Review: Jungle Girl: Season 3 #1 (of 4)
I’ll admit I’m a latecomer to the adventures of Jungle Girl, the bikini-clad heroine of a time-lost land created by comic writer/artist and good-girl-art specialist Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows, Shanna the She-Devil, Savage Wolverine). I’d heard of the character, and it’s pretty clear she’s popular with her fans, given she’s now starring in her third miniseries. But one glance at the cover of this first-issue cover was enough to clue me in that, at heart, she’s a tribute to both the jungle-girl comics of the 1940s and ’50s (Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; Cave Girl; Vooda, Jungle Princess) and the savage female warriors found in the works of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs (Ajor of The People That Time Forgot, Dian of At the Earth’s Core, La of Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar).
I just didn’t know how crazy it was going to turn out to be.
Jungle Girl: Season 3 #1, published by Dynamite Entertainment, is plotted by Cho (who provides the cover art) and scripter Doug Murray (Jungle Girl: Seasons 1–2, Savage Red Sonja), and is illustrated by Jack Jadson (Warlord of Mars #0, Vampirella: Feary Tales). The story picks up where Season 2 left off, with Jungle Girl—whose real name is Jana Sky-Born—and her new friend, Mike Mize (who was part of a crew of drug smugglers whose plane crashed in Jana’s lost world) returning from a trip to God-Mountain, where they’d encountered a Lovecraftian creature that was ultimately destroyed by the crew of a submarine that happened to be on hand. But as Jana’s scientist father points out, the god wasn’t destroyed—Jana’s just made him really pissed off. And the start of Judgment Day arrives shortly, in the form of an attack by the evil Dirt People tribe…and a dinosaur stampede that Jana decides to take on barehanded.
And then things get really weird when the alien spaceship shows up.
Maybe “crazy” isn’t the right word to describe Jana’s story; “insane” might do it, though. But it’s a good kind of insane.
Storywise, after a handy recap of last “season” for latecomers (like me), Cho and Murray deliver a story that moves at warp speed—the dinosaur stampede alone starts just five pages into this first issue, and the action carries through without slowing down, right to the last-page cliffhanger. And Jackson matches them note for note, delivering fast-paced storytelling that, surprisingly, doesn’t dwell much on the T&A in what one would normally expect to find in a T&A comic—in fact, Jana spends the issue wearing a curve-hugging leather bodysuit instead of her trademark tiny bikini. Modesty of a sort in a jungle queen comic? Shocking. Of course, given creator Cho’s penchant for cheesecake art, that situation will probably change with the next issue—and regular readers of Comics for Sinners wouldn’t have it any other way!
Bottom line? A fast-paced adventure, complemented by action-packed art, plus dinosaurs and aliens, make this miniseries worth checking out by fans of not just Jungle Girl, but of classic jungle queens, Burroughs-style pulp fiction, and action heroines in general.
Jungle Girl: Season 3 #1
Created and plotted by Frank Cho
Scripted and plotted by Doug Murray
Art by Jack Jadson
Cover art by Frank Cho
Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment
32 pages • full-color
$3.99 U.S.
Now on sale
About the Author
Steven Roman Steven A. Roman is the author of the Saga of Pandora Zwieback novel series and the graphic novels Lorelei: Sects and the City and Sunn, and the bestselling author of the novels X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy and Final Destination: Dead Man’s Hand. Follow his adventures in publishing at StarWarp Concepts.
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