How do heroines in skimpy animal skins deal with snowy locales?
Have a look at this gorgeous story and find out!
Now
that warmed my chilly bones!
In the 1940s-50s, one of the most popular genres in comics was the "jungle hero", the most famous one of all being
Tarzan.
A horde of imitators followed, with some interesting variations, including an entire sub-genre--the "jungle
heroine"!
While many had weird names like
"Sheena",
"Rulah", or
"Zoot", one of the best-illustrated was known
only as
"Cave Girl"!
Beginning as a backup in the first issue of Frank Frazetta's
Thun'da comic,
Cave Girl was a little girl named
Carol, whose explorer parents were killed by natives in the jungle they were mapping.
Before Carol could also be put to death, an eagle swooped down and took the child to it's nest.
There, the eagle and a wolf raised the girl to young adulthood, teaching her how to survive and communicate with other animals.
Though in the first couple of stories, the jungle was shown to be home
to timelost creatures like sabretooth tigers and Neanderthals, by the
time she got her own title, it was pretty much a generic jungle heroine
strip...with one notable exception!
Legendary "good girl" and romance artist Bob Powell handled the art as
Cave Girl cut a svelte path thru Africa's villains from backup feature in every issue of
Thun'da to four exciting issues of her own title as well as a one-shot entitled
Africa: Thrilling Land of Mystery!
This story from Magazine Enterprises' Cave Girl #11 (1953), her premiere issue, was produced by her co-creators, writer Gardner Fox and illustrator Bob Powell.
