Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli is a very different thing than Walt Disney’s. I love that old cartoon but when I finally read the original stories as an adult I realized that something was lost in Disney’s cutesy rendition. That is a tradition of adventure that will pass along to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan. It’s not a series of maudlin emotions but fiery ones. Lord Badon-Powell designed the Boy Scouts around Kipling’s masterwork because of this sense of adventure. (I remember being eight and saying “Ah-Kay-La-Will-Do-Our-Best. Will-Dib-dib-dib. Will-dob-dob-dob!” and not really getting why.)
Before the 1967 cartoon, Dell Comics adapted the majority of the Mowgli material in three issues of Four Color, their anthology comic that often featured movie and television products. The first issue had writing by Paul S. Newman but most of the authorship is uncertain. But that’s okay because Morris Gollub is the cover and interior artist for the entire thing. 34 pages each, no ads, even the inside and back cover are used for story. These are sweet comics!
Dell Four Color #487 (August 1953) adapted “Mowgli’s Brothers” and “Kaa’s Hunting”
Dell Four Color #582 (August 1954) adapted “Tiger! Tiger!” and “Letting in the Jungle”
Dell Four Color #620 (April 1955) adapted “Red Dog” and “The King’s Ankus”
There would be other Jungle Book comics, of course, including the cartoon version, but until P. Craig Russell applied his magic to the tales, these by Mo Gollub were the best. Like the book illustrators of old, Gollub captures the characters well, drawing animals as well as he does humans. These skills will be helpful when he moves onto doing Tarzan covers in the 1960s. His work has a believability that is essential to make this kind of tale work.
The platform of Four Color Comics was a wonderfully varied anthology of comics that allowed artists time to create. If Gollub had had to produce all three issues in a third-month span they probably wouldn’t be as good. With as much as a year in between, Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli is a treasure worth collecting.
Had these briefly and remember them well