Congo Bill was one of the longest running back-up features at DC. He debuted in MORE FUN COMICS #56 in June 1940 and continued there through issue 65. One year later he was transferred to ACTION COMICS (as of issue 37) where he appeared in every issue (or so it appears at a glance; I’m not going to parse through it to see if he missed an occasional issue) until #261, February 1960. With #248, Congo Bill began sharing his feature and the feature title with Congorilla, a golden gorilla into whose body Bill was able to transfer his own consciousness, leaving the gorilla in charge of his own human body. Congorilla then moved over to ADVENTURE COMICS #270 for a shorter run, to issue #283, April 1961. That puts Congo Bill on par with Aquaman and Green Arrow as one of the few backup adventure characters DC published consistently from the Golden Age to the 60’s. And unlike Aquaman and Green Arrow, by the time he reached the 60’s, he had had not only his own comic, running for 7 issues dated Aug/Sep 1954 through Aug/Sep 1955, but had been featured on the silver screen in 1948’s Congo Bill, King of the Jungle, a fifteen-chapter Columbia serial starring Don McGuire.



And when Congo Bill’s ACTION COMICS adventures were collected for Australian publisher K.G. Murray, it was Superman who got second billing on the covers!



Before Congorilla, though, came Janu the Jungle Boy, an orphan lad brought up in the jungle, who was adopted by Bill in ACTION COMICS #191, April 1954. Janu got cover co-billing in CONGO BILL, the series to be sampled here.



CONGO BILL #1 is representative of the character at full maturity of the feature. The comic essentially collects the equivalent of three back-up installments, as did every issue, rather than attempting to more fully develop the feature with longer stories. If the series wasn’t a success—and it wasn’t, obviously—DC could easily slot any unpublished stories into Bill’s simultaneously ongoing back-up berth in ACTION COMICS.

The first issue is also of interest because it cover-features “The Golden Gorilla”, a prototype for Congorilla. The first issue’s cover and interior art is by Nick Cardy, and the writer has not been identified according to the GCD.

“Chota The Chimp!”



Escaped convicts steal an army tank and Bill is tasked with pursuing them through the jungle. Janu, naturally, is expected to come along, leaving behind his new elephant friend, but holding onto an ultrasonic whistle which only the elephant can hear.

Along the trail, Janu picks up a chimp with an injured tooth, which Bill pulls (in an absurdly clever manner!). The grateful chimp, dubbed “Chota”, won’t leave them, now.

Bill, Janu, and Chota catch up to the convicts and the tank (I suspect tanks are not very effective transportation in dense jungle, but what do I know?). The chimp proves to be useful in protecting the humans from dangers like quicksand, and saves them when the convicts turn the tank’s weapons on them, but of course it’s a whistle for Bombo the elephant that proves key to capturing the tank thieves:



Well, I guess they figured you can’t be a proper jungle hero without a chimpanzee companion and an elephant for transportation. Skimming the following issues, I can confirm that Chota and Bombo continued to appear throughout the run.

“Hot Breath of Death!” is a single-page that tells an anecdote of Theodore Waldeck, a real-life explorer of Africa and writer of memoirs and children’s fiction about Africa. According to this story, Waldeck was once charged by an angry bull elephant but survived when the bull’s tusks hit an underground boulder:



“Queen of the Jungle!”



Bill is out to track down the missing film actress Wanda Gail, lost filming a feature in Africa.

When he finds Wanda, she’s not lost at all—it’s a publicity stunt. Bill is peeved, and tells them he’ll expose the stunt when they get back to the Congo. On the trek back, though, Wanda partakes of some hallucinogenic berries:

Eats grapes:

Wanda spends the rest of the story getting into dangerous situations, under the delusion that, as queen of the jungle, the wild animals are under her command, with Bill keeping her safe and arranging it to appear that her delusions are true, so as not to disturb her delicate, drugged, psyche.

Bill’s efforts reward him with an accidental tumble into a pit of quicksand, but then Janu finally catches up (having finished his errands). A “supersonic” whistle and it’s Bombo to the rescue!

Things get even worse when a jungle fire traps them, but all ends up well, and Wanda confesses that the jungle queen act was a deception, too:



Well, that was kind of a clever take on the jungle queen cliché, I suppose. A typical sequence of 50’s DC contrivances would make this material comfortable to readers of Superman and Batman. Nick Cardy could sure draw some pretty women, and his art is fine throughout the issue.

I’ve seen a meme crop up in various places on the internet to the effect of “When I was a kid, I thought that quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it is.” A venerable death trap in jungle adventure, it was indeed a lot more ubiquitous in fiction than it is in daily life, even for those living in more remote places. But I can tell you, as someone who has actually stepped into quicksand, that it is a terrifying sensation, probably very akin to the panicking feeling people get when they sense they are about to drown. I was able to extricate myself quickly, and it wasn’t any deeper than my knees, if that, but man, oh, man, my heart let me know immediately that it did not approve of my foot sinking quickly into that muddy mixture of water, dirt, rocks and sand!

The ubiquitous Henry Boltinoff contributes a one-page humor strip, “Shorty”, about a blond character unexpectedly encountering someone from a far-distant culture while Shorty’s on safari in Africa. I’ll refrain from sharing the potentially offensive illustration and outdated and out-of-favor terminology.

