JUNGLE COMICS 331
tended to fi ght the usual evil slave traders and bad white guys who were out to steal
some innocent native tribe’s gold or jewels.
What kept Camilla from being merely one more Sheena copycat was her art. During
the war, and for a few years after, she was elegantly drawn by a woman artist, Fran
Hopper, who drew a good number of comics for Fiction House. By the later 1940s,
Camilla was taken over by Tiger Girl artist Matt Baker. His Camilla had class, and
wore her zebra skin with the grace of a high fashion model displaying her mink. After
Baker left the strip in the early 1950s, it was drawn by various other artists, and while it
was never badly drawn, the spark was gone. Camilla lasted until Jungle Comics ended in
1954, but by then she was just another jungle girl.
By 1947, Sheena and her vine-swinging sisters and brother were selling so many
comics that other publishers decided to get into the act. Fox Feature Syndicate was
one of the fi rst publishers to hitch a ride on Sheena’s furry coat-tails with their comic,
Rulah, Jungle Goddess. Unlike Sheena, Rulah is hardly a feral girl growing up with jungle
animals. In fact, she is an adventurous American named Jane Dodge.
Jane is a loner and a plucky woman. Th e story starts with her at the controls of her
private plane, fl ying over the jungle: “Flying around like a lone eagle... no home...
no family... just money and a search for adventure.” Something goes wrong with the
engine, and Jane parachutes out over the jungle. As for her plane, it crash-lands on top
of a giraff e. Her clothes ripped to shreds by the crash, Jane slices herself a bikini out of
the skin of the late giraff e. She says, “Good thing the sun is hot, and I can cure the skin
quickly.” Sure enough, the next panel shows her lacing the outfi t together with lines
from her parachute, after which she sets out to look for help. Jane is next seen in her
giraff e suit, swinging from branch to branch like Tarzan’s kid sister. She has learned,
says the caption, “that tree traveling is speedier than trudging through the profuse jungle
growth.”
Meanwhile, for some inexplicable reason there is another white woman in the jungle
of Africa. Her name is Nurla; she wears a bizarre two-piece getup, and, wrapping her-
self in Jane’s parachute silk, she declares to the African villagers that she is a “moon
goddess.” In the process of convincing the Africans, who are portrayed as gullible idiots,
that Nurla is an impostor, Jane kills a cobra with a knife that she just happens to have
on her, leaps out of trees with the knife in her teeth, catches a spear in mid-air, and
fi nally bests a leopard in hand-to-claw combat. Th e natives name her Rulah and declare
that she is a goddess. Any American girl with no previous jungle experience who can
out-do Sheena in vine-swinging and big cat-killing — not to mention her superb style
sense in fashioning a bikini out of a dead giraff e—has got to be a goddess.
Jane, alias Rulah, likes being a goddess and decides to stay in Africa. Because one
cannot be a jungle girl without a wild animal pet, she eventually acquires a black pan-
ther, Saber, who in his own furry way plays Lois Lane to her Superman. Saber seems to
always get attacked by vicious wild boars and rhinos, or caught in traps, so that Rulah
can come to his rescue with her trusty knife. In one story, she even protects him from an
attacking tiger, which is quite a feat, since there are no tigers in Africa. In return, Saber
