Sheena is the mother of all jungle girls. Created by legends Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, Sheena is allegedly the result of combining H. Rider Haggard’s She with Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan. The result was a terrifying, beautiful, and powerful warrior queen… who is quickly tamed by a square-jawed, huge-pecked American eager to show her a good time.
Her adventures have direction and an overarching plot, unlike Sheena illustrator Bob Powell’s later creation, Cave Girl, and her place as the most recognizable jungle girl is deserved not just because she was the first, but because she was one of the best.
Sheena evolved over the course of the series – well, at least in the first thirty issues of Jumbo we’ll be looking at here. Sheena’s initial fifteen year run likely wasn’t due to appearance alone. The book adapted to the times in which it was published, moving from one-page black and white strips to double-digit page count colour stories, from repetitious reprints to magnificent adventures, and even to unabashed wartime propaganda, always embracing its setting in creative ways. Whether enjoyed episodically or as a whole, nearly a century after their inception Sheena’s exploits are as bold and exciting and they ever were.
Origin: Domesticated. Her parents were killed when she was a small child, and was subsequently adopted/kidnapped by a tribe in Congo, who believed her to be an omen.
Affiliations: Bob Reynolds, Chim the chimpanzee, Numa the lion, her tribe.
Powers/talents: Leadership, acrobatics, knife fighting.
Outfit: Variable, evolving from a one-shoulder tunic into a leopard skin bikini.
Habitat: Congo.
Equipment: Knife.
Spoken Language: English, “Native language”
Part 1: Wags Weekly – Jumbo #10
Sheena was introduced in Wags Weekly in 1938. Initially signed W. Morgan Thomas, the pseudonym for Iger and Eisner, the strip was a one page, eleven panel black and white production. Curiously, it’s not Sheena the strip starts with, but a band of explorers deep in the Congo jungle, labelled the “last outpost of the white mans[sic] civilization.” Bob Reynolds, one of the members of the troop, sits at a desk, studying a map. The narration reads, “… a white man, young and clean, strangely out of place in such a poor setting!”
The action picks up when a distraught man enters the camp. Bob and Professor Vandike rush to his aid, where he tells them that he is running from Sheena. Bob dismisses the notion, stating that there’s absolutely no goddamn way that a white woman could lead a bunch of black dudes – words he quickly comes to eat as Sheena emerges from the forest, looking absolutely rabid.
The characters in this initial strip are impeccably drawn – no surprise for an Eisner piece. The strip is greyscale, though the grey tones look to have been added in as aftereffects for colouring. There is quite a bit of white space, especially in the interior scenes, with the grey tone used to communicate the darkness outside. The seventh frame, on the other hand, sports no grey, and instead utilizes hatching and white space, perhaps showing Eisner’s reservation in using the grey middle tone.
The lettering is charming, and you can see Eisner’s hand at play in how the font fluctuates in size and placement. Figures are well constructed, with Bob’s broad build communicated through angular design and folds in his tight-fitting attire. His thick black hair is impeccably styled with masterful inking, and the use of white on Vandike’s receding hairline effectively contrasts his age in comparison to the young Bob.
Sheena wears a ratty black fur dress in this first strip, with stitches on the righthand side emphasizing the crudeness of its construction. Her belt does little to fit her form, and the one shoulder strap coupled with her hunched posture make her look more akin to a stereotypical cave woman than a beautiful queen. She is dangerous, reflective of the fleeing man’s fear – a bold introduction to what would quickly become a sex symbol.
By only the second strip (Jumbo Comics #1) Sheena had changed dramatically. Though still an eleven (ish) panel layout in black and white, and still attributed to W. Morgan Thomas, several artistic changes were implemented. The strip begins with a wide introduction pane accompanied by a narration panel outlining how Bob and Van Dyke had been searching for Sheena prior to being ambushed by her. This opening panel showcases Sheena accompanied by one of her male warriors. The warrior leans forward with bent knees and his head down while grasping a long spear in his hands, piercing through this first frame and into the next. Behind him, Sheena grasps a spear in her right hand while her left points forward, directing the warrior into the next panel of the comic, where Bob is pictured, surrounded.
