The Jungle Lord is a cultural construct, like the Western gun-fighter, the Northern Mountie, the Noir private detective or the African adventurer. All these motifs have factual counterparts, but it is in fiction that they take on another life, an iconic life, becoming part of the collective culture. All these motifs explode during the Great Depression, then World War II and finally into the Cold War period. They are Pulp icons. Kipling creates the idea of a jungle man in 1894–Edgar Rice Burroughs expands and popularizes it in 1914–and by the 1960s the wave begins to subside and the Jungle Lord becomes a figure of parody and ridicule. The ideas that made the Jungle Lord (and all these other motifs) pure gold in the 1930-50s has become familiar, a part of our language. Not just stories in old Pulps, the Jungle Lord can be found in comics, films, radio and eventually television, popular songs and in cartoons.
Jungle adventures date back to the days of H. R. Haggard and Rudyard Kipling. They also formed a large portion of most Pulp and popular publishing after 1900 whether in America or the UK and Europe. When Edgar Rice Burroughs created Tarzan in 1912, the jungle exploded once again with jungle lords and ladies galore. It should be no surprise that the story paper, The Triumph, had their share of jungle heroes in the 1930s. Some stories were single tales set in the African rain forests but another group featured returning characters, pale imitations of ERB’s Lord of the Jungle.
The first was “Congo Jack” (not be confused with character in the American Lightning Comics) by Douglas Dundee (Dugald Matheson Cumming-Skinner, 1902-1956). The serial ran off and on between December 26, 1931 – January 1932. Congo Jack’s adventures range from pulling pranks on the Africans to a quest or two. The racism of the time is evident in much of The Triumph‘s different story lines, often choosing Europeans laughing at the savage and ignorant blacks. Congo Jack is no different.
Dundee returned with “Sarajak the Jungle Man”, September 17-December 29, 1934 and another story “The Ju-ju with Talking Feet”, November 23, 1935.
Dundee went prehistoric with “Cave-Boy Erek” in 1933. Erek is the lone survivor of a group of cavemen. He was swept out of his mountainous country into a land of swamps and dinosaurs. He is accompanied by his jungle dog, Red Fang.
The writers tried different takes on jungle characters, with Jack King, the clever fellow who always outwitted a hostile environment. Another was Basuto Joe, the Tec from the Jungle. (In British slang “tec” was short for “detective”.)
Charka by Peter Garnett (?) had an equally long run in “Charka of the Great Apes” (June 12-October 2, 1937),”Charka Takes the Terror Trail” (April 1, 1939), “Charka’s Revenge” (June 24, 1939) and “Charka, King of the Great Apes” (December 30, 1939). Charka’s adventures were less about fooling the locals and more in the Tarzan vein, with plenty of daring-do. Like Tarzan (and many of his clones), his greatest foes are witch doctors and arrogant white hunters.
Some of the other story lines in The Triumph occasionally featured jungle settings. Some even had black heroes such as “Joker of the Jungle” (who joins a ministrel show, not requiring any black face make-up) and Parah, a Mowgli clone.
The Skipper presented their ape-boy in September of 1939 with “Boy King of the Fighting Apes”. The Skipper didn’t believe in by-lines so I don’t know who wrote it or illustrated it. Tom Watson is the son of the British commissioner. He swings around the jungle in a leopard skin suit with a large medal around his neck on a red-white-blue strap. Dibba the ape and his friends join Tom in hair-raising adventures. Tom has to save Chief Kanga and his people from many dangers like a blood-thirsty crocodile-headed god.
By the 1940s many of the story papers had converted to partial or even complete comic format. Published fortnightly in the British weekly, Comet, “Jungle Lord” graced the front page during 1947 and 1948. Exact dates are hard to find but the strip was begun before Issue 19 in May 30, 1947, and went as long as April 1948. The strip was drawn by Reg Beaumont and written by his younger brother, George Harry. “Jungle Lord” was simply signed in the last frame as BEAU.
The ephemeral nature of weeklies make it hard to be more precise. The story concerns a very conservatively named Dick, a Jungle Lord and his Jane, Bibi, as they flee an evil ivory hunter named Snape (take that J. K. Rowling!) The duo discover a lost city ruled by a white queen named Zorina. Snape enslaves the people and it is up to Dick and Bibi to save them. Here’s that racism again. Typical of the 1940s, the Europeans are seen as needed to organize the Africans and take charge, but compared to much of what appeared earlier in The Triumph this is unusually tame.
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