JO-JO CONGO KING, Part I

Hey, don’t laugh. Well, okay, you can laugh at first, because JO-JO COMICS debuted from Fox Feature Syndicate as a humor book featuring a variety of funny animals and humorous humans, none of whom went by the less-than-imposing monicker of “Jo-Jo”. Why “JO-JO”? Maybe Fox thought it sounded funny—it does!—or perhaps the series began development as “HO-HO COMICS” and either another publisher had already trademarked the name. I can’t find evidence of a competing HO-HO COMICS being published, but “HO-HO” may have been considered potentially infringing on Four Star Publications’ HI-HO COMICS or ACG’s HA HA COMICS, both of which hit the stands earlier.

So for whatever reason, JO-JO COMICS it was, and it began with a Spring 1946-dated issue cover-featuring the “O’Brine Twins”, a cartoony pair of sailors whose stories had already been running as backups in other Fox anthologies. In July 1947, though, the initial premise was scrapped, and with its seventh issue, the cover read “Jo-Jo Congo King”. The formal title, according to the indicia, was still “Jo-Jo Comics”, occasionally simplified as “Jo-Jo”, sufficient to cover Fox’s claim that it was the same comic, to avoid paying a new fee to establish the desirable second class mailing privileges in the United States. (It appears that earlier in the history of comics, publishers were more concerned about plausibly claiming continuity between two obviously different comics being in some sense the same series, so name changes, when necessary, were more subtle, such as the classic example of EC’ MOON GIRL becoming A MOON…A GIRL…ROMANCE! As the years went on and the Post Office apparently demonstrating little concern, title changes were more abrupt, leading to instances such as Marvel/Atlas treating publishing BLAZE CARSON, REX HART, WHIP WILSON, and GUNHAWK as different issues of the same comic, at least for the purpose of postal registration.)

Jo-Jo Congo King took over with the 7th issue, but it appears to have been a hastily-arranged coup, with only two Jo-Jo stories—a total of 12 pages--backed with a couple of adventure features yanked from inventory: the last Bronze Man story, following the character’s previous appearances in BLUE BEETLE, and The Purple Tigress, a costumed heroine who had previously appeared in ALL TOP COMICS, and a non-jungle 2-page text story.

The first two Jo-Jo stories show him involved with two different women. The first, Gwenna, is queen of the Bonangi tribe. The synopsis on the GCD suggests that Gwenna is Jo-Jo’s “first mate”, but a careful reading of that story does not suggest that they are lovers, but friends. The second story, involving a mad scientist who makes plant life into dangerous monsters, clearly establishes another woman, Geesa, as Jo-Jo’s “betrothed”.

The next issue was mistakenly also number 7, so these issues are listed as 7a and 7b at the GCD. 7b has 22 pages of Jo-Jo Congo King, a jungle-themed text story, and a humorous Western back up, Popgun Pete. As of the 8th issue, Jo-Jo seems to be romantically attached to Tanee—with Geesa long forgotten. Tanee will remain as Jo-Jo’s girl through the remainder of the feature’s run.

But before getting to the stories, I’ve got to address the elephant in the room—uhh—jungle…

Back in this post ( classiccomics.org/post/480474/ ) on DOROTHY LAMOUR, JUNGLE PRINCESS, also published by Fox, I speculated on what I assumed would have been a controversial aspect of the comic in 1950, perhaps even so controversial as to lead to Fox leaving the comics market. That aspect was what appeared to be interracial relationships between dark-skinned African men and light-skinned women with conventionally Caucasian features and hair.

Well, judging from JO-JO CONGO KING, published several years earlier, I suppose that if there were any objections, they weren’t strong enough to drive Fox from the stands, because Jo-Jo lives in a version of the African jungle where all the native women are colored and drawn to look like white women, while the native men are all brown-skinned, with hair and facial features more generically characteristic of Black men. It’s a very curious convention to adopt, and I can only guess that Fox wanted to take advantage of the prurient appeal of having lots of scantily-clad women, but thought that only light-skinned, Caucasian-looking women would appeal to the comics’ readers. As a commenter on comicbookplus.com put it, in reference to a similar comic, ZAGO JUNGLE PRINCE (which I’ll cover later):

Zago exists in a strange universe. He is claimed to be a "Jungle Prince", but unlike, say Dell's BROTHERS OF THE SPEAR, that title is never explained. Zago exists without benefit of origin or hint of a backstory of any kind. He lives in a native village where all the females are light-skinned like himself, but all the males besides himself are dark-skinned. There are several instances where we see a dark-skinned native refer to a light-skinned girl as his daughter, or his mate (or the light-skinned girl refer to a dark-skinned male as father or husband). In addition, all of the women are young and attractive; and children or elders are never seen -- either female or male. In the one story where a child seems to appear, he actually turns out to be a 20-year-old midget! That not only seems to present an extremely odd picture of Africa but seems especially puzzling when you remember these stories were published in 1948. Native women are, without exception, whether good or evil, portrayed as light-skinned. We never, ever see a dark-skinned woman, yet all the male natives are dark-skinned (as you would expect for Africa). At first when I noted this in a couple of stories, I simply wrote it off as a mistake of the colorist (they are notorious for not actually reading the scripts), but after a goodly number of stories, it became obvious that this policy was not only consistent, but quite deliberate, and somewhat baffling.

This also raises the question of whether Jo-Jo’s girl-friend Tanee is supposed to be one of the native females or a white like Jo-Jo…assuming that Jo-Jo is white! After all, in his first appearance, he addresses the bad guys as “white”, almost as if he doesn’t consider himself to be of the same race:



Or does any of that even matter in Jo-Jo’s fantasy jungle world? Are we to imagine Jo-Jo’s world is a utopia where skin color is irrelevant to society? If so, though, why the gender distinction between light and dark skins? Heck, this is one of the most difficult-to-write-about issues that’s arisen in these jungle comics, riding some line that feels racist to me, but I can’t clearly articulate why—it’s some kind of racist/sexist/exploitative/fantastic jumble of hard-to-process choices. Help?!

More Jo-Jo could be found in ALL GREAT JUNGLE ADVENTURES, which was (sort-of) a one-shot release, 132 pages for 25 cents, published by Fox in 1949. Fox published several of these extra-long giant comics by removing the covers from four unsold, leftover, regular-length comics and reassembling them under one new cover. I say “sort of” a one-shot because the contents to be found behind these covers might vary, even between copies with the same cover. Fox published several such collections of their romance comics and superhero comics, but this appears to be the only giant jungle comic Fox attempted to recycle.



The format might have seemed like quite a bargain, but as I mentioned in prior post, Fox had a policy of printing the first story page of its comics on the inside front cover, colored in tones of a single print color (cyan or magenta), plus black, of course. Consequently, four of the stories in each giant--stories which would have been the lead story in their respective original releases—would start on the second page, lacking splash or title page!

The copy that you can read at comicbookplus.com/?dlid=16553 evidently collates interiors from ALL TOP COMICS #16 and JO-JO COMICS #18, but as I said above, collections of other Fox jungle comics were also issued between these same covers. From a stack of cover-stripped unsold jungle comics, they would grab four and rebind them under this cover, so there’s really no telling what combinations might have been released.

Since the component comics are considered elsewhere in this thread (or are not relevant to the topic of jungle comics), I’ll refrain from digging into the stories on this one. The inside front cover is a one-pager in black and magenta called “Man Eater”, about the Bengal tiger. The stories feature Rulah, Jo-Jo Congo King, Phantom Lady, “Tropical Topics”, and a “True Crime” story narrated by Phantom Lady.



That's a lot to say about Jo-Jo, so I'm splitting this into multiple parts. Coming up, a proper sampling of an issue of JO-JO CONGO KING...

A rough count indicates that Marvel would have been able to publish around 53 issues of the 70's reprint series JUNGLE ACTION had it sold well in its initial format, with the majority of the content being Lorna stories. Although judging by their Western reprints of OUTLAW KID and RINGO KID, they wouldn't have hesitated to reprint the reprints on a shorter cycle if, as might well be the case, they didn't have usable film for some of their 50's jungle comics.


If they had been willing or able to dig into the Golden Age material, they could also have reprinted the original Ka-Zar, Trojak the Tiger Man, and Zara of the Jungle, but these stories would have been pretty crude work to pass off in the 70's, even given the more lax standards that Marvel's genre reprint books of the era held. 

LORNA THE JUNGLE GIRL #26, August, 1957, Atlas (Marvel) Comics



Cover by Bill Everett, who was evidently incapable of drawing a bad cover: great composition, lush vegetation, menacing villain, dangerous gorilla. Man, do I love his work!

I’ve already sampled LORNA THE JUNGLE QUEEN, and although the name change to “Girl” did not reflect a monumental change to the character or content, I am happy to back to the well for one last time (as promised!), since I’ve been enjoying the Atlas jungle comics so much.

This issue’s three Lorna stories are all illustrated by Jay Scott Pike, and written by Don Rico. First up is “Return of the Outcast”. It opens with Lorna defending the safari’s limited water supply from the thirsty Mort Hoskins:



For his attempted water theft, Lorna’s co-star Greg Knight expels Hoskins to survive alone in the dry season, a harsh punishment for breaking “jungle law”! Hoskins vows vengeance against Lorna as he heads into exile, while Lorna and her chimpanzee companion, Mikki, swing off into the trees to look for a water source (she has to justify her desperate attempt to the chauvinistic Greg: “I know you feel I shouldn’t risk my life because I’m only a girl, but we’ve got to try something!”

