Alter Ego #190 November 2024 (magazine review).
In his introduction to this issue of ‘Alter Ego,’ editor Roy Thomas points out his plan was originally to only have one issue devoted to comic book jungle characters. Instead, the abundance of material necessitates splitting it across two issues.
Writer Mitch Maglio covers a large part of this issue. Obviously, the biggest influence was Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, but what really brought forth the ladies was ‘She’ by H. Rider Haggard and introduced ‘good girl art’ to the comic book reader as various ladies protected their jungles dressed in, well, not very little. It was probably the same appeal from the ‘Tarzan’ films. Of course, everyone knows who Sheena is, her name based off the Haggard title, but the bandwagon really opened with the other comic book companies. One question I would raise is: “How did the people tan their minuscule hide clothes they were wearing to stop them from rotting?” The second section looks at the jungle characters who followed Tarzan and the various animals that raised them. Writer Will Murray has a 2-page insert looking a bit more closely at the original Ka-Zar, a markedly different one from his revival in the early 1960s in the Savage Land. The list of artists who contributed to these jungle tales is impressive. It’s also vastly different from the jungles we know today and which animals inhabited them. One strip even had orangutans in India, not Sumatra.
Long before TV nature programs became commonplace, the likes of Martin and Osa Johnson would take photographs throughout Africa, collected in “Danger Trails in Africa,” where they were used in all kinds of media, including comic books. Writer Conrad G. Froelich gives the complete history, especially to DC Comics’ ‘Congorilla.’.
Michael T. Gilbert’s ‘Mr. Monster’ has the fourth part of the look at artist Sam Glanzman and how he met him in New York.
One should also mention a significant obituary for Ramona Fradon (1926-2024), surely one of the last of the silver age comic book artists.
It’s rather fascinating seeing how the earlier generations took to jungle-living characters and how it still continues to modern times.
GF Willmetts
December 2024
(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing. 82 page illustrated magazine. Price: $10.95 (US). ISSN: 1932-6890. Direct from them, you can get it for $10.95 (US))
check out websites: www.TwoMorrows.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=1783
