Fear in the Jungle (comic story)
Fear in the Jungle is a now-public-domain comic story which was originally printed in July 1954 in Fantastic Fears #8. It introduced Kaza, a one-off jungle-hero character who, after falling into the public domain, would gain a new lease of life as the protagonist of the Jenny Everywhere-adjacent webcomic Kaza's Mate, Gwenna, now paired up with Gwenna, a hitherto-unrelated public-domain jungle-heroine.
The story was actