Jungle Girls

It’s amusing to consider that after the appearance of the decidedly homo-erotic Tarzan in popular literature and film at the beginning of the 20th century, the concept of a jungle *girl* became an entire genre in pulps, serials, and comics thereafter, the girls almost certainly outnumbering the boys (unless you allow the likes of Conan and Kull etc. to join the team alongside Tarzan, Korak, Kaanga, and Ka-Zar). “One can argue that these stories offered early examples of female empowerment…” writes editor Mitch Maglio, or gave “little girls someone to look up to… there might even be some truth in it, but let’s face it, at the end of the day, what the publishers were selling was sex”. That’s a fair and honest assessment to most people, but it’s not good enough for his own publishers, who spend the first few pages of his book irritating, offending, and annoying all three groups of readers.After a smug and self-righteous warning that could only have been written in the 21st century announcing that the contents we have just chosen to purchase are, in their own words and judgement, outdated, ignominious, and contemptible (!) “in regards to race, gender, and other issues”, so smearing all the people who they “affectionately thank” for their help in compiling the book on the very same page, and who actually like this stuff and have no problem with it, we are treated to a two-page lecture from a PhD in communication and culture and associate professor of communication at a university, creator of content and image activist (nice work if you can get it), the content of which I’m sure you can guess, but which boils down to the critical observation that these unrealistic men and women are more attractive than we are in real life. This, it is implied, is a bad thing. That, surely, is the point, and the pleasure of all heroic, sexual, and romantic fantasy, it’s not supposed to be realistic, intimidating, or setting an example. But then this is a communicator in culture who considers Maglio’s assertion that “In comics, success leads to immediate imitation” to be “a profound statement” rather than the first sentence and starting point of any textbook study of popular culture.Maglio’s introduction reminds us, without irony on the very opposite page, that “The beauty of the jungle girl… helped make comic books the single most popular form of disposable entertainment in the world…” and that “Good Girl Art also served as ‘evidence’ in 1954 when… various pressure groups forced publishers into the self-policing but artistically stifling Comics Code… After 1954, Good Girls got so good that no-one looked at them any more. There was no place left for the jungle girl to thrive”. Nothing like a warning from history to drive a point home. Makes you think… Or perhaps not…But who needs the Comics Code when you’ve got the Thought Police? It says everything you need to know about the strange times we live in… sorry, more *enlightened* times, according to the publisher… that in a book filled with supposedly objectionable art from the 1940s and 1950s, the only genuinely offensive and overtly sexist illustration can be found on page 13, dated 2003, a ridiculous, pornographic, and immature picture oozing such embarrassing sexual frustration that it might best represent a jungle girl called Vageena of the Jungle, so uncomfortably detailed is the strenuous pose she finds herself in, poor thing.Apparently, the “ignominious aspects of the content do not represent the views of Yoe Books or its associates” but are “presented for historical purposes”.Yeah, sure they are.In that case, it’s hypocrital to be publishing them at all, because I’ve got news: Nobody paid you their thirty bucks to feel bad about feeling good, they bought them for nostalgia, adventure, entertainment, and escapism, to enjoy pretty girls in scanty outfits, just like I did. The content is the bait, the history is the bonus. And what really amuses is that the rest of the book proceeds with absolute disdain for this two-faced disclaimer, which is then completely ignored as the editorial, acknowledgements, authors, historical detail, and actual art celebrates and congratulates the content throughout. It’s called fantasy, and it’s healthy. So, potential readers, either admit you like these simple, sexy stories just as they are, or join Yoe Books, IDW Publishing, and their ’image activist’ apologist in their joyless, guilt-ridden, virtue-signalling, Ned Flanders dystopia of denial.Anyhow, what about this book we chose to buy in our intellectual ignorance? Beautifully designed, printed nicely in colour on decent paper (if only Marvel’s reprint books could reproduce the original look of the comics this authentically), it opens with intelligent and informative articles on the genre, its creations, and its creators, and not an image activist or Comics Code authoritarian in sight. Then comes a beautiful gallery of full page covers (full of negative images you mustn’t enjoy—okay, I’ll stop now), and individual stories featuring Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, Cave Girl, Judy of the Jungle, Malu the Slave Girl, Rulah the Jungle Goddess, Camilla, Taanda the White Princess, Tygra, Kazanda, Queen of the Lost Continent, Fantomah, Daughter of the Pharaohs, Crusoe Island, Princess Pantha, Tangi, and Tiger Girl. fourteen stories in all. The weakest is the Sheena offering from 1945, which is… odd, rather than offensive. Also odd, the peculiar medieval English some of the jungle girls speak, as if they’re in a vintage Hollywood King Arthur film, very strange. Maybe the monkeys and wolves raised them with Shakespeare? Anyhow, I would gladly buy an entire book of covers, or indeed any future collections featuring the majority of these characters. More, please (with less PC humbug).Is there sexism and racism, by a normal person’s standards? It’s a genuine concern when unfortunate attitudes used to prevail, particularly toward African Americans. But unless you subscribe to the body negativism, historical revisionism, anti-sex fascism, and victim culture of a certain type of person today, then, as is so often the case, any ‘racism’ or ‘sexism’ is mostly