JUNGLE GALLERY

 Nyoka. nullifying nuisances.

SILLY SAURIANS

 I've posted once or twice about the female lead of goofy manga GIRLS SAURUS, but she had a couple of loony sisters who gave the hero a "rough trade" time.  

In a separate adventure Chiryuu tries to avoid one of the young girls coming on to him, and he crashes into the invulnerable boobs of Fusou, mature schoolteacher and "sadist" (according to what she says about herself above). I'm not sure a guy hurting himself on a woman's phenomenally hard boobs counts as violence on the part of the female-- I guess one might call it "passive resistance?" The fact that Fusou doesn't even notice Chiryuu crashing into her suggests a deflected "limp dick" joke, but it's not a certain-sure thing.

  

HER LITTLE MARGIE PT 2

 "Her Peculiar Pop" (MARGIE 38) changes things up a little, as Pop Pat gets clobbered by a woman he only dances with for work purposes. Of course this leads to static from the wife too. 

Then Rusty gets a little more into bondage in "Who Sent for an Inventor?"

MARGIE #39 has symbolic violence in the RUSTY story:

Followed by real violence after Dagwood, er, Johnny is told to be friendlier:

Making its first appearance on this blog is the strip "Ruffy Ropes," a goofy boxer whose peaceful girlfriend beats up people who disagree with her.

  Back to Margie, once again inciting rather than performing violence in "Beauty is as Beauty Does:"

  Nothing to do with sadism, but in MARGIE 46, Patsy Walker's friendly foe Hedy gets confused by rave reviews for actress HEDY DEVINE, who had her own Timely title.

In MARGIE #46, we get JEANIE getting jabby.

HER LITTLE MARGIE

 This essay was one of many I've written about the appearance of sadism-scenarios in popular comics, taking issue with "Gershon Legman's claim that all teenage comedy comics were just filled to the brim with young women panting with desire to harm/humiliate fathers and boyfriends." That didn't mean that no particular artists didn't exploit such scenarios, in keeping with all of my posts about Chic Young's BLONDIE and such imitators as Timely's RUSTY.

Another example was Timely stalwart Morris Weiss, who used such scenarios frequently in the two teen features for which he did the most work: TESSIE THE TYPIST and MARGIE. I'll looked at TESSIE a while back, so now I'll devote a few posts to MARGIE. 

MARGIE #36 (1946), the second issue of the teen heroine's own comic (I have no idea what the numbering continued from), puts her dad "Pat" in hot water right away, though the torture's only symbolic here.

In "Margie's Big Date," the teen is suddenly aware that some company publishes fictional versions of her adventures. (And the Fantastic Four thought they were so special!) But she doesn't like the way she's portrayed, so she goes down to the publisher and clobbers editor Stan Lee himself. I like the way she tells the editor not to "blame the poor artist," meaning Morris Weiss, who was IMO probably both writing and drawing the feature.

Editor Lee (looking nothing like Real Lee as a young man) is so turned on the head-bash that he asks the high-school girl out for a dinner date. However, at the restaurant Lee ducks out on Margie because she embarrasses him by chasing after "Bang Swoonatra" for an autograph. Lee is thus spared Margie's feminine wrath, which Margie takes out on Bang (whose real-world model, like Lee, was considerably older than a high-schooler). 

  In the next story, Poor Old Pat gets both symbolic bondage--

And a real kicking-out from his wife, who was usually seen punishing the father in place of any direct daughter-mayhem.   

   We get a pause for variety with a RUSTY strip. The loyal redhead Blondie-clone spends most of the story watching her stupid husband injure himself in skating stunts, and only at the end she threatens to wreak violence on him herself rather than allowing him to continue his behavior-- though of course by the next story, he'll find some new way to act the ass.   

And finally, Pat and his son "Poison" try to rig things to reduce the impact of Margie's social life on their quiet lives, with the result that the mother (not sure she had a name) once more sends Daddy flying.

  

   

JUNGLE GALLERY

 

Sheena leads the pack, as always.

However, Camilla comes in second with two strong showings.

However, a story I'll entitle (for reference) as "The Death Idol" (JUNGLE COMICS #46, 1943) requires a little explication. In it, an evil chieftain named Kann has set up an idol that dispenses death to those who come near it, for the idol dispenses deadly germs. Kann denies his sister Lelia the right to marry her beloved, the strangely named tribesman "Red Rogue," though Kann gives no reason for the injunction. Foreign Legionnaire Terry Thunder, having wandered very far from his usual North African haunts, gets involved. Despite the hero's presence, Lelia saves the day. She stumbles across the door in the back of the idol, and when her brother gets close, she triggers the germs, kills him, and gains the freedom to marry her beloved. As for the most unusual aspect of "Idol," Lelia is portrayed as the only White person in an otherwise Black tribe. But since this wasn't a strip by Black artist Matt Baker-- an artist who frequently had his heroes encounter tribes of Black men married to White women, I suppose for his own amusement-- it's pretty likely that Lelia was simply intended to be Black but a colorist rendered her as White.            

CHESHIRE CATTING AROUND

 When the villainess Cheshire cats around, it's her victims that do a fade, be it fast or slow.

These all appeared in ACTION COMICS WEEKLY, and these particular issues only had one lousy punchout from a heroine, elf-eared Arisis Rrab clouting a flirty creep.

Then we're back to Hoodlum Girls as the Lantern takes on "Runaround Sue"-- no comment needed.

JUMBO THRILLS

 No scene like the cover of JUMBO 105 inside the comic. 

The Sheena story concerns the Jungle Queen contending with juvenile warriors, whom her mate calls "the Dead End Kids of the jungle." Along the way she beats up some more standard villains.

 

FROM HERE TO OBSCURITY

I had never noticed Fox Comics' ALL GREAT COMICS title, and I find it hilarious that the cover to issue 14 claims that any of these comic strip features (aside from BRENDA STARR) were "famous" even in 1947. There's no scene resembling the tough-girl fisticuffs in the "Surgeon Smith" feature, so it's almost certainly something that was whipped up to sell the book.

   Worthy of a quick look is the 2-page feature THE KRIME KIDS, whose format does not look like any sort of newspaper comic strip. In it, the mischievous brats first tease, and then venerate, the dynamic "Sweet Miss Carroll."

 

An issue of ALL GREAT designated only as "1945" on Comic Book Plus includes more obscurities, like "Pussy Katnip," a borderline superhero in the funny animal genre.

In a humor strip called "Bill Buster," Bill gets busted up by a tough girl named Mabel.

TERRA-RIZED

 

The Gold Key villainess (not the DC character) TERRA OF JERZ, who hands Mighty Samson a shocking time.