Sheena now wears a brazier with one shoulder strap and a skirt (coloured in as red on the cover of Jumbo #1, so what animal it was fashioned from is anyone’s guess), leaving her midriff open. We see her face in profile in this opening panel, with her long blonde hair flowing behind her. Her body is pivoted towards the viewer, revealing her strong physique by way of hatching to highlight her abdominal, bicep, and forearm muscles. Compared to her initial appearance, Sheena is depicted as both strong and feminine, beautiful but also commanding. She stands tall, not growling and hunched like an animal. In the third pane we see that Bob is indeed still taller than Sheena, though her posture and facial expression reveal that she is not intimidated by his stature or appearance.
The illustrations in this strip also differ drastically from the first. Grey tones are used, though the art adheres closer to straight black and white for the most part, emphasizing the blinding sun and heavy darkness. Coupled with the fact that the first five panels are entirely devoid of speech, instead featuring only narrative text, a great sense of unease and suspense settles in. When Van Dyke is captured and thrown into the prison with Bob in the fifth frame, for example, two poles capped with human skulls sit at the lefthand side of the picture. By the final frame, when Bob and Van Dyke incapacitate the guard and escape, the frame is bookended by more skull-capped poles, creating a border between the set of six panels, and ending the page on a cliffhanger. Though the modelling is not as strong, with Bob fluctuating quite a bit in terms of his facial details, the use of hatching to create dramatic shade on the men’s faces while in captivity adds to the sense of horror.
In the third strip Sheena receives yet another wardrobe change – though, to be fair, she is in her throne room here, and it’s not unreasonable to assume she has multiple garments as queen.
Van Dyke attempts to communicate with the tribe, and eventually lands them an audience with Sheena’s witch doctor, prompting a retelling of the tribe’s history. The witch doctor reveals that Sheena’s tribe is half-Mongol. An army aligned with Ghengis Khan moved into Africa and, as the strip puts it, “Mixing with the natives who had been captured, the mongols begin to propagate their own race…”
Jumbo #2 picks up from the rape cliffhanger that, as it turns out, is kind of inconsequential. Fast forward several hundred years and Sheena’s dad brings his little girl to the jungle in what will turn out to be either the best or worst ‘bring your kid to work day’ in history. The witch doctor recalls that Sheena Senior (Cardwell Rivington) was a learned man with lots of books. When he tried to leave, the witch doctor got jealous and cast a spell on him. He died shortly thereafter, and the witch doctor took his baby girl and proclaimed her queen to maintain his power, shaping her into the leader of the tribe.
Bob and Van Dyke are sent back to prison after witch doctor story hour. However, an armed group of outsiders are soon spotted on the outskirts of the village. Sheena (now in her fourth wardrobe change) orders Bob to go talk with the white men and report back.
Turns out these intruders, led by a man named Morgan, are hunting for gold that is supposedly located in Sheena’s village, though when Bob appears, they claim to be nothing more than scientists who are researching… stuff. The gang members are textbook examples of ‘ugly villainy’, and it’s clear from their inset eyes, smoking, and heavily shaded faces that they have something to hide. Bob spends the night with Morgan’s group, and then they follow him back in the morning, keen on pillaging the village.
Bob is held hostage by the prospectors after learning of their plans. Sheena springs into action, killing one of Bob’s captors and setting him free. The beginning strips of Jumbo #3 are primarily focused on Sheena, and finally getting to see the fierce queen in action is exciting and satisfying. She goes toe-to-toe with the thugs, wielding only a knife against their firepower. Bob and Sheena end up making a good team, and the two are framed as equals, with a spark of romance budding from this first round of co-op combat. They then hijack one of the group’s machine guns and form a plan to repel Morgan’s hired army of tribesmen. Once the threat is defeated, Van Dyke opts to stay with Sheena’s tribe while she and Bob walk hand in hand off into the sunset; Bob looking to discover his primal-side, and Sheena… looking to discover her… um…
Though semi-fragmented into single page stories, these first several issues of Jumbo string together an overarching narrative. The rotation of illustrators each issue is slightly jarring, but the tone remains consistent, and the origin story is very well told, even if Bob and Sheena’s relationship feels abrupt, with most of the development evidently taking place off the page.