Next comes the requisite two page text story to satisfy the second class mailing requirements, “Fear in the Jungle”. Hunter Jim Branson doubts his worthiness to join the ranks of pukka sahib (“first-rate hunter”) when he is charged by a kifaru…that is, rhinoceros! After all, “only a well-timed and perfectly-aimed shot past the vault-like cranium that encases its stupid brain can kill a rhino.” (I think that which party is stupid in this encounter is debatable.) Branson is fortunate that the rhino ceases its charge, but Jim’s fear at the encounter makes him want to give up the “sport”, until another hunter explains that a burra sahib, or “big hunter” is just as good as a pukka, but has the sense to have a healthy fear of big game.

Last up, the cover feature, “The Golden Gorilla!”



(That’s a nicely drawn ape there, isn’t it?)

The sound of jungle drums alarm Janu: his friend Bogadu is in trouble! Congo Bill has no idea who this friend is, but he advises against swimming across the crocodile-infested river barring them from this “Bogadu”. Janu has a solution: his inaudible-to-humans whistle summons a hippo which they can ride to the other side. It wasn’t made clear in the first two stories, but evidently, this whistle doesn’t just summon Bombo the elephant, but can command other wild jungle animals as well. This turns Janu into something of a jungle version of Aqualad!

Bogadu proves to be the titular golden gorilla, held by a hunting expedition with numerous ropes. When Janu tries to untie the gorilla, the hunter warns him away at gunpoint, and even Congo Bill agrees: the gorilla must not be freed!

A veteran DC comics reader will, at this point, anticipate a surprising reason why the gorilla must be restrained, maybe he’s tied on to a human hanging over a nearby cliff, or he’s standing on a landmine that will go off if he steps away. It’s gotta be something like that, right?

No, the reason Congo Bill won’t let Janu free is friend is because “these people have a hunting license! …these papers allow them to capture Bogadu”, and if Jane tries to release him, Janu will be a criminal! “The law of the jungle has changed! Man’s law now rules! Man’s law says he can come in here and capture Bogadu!”

So into the cage goes Bogadu, and the big game hunter doesn’t want to hear Bill’s advice not to proceed to the coast while the hunter’s son lies sick with some jungle illness. But the hunter’s a tough guy, and assumes his son can handle the trip, even though he’s doubled over with cramps.

The dizzy, sick kid soon stumbles off a cliff, causing a landslide that leaves him trapped under an immovable boulder. Janu’s able to communicate their need to Bogadu, who saves the boy, and is granted his freedom in gratitude:



OK, the “law of the jungle” wins out, but it’s kind of weird to see the hero of the comic so committed to African hunting regulations that he’s willing to shrug off the capture of such a unique and highly intelligent specimen. But I shouldn’t be surprised, that’s nothing compared to ACTION COMICS #224. That’s the episode where Bill encounters another golden gorilla, and this time, Bill is willing to hunt and kill the gorilla for a $500 reward, even after the gorilla saves Bill’s life, twice—including saving him from quicksand!. That golden gorilla would become the title character of the feature in issue 248 as “Congorilla”!

I can’t call this a Jungle Gem, but Congo Bill gets respect for longevity, and for being one of the three third-string DC characters to get his own serial (along with Vigilante and Hop Harrigan). Nick Cardy’s art is a pleasure, and the comic is fully compliant with the DC standards and storytelling approaches of the era, so if you like that kind of thing—and I rather do—CONGO BILL is a pleasant read, rather than the outright chore that many of these vintage jungle adventure comics can be.

Avon published their only dedicated jungle adventure comic, WHITE PRINCESS OF THE JUNGLE, for five issues, running quarterly from July 1951 to November 1952. For unknown reasons, the lead character, called "Taanda" in the first four issues, was renamed "Tarinda" in the final issue. Could Avon have faced a complaint from Fiction House arguing that "Taanda" was too similar to their character "Kaänga"? Unlike many instances when there is a sudden name change in a comic book character, there is no evidence of lettering corrections on the fifth issue, implying that the decision came before the lettering stage, at least. It is the same character, though, since supporting characters' names are unchanged: the princess's adopted father Chief Upatani of the Tuaruti tribe and her young ward Koru (this gets a confusing after Jungle Jim's young aid "Kolu"!). Taanda/Tarinda's origins are related in issue 1: she was the daughter of white explorers named Simmons, who were beloved by the Tauruti. Her parents were killed by men of the Jhibuti tribe while they were exploring a lost temple. The red-haired girl was adopted by the chief and named "Taanda". She was raised learning and excelling at jungle skills and wisdom, and developed the strength of ten men. Armed with a knife and sporting an animal-hide bikini, Taanda is a kind bringer of "freedom and justice" to the jungle.


Our sample is the final issue, White Princess of the Jungle #5, which features a cover and inside front cover from the greatly respected Everett Kinstler:




Kinstler makes these stories look way more exciting than they turn out to be!

Gene Fawcette penciled and Vince Alascia inked the three Tarinda stories in this issue.

"King of the Gorillas!"

As Garth, king of the gorillas, is trying to defending his pack from "the cavemen of the past", who have emerged "from out of the hidden recesses of the mysterious veldt", Tarinda, Koru and Upanati are tracking and slaying a tiger that has been terrorizing the tribe. (Yes, the locale was specifically identified in the first issue as Africa, to which tigers are not indigenous.)



A giant caveman arives and abducts Koru. Tarinda pursues them and spies on the strange-looking tribe from the trees above. Tarinda is spotted, and wordlessly challenged to a test of combat with the tribe's leader. Tarinda is victorious and is accepted as their new leader. Koru explains that the men, who can only grunt, had wanted Koru to build huts for them (they must be really good at speaking with gestures).
Suddenly the gorilla Garth arrives and begins to slaughter the child-like cavemen, forcing Tarinda to come to their defense. She stabs Garth right in the eye:



Tarinda takes two days to recover, aided by the "strange herbs and mixtures" of the grateful cavemen, who leave in search of new lands before Chief Upanati arrive to bring Tiranda and Koru back to the Tauruti.

