Number 1342: Lorna the Jungle Girl kicks commie devil bird butt!

This is day two of our Jungle Jive theme week, here with the first of two postings featuring blonde jungle women. You’ll see Sheena on Wednesday, but for today you’ll be reading a couple of stories featuring one of Sheena’s competitors for the Miss Clairol of the Jungle award. Sheena came first, of course (created in 1938), but Lorna covered some of the same jungle territory. She protected the local tribes. She came up against constant menaces which she conquered handily. The difference in Lorna is in her man...Sheena’s man, Bob, is not a male chauvinist like Lorna’s Greg. That’s where the fun comes in. Greg is constantly telling Lorna men are superior to women, even after Lorna has pulled his sorry ass out of a deathtrap. Lorna smiles and goes along with Greg. I suppose she figures the guy is good for something, but considering his attitude we wonder what.

In these stories Lorna takes on communist infiltrators who come into the jungle trying to bamboozle the “superstitious natives”, and then, in the second story she channels some old jungle movies. She gives a Tarzan yell to keep dying elephants from trampling Greg.

It wasn’t the first time Lorna’s comic book creators borrowed an idea. In my last posting, Lorna dealt with a King Kong-size ape called Agu. At the bottom of the page you'll find a link to that post.

From Lorna the Jungle Girl #9 (1954). Art by Werner Roth, stories by Don Rico.

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Click pic to go to Pappy's #1143.

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Number 1143: Lorna and the King Kong klone

From the Wikipedia entry on the 1933 version of King Kong:

“[King Kong] was re-released in 1952, becoming one of the media events of that year. Time magazine named it “Movie of the Year.” The film’s studio, RKO. tried an experimental reissue of King Kong in the Midwest United States in 1952. In an unprecedented move they committed most of King Kong’s promotional budget to television spots. The re-release was an enormous success, with the film attracting triple the usual business in its markets.

. . . King Kong generated more box office receipts than the original 1933 release . . . Theatre owners named it Picture of the Year. It was at this time that King Kong acquired its reputation as a popular culture phenomenon.”

It's no wonder that comic books of the era used it for inspiration. There was "Ping Pong" in Mad #6, for example.

Atlas Comics' Lorna the Jungle Queen used a Kong lookalike, named Agu, as a character who appeared more than once. I have three Agu stories, "Agu the Giant," from Lorna the Jungle Queen #1 (scanned from the later 1970s reprint in Marvel Comics' Jungle Action), "The Return of Agu the Giant" from Lorna #3, and "The Battle of the Giants" from #9. The stories are written by Don Rico, and drawn by Werner Roth.

Like the movie Kong's love for Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), Agu had a thing for Lorna.

Blondes have more fun, as the old Miss Clairol ad used to tout, but in the company of a twenty-foot-tall ape, a little fun goes a really long way.

















If you want more giant apes, check out the Indian headband-wearing, bow-and-arrow-shooting giant ape from Tomahawk #107 (1966) in Pappy's #848.

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Number 948


Tough blondes of the jungle


Characters like Sheena the Queen of the Jungle, and Lorna the Jungle Girl (who was demoted after five issues of being Lorna the Jungle Queen), were strong, beautiful, capable women battling men and beasts in a world of beastly men. Nowadays plots like these aren't so unusual, but in the 1940s and '50s they were. Women were mothers, "sweethearts," nice girls who, if they worked, did it until they got married and then raised a family. I can't imagine Sheena having babies. Though stronger than most men, Sheena is still very sexy, even as she grabs a man by the short and curlies and flings him through the air into the treeline. Maybe that's what appealed to some of the guys who read Jumbo Comics. Sheena's mate, Bob, gets in messes all the time and she has to go in and rescue him. In the splash panel he's looking kind of useless. Brave Sheena holds him like a child while simultaneously holding off the enemy.

Guys who read Sheena might've had a secret yen to have a strong woman come in and rescue them. (Doc Wertham would have an opinion on such fellows.) Anyway, I see it as harmless fun, even as I cast my glims over panel after panel of pulchritudinous jungle babery.

This story is drawn by Robert Webb and is from Jumbo Comics #103, 1947.











Lorna also had a boyfriend problem. Greg, her significant other, is a male chauvinist. He's constantly ranting about how women don't belong in the jungle, all while Lorna is pulling his sorry ass out of trap after trap. In his story she saves him from some commies! It's from Lorna the Jungle Girl #9, 1954, drawn by Werner Roth.

Is the jungle big enough for two powerful women like Sheena and Lorna? Maybe we could get them to fight for the honor of being true queen of the jungle. A nice mud wrestle would do. In the meantime Bob and Greg could put on aprons and bake cookies.

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