Part 3: Jumbo #20 – #30

Jumbo #20 marks the official un-Africanizing of Sheena. It begins with Sheena and Bob gazing out towards a vast landscape, with the narration stating that they have become bored with village life and have decided to seek adventure where no white man ever has. 

The art in the issue is outstanding both technically and compositionally. The second frame, for example, shows Sheena and Bob walking through the alien topography of Grandanga. The landscape dwarfs the pair as they walk beneath a natural arc composed of a tilted boulder, whose point rests precariously against the neighboring cliff, telegraphing the danger ahead.  

The issue’s villain, Keela, is introduced shortly thereafter via silhouette on page 2. Sheena and Bob make the mistake of bringing fists to an ape fight, and the pair are quickly incapacitated, only being saved by Keela after she sees that the intruders are (well-groomed) fellow white folk. She calls her ape companions off via a series of grunts (after doling out a good wallop on her gorilla friend, showing her raw strength to be greater than Sheena’s), then begins speaking broken English to Sheena and Bob. She invites the pair to her cave to rest, where the real conflict begins. 

Later, Keela invites Bob to walk to the volcano and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s a plot to confess her feelings to him. Keela is, in all estimation, more of a jungle girl in the comic genre sense than Sheena at this point. She speaks in broken English, can talk to animals, has super strength, and is in desperate need of white male companionship. Part Cave Girl, part Lorna, Keela seems to be a good girl in a bad situation. Of course, Bob would never cheat on Sheena or send mixed signals to other women (except for that tiny indiscretion in issue 18). He refuses her advances, but it’s too late, Sheena sees Keela make a move on her man and comes rushing in to slap a bitch. 

In the commotion Bob is thrown down the mountain where he (hilariously) lands on an ape and starts a fight. We spend a few frames with Bob as he battles the raging animal before returning to Sheena and Keela who battle it out next to an active volcano. The action is broken into nine panels on pages 7 and 8, and is an expertly choreographed fight between superheroines. Keela easily overpowers Sheena, tossing her about, but being civilized and clever now (having learned about Bob’s Harvard games) she uses the brute’s strength against her, leaning back and topping her into the pit of lava. 

Estrogen is seemingly a reactive ingredient, and Keela’s addition to the molten lava triggers an eruption. A group of enraged apes approach from below, pinning the couple between a molten rock and a hard ape. Bob fires his pistol, shooting some of the apes in order to make a path, but it’s ultimately the lava flow that causes all players to run and escape down the mountain. 

The final few frames in particular are nice, with Sheena and Bob finding refuge by a body of water, ending the strip with another stunning landscape. 

Jumbo #21 sees Sheena and Bob reach Mount Kenya, returning to their village. In their absence, a serial killer began terrorizing the tribe in a series of hate-motivated murders of women. The pair jump to investigate the crime spree, travelling to convene with a neighboring tribe when they meet Professor ‘Pete’ Woods. He joins the pair, but Bob believes there is more to the professor than meets the eye. In fact, he is a police officer operating far outside of his jurisdiction, but no one cares because… Africa. 

Finding Pete unconscious after being attacked, they opt to revisit a suspect named M’rugu in the neighboring tribe only to fall victim to the old grass over the hole trap. Unable to escape, the warrior opts to let the pair starve to death. However, Sheena calls for Chim, and they are saved after half a page of Chim retrieving a vine. They rush to the house where Pete is being looked after by a nurse; however, M’rugu has beaten them there. After killing the nurse, he turns his attention to Pete. Sheena and Bob arrive in the nick of time (well, not for the nurse), and a fight ensues. 

At first glance it’s an unremarkable interior fight scene. However, there are a few standout frames, like a first-person shot of M’rugu holding up his knife to Sheena and Bob as they enter the clinic. The pair also work together, instead of having their own foes, flinging themselves at the killer in a series of energetic poses throughout page 9. There is some inconsistent colouring throughout the issue, like yellow being use for Sheena’s outfit and tree trunks, as well as a some off compositional choices for Pete’s face overlaying a frame on page 3, and his body lying flat on the ground as obstructed by a tree branch at the base of the same page, but this fight scene does help save the issue from being a total bore. 