All human life is sacred, even primitive precursors of modern man, certainly more sacred than simians like Garth. When you see a ring of apes bowing down before their hairy leader, you could almost think they were worshipping him. Can't have animals spreading their flea-bitten religion in the jungle, can we, Tarinda? Bring that ape down a peg by blinding him!




Koru is hunting a gazelle and sees it attacked and killed by a boa constrictor. Koru spears the snake through its head and returns to the Tauruti kraal boasting of his aim with the spear. The previously undetected presence of such snakes alarms Tiranda, who has heard of a tribe that worships and protects the boa.

The boa worshipers, meanwhile, are plotting how to take vengeance on the murderer of Vishnac's son...Vishnac being the giant Serpent King dwelling in a decorative "throne-hole"!



The worshippers vow to bring the killer--Koru, of course--back to Vishnac as a sacrifice. They kidnap him, but he is able to cry out and alert Tarinda and Upanati.

Tarinda is able to kill one of the boa men with a knife hurled into his back, and she takes to the vines in pursuit as Upanati returns to the kraal to amass his forces.



Koru is bound to the stake before the snake, but Tiranda, disguised as one of the snake worshippers (having back-stabbed yet another boa worshipper!), doffs her costume and effects a rescue. She stabs the giant boa, but cannot kill him. She and Koru escape the snake (who accidentally bites into one of his worshippers!) by fleeing up onto a cliff, from whence they start a landslide that slaughters the tribe (possibly!) as well as the snake.



Tiranda knows that radical worshippers of false gods are not to be tolerated. These heathens are killers, after all, so they themselves must be killed, for jungle "freedom and justice." Their loathsome giant serpent god and its unholy deer-suffocating spawn? Wipe them out!

The final Tiranda story is "Mountains of Madness".

Tekeli-li! Oops, wrong mountains of madness...

The Tauruti have been building a huge village hut in the kraal, a place for the tribe to congregate and witness "great ceremonies of state"...but Koru just wants to play at sliding down the building's steep roof.
An arrow suddenly pierces a tribesman through the throat:



The attackers yell that they "must kill--the mountain of madness has commanded it!" Tarinda joins the tribe in fighting back with lethal force. Interrogating a dying attacker, she learns that the Priestess of Koomalo and "the wailing sound of death" are responsible. Upanati determines that the savage had been drugged by a strange herb, and Tiranda calls for a tribal council.

Elsewhere, the evil priestess's men are looting and murdering other jungle tribes, but the thunder god is still demanding more treasure, as the warriors kneel to hear the wailing wind:



Tarinda takes to the air with her pilot Captain Stevens--I guess she still has connections to the "civilized" world, as must have been made clear in earlier issues--and parachutes into Koomalo. She spies on the priestess mixing up a narcotic brew before her deaf-mute servant, and follows her as she unblocks the "wind-hole" through which blows the "wailing sound of death", i.e., the drug-carrying wind that makes a sound which the tribe recognizes as the "thunder god".



Tarinda interrupts and shouts the truth down to those gathered to hear the thunder god's message: "Heed my word, villagers! She has lied to you! There is no thunder god!"


Tarinda has a knife fight with the priestess while Koru and the late-arriving Tauruti warriors fight the savages below (off-panel!). The priestess plunges to her death, Tarinda has Captain Stevens bomb the mountain top to prevent anyone else from fooling others about the voice of a thunder god.



"Now, once again, peace will come to the jungle!"

Tarinda doesn't mess around! When she sees religious leaders preying on the faithful to enrich themselves, she doesn't just take out the corrupt leader, she crushes the entire religion by bombing its holy site and shouting heresies! Nothing worse for peace than religious pluralism, right? Once they come out of their drug-induced fervor, they'll turn to the one true religion...that of the Tauruti, naturally. Maybe even come to services in the dandy new village hut!

On all three stories, the rendering by Fawcette and Alascia is competent, but shortcuts make the storytelling suffer. There are several story sequences that involve large groups of people, and Fawcette positions all of that off-panel. We don't see the tribe fighting the savages while Tiranda and the priestess fight on the mountain. Rather than showing the fight between the cavemen and the gorillas, we get a closeup of Garth and the Garth worship circle. It takes a careful reading to piece together all the story elements we aren't shown directly.

The Tiranda stories are far more violent than I'd expect from a jungle girl comic; stories like these were what fueled the anti-comics crusades of the 50's. The Tiranda stories are brutal, but they don't have much sex appeal as presented by these particular artists.

But there are some titillating panels in the back of the book. Kinstler comes in at the end to illustrate "Return of the Blue Gorilla", a sequel to issue 3's "The Blue Gorilla".



This blue gorilla is Karth, no relation to Garth, the King of the Gorillas from the first story. Anthropologist Victor Borgman, his daughter Ann, and his assistant Mike Norday are in Accra discussing the skull of the blue gorilla who died saving them in the previous installment. That gorilla appeared intelligent, and Borgman proposes that the gorilla was the "missing link".

A native fires an arrow into the room; the arrow was a warning of death for violating the lair of the blue gorilla, with a symbol that implicates the Rambao cannibals, worshippers of the blue gorilla. Despite the risk of unfriendly Rambao, the trio plans to return for more research, even without the assistance of Jim Taney, the only man who has the Rambao's respect.

