Jungle Comics #3 - pt. 1

After my longest lull ever, I'm back! And so is Fiction House and the unrelenting racism of the jungle genre. Gird your loins, because we're wading deep into the racism today!

We'll jump right into the lead feature, Kaanga, in progress. I don't know why so many golden age comic book artists had trouble with drawing cats, but this black panther with a distinctly seal-like head tempts me to go back to work on the Advanced Hideouts & Hoodlums Mobster Manual so I can stat it! I guess it would be just a black panther that likes to swim a lot more, though.

Tree-based fighting is interesting because there's a chance each turn of falling out of the tree. Here, Kaanga and the seal-panther both miss their saves vs. science at the same time.

It's interesting how brutally murderous Kaanga was against black panthers, but how gentle and caring he is over leopards. Or maybe his player was just looking for a good deed XP award. Killing a defenseless leopard would have netted him no XP award.

An assegai is a real thing, a slender, iron-tipped, hardwood spear used chiefly by southern African peoples.

That's a big python! But is it a "huge" python -- in terms of needing additional Hit Dice -- or just a normal-sized python? The average length of a python is, I believe, about 9 feet. This one looks to be twice that long, making it a large python (remember our large/huge/giant categories from D&D!).   Pythons can reach 26' in length, though, meaning that even in the real world there are such things as large and huge pythons.

I'm preeetty sure that constrictor snakes do not bite and hold fast like that. Had it looped around him and squeezed, I do think Kaanga would be a goner now.

There's another issue, though, of how to handle striking something against a stationary object after grappling it. I wouldn't introduce a new mechanic for this, but just reverse how hitting something with a rock works -- simple attack roll and damage if you hit.

Kaanga ducking is just flavor text; The King's attack roll missed and Kaanga ducking is simply how the miss is explained by the player and/or Editor.

I'm not sure where Cheba came from. Is Cheba the leopard from earlier, or a third cat? Did the Editor decide that Cheba just happened to be walking by and tossed her into the encounter, to make it easier for Kaanga's player?

It's unclear what happens after panel 5. It seems the gun was knocked out of The King's hand when Cheba leaps on him -- and disarming guns is supposed to be a common occurrence in Hideouts & Hoodlums, to reflect pages like this. But how does he choose to pick up a rock instead of the gun? Was the gun damaged? Because there is no chance of that happening in the disarming mechanic as written. Does he accidentally pick up the rock instead? There is no game mechanic for random picking up stuff either.

Incidentally, in case you need the top hat explained to you, The King is able to take over a tribe of naive, superstitious natives because he comes from New York. So, that makes him smarter than an African.

The Red Panther feature is not any better. Okay, the artwork is better, I meant racism-wise. Here, we're supposed to side with the "innocent" miner wanting to take the land and its resources away from the natives living there because, you know, he's white (though having a hot blonde daughter probably helps his case too).

I don't have much to say about this page, except -- dig that elephant portrait on the wall. What is the backstory between the miner and that elephant that would make him put a photograph of the elephant on his wall, as if it was a beloved pet?

Did I mention I like the art? Comics.org's contributors think this is Arthur Peddy's work, and I really dig the layout of that first panel.

No, there was no African deity named Zagu. Most tribes, from what I've read, didn't worship deities so much as ancestors. Of course, this could be a cult, and an exception to that rule. Of course, maybe they are worshipping Tabu, so that this segues into the next feature...

Lastly, we're going to take a quick peek at the next story of Tabu , Wizard of the Jungle. Gee, I wonder why it's black panthers that are always the cats getting picked on (though at least this one is drawn well)? I'm also sparing you from the previous page where a black man is being tortured to death, supposedly not far away. Tagu doesn't hear those screams at all, but conveniently hears a white woman's screams.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)