Sheena lands the fatal blow, ending the killer’s reign of terror. In the final frame, Pete is shown leaving the village, thanking Sheena and Bob for their hospitality. As an interesting aside, whereas the French soldiers in Jumbo #19 were seen as capable in their cooperation with Sheena and Bob, Pete is more or less there to bend the knee to American influence, stating that he and the British government are in debt to the pair. 

Jumbo #22 opens with a comedy bit featuring Chim getting cucked by his rival, Orang, putting moves on the girl chimpanzee, Panzee. There is some great action and detail in these opening shots, and Chim and the apes have never looked better. It breaks into cartooning a bit more, with the chimpanzees having distinctly human expressions and exaggerated proportions. 

The actual story begins at the base of page 2 when an exhausted explorer is discovered by Chim, who in turn notifies Sheena. Sheena and Bob rush to the man’s aid. He tells them that he joined the foreign legion in Algiers and believes his brother, who had also been in the legion, has been killed by the sergeant. He then loses consciousness, so Sheena and Bob take him to their secret treehouse to recover. Bob states they should retrieve the French colonel, Picard, who is visiting a nearby village. 

Meanwhile, perhaps the best villain of the series thus far emerges from the jungle. Korilenko, a broad-shouldered brute with a handlebar mustache, enters Sheena’s village and immediately starts glass-jawing everyone. Sheena eventually puts a stop to his rampage, pinning his hand to a pole via throwing knife. She then kicks him out of the village, leaving him and his troupe to die in the jungle. He tries to get the jump on her once again by placing his sniper, Luigi, near the village entrance, but Sheena’s ally Memba Siba skewers the shooter with an arrow before he can fire. 

Eventually, Korilenko gets the drop on Sheena as she returns to the treehouse to check in on their friend. Korilenko follows her and instead of simply shooting Sheena while her back is turned, enters the hut, stating, “I, Korilanko, have returned!” 

Best. Villain. Yet. 

Sheena and Chim battle Korilenko on the treehouse platform. Curiously, instead of letting them battle it out Mortal Kombat style, they opt to have a giant Kong-style gorilla enter the scene, despite zero mention of him before. He crushes Korilanko, then goes for Sheena, who avoids his grasp while Bob returns with the foreign legion, who promptly gun the big ape down. It’s an unnecessary plot device, made more curious by the fact the ape wore clothes. Instead of inquiring into this scientific discovery, or illuminating the motivation behind the murder of the soldier’s brother, the strip ends with Sheen and Bob snuggling. Sheena states that the plot has wrapped up like those motion pictures Bob talks about – all that’s left is for her to kiss her; Cute, but they’ve run out of page space, so we’re left just watching them grin like idiots. 

Jumbo #23 begins with Bob and Chim riding an elephant named Buta while Sheena watches from nearby. A man from a tribe appears and asks for Sheena and Bob’s help with an elephant which has been terrorizing the village. Sheena and Bob agree to help, but oddly, jump right to committing to killing the animal, even though on the previous page Bob states about Sheena in regards to Buta, “She seems to surmise your thoughts!” 

It isn’t long before the pair run into the raging bull. It stampedes past Buta and her calf Dunda to attack Sheena. Instead of using her implied telepathic elephant calming abilities, Sheena does a couple of somersaults before Bob plants a slug in the animal’s forehead. With Dunda and Buta safe, the group continue on to the village. 

Meanwhile, we move to the village of the evil Queen Nada of the Kwagoni tribe. An old woman sits near the village water hole, feeding the crocodiles, when Nada and one of her guards approach. After the guard scolds the woman, Nada demands he throw her to the reptiles. The guard hesitates, and the queen double punches them both into the water, smiling with glee as the bask begins to feast. Though there is no gore in this scene, the display of cruelty punctuated by the crocodiles thrashing about in the water is visceral, with the old woman’s hand seen clawing up past one of the reptiles as it pulls her under. 

Of course, it wasn’t the guard questioning her orders, nor the old women feeding the crocodiles that upsets Queen Nada; Naturally she is jealous of Sheena, stating she wishes it were Sheena being eaten alive. Cut back to Sheena and Bob, watching in satisfaction as the tribe work to prepare the elephant carcass into a feast, when Bob pipes in that he heard a rumour somewhere that Nada has it out for Sheena. Sheena dismisses the notion, stating that the bitch talks too much. Coincidentally, Kwagoni warriors ambush the pair in the very next frame. Bob grabs a gun and starts swinging while Sheena takes a few out with her knife. Eventually they are both overpowered and knocked unconscious by the mob. Bob is left to the elements while Sheena is hauled off to Nada. 