On the trek, while crossing a river, the scientists are attacked by crocodiles--actually Rambao warriors disguised as crocodiles! The Rambao abduct the scientists:



As always seems to be the way, the tribe requires a trial of combat, with Mike facing off against the tribe's warrior-priest. As always seems to be the way, the white guy wins the challenge, and as doesn't typically seem the way, he stabs the warrior priest to death!

The infuriated cannibals prepare to drag the whites to die at the stake, but they are interrupted by a blue gorilla! The Rambao flee from the resurrected Karth...



..who is actually just Jim Taney in a gorilla outfit. He's been sent to rescue the scientists.

The Rambao haven't backed too far off, and they see that they've been deceived. As the quartet hurries off in their boat, they discover the habitat of the blue gorillas.

The final panel promises a resolution in the third and final installment, to be published in the next issue. But alas, the series would not see a next issue, and Ann would never get a bra.

The text stories are "The Giant Cataract" and "Slaves of the Diamond Mines." At least these are jungle stories. "Slaves" tells of a hunter who confronts a Nazi who is using African slave labor to mine diamonds; one of the slaves murders the German general. "Cataract" tells the story of an African tribesman named "Kolu" (!) who establishes peace between rival tribes in search of an area with fresh water.

It's not a Jungle Gem, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to getting a kick out of this sloppy, crazy book. While comics of the era usually shied away from the topic of real-world religion, there was no shortage of dreaming up false gods for heathens to worship in jungle comics, science fiction comics, or more generic adventure comics. Seeing Tiranda the iconoclast destroying two religions in a row, explicitly announcing her intention to eradicate them, that feels a little uncomfortable from a modern perspective. Destroying natural landmarks, slaughtering unusual creatures, these are things that don't play well today, either. Putting "White" up front in the title of the comic is another cringe-worthy detail. 

Avon also produced SLAVE GIRL COMICS, stories from which found their way into more than one jungle comic, as we've already seen. They published a slew of one-shot comics, including PHANTOM WITCH DOCTOR:



That comic does have one jungle-based horror story leading off back-up horror stories from more "civilized" settings. Other than that, Avon doesn't seem to have published any other jungle-related comics.

Standard Comics (a.k.a. Better, Nedor, and Pines) was one of a series of comic book publishers to hold the rights to JUNGLE JIM, a King Features Sunday comic strip. (The house ad on the inside front cover lists their then-current titles, including EXCITING COMICS, GOOFY COMICS, HAPPY COMICS, SPUNKY COMICS, and THRILLING COMICS. It’s an emotional roller coaster at Standard!)

So given the thread title, we might as well get to its inspiration:
Standard published five issues of JUNGLE JIM, numbered 11-15, in 1949 and 1950. The lead Jungle Jim stories were written and drawn by Paul Norris, who is credited as the co-creator of Aquaman. Norris was at this time drawing the Sunday feature; these issues prominently display Norris’ name on the cover and proudly announce that these are new stories created for the comics, as opposed to reprinted newspaper strips.

Jungle Jim offers a change of pace from the usual comics jungle adventure fare, as “Jungle” Jim Bradley is a hunter and adventurer in contemporary Asia, rather than a loincloth-clad vine swinger in Africa. Jim is assisted by his native (although I can’t determine what country he’s native to!) aid, Kolu, a turban-wearing young man.



Our sample issue is issue 13, featuring a three-part story, with chapters titled “Mystery Island”, “Inferno!”, and “Return of the Ghosts”, and it’s cover-dated July 1949.

The introductory caption establishes that Jim and Kolu have been assigned to solve a mystery on Cormorant Island, and the story opens with Jim saving a female pearl diver from the clutches of a giant clam. This turns out to be Lona, the daughter of the grateful chief Baku of the island, who explains the “Curse of the Cormorants”, visited on the island when pirates wiped out the local cormorant population in order to steal the tribe’s wealth of pearls. If the tribe ever sells their pearls, the ghosts of the cormorants will return to do evil to the people.



The American-educated chief has defied the curse to trade with the British, and now the ghosts of the birds have returned to the island!

The British representative Mr. Swinford rushes onto the scene, alarmed that a knife bearing a warning about the curse has been hurled at him. Another knife hurtles toward Jim, and Kolu pursues the culprit as Jim retrieves the note impaled on the knife blade.

Kolu is found unconscious, and Swinford orders his wife Bela to flee to Singapore. The confident blonde fears no ghosts, but looks forward to the trip to “civilization”. She also recognizes Jim, who claims no particular business here…he and Kolu were just sailing.

Swinford and his wife, in the confidence of their island home, aren’t buying Jim’s cover story. They are sure Jim’s been sent by the British Foreign Office to investigate!

That night, after Kolu recovers, the glowing white cormorants appear in the sky.



When Jim rushes to the beach to investigate, he’s jumped by a man who, earlier, had rammed Jim’s sailboat in the company launch. Jim gets knocked out, but when Kolu comes to his aid, Swinford and his lemon-yellow Asian assistant are still there, claiming it was a misunderstanding: Jim was mistaken for a “bad man”.

The next day, there’s more mystery as Jim and Kolu find a diver trying to throw away some fish that turn out to have pearls inside of them. The diver claims “old legend say appease ghosts of cormorants by stuffing big pearl in fish and throw on water of pearl beds at sundown.”