Hoskins follows Lorna with a rope and a plan to get to Lorna “through Mikki”. He manages to lasso the simian, then holds the approaching Lorna at gunpoint. When Mikki saves the Jungle Girl by pulling on the rope and spoiling Hoskins’ aim, the man breaks down sobbing: “You’re against me! Everybody’s against me!”

Lorna proves him wrong by attempting to save him from an attacking boa constrictor, and Hoskins tries to help, aiming his gun at the snake, but Lorna is alarmed by how weak the snake is; it turns out that this is a thirst-weakened boa that was defending a newly-discovered water stream in the rocks!

Lorna graciously allows Hoskins to claim credit for discovering the water, which allows him to get back in Greg’s good graces, accepting Greg’s sexist closing remarks:



I suppose this is the kind of story wildfire2099 was talking about in response to my original post on the “Jungle Queen” era of Lorna’s run. This is a pretty distasteful way to treat the lead character; she’s still competent and kind-hearted (although she did accept Greg’s draconian punishment of poor Hoskins without objection), but the way she smilingly accepts Greg’s attitude makes me cringe.

“The New Chief” is the requisite two-page text story and it’s kind of a weird one: explorer Harry Fenner has brought his buddy Mike on safari. Mike is a non-serious galoot who makes his living in pro wrestling pretending to be “a raw primitive, fresh from the wild lands.” When Mike roughhouses with his guide, the native bearers disappear on them, leaving both of them concerned that they are hallucinating the dozens of seven-foot-tall, spear-wielding men who aren’t supposed to be in this uninhabited part of the jungle. The men are real, and they engage Mike in a wrestling match?!

It turns out that these men were exploring a distant area of the jungle, and had seen Mike’s tussle with Harry. Impressed with Mike’s skill, they just wanted to try him out, all in sport! The natives tell the pair how to find “a rare Skoodaloo, a small bear-like creatures who lived on the leaves and slept standing up” and an unusual jungle fruit, then they go on their way. Mike muses about bringing some of the natives back to the States as wrestlers, or about himself retiring to become a jungle chief.

“Doom Walked the Jungle” is the second Lorna story. It seems the cover conflates both the previous Lorna story and this one, where Lorna is trapped in a pit with a gorilla, all thanks to our villain, a hunter who wants Lorna out of the way so that he can hunt the albino lion in the protected jungle preserve:



The gorilla in the pit proves not to be a threat: he has injured his leg in the fall, and Lorna relieves his pain with a splint, and all of them escape thanks to the agile Mikki bringing a vine for them to climb.

Lorna pursues the hunters, finding an assortment of animals snared in the men’s rope traps all along the way. When she catches up to them, they have the albino’s mate dangling from a rope over a pit, as a lure to their quarry. Lorna’s got no options: if she moves on the men, they’ll cut the rope and kill the lioness, but if she does nothing, the precious albino will be taken!

The balance of power is shifted with the arrival of the gorilla, and then with the approach of the snared beasts Lorna has unleashed:



Well, that’s a little more like it! Without Greg and his sexist dismissiveness, Lorna’s the sort of highly competent friend to the jungle beasts she ought to be. The bad guy is lucky to have escaped an attacking water buffalo!

The Jungle Adventures of Greg Knight presents “The Last Hunt!”, drawn by John Romita, and also written by Rico. Greg has been appearing in backup stories ever since he first appeared as a supporting character in the second issue of Lorna’s comic book series, back when she was “Jungle Queen”. Backup features at Atlas, at least in the adventure titles, didn’t seem to take place in the same continuity as the main feature back then, and I think that as a reader, I would have appreciated that aspect. In this story, Greg is assisting Terry, an over-the-hill safari guide whose poor aim is disappointing his clients:



The group’s hunting trip gets even more dangerous when they are attacked by a herd of rhinos, causing the jeep to wreck. Terry’s final shot kills off the stampeding rhino, and the rest of the herd abandons the attack. Terry has earned the respect of his client, who promises to give him a recommendation that won’t endanger his pension:



It’s a bit too much glorification of senseless killing for my tastes, but attitudes toward trophy hunting were different back then. I can’t quite swallow the premise that Terry’s pension would be forfeited if this final hunt didn’t go well, but I doubt the young readers gave much thought to pensions.

Tales of the Jungle presents “King of the Beasts”, drawn by Syd Shores. The leader of a herd of water buffalo, Koddo, drinks from a watering hole that has been polluted with poison berries. The water buffalo runs wild and attacks a lion, while the water buffalo herd observes.