Bob regains consciousness. Buta, who happened to be nearby, offers him a ride. Chim goes to work too, chasing after a tribesman who discovered Sheena’s dropped spear, rushing back to his village for reinforcements. 

Sheena, meanwhile, is dragged around limp as Nada orders her witch doctors to begin the sacrificial ceremony. She is tossed into the swamp just as Bob appears with Buta. Page 11 contains an awesome central frame of Bob atop Buta, firing his gun at the crocodiles as they wade into the water. Buta lifts Sheena to safety with her trunk while kicking a nearby crocodile in the process. Nada can be seen in the background, seething with rage. Page 12 switches to a nine-panel grid. Here, we learn Sheena’s supposed connection with animals may in fact be bullshit, as Buta decides to chase Nada down and crush her to a pulp while Sheena and Bob watch from atop her back in shock. This all unfolds in the third and second last frames, with the final frame of the strip reserved for the awkward walk home while Sheena and Bob just sit in silence as their unhinged elephant friend drag’s Nada’ brain matter behind them. The narration pane reads, “An hour later Sheena and Bob turn away from the village and head for home with peace reigning again,” implying they watched Buta step on Nada for an entire hour, which is fucking hilarious. 

Jumbo #24 simply begins with Sheena and Bob “taking life easy after their last adventure…” suggesting that perhaps Buta’s outburst left some emotional scars. Sheena and Bob are hunting a leopard (which is coloured entirely black, meaning it’s actually a jaguar, which live in South America, not Africa, which means that this, like all past strips, is going to be playing the facts fast and loose – but hey, that’s what I’m here for) The first two pages are pure suspense, with some great-looking foliage and well-composed shots, like Bob sneaking up on the cat only to have another get the jump on him. The following two pages break into action as Sheena leaps to save Bob. She tangles with the jaguar but is bitten by a snake mid fight, prompting Bob to turn his attention to saving her from the now furious wildcat. Though the jaguars themselves look a bit derpy, Sheena and Bob look great here, and it’s some of the best character modelling yet. 

Bob gets Sheena to a village for medical help, but the doctors state she has only a few days to live if not treated, and the medicine she needs is located on the coast. Thus, we get a Bob story, as he rushes out to save the woman he loves. In fact, the entire continent comes together, with drum signals ringing out across Africa. Page 4 shows this signal across the M’Lobo, Membikk, and Gindii Oro peoples, with an overlay image of the continent pasted atop the tribes coming to pay their respects. 

Near the bottom of page 4 we see ugly villainy in its purest form as three outlaws plan to go on a robbery spree. We then switch back to Bob who, after a grueling two-day hike from the Congo to Mombasa, kidnaps doctor Mohammed Bey by gunpoint (instead of just asking nicely) and escapes by horseback. The two push on through the savannah, with a gorgeous spread of landscapes and a map connoting their route through Africa placed in the centre of the page. As they rush back to Sheena the pair just so happen to pass through the village the outlaws decided to rob. A terrific gun and fistfight ensues, with Bob and the doctor cutting through the trio in a no nonsense fashion. The dynamism on display here is matched with detailed jungle backdrops and excellent framing, making this issue (in-spite of this shoehorned conflict) one of the best of the series thus far in terms of action. 

Bob saves the doctor from a bullet but collapses from exhaustion shortly thereafter. Mohammed contemplates sneaking away from his captor, but instead stays with him. The police chasing the captured doctor arrive shortly thereafter, but Mohammed simply instructs them to arrest the outlaws while he and Bob push on. After another page of the men cutting through dense jungle with machetes, the strip ends with Bob and Mohammed arriving at the village only to find that Sheena had been cured without the need for extra medicine. Meanwhile, Mohammed inquires as to what the doctors did to treat her, but is told he’s too white to understand. So, the moral of the story is that kidnapping doesn’t pay. Or, it is alright as long as it’s for a hot piece of ass. Or, if you do get poisoned, better to just wait it out. I don’t know. 