Curiously, though the world is now seemingly Bob and Sheena’s oyster, the next several strips are concocted of recycled frames. The second page of Jumbo #4, for example, opens with Bob and Sheena walking through the jungle together, but Bob’s arms are tied and Sheena is wearing her shoulder strap brazier, not her dress with belt like she is in the rest of the strip. This opening pane was taken from when Bob and Van Dyke are first captured, though the narration box frames the scene as Bob and Sheena exchanging knowledge and learning from one another. Either Bob was getting too handsy, or we’re in for a stint of panels lazily rearranged into new stories.
On the following page, the frame of Bob waving out and stating “Ho! There! — I am a friend take me to your chief!” is recycled from Bob meeting the gold scavengers and asking them not to shoot. These cannibalizations continue for some time, with the next group of shady white dudes hanging out in the jungle in Jumbo #5 being the exact same frames as Morgan’s crew, only this group is looking for oil.
This disregard for content became distracting to the point where I was more inclined to play memory, matching the reused frames from previous strips, rather than follow the story. Perhaps there are so many reused frames because of the consistent format of eleven frame pages, and the art could simply be re-lettered, with slight touches done to the illustrations where needed. It’s a shame that the second story arc is so carelessly tossed together, though thankfully the strip evidently remained popular enough to buy time to reinvent itself.
Sheena continued in black and white until Jumbo issue 9, at which point the strip was colourized and made into eight to eleven-page stories without header breaks and adhering (more or less) to an eight or nine-panel grid. Sheena and Bob’s first big adventure in colour saw them searching for a fabled lost city that was paved with gold. The opening page of Jumbo #9 begins with the wide title frame ‘Sheena: Queen of the Jungle’, with portraits of Sheena and Bob framed in the outline of yellow palm, taking up half of the page, making the introduction more grandiose, and less of a stamp connoting the start of a new page.
Over the following six frames, Sheena and Bob traverse the red sands of the savannah, a dark mountain cave, and finally a snowscape, painting the page in a beautiful array of colours before preparing readers for the reveal on page 2.
The city itself is, well, ridiculous, with Seussian flourishes and a nonsensical mishmash of architectural styles faintly mimicked by the city’s simple geometric constructions. However, the shot is so awe-inspiring in its array of colours that this criticism can easily be ignored. Sheena, Bob, and their guide, Agoni, stand in contrapposto at the bottom of the frame, looking out towards the towering fortress before them. The path they emerged from is connoted by two boulders at the bottom corners of the frame, with the tendrils of a tree root arranged to look as though they are reaching out towards the group. Before them sits a manicured green lawn leading to a temple stacked with layers supported by doric columns. A relief carving of the sun can be seen on the entrance to the temple, though most other panels are devoid of decoration. However, each is coloured with a unique pattern, contrasting nicely against the blue sky and white cumulus clouds, while heavy black shadow in the sides of buildings emphasizes the sun’s heat. It’s hard to imagine achieving such a sense of grandeur in the strip’s previous format.
The city appears deserted until Sheena and Bob stumble upon a robed man who leads them to the throne room. Here, a king and his ape subjects sit before a multi-armed primate statue. Apes are rarely a good sign in jungle comics, and unsurprisingly, their conversation quickly goes south. The king sets his gorilla subjects upon the pair (Agoni seemingly fades in and out of existence from this point), and Sheena and Bob proceed to fight in the king’s discotheque arena. Bob is quickly knocked unconscious by one of the apes after attempting to wrestle it (idiot), leaving Sheena to battle the beasts with her superior agility.
Though the action is well choreographed, the accompanying narration makes the scene slightly overdramatic. The nine panel frame switches to a packed twelve panels on page 6, speeding up the action as Sheena climbs out of the arena to safety, only to swing back down to rescue Bob before falling through a trap door and plummeting to a body of water below (Still no sign of Agoni. Is anyone else concerned?) The reserved detail in backdrops for this page encourages readers to scan the frames quicker, keeping the action prescient.