Jim and Kolu boat out and see the “ghosts” again. Back on land, Baku expresses doubt about the ghostly nature of these birds. Meanwhile, Jim and Kolu catch the fishermen who have been paid to release phosphorescent-painted birds intended to scare the natives. The fishermen don’t know who’s behind it all…



On shore, Swinford is consulting with the company about closing the Cormorant Island office…

Part 2, “Inferno!” finds Jim and Kolu paddling out to the Chinese junk from which the bird-releasing fishermen claimed to have come. They stealthily swim to the ship, while the fishermen, following Jim’s instructions, claim not to have found any pearl-stuffed fish. Jim and Kolu start mopping the deck with the crew, but the first mate aims to throw a knife at Jim’s back!

Kolu’s own hurled knife knocks the sailor’s out of his hand before he can throw, and gets into a struggle with Kolu. Kolu head-butts the villain and reports back to Jungle Jim.



A little water torture, and the first mate, “Scar” spills the beans: the skipper’s aft, on the radio. When Jim investigates, he finds that it’s Bela who’s the brains of the operation! Before she can be captured, she hurls the lantern and sets fire to the junk, then dives overboard with a bag of pearls, seeking an outrigger in which to escape.

The crew follows Jim into the ocean as the ship goes down, and Jim explains that the fire will raise an alarm, and they can wait for the pearl thieves to come to them?!



In Part 3, Bela selfishly takes an outrigger for herself, beating off desperate seamen with an oar. On shore, Swinford grabs a bag of pearls, punches out the island chief, and orders Lona, at gunpoint, to lead him to the powerboat. He’s heading out to pick up his wife and flee with the jewels!

Jim and Kolu board Swinford’s boat, and, with the assistance of Lona, begin fighting Bela and Swinford. The boat hits a coral reef, and Jim wraps up the mission. The birds fleeing the burning junk roost on the island: the curse is broken, and the cormorants are back to stay!

Jungle Jim’s Scrapbook fills out the issue with 2 1/2 pages of interesting facts:



I can’t quite call this a Jungle Gem, but it’s not the best of this short run of issues; issue 15, the only other one I’ve read, is better. Neither of them lean too heavily into the jungle theme. This one, in fact, is much more in the “Pacific Islands” genre than “jungle”. But that’s the one I picked, and that’s what we’ve got to go with. I can’t help but suppose this was a detriment to the popularity of the comic: a book called “Jungle Jim” would imply jungle adventure to most readers, right? There are some racist depictions and stereotypical renditions of language, but if we were ranking these books, JUNGLE JIM is far from the most offensive. Kolu is a capable and intelligent aide, and the female characters are treated better than one might expect: Lona does not immediately fall for Jim (and in fact, doesn't fall for him at all, refreshingly), Bela does not betray her husband, and is a capable criminal mastermind on her own. 

I can’t complain about Paul Norris’ art or script. While this one was a little predictable, it was engaging, well-drawn, and delivered a fair amount of action. The ocean setting was surely one that Norris was comfortable with after his work on Aquaman. And he does deliver a tale with some plot complexity comparable to a better-than-average b movie of the times, speaking of which…

1949 saw the release of the first two films in the Jungle Jim series of b-movies starring Johnny Weissmuller. Weissmuller’s films transplanted Jim to Africa, presumably to make the pictures feel familiar to fans of Weissmuller’s Tarzan films.

LORNA, THE JUNGLE QUEEN #2, August 1953, Atlas Comics (Marvel Comics)



Written by Don Rico

Illustrated by Werner Roth (Lorna) and Jim Mooney (Greg Knight)

Lorna, according to her first issue, is the daughter of a white trader, with whom she has grown up in the jungle of Africa. When her father dies, Lorna, at age 17, learns the ways of the natives and goes deep into the jungle to help those in need.

Her second issue begins with the 7-page story “The Killer Rogue”.

Lorna watches a stampede of various jungle animals from her position in the tree branches. Her native friends alert her to two problems: a white hunter is shooting at the animals and the “killer rogue” is on the rampage. Lorna is confident they can stay out of the rogue’s way, but something has to be done about the hunters. As she explains to her monkey friend Mikki: “White hunters kill for the sport…and leave the young to starve by themselves …or to turn into killer rogues! It’s wrong, Mikki…wrong!”

The hunter and his guide find that their native bearers have fled in the knowledge that the killer rogue is on the loose. From a discreet distance, Lorna seems to immediately lose her disdain for the hunters when she spies the guide, Greg Knight:


She overhears Greg explaining to his client that he’s had it with women after being spurned by a former love in favor of a richer man. Lorna sees this as a challenge, and beds down in the branches overhead as the white men make camp for the night.

As the men sleep, a lion leaps toward Greg, and Lorna dives from the trees to kill the king of the beasts. Lorna leaves the lion’s corpse as a token of her love, having found Greg even more handsome from up close! She’s further encouraged when Greg awakens and realizes “Somebody saved my life! A friend…”

Thrilled to be acknowledge as a “friend”, Lorna continues to shadow the men, but interrupts them when they take aim at an antelope mother of a pair of young fawns. Finally face-to-face, Lorna explains how orphaning jungle animals can lead to them turning rogue…

…and on cue, the titular Killer Rogue appears: a bull elephant! The hunters fire on him and Lorna disappears, presumably fleeing danger, as does the hunter, leaving Greg to face the crazed pachyderm alone!
Lorna, of course, has not turned tail. Instead she swings on vines ahead of the rogue, leading him into a large pit, where he falls and dies. Greg scolds her for taking such a risk, but Lorna explains that the elephant was dying from his wounds; she was simply leading him to “the secret dying place of the elephant herds” because, being an orphaned rogue, he didn’t know where it was!
And we close with a couple of sexist dismissals of Lorna and a leering appreciation of her from the pig of a hunter:



What a disappointing turnaround in service of sexism! Lorna abandons her convictions, falling in love at first sight for a man who claims “a jungle is no place for a woman” and who takes credit for “saving” her. Lorna’s supposed to be a well-educated and highly skilled jungle adventurer, but she’s played here as if she’s never seen a (white) man before. One might generously assume that the closing panel was intended to be humorous--silly white men don’t realize that she was more capable than they were—but her lovestruck portrayal works against that interpretation.