Jumbo #25 is a classic adventure story in the vein of H. Rider Haggard, with a little bit of horror mixed in for good measure. Two explorers, Jeff Spalding and Ahn Kamin, approach Sheena’s village in search of the lost city of Eypta. Kamin says that the city is a myth, but Spalding insists it is nearby. Sheena and Bob confirm that no temple exists around their village at all, whatsoever, period – except maybe on that one hill they haven’t checked (it’s always the last place you look). 

This setup unfolds across the first two pages brilliantly, with the strip introduced by Sheena and Chim holding onto the opening frame next to the title font. We also get a flashback preview of Kamin in the city, casting a protective spell before we meet him with Spalding, letting the reader know he is up to no good. 

Kamin beats the trio to the lost city, sneaking in a secret entrance in order to awaken a sleeping mummy. Kamin injects the mummy with a “secret fluid”, promptly instructing the corpse who has been asleep for millennia to go and kill “Jeff”. 

The lost city of Eypta is, unsurprisingly, inspired by Egyptian architecture, though its main structure is more of a short mastaba with a staircase circling the outside. Inside, the rooms are decisively square, with scant décor. The green, red, and yellow stone also gives the tomb a warm, bleached feel, despite the fact it is hidden deep underground and within a jungle. 

Moving back to Sheena, Bob, and Spalding, page 4 sees Sheena battle a charging rhino as they make their way to the location of Eypta. The conflict ends on page 5 when Bob snipes it from a distance. Just as things settle down and the trio make camp, the mummy catches up with Spalding and knocks him unconscious before hauling him back to the tomb. Sheena and Bob follow Chim, who leads them to the temple, though upon arrival they cannot find a way inside. At the base of page 6, we see Sheena placing her hand upon the temple’s stone surface, immediately followed the next frame by Kamin greeting Spalding as he regains consciousness, finding himself tied to a block. 

Meanwhile, Chim accidentally stumbles across a secret entrance to the temple. Page 7 ends with Sheena and Chim casting long shadows upon a cave wall, framing the scene from a bird’s eye perspective. They barge in to interrupt the sacrificial ceremony, with Sheena attempting to wrestle the mummy down by jumping on its back. Bob enters just in time to stop Kamin from throwing a dagger at Sheena. Though Kamin appears to have been defeated, and Bob undoes Spalding’s bindings, the fight is not over, as Sheena has been carried to the top of the temple by the mummy. Her and Chim battle the reanimated corpse at the edge of the cliff, when Bob appears and tells Sheena to crouch behind the mummy. Bob then hurls himself forward, knocking the beast over Sheena and down the cliffside. It’s a terrific action pane, almost akin to one of Buscema’s dramatic landscapes in Savage Sword of Conan

The group head back inside to discover a pool of blood where Kamin had fallen after being shot. They follow the trail to a set of stairs, with the blood leading the reader to the next frame. Barging into the chamber, Kamin tosses a spear, hitting Spalding in the chest and killing him instantly. Bob catches Spalding’s limp body while Sheena rushes forward. A dramatic tackle viewed from the side ends page 11, while page 12 opens with a dramatic swipe, and then retreat, by Kamin. Sheena catches up to the injured sorcerer, only to see him succumb to his wounds and tumble down the staircase. Powell brilliantly emphasizes the weight of his fall via a tilted perspective of Kamin at the top, switching to Sheena’s view a frame later as he falls, creating a dizzying sense of vertigo. 

Jumbo #25 has an impeccable pace, with each page ending on a cliffhanger, and no one fight or situation lasting more than two pages. It constantly changes up the scenery, keeps the action pertinent, and the dramatic use of shadows and line of action make it truly exciting to read. Even with such a silly setup, it’s pure adventure from start to finish. 

Ancient temples, slave traders, and witch doctors are one thing, but the biggest threat to African peace is undoubtedly invasive species of cats – specifically, tigers. In Jumbo #26, Sheena and Bob meet a tribe whose chief wears a tiger skin. Bob is shocked at the revelation, as is Sheena, who despite knowing nothing about geography or the large feline species of the Asiatic continent, is appalled by the man’s clothing. The chief explains that they border the (aptly named) Taboo Jungle. A guide takes them as far as the perimetre but then runs away in hysterics. 

