After witnessing the blonde bombshell, ass kickin' horror action of our previous post HERE --I feel this voluptuous vibe has totally set us up for a wild, week long theme! Enter another fair haired, hard hittin' honey, this time in a juicy jungle jolter from the July 1954 issue of of Cave Girl #13! The great, Gardner Fox wrote the script, while Bob Powell delivers the va-va-va-visuals and pummlin', powerhouse savagery of manhandlin' Carol Mantomer, aka Cave Girl-- who makes her dynamic debut here at THOIA too, I might add! If you ever wondered what Poe's Pit and the Pendulum would be like in a jungle setting, well, --it's swingin' your way NOW!
6 comments:
We haven't had a jungle girl story in a while!
BTW, I don't know if it's just the selection that we've seen here but scheming and backstabbing medicine men seems to be a common theme in these stories. Without his interference, basically nothing stops Cave Girl. Once she is free she just mows through the Amazons and then constructs an elaborate ... overly elaborate ... trap.
I do have to say I might have re-arranged this a bit. The ending feels rushed.
Powell, as always, turns in some great work. The elephants are excellent. Every time they are on a panel they are amazingly rendered. Second to last panel is just beautiful.
I wish some of these stories would give us something a bit more interesting for our jungle girls. Hot white lady in a tiger skin. I mean, nothing wrong with that! But a gimmick couldn't hurt!
I hereby approve this va-va-voom vigil here on THOIA! Thanks for sharing this amazing art as always :)
My only problem with the "female good guy defeats female bad guy (s)" idea is how big a CLICHE it became in adventure stories.
But this is before a lot of that, and it's an unusual story.
As far as I know, most Amazon stories and "all-female civilization" stories have MEN arriving and "putting everything back in order." As in, men in charge.
Here, a female character does it.
More female good guys coming up— for the next few posts anyway! In fact, I've had a couple patiently waiting on the ‘ol THOIA back burner / axe altar for a while now. Everyone stay tuned, and as always thank you for the great comments! :)
The pendulum without the pit, with a Jungle Princess straight out of TV Tropes added.
The problem with these stories is that the White Saviour/ess never seems to do anything until he or she is personally put in danger, or someone he or she personally cares about is. That goes right back to the first Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan book where Tarzan has no problem watching a cannibal tribe kill and eat black people, but as soon as they capture a white woman - the future Mrs Tarzan, Jane herself - he immediately swings into action to rescue her.
In this tale, not how the Amazons are *cave girl's* enemies, not the enemies of the village that they've been looting.
Powell's art is is always so good--bold, aggressive, thick-lined, totally self-assured. Even the nonwhite characters seem less racist looking than usual. I really love the last two panels on page four and the middle row of seven.
It's bending my mind trying to imagine setting up a bow to fire a projectile straight down. With a "hair trigger". With stuff you'd find in a tree. How did she keep the spears from just falling out of the trap? She's definitely a better engineer than I am.
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