Next, we have “Magic Music”, a two page text story that I’m going to actually read…

….No, I’m not. I read enough to see that this story has nothing to do with jungle adventure, it’s about college girls obsessed with a band leader that they recruit for a performance. Clearly a story intended for one of the Atlas romance comics, this is proof that even the publisher knew that none of the readers ever read the text stories.




So we’ll move on to the second Lorna story, “The Black Swamp”. Peter Dooley, a horticulturist, has hired Greg Knight to guide him to the Black Swamp in search of “a rare treasure” that Dooley wants. The Black Swamp is supposed to be impossible to return from—Professor and Mrs. Logan disappeared there ten years ago—but Greg accedes to Dooley’s wishes and hires on. Eavesdropping, Lorna remarks “So this is why Greg didn’t want me around…he doesn’t want me to know where he’s going!”

As Greg and Dooley head out, Greg introduces her as “Lorna, the jungle queen…a gal that just doesn’t know how to stay out of trouble!” Dooley likes the idea of the beautiful Lorna join them, but Greg nixes the idea, this being “a job for men!” Even so, Lorna trails them, not wanting the man she likes to fall victim to the dangerous Black Swamp.

Along the trail, the men face a giant cobra, which Lorna kills with a spear, revealing that she is following them. Finally they arrive at the Black Swamp, where they are attacked on their raft by a crocodile, who carries Dooley away.

You’d think that would be the end of Dooley, but Lorna and Greg follow and see the crocodile about to hurl Dooley into the swamp to feed other crocodiles?!



When Lorna attacks, she discovers that the “crocodile” is really Prof. Logan, wearing a crocodile costume. He’s been living among the crocodiles, and as a crocodile, since his wife died ten years ago! They had come to the swamp to obtain a rare orchid.

The visitors to the swamp vow to keep Logan’s secret, never to reveal where they received the rare orchids that Logan gives them.



This is what I love to see in old comics: utterly daft ideas presented "straight". The crocodile man living among his "people" in a croc suit, crocodiles commanded to transport humans on their backs as if they were skis, crocodiles commiserating with their human master at a gravesite! 
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The next comics story is “White Gold”, bulled as The Jungle Adventures of Greg Knight. Yep, Greg has graduated to his own back-up feature in his very first issue.




Greg stumbles on a root as he’s aiming at a charging rhino, but the animal falls dead before it crushes him. The “old jungle tramp” Whitey saved Greg’s life with a lucky shot. Whitey tells Greg he has found a stash of ivory that will make him rich. As they proceed through the jungle together, Whitey shares the last drop from his canteen with the thirsty Greg. Greg, supposedly the lead character of this story, is so worn out that he can’t go on, and Whitey has to carry him into town:


The effort does Whitey in, so Whitey asks Greg to get the map to the ivory to Whitey’s son, but the clinic’s orderly swipes the map!

Greg asks the doc if he’s healed enough to track down the orderly, Sam Fisher, who, with a friend, heads out in search of the hidden ivory. Along the way, they are attacked by a lion, who is killed from a distance by Greg, who has indeed recovered and is on their tail.

The pair find the ivory, then panic when they realize they are out of water! Lucky for them, Greg is there with some H2O:



The thieves tote the ivory back to civilization at gunpoint, relieved to be alive and feeling fortunate that Greg, so far as they are aware, doesn’t know they stole the map. Oh, but Greg remembers, and he’s been feigning the continued injury to his ankle: he gives the boys a solid thrashing on the final page, before paying his respects at Whitey’s grave.

Well, that was a quick promotion! With what appears to be his ubiquitous presence in the main “Lorna” feature throughout its run, as well as his implied superiority to the titular heroine, the back-up feature seems to put Greg in position as the real lead of this feature. (I’m reminded of the curious fact that Robin appeared in more stories than Batman up until the JLA era, by benefit of having more solo stories in STAR SPANGLED COMICS than there were Batman stories in DETECTIVE COMICS prior to Robin’s introduction!)

Writer Don Rico manages to put Greg in a pretty bad light, letting the old “jungle tramp” (was that a thing?) kill himself carrying Greg through the jungle, after giving up all his own water! Rico played up the scarcity of water more than he needed to, and pads the meager plot with “thrilling” animal encounters. Artist Jim Mooney’s art shows only a few glimpses of what will be his mature style, but he does a nice job over all, with some expressive faces and elegant inking effects.

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Finally, “The Head-Hunters” opens with Lorna escorting Greg through the jungle, warning that the quiet implies danger. Sure enough, native eyes are upon them; Lorna is correct to be wary, but is swayed by Greg’s argument that “you women are too cautious!” Lorna’s a real pushover: “What am I worried about…with you here to protect me?”

But even the little monkey Mikki has more jungle sense than Greg or Lorna do, and he chatters in an attempt to warn the humans, before dozens of natives drop from the branches and overwhelm them. Greg fights back, but Lorna gives up without a fight, realizing that these men, the Gaturi, want the pair alive…for their heads!