Once inside the mess of foliage, Sheena and Bob discover two skeletons. Bob picks up the “native’s skull” and, while he’s distracted, a tiger ambushes the group. Most of page 3 is devoted to Sheena’s acrobatics as she cuts the cat multiple times, gripping its back as it attempts to buck her off before she uses her legs to catch the cat in a chokehold while stabbing it in the heart. Just as she goes to check whether Bob is alright, Prince Khan, Hindu ruler of the Taboo Jungle, emerges from the woods to congratulate Sheena on her display of valiance. The pair follow him to his palace, with Khan promising Bob first aid. Here, it is revealed that Prince Khan has much more than just an elementary knowledge of medicine; he has a working power plant to power his palace. After wrapping Bob’s wounded arm, the tour continues, wherein they investigate a curious sound coming from another room. The prince states they are his game for hunting, revealed to be tribesmen from the village bordering the Taboo Jungle. Sheena and Bob lash out but the prince stops them at gunpoint, stating he will give them an hour head start. 

As they soon discover, Prince Khan isn’t using the power plant to play Xbox — he has rigged explosive traps throughout the jungle, meaning Sheena and Bob, who mostly keep their eyes locked on the ground and away from the predators stalking them, now have to actually pay attention to shit if they want to survive. 

The general idea of upping the ante from the Island of Dr. Moreau to include grenade trip wires and tigers is kind of awesome. Great use of trees and silhouettes keep the claustrophobia strong throughout as well, always framing the hunted pair as barely squeezing through. 

The tables turn on page 10 when Sheena, Bob, and Chim set a trap for Prince Khan and his tigers, with Sheena going full Tarzan with her vine swinging, grabbing the prince and hauling him up the treetops for a final showdown. 

Meanwhile, Bob bumps tigers from Africa’s invasive species list to the extinct one, unloading on the (remarkably well-trained) cats. Page 12 begins with the prince and Sheena embroiled in an intense battle, with Khan’s landlubber footwork being no match for Sheena’s nimble traversal skills. She swings down to deliver a kick into the prince’s chest, sending him to a neck-breaky fate. The final four frames of the strip hastily wrap things up, with a thumbnail of the palace leading to Bob shooting the last of Prince Khan’s servants point-blank with little more than a footnote before setting the prisoners free. Curiously, the strip ends with Sheena having a revelation about how animals must feel when hunted – I guess we’ll see if that bit of empathy sticks. 

On the cover of Jumbo #27, we can see that it evidently has not. Sheena stabs a saber-toothed Violator while Bob shoots it in the back. Inside, we find out that Sheena and Bob have become bored with the “hum-drum” village life and decide to go out for a walk… to Kenya. It’s a magnificent shot, with the trio looking out to a rolling landscape with an active volcano in the distance. While the hills are all untextured and rounded, the volcano itself is hatched and textured to be rugged, inviting the group to climb it. 

This is exactly what they end up doing, with a hilarious third frame on page 3 depicting Bob pointing towards a cave opening with a smile on his face while fire literally surrounds the group on all sides. 

The entire second page consists of shots depicting their journey through the volcano, with several silhouette images used to great effect. Eventually, they emerge into a lush jungle, though Bob notes that the vegetation is completely foreign to where they came from. 

They quickly learn that the wildlife in this area too is several millennia out of place. A woolly mammoth and saber-toothed tiger soon approach the group. Unlike advertised, however, Sheena and Bob do not double-team the wild cat, but rather Chim accidentally drops a rock on its head, knocking it unconscious. 

Having narrowly avoided death, Bob decides it would be best to split up and explore this hostile landscape alone – you know, in case he runs into any old squeezes from Harvard or something. This plan immediately backfires as Bob is glass jawed by a group of “savages” and taken away. 

There have been allusions to the war effort prior to this. On page 6 the book takes a slight detour into war comics territory, with R.A.F. Captain Starling is tasked with delivering a message to South Africa. On the way, he dog fights his way through a squadron of “enemy” aircraft, easily dispatching the lot. It’s a great bit of action and brave changeup halfway into a twelve-page story. 

After the fight, the captain makes an evasive maneuver through the volcano cave opening, inadvertently landing in the prehistoric paradise. He too is quickly apprehended and taken to be sacrificed at the stake alongside Bob. At this point, it’s been nearly four pages since we’ve seen Sheena. After failing to meet her at the arranged time and place, Sheena goes looking for Bob and finds evidence of the ambush. She then follows the tracks to the outskirts of the native camp, where she lights a torch and sets their village ablaze. In the chaos, the trio escape back to Starling’s plane, but take off only to realize that they have left Chim behind. 

