jungle sacrifice, abduction, trap…whew! It’s not without some minor letdowns, such as the simple resolution to Keeto’s sacrifice, and Wild Boy’s way-too-literal ability to communicate with animals, but the pieces come together so that the bad guys all get the comeuppance they could earn back in the days before the imposition of the Comics Code Authority.
The obligatory text feature is “Man-Eater”. A white man named Walters is investigating some deaths in an Indian village which the locals attribute to a different white man who can turn himself into a devil-tiger. That man proves to be Thorpe, a killer who has stolen big cats from a European circus and is using them to wreak havoc. Thorpe overestimates his ability to control Rajah, the Bengal tiger…
Irv Novick and Bernard Sachs handle the art for “Jungle Guns!”, starring Joe Barton, Jungle Adventurer.
The dashing, pipe-smoking Barton is assigned by the Belgium High Commissioner to the Congo to guide an authorized yet suspicious party into the interior. These suspicious travellers are Karl and Olga Heinlin, who claim to be zoologists trying to reach Tambu country before the rains come. (Also, a pick-pocket named “Limey Louie” is being sought for stealing, so I suspect we’ll see him before long.)
As Barton pilots the pair on a boat through the river, Karl objects when Barton insists on finishing the journey on shore, in order to avoid whirlpools and rapids. As the men trade fists, the boat crashes, deciding the matter. The sinking of the boat reveals that Limey Louie was a stowaway in the hold, which was filled with rifles!
It turns out the Heinlins are communist agents here to sow revolution in European colony countries. Olga convinces her husband to keep Barton alive, since he’s the only one who can lead them to the natives. Joe Barton, claiming to be motivated only by his paycheck, makes peace with the commies and they reach the Tambu people, who welcome Barton.
With Barton the only one capable of translating, Karl doesn’t realize that Joe is advising the chief not to accept the offer of guns or the encouragement to rebel, explaining that the communists will return to enslave them if they do.
The Tambu delay their decision until the next morning, but the greedy Karl has, overnight, swiped the precious jewels from the tribe’s idol’s eyes and planted them in Joe’s pocket. The furious chief decides to accept the guns, and sentences Joe Barton to face the deadly bushmaster, the deadliest snake in the jungle!
Joe is rescued by Limey Louie, who has a conscience after all. Louie and Joe take a short cut to the boat, hoping to get there first, but they find the gun-filled boat surrounded by curious elephants. Karl tries to spook them by shooting at them, forcing Joe to expose himself or risk Karl causing a deadly stampede.
Karl shoots and misses, the elephants react exactly as Joe expected, killing Karl beneath their immense feet and crushing the weapons as well. When the Commissioner arrives, Joe refuses to lay the blame on Karl alone, despite Olga’s pleas. Olga goes with the authorities, and Limey Louie gets a pardon for his part in the affair.
Hey, this backup feature isn’t too bad! The Novick/Sachs art doesn’t wow me like Hodge’s, but the story reads like the many pulp magazine short stories starring cool-headed adventurers-for-hire.
Closing out the book is a third Wild Boy story from the drawing table of Paul Hodge, called “The Invaders.” Wild Boy encounters wounded man, reporting that “two strange men of great evil…come to village…ask to be brought to Lost City…” The man dies of gunshot, and Wild Boy vows to avenge him.
Back in the native village, the evil men are beating people, trying to extract the secret location of the Lost City. With villagers facing down a rifle barrel, one villager relents, but warns that they will perish if they try to learn the City’s secret.
Once the safari reaches the Lost City, the villagers attempt to beg off, having wronged the “great jungle prince”, but the evil whites intend to loot the legendary ruins, and need the natives to carry their takings.
Before they can kill another villager, Wild Boy attacks from out of nowhere, but he succumbs to the club of a rifle butt to the back of his head, and is bound and taken prisoner.
The invaders find golden statues, which they begin destroying, caring only about the value of the raw materials. Wild Boy can only watch in distress, until his panther Daro frees him by gnawing at his bonds.
Wild Boy means business, and attacks one villain with his knife going for the throat, but the other man is taking aim with his rifle. Wild Boy turns so that his enemy takes the bullet, but that leaves him as an easy target for the second shot.
(This page is a good example of the jigsaw puzzle approach Hodge takes to his panel design throughout the issue.)
Once again, though, Daro comes to the rescue, knocking his master out of the bullet’s path. A third shot is never fired, because the remaining invader is taken down by “a bolt of lightning from the angry skies.” Wild Boy graciously accepts the villagers’ apology; the evil has been destroyed and Lost City is safe again.
That was a quick one, but a cracking good one. The implication is that Lost City is defended by supernatural forces, making the literal “bolt from the blue” a forgivable means of polishing off the menace. Never mess with the integrity of ancient idols, kids!
It’s pretty shocking to see the hero of the comic holding the end of a dagger to the bad guy’s throat. There’s no question that Wild Boy would have carried through, even if the writer spares him the burden of killing by the convenience of friendly fire.
As a special treat, the back cover features a full color pinup of Wild Boy and his panther Timba before a massive stone idle. The GCD doesn’t identify an artist for this, but I think it’s very nice work.
Well, how about that? Unexpectedly, I find this to be a definite
Jungle Gem! Although it’s loaded with well-worn jungle tropes, cliches, and conventions, everything is executed well. The artwork is above average, the rendering is lush, the Lost City adds visual appeal, the stories make effective use of their page count without excessive padding or hasty shortcuts. I had never heard of the artist Paul Hodge, and I quite like his work. He staggers and angles his panels so that no page is just rectangular blocks, but does so in a way that doesn’t hinder the flow of reading.
Out of all the jungle comics I’ve sampled so far, this is the one I’m most tempted to read in full. WILD BOY ran for eight issues in 1950-1952, with its first three issues numbered 10-12. Ziff-Davis had only been publishing comics for a few months when WILD BOY debuted, so this was not a case of a new comic taking over the numbering of a cancelled comic, as was typical of the industry. Ziff-Davis actually debuted five new series in January 1951, all of which started at #10, so this appears to be a ploy to make these appear, to retailers, to be well-established properties. Ziff-Davis had actually only published 7 comics in total thus far: FAMOUS STARS #1-2, KID COWBOY #1-2, ROMANTIC MARRIAGE #1-2, and AMAZING ADVENTURES #1.
Ziff-Davis sold many of their properties to St. John Publishing when they abandoned the market in 1952, and St. John continued the series under the new title WILD BOY OF THE CONGO. Their first issue, #9, appears to have been prepared by Ziff-Davis but handed over to St. John, and was published a year after the last Ziff-Davis issue. After that single issue of new material, St. John reprinted earlier Ziff-Davis content, but published them under new covers by Matt Baker, such as this one:
I won’t be sampling the St. John issues separately, letting this one stand as my single review of WILD BOY.
?! I applaud the creative team of writer Robert Kanigher and artists Ross Andru and Mike Esposito for conceiving and executing this daft team of villainous vapors!