The Gutari leader Labu gloats to Lorna and Greg (who, unlike Lorna, can’t understand the language and is therefore unaware that they are being led to decapitation. With Greg about to receive the first chop, Lorna interrupts:



Lorna accuses the great Labu of cowardice and challenges him to a one-on-one duel. Labu’s men show that they share Lorna’s low opinion of Labu’s bravery, but Labu refuses to fight a woman. So Lorna volunteers Greg!



Greg wins, of course, and the noble Gaturi grant the pair their freedom. But the story delivers a couple of real zingers to close the issue. First, a chauvinistic remark that I don’t know whether to take at face value or sly wit:
”I must admit, Lorna…you used rare intelligence for a woman, when you taunted Labu into a match with me!”


And finally, off-panel, the “noble” members of the tribe arrange for a new leader, according to their savage ways:



These pre-code comics have a modest level of brutality that contrasts with the pretty-girl art, and a subtle humor that may not have been intentional. While Lorna does appear to turn over the dirty work to Greg, there's the implication that she could have handled things all on her own if she wanted, a sense that she's letting Greg feel more valuable to boost his ego and to engender protective feelings for the smitten jungle queen. 

The Atlas format of four stories, each 7 pages or fewer, gives the reader an impression of value, I’ve got to at least give them that. The stories are mildly entertaining, with delightful absurdities like the man living in a crocodile suit, but Don Rico can’t move past 1950’s sexism and chauvinism to make a convincingly competent lead out of Lorna. He does make some effort to demonstrate Lorna’s jungle skills, but the need to avoid putting her in explicit physical combat has forced him to draft Greg, to handle all the hand-to-hand and gun-firing that readers expect, leaving Lorna to mainly be eye candy.

Of note is the fact the LORNA THE JUNGLE QUEEN began publication just after the cancellation of Fiction House’s far better-known SHEENA QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE. Atlas publisher Martin Goodman, well known for capitalizing on other trends and trademarks, was almost certainly trying to fill the void with his own “jungle queen”. Fiction House, perhaps in response, issued a 3-D SHEENA, JUNGLE QUEEN one-shot the same month that LORNA THE JUNGLE QUEEN #5 was published. As of issue 6, this magazine was re-titled LORNA THE JUNGLE GIRL, implying that Fiction House made clear that they intended to defend the “Jungle Queen” part of their trademark.
Lorna’s series has been collected in MARVEL MASTERWORKS ATLAS ERA JUNGLE ADVENTURE Volumes 1 through 3:



These three volumes collect all of Atlas’s magazines dedicated to jungle adventure.

I'm feeling generous enough to rank LORNA as a Jungle Gem. Like most Atlas comics, the Lorna comics are disposable, quick reads, competently written and well-drawn. Scripter Rico doesn’t demonstrate any particular talent for jungle stories, nor specific knowledge about Africa other than what he’s picked up from other jungle adventure media. But the fact is that Lorna was Atlas's top jungle feature, running for an impressive 26 issues. Evidently there was a real gap waiting to be filled when Fiction House cancelled SHEENA, as they were winding down their comics line. 

Jay Scott Pike took over as the LORNA artist from Werner Roth with issue 13. Both Roth and Pike were skilled at drawing attractive women, and that was essential; comics like these were a good place to look at scantily clad women, which had to be a strong draw for many young male readers. 

Atlas/Marvel had several other jungle comics, so I’ll return in the future to sample JANN OF THE JUNGLE, JUNGLE TALES, JUNGLE ACTION, TARZAN, Ka-Zar, Black Panther, and SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL.

That's an interesting detail. I would suspect Skywald was burning off material to quickly fulfill printer commitments after disappointing first-month sales, but hey, maybe they were so confident in their product that they were certain they had huge hits on their hands!

JUNGLE ADVENTURES #2, May 1971, published by Skywald Publishing Corporation.



                    (How about that awkward dialog on the cover, hunh?)

In 1971, Skywald, known for competing with Warren’s successful black and white magazine size comics with the likes of NIGHTMARE, PSYCHO, and SCREAM, took a try at the four-color comics format with a few months of beefier 25 cent comics. Rather than compete in the superhero arena, Skywald aimed for what they perceived might be underserved genres. Westerns were their biggest focus, with 1 to 3 issues each of BLAZING SIX GUNS, THE BRAVADOS, BUTCH CASSIDY, THE SUNDANCE KID, and WILD WESTERN ACTION, but Skywald also delved into romance comics (TENDER LOVE STORIES) and, yes, jungle comics, with JUNGLE ADVENTURES, which ran bi-monthly for three issues, from March through June 1971.

Skywald (wisely) didn’t heavily invest in the effort; each issue featured a newly-produced story starring their own creation “Zangar” backed up with a variety of reprints sourced from other companies. The second issue includes stories from Avon, Fox, and Fiction House.

Zangar, as revealed in the premier issue, is Bob Gordon, an actor who loses his memory while filming a jungle adventure movie in Africa. In his amnesiac state, he remakes himself into a white jungle god a la Tarzan, begins speaking in the usual stilted, formal speech patterns readers have come to expect from this kind of character, living in the jungle and associating with wild animals and natives.

“Trail of the Golden Idol”, by an unidentified scripter with Jack Katz and Vince Colletta on art, opens with Zangar rescuing the elderly African woman Nata Wola from a leopard attack. Nata Wola had been cast out by her tribe for using her “second sight” to predict that their idol Kondoko—owned jointly by her own Bombola tribe and the Asunti tribe--was about to be stolen.

Zangar escorts the exile to the safety of a nearby mission, and receives a protective amulet from the supernaturally gifted woman in return.