The roaring blaze of the fire as the group runs to the plane with the tribe hot on their heels before deciding to turn around to get Chim, is pure adrenaline-pumping action. Starling opts to fly low while Sheena hangs out with a rope, ready to drop down and grab Chim. However, the rope breaks, sending her and Chim into a pond while the plane has to loop back around. The tribe closes in on Sheena and Chim, but Starling covers them, unloading his machine gun into the crowd of cannibals while the pair leap for the remaining line of rope to climb back to safety. 

It’s a wicked display of aerial acrobatics and dynamism, with Sheena’s line of action as she hangs on to the rope and the stampeding tribesmen as they are gunned down giving each panel an incredible sense of dynamism. 

Starling flies out through the cave and back to Kenya, and the comic ends with Chim, Sheena, and Bob waving to Sterling as he continues his mission. It’s a great advertisement for the fighting spirit of the British, but also a wonderful action comic in its own right. Just when the tropes may have started to become long in the tooth, and even with a premise as plain as, “we’re bored, let’s go inside a volcano”, Jumbo #27 is a spectacular comic on all fronts, and stands as not only a war-adventure hybrid, but an incredibly exciting read nearly a century later. 

In Jumbo #28, a “fake” black dude tricks a tribe into ransacking and kidnapping a commissioner. The Great Black Father, as he is known, wears a suit, smokes a cigar, and carries a sidearm. Sheena and Bob fight their way out of his grip several times, with the captured Commissioner Fletcher revealing that the Great Black Father is actually a tool of the “fascists”. Sheena manages to escape capture a second time, rendezvousing with Commissioner Fletcher’s wife and setting a trap for the imposter. The strip ends with all returning to normal, and Sheena and Bob being invited to the Wasuri celebration. In all other tribal conflicts solved in the series thus far there has never a celebration of culture shown like this. 

Jumbo #29 utilizes a flashback frame to start off the strip, with the opening panel previewing Sheena, Bob, and Chim riding atop elephants before starting the story proper. 

The trio are ambushed by a group of zebra-riding pygmies. Sheena and Bob quickly overcome the chief, lifting him from his mount and bringing him to the treetops where they interrogate him. It turns out that the Pygmies believed Sheena and Bob were attempting to thwart their elephant hunt. And, wouldn’t you know it, before Bob can say “elephant hunt?”, a stampede of elephants comes through the jungle. A brilliant action sequence plays out over several pages as Sheena and Bob ride atop the animals. On page 5, Sheena is thrown from the back of an elephant and her fall transpires over several frames, breaking through the panel borders. 

Sheena is then pinned to a tree between a bull elephant’s tusks. Bob frees her, and the bull by proxy. The animal corners them atop a rock, but it’s here they realize the animal is no longer chasing them, but rather trying to thank them for freeing it. Bob ascertains that the bull was a domestic animal from scars on its foot. 

As it turns out, the Pygmies were actually bribed by a militia to stop a French brigade. This brigade helps stop the stampede of elephants by downing a tree. Sheena and Bob agree to help retake the French garrison with the help of their new elephant friends. The assault occurs on pages 11 and 12, with Bob settling “the pygmy problem” by way of plowing through them. 

The battle with the militia is muted in comparison to the Pygmy slaughter, being quickly condensed into half a page (though the elephant does overhand a grenade back at his attackers, which is awesome). The French then thank Sheena and Bob for their efforts, and the trio ride off into the sunset with their new elephant friend. 

R.H. Webb did the art for this issue. Though the action and page composition are great, character modelling is less consistent, with Sheena having suffered the most. The clash in the first panel of page 11 is incredible, with numerous action lines erupting from around the elephant’s trunk, sending human and zebra bodies flying. On page 8 Sheena pulls Chim up to safety, and her hair becomes unkempt and falls over her face. It may be a small detail, but it adds a nice bit of drama and authenticity to the action, considering how elegant and put together she is all of the time. The elephants really are the stars of the show here. Being the focus and center of so many panels, it’s easy to overlook other inconsistencies in facial constructions or proportions. 