in the eye of the over-zealous beholder, the sort of people who like to complain on other people’s behalf. In terms of racism, unless you object to seeing jungle natives portrayed as jungle natives, there’s not really a problem here. None of them are role model rocket scientists, its true, and I’m sure that, even as I write, Hollywood is preparing the first multi-cultural native tribe of white, black, brown, ginger, Asian, and Scandinavian jungle primitives, all playing violins instead of drums. But it’s just the way it was. As for the villains, they are clearly a broad mix of white and black, male and female, foolishly superstitious maniacs, or intelligent schemers and looters. Some of the primitive tribesmen in the more fantasy-based lands are even white. The only sin is an unfortunately coloured bright yellow Asian girl, who in the story concerned is a self-rescuing damsel in distress. Readers of page 49 will have no trouble re-evaluating the Bobs of this world, who in 1945 was probably seen as assertive and admirable by both sexes, but today reads as a condescending jerk. Sheena’s no dummy, she’s got his number.Elsewhere, fit women rescue themselves, rescue other women, rescue men, and save isolated primitive African tribes (wearing grass skirts rather than business suits) from outsiders and superstition. Their knives flash heartlessly against white and black, male and female, human and animal, it’s a jungle out there. There are good, friendly native black men, and evil, plotting native black men, brave-hearted white explorers and black-hearted white exploiters. There’s even inter-racial relationships going on. Animals are heartlessly shot, usefully tamed, or just plain scenery; sides are taken, based on bravery or cuteness. One or two of the girls have clever animal sidekicks, but generally, the wildlife behaves as it does in reality. Hopefully, all the jungle girls’ animal skin outfits came from creatures that died of old age. What there isn’t is false revisionist history, social engineering, or right-on tokenism, because, yes, it’s 1945—’55.Sheena was the first of the jungle girls, created for the syndication market in 1937 as a female Tarzan, a merging, if you like, of Tarzan and Jane (the jungle girls frequently came with a fully clothed and quietly impressed pith-helmeted male partner of the Jungle Jim variety). She first appeared in Britain and Australia, and then America, where she flourished, in 1939. Nobody knows who came up with the character, as the two partners in Sheena’s syndication outfit, Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, couldn’t even agree on how they got together professionally, let alone who created her; each of them told varying self-aggrandising stories, liberally glazed with the sheen of hindsight, every time they were asked.However, neither of them had anything to do with the strip other than getting it into Jumbo Comics, the first venture into comic books by pulp magazine publishers Fiction House. The stories were (mostly) written anonymously by Ruth Roche and illustrated initially by Mort Meskin. Later, Bob Webb became the primary Sheena artist, enjoying himself by drawing Sheena as completely naked, and reluctantly adding the leopard-skin ensemble later… much later. Sometimes he assigned assistants to put her clothes on. Sheena dominated Jumbo Comics almost immediately, and instantly spawned literally dozens of imitations, including those featured in this book, almost all of them completely interchangeable. Roche also wrote the first direct copy, also for Fiction, Camilla, in Jungle Comics. If you’re going to be ripped off, at least get in first (profound pop culture observation no. two). This entry, by the way, has the best art, and it’s by a woman, Fran Hopper (art-wise, Bob Powell comes in second, but all the illustrations have a primitive charm acceptable for the period). Fiction also got in second, with the sexy Tiger Girl, and their three jungle heroines dominated the market thereafter, despite almost every publisher having at least one tree-swinging, loin-cloth-wearing, butt-kicking jungle girl in their books, the most desperate probably being the short-lived Jun-Gal (ouch!). The latter is promised on the cover, but doesn’t appear to have made the final editorial cut. Cave Girl is as clever and resilient as her archaeologist/geologist fella, Judy takes the side of a doe against a hungry lion and knifes him for following his natural instincts, and the bonkers Malu just stops, leaving the contemporary characters adrift in the past. In the 1970s, Marvel came up with the colourful rip-off Shanna the She Devil, who, if memory serves me right—don’t hold me to this—later transformed into Tigra (as opposed to Tygra). Now I think about it, that might have been The Cat, another short-lifer from the same era…Sheena appeared successfully on television in 1955, portrayed by sultry former model Irish McCalla, and less successfully in a low-budget feature film in 1984, played by the gorgeous doe-eyed but blonde-dyed former Charlie’s Angels girl Tanya Roberts. Memorably, the production painted horses with black and white stripes, because in real life, it turns out people just can’t ride zebras (fantasy, see?). Superior to both were the Republic serials Jungle Girl in 1941, and Perils of Nyoka in 1942. In 1955, Phyllis Coates made a striking Panther Girl of the Congo. Tom Tyler was The Phantom, a hero of syndicated newspaper strips, and the less said about Captain Africa, the better… Jungle Girls does give a slightly false impression of the genre, as it focusses solely on the heroic exploits of the characters. Many covers of the same titles had the women in jeopardy, and male Tarzan-clone heroes leaping to the rescue in the traditional manner of the day. However, at the risk of reading like the good doctor, I don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad thing to focus on the more heroic aspects of the characters rather than the cliches. It’s just a shame the publishers tried to sabotage their own project in such a knee-jerk, patronising manner, and didn’t have more faith in their authors, their content, and their readers’ intelligence.