Days later, Zangar and his adorable pet ocelots (Dinga and Donga!) hears the Asunti war drums.




Chief Tasundi explains how a pair of warriors from the two tribes dug up the Konduko idol together, which was placed on the border between their lands as an object of worship. Tasundi now accuses that Bombola tribe of stealing the idol, while warrior-chieftain Bakuba and high priestess Tallanna accuse Tasundi.

When the tribes meet for battle at the border, Zangar points out the shoe prints at the site of the missing idol—the thief was a white man! Zangar vows to track the thief and return the idol, but since the war drums have sounded, there must be combat. Priestess Tallanna suggests that each tribe appoint a champion, and if Zangar can defeat them, he will be allowed to pursue the thief.

This, naturally, strikes Zangar as fishy. Tallanna has taken over the position of old Nata Wola, and this plan of hers suggests she doesn’t want the idol to be found!
Of course, Zangar is able to defeat both champions, and Tallanna turns into a frightened Gil Kane woman when Zangar declares his triumph:



This wasn’t made clear in the first issue, but apparently Bob’s memory has come back—at least partially, because according to the script, it’s Bob Manning, movie star—not Bob Gordon—who flies to Paris in pursuit of the suspects who left the country a few days ago. In his sophisticated persona of Manning, Zangar consults a dealer who has refused the thieves’ business but retained their address. It is as Zangar, though, that our hero confronts the trouble-making trio of Merkin, D’Arcy, and Trumbull.

The crooks flee to the top of the Eiffel Tower (miraculously bypassing the usual throngs of tourists), and release a box full of deadly scorpions when Zangar climbs the landmark’s exterior:



The amulet he was given by the old woman snags on a tower prong, almost killing him, but then providing Zangar with the means to intentionally catch another hook, saving him from death and giving him the chance to head back up and thrash the thieves.

Zangar returns the idol to the tribes, which both adopt him as a member. Tallanna is banished to face the threats of the jungle, but without the hope of a Zangar rescue if she runs into the same kind of trouble Nata Wola did:



Zangar is nothing special, but it’s not Jungle Junk. I respect the creators for rising to the challenge of creating a Tarzan clone in the early 70’s, but they do so at the expense of the African tribes, who are depicted as the usual primitive stereotypes. Yes, to this day there are Africans living their lives with the traditions, technologies, and cultures of an older era, but stories like these perpetuate the impression that Black Africa is, in the majority, accurately represented by the tropes of a Tarzan movie. It’s understandable, as idols and tribal warfare and brutal physical challenges can be appealing and enjoyable building blocks of a jungle adventure, but it leaves a bad taste to see that intentionally contrasted with the “civilized” world of the swinging 70’s. It’s more comfortable to see these kinds of stories confined to a fantasy kingdom in remote jungles.

Veteran artist Jack Katz does a good enough job with the pencils, and Vince Colletta lavishes his usual detail on Zangar’s luxurious but laughable coif. The script does what it can to cram into 11 pages a plot that would be better served with a longer page count.

Most of the back-ups are features that will be spotlighted in more detail when we get to the original source comics.

“The Strange Mission to Ormuz” is from the unsettlingly-titled SLAVE GIRL COMICS #1, from 1949. It reprints the origin of “Malu the Slave Girl” via a vision of the past presented to Malu’s modern-day ancestor Carol Long, courtesy of mystic locket she has inherited. Malu is actually the princess of Ormuz, kidnapped into slavery when she was a little girl. She escapes with countryman Garth, to head back to rule Ormuz. The installment reprinted here concludes with this cringingly-expressed sentiment:



“Dream Mystery” is a one-page filler with art by A.C. Hollingsworth, originally published in JO-JO COMICS. A psychologist explains the meaning of a dream to his son.

From the 23rd issue of JO-JO comes a tale of Jo-Jo, Congo King, with art by Matt Baker. When Jo-Jo is coveted as a mate by the evil Torla, she drugs and abducts Jo-Jo’s girlfriend Tann to torture her on the Island of Rodents:



“World Facts” is another A.C. Hollingsworth one-pager, also from JO-JO #23. This one shares facts about jungle women from different cultures around the world, such as:



The issue closes with a pair of Sheena stories from SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE #17, Fall 1952, and JUMBO COMICS #162, August 1952. Art is by Robert Webb, with contemporary retouches to Sheena’s face by Bill Everett.

“The Curse of B’Shingu” is a 4-page short, in which Sheena outs the lion-masked culprits behind a series of jungle killings:



The untitled 6-page story from JUMBO has Sheena (with her boyfriend Bob) protecting an ancient temple from being looted and returning a kidnapped daughter:



That's not too bad a selection of reprints, given that Skywald probably just took the first things they had available that fit, rather than carefully curating the best material. Rodents aren't the typical threats one finds in a jungle comic, making the Jo-Jo story stand out. Sheena had, potentially, some trace of name recognition, so perhaps they made a few extra sales from browsers who spotted her first appearance on the stands in well over a decade. 

JUNGLE ADVENTURES wasn't a success for Skywald...but then, none of its color comics were. Its only competition on the American stands came from Gold Key's TARZAN and KORAK comics. Skywald's stylistic approach to the new content had a more contemporary, Marvel-influenced look than Gold Key's stodgy format, but I don't know if that would have been a factor influencing whatever readership--if any--was sustaining the sales of their ERB comics. 

Even though FIGHT COMICS wasn't strictly a jungle comic, it will be hard to resist sampling all of Fiction House's jungle characters, given their prominence in the genre. So Tiger Girl is on the agenda!