Jumbo #30 is a slightly weaker entry in terms of character modelling, though it does still play with the panel layouts in interesting ways. The opening frame depicts Sheena whipping a man (De Mond), resulting in his body doing… something. It’s a bizarre preview of the awkwardness to come, with his strange posture coupled with his out of perspective hat and his green pants blending into the background. 

We quickly learn that this pretzel of a man is a tobacco farmer, and is planning on stealing a village’s crop. Upon pulling his car over to the side of the road, the village children hop on top of it, as though they were modelled after monkeys. Inside the council lodge, Sheena acts as an advisor to M-Gali, informing him of the financial success their tobacco has afforded the tribe. It’s a curious detail, with Sheena again acting not just as a “halfway” between African and American, but seemingly being most concerned with making money. 

De Mond enters the council chamber and begins his “art of the deal” chat, ending with Sheena tackling him to the ground and tossing him out. On page 3, two connected circular frames mimic binoculars, which is one of the strip’s few thoughtful effects. Bob spies the tribe’s fields being set ablaze, prompting Sheena to get her hands dirty building a ditch around the crop. The following day, Sheena and Bob set off to sell the crop. Unbeknownst to them, De Mond’s luck is on the up, and he has found one of the few lion dealers of the jungle. He purchases a cat and sets it loose, with it leaping out and attacking Sheena directly (instead of De Mond, who is standing next to the cage). Sheena makes quick work of the cat in a three-panel fight while Bob watches. Curiously, the cat’s teeth and gums stand out in the scan I read, perhaps implying that they were added on another layer. However, on pages 6 and 7, Sheena’s head appears to have been reproduced nearly identically between the final panels, with only the contours of her hair being adjusted, perhaps also suggesting some copy/paste printing techniques. 

Sheena catches up to De Mond by taking the tree route, with page 5 ending with her looking out to the road as his car drives by. Bob’s gun in hand, she shoots out De Mond’s tire. He escapes before Sheena can confront him, but shortly thereafter Sheena and Bob are ambushed and taken back to M-Gali’s village. De Mond has made up a story about Sheena preparing to attack the tribe, which M-Gali quickly dismisses. Sheena is a friend, he states, and she would never plan such an atrocious act. De Mond then offers M-Gali a couple of bucks if the tribe will cook and eat Sheena, to which he (suspiciously) quickly agrees. 

As the tribe prepares to engage in cannibalism after only the slightest of prods, Bob escapes his bindings and rushes out to his girlfriend’s aid. The final panel of page 8 shows Sheena in portrait view, head resting on a block of wood while a sword is lowered towards her neck. She stares fearlessly forward, though as another artistic oddity, her eyes are fully coloured green and are considerably larger than usual, giving her a feline-like appearance. Transparency effects are used to moderate success in the silhouettes on page 9 after Sheena is freed, while some odd stance and perspective choices at the top of the page with Bob somewhat nullify the suspense of the escape sequence. 

With the cannibalism plan falling short, De Mond goes to plan B: machine gun. Bob manages to knock down De Mond’s associate, allowing Sheena to toss a knife directly into his throat. It’s a fantastic sequence on page 10 and 11, with detail like the machine gun sitting overtop the final frame as De Mond runs towards it, while Sheena stands with her back turned in the following frame. After a brief wrestling match, De Mond is apprehended and taken back to the village where he is tied to a stake and executed by firing squad. The shadow silhouette is used here once more, and coupled with the throat stab, this is one of the more gruesome displays of violence in the series thus far. 

While the story could have wrapped up on page 11, page 12 acts as an epilogue. Returning from the tobacco market, Bob presents M-Gali with cigars. It’s another bit that riding the line between soft imperialism and trade, with the moral being to embrace the philanthropic white folk helping establish a new economy. 

Though she was always seen for her race, she was treated as African at the beginning of the series. Now, she is clearly a Westerner, having only travelled with Bob for around two years. The themes of Westerners taking back Africa, or using it as a proxy battleground, are striking in issues 20 through 30. Sheena would continue on for another several years, eventually spinning off from Jumbo and into her own self-titled book. Whereas other jungle girl books we have looked at on Post Rendered are shorter and more evocative of their specific era, Sheena is so fascinating because of its continued evolution.

You can download Sheena: Jumbo Comics Archive Pt. 1 here.

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