Koddo dominates the battle (which, to my understanding, is true to nature; the water buffalo is reputed to be among the most dangerous and powerful of jungle creatures), but before he can kill the lion, the other buffalo turn on their own leader. This revolt is neither clearly depicted nor clearly explained, but evidently they realize the lion was fighting to protect all of the creatures from the poison-maddened Koddo. Before the herd can act on their betrayal, Koddo dies from the poisoning, and the animals part ways (and the magenta and yellow plates also part ways from their proper registration:



It’s a sloppily-rendered tale that side-steps the gruesome qualities inherent in its slim plot. Syd Shores is competent with the animal depictions, but it’s not an exemplar of his artistic skills, which I greatly admire.

“It Stalks by Night” is the final Lorna story in this issue, and the final Lorna story of the original run. It opens with Greg and Lorna (in a smart pink dress with an animal fang necklace) in “the big city”, with Greg condescendingly declaring that “This is where you belong, Lorna…not in the jungle!” (It’s not clear where this big city is; it looks like an American city and all the people here are white.)

The big city proves dangerous, as a lurking silhouette thinks “I could never get Lorna out of the way in the jungle…but now that she’s here, she’s in my territory…and this is her finish!” He loosens a “Boots” sign than nearly lands on her and Greg, and Lorna leaps onto the fire escape to chase down their assailant.

She finds “Karl”, an enemy she had chased from the jungle. Karl has unleashed “the night beast”, a creature Lorna had prevented Karl from huntil (It’s illegal to hunt the night beast!). So what is this night beast? It’s part ape, part lion, all demon:



Karl bails, leaving Lorna, Greg, and his own accomplice behind to deal with the night beast—as Greg puts it, “it’s a destroyer of mankind”! The cops prove receptive to the trustworthy Lorna’s explanation that the night beast hides during the day and only comes out at night, and that it will pursue the man who captured it. Karl is in danger, no matter where he hides!

The beast does indeed track down Karl, and Lorna doffs her pink dress for her jungle garb as she takes to the telephone lines to head up to the rooftop where the beast holds Karl’s unconscious body. She rescues Karl after the beast flees and the cops trap the creature in spotlights, when it is fooled into thinking it’s daylight:



Were it not for that final panel, I’d have wondered whether this tale was retooling the feature for a non-jungle setting. Tarzan’s New York Adventure was one of the most popular and successful of Weismuller’s Tarzan films, so translating Lorna’s jungle skills to a civilized environment might have been a successful change. But if such a change were pondered, it was never to be implemented, because this was the final issue.

With the cancellation of LORNA THE JUNGLE GIRL, Atlas ended its burst of jungle comics. JUNGLE TALES became JANN OF THE JUNGLE and ran for 17 issues, from September 1954 to June 1957. LORNA THE JUNGLE QUEEN became LORNA THE JUNGLE GIRL and ran for 26 issues, from July 1953 to August 1957. JUNGLE ACTION ran for 6 issues, from October 1954 to August 1955. Four years, forty-nine issues, halted by the dramatic implosion of the Atlas line down to a mere 8 titles per month in 1958. Except for issues 8 through 17 of JANN OF THE JUNGLE, and issues 17-26 of LORNA THE JUNGLE GIRL, all the rest has been reprinted in hardcover in MARVEL MASTERWORKS ATLAS ERA: JUNGLE ADVENTURE Volumes 1-3. It’s a pity that Marvel couldn’t finish the job, but it’s astonishing to know that that much has seen print in a high-quality format in the 21st century.

While I’ve generally enjoyed all of the Atlas jungle comics, this one is mediocre, neither a Jungle Gem nor Jungle Junk. Lorna limps to the finish line. Within a couple of months, Charlton would cancel NYOKA, and the jungle comics niche would be ceded to Tarzan and other characters such as The Phantom and Jungle Jim who had established recognition from other media.

Can't afford to hire models on a comic book artist's salary? Try using clothing store manikins!

"Cool", maybe, but I have a terrible time trying to enjoy any issue of Lee & Kirby's Sgt. Fury since I find them all so unbearably overwritten. Stan seems compelled to have nearly every character in each panel say something, and that saps the dynamic quality of Kirby's art. The visuals are trying to compel you forward, the text is forcing you to linger on the same image for way too long. There's no urgency, no chaos of the battlefield, with all the constant chatter.

Indeed. Literally unparalleled:

True, I wouldn't say I was "impressed" with JUNGLE TALES, either. Maybe my bar for a Jungle Gem is too low, but I appreciate a comic in this genre where every story is coherent and pleasant to read and to look at. I do think JT gets some extra credit for giving Waku a solo feature and cover visibility, with no white characters at all in the story.
Your comment makes me wonder what might have happened if EC had tried a jungle comic as part of their New Direction restart. Wally Wood and Jack Kamen did their share of jungle comics elsewhere, to fine result. I'd have loved seeing Jack Davis and Will Elder bringing their talents to the genre!