Sheena and Bob swim ashore and find another captive of the city, Thad Barker, the last survivor of his expedition. He brings Sheena and Bob to the small alcove in which they are trapped, pointing out a 400-foot ravine sitting between them and freedom.
The group devise a plan to weave rope from grass and to have Sheena swing through the waterfall to the other side. It’s interesting to note that though the weaving skill is not attributed directly to Sheena or Bob in the subsequent frame, it is Sheena’s unique capability that is pivotal to their plan. Not only is this a breakout issue in terms of art and action, but Sheena is clearly defined as the heroine of the book, not a piece of arm candy for Bob, and having them share in the duty of weaving is an interesting note in their dynamic.
The plan works, with Barker successfully climbing across the rope line after Sheena secures it to the other side of the ravine. Unfortunately, the mad king comes with backup, catching the trio in the act. Bob, having learned his lesson from last time, opts not to grapple the beast but instead gives it a strong right hook, knocking it off the cliff. The king then jumps Bob, and the two fall into the waterfall. Bob catches the rope on the way down, while the mad king hits the river below at mach 2. The group set out to return Barker to civilization and engage in new adventures. Oh, and Agoni shows up out of nowhere to greet Sheena and Bob. He was just sitting around, somewhere, the whole time.
The introduction frame of Jumbo #10 shows Sheena in a one-piece leopard suit, with the brazier connected to shorts, while in subsequent frames she is in a plain hide skirt. This isn’t an oversight, however, but a preview of the change to come as Sheena adopts what will be her trademark look.
The “little group” (apparently Sheena and Bob picked up some friends) make their way back to the “native village” and discover that the lion Namu has been killing villagers. The chief explains that his hunters suck, so it’s time for some good ol’ Caucasian intervention, jungle girl style.
To her credit, Sheena wants a fair fight and opts to kill the lion in hand-to-hand combat. The action on pages 3 through 6 is displayed in large frames, and without much narration, which is a nice change up from the previous issue. The two fight in a small meadow, with Sheena leaping from the trees and eventually mounting the lion before stabbing it in the back (while Bob just stands there). The colours switch up every frame here, so while one could criticize why the sky goes from blue to yellow and back again, four-colour choices like this keep the action fresh, and the page is a radiant spread of activity.
Hilariously, after Sheena kills the lion, a jaguar leaps down from the tree, and Bob responds by simply shooting it. Sheena, not bothered that Bob didn’t just use his gun on Namu, makes lemons out of lemonade; or rather, a new outfit out of the leopard.
Sheena states while Bob holds the jaguar corpse, “His skin will make me a new dress,” and in the next frame, she is wearing the new dress. The background, especially the foliage, connects almost seamlessly between the two frames in terms of colouring and horizon line, making it seem as though she had skinned the cat off screen and immediately started wearing its skin, wet and fresh. It’s hilariously abrupt. The book ends with Sheena asking how Bob likes her new dress, to which he berates her for being girly. Sheena looks down in shame, and it’s genuinely heartbreaking. The exit frame teases that Sheena will go to the land of the giants next issue, and she also has a pet chimp now, and just ignores Bob being a jerk.
The facial features in this issue have some inconsistency, primarily in the way Namu’s face is drawn. The action, however, is great, the backgrounds superb, and the modelling strong. However, as we’ll see, shortcuts are still utilized in this new format, albeit not as egregiously as in the black and white strips.
There were substantial shifts in both tone and art over the course of these first ten issues. The move from black and white to colour was the biggest hinge, though the strip wobbled while finding its footing in both monotone and four colour printing. Sheena began with a well-conceived plot, and then was quickly reduced to recycled art and directionless narratives until finally being revitalized in its new format. The mystery of Sheena curved from that of a wicked and immoral ruler to a curious and noble warrior, and by the end of issue 10 she had become identifiable as the character most people know today, with her outfit established, a loyal chimp sidekick, and fearless white hunter at her side. In part 2 we’ll see how Sheena developed over the next ten issues of Jumbo.
You can download Sheena: Jumbo Comics Archive Pt.1, here.