Terrors Of The Jungle #20
December, 1952
Terrors Of The Jungle #10
September, 1954
Terrifying Tales #11
January, 1953
Jiggle In The Jungle
From its silent inception, the movie industry quickly picked up on the box
office potential of ill-clad females traipsing through the Dark Continent's
exotic landscape--an area as remote to the average North American as the Moon.
Audience ignorance being
the Hollywood writer's greatest tool, almost anything "went"--limitless
unexplored African jungles, tigers and lions cohabiting, the cry of common
peacocks doubling for jungle fowl, and of course the impractical
bikini that packed the house. Every studio gleefully issued a dramatic license
to kill when it came to concocting stories of jungle adventure.
A jun-gal, whether ape-raised blond goddesses or loyal side-kick to her
imitation Tarzan mate, stumbled through thousands of tales, squaring off or
falling prey to evil big game hunters, lost tribes of savages, and rogue beasts
with an attitude. So pervasive was the genre, it would have been tough to find
a Hollywood starlet who had not portrayed a defender of the veldt, voodoo queen,
or South Seas island girl.
As the pulps and comics came into their own, they picked up on the jungle theme in the
late 1930's. S. M. Iger and Will (The Spirit) Eisner, under the nom de plumb
W. Morgan Thomas, created a syndicated English newspaper strip titled,
A plethora of imitators followed on the success of Sheena, including:
Leopard Girl, Tiger Girl, Camilla, Rulah, Jann of the Jungle, Lorna the Jungle Girl,
Vooda, and Cave Girl. Just as Tarzan had Jane, so did his imitators: Kaanga's
Ann, Jo Jo's Tanee, and Ki-Gor's Helene. Ka-Zar preferred the company of Zabu,
a saber-tooth tiger and Bomba, was too young to be messing around with girls.
Like westerns and other genres lost to changing entertainment habits, jungle
themed pop culture faded in the late 50's, eventually being usurped by a new
breed of more politically correct man-smackin', ape-kickin', sorcerer-stompin'
mamas, such as Conan's Red Sonja and current warrior champion, Xena.
The sultry jun-gal didn't explode into the public's awareness as a full-blown
pop icon until the late 30's with the advent of pulps and the more visually
stimulating comic book medium. Her modern origin can be traced back to the
turn of the century. H. R. Haggard introduced "She", sorceress queen of a
lost African civilization, A. Merritt concocted more than one exotic
princess, and of course Tarzan's creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, sired Jane and
numerous fems of the fern over, under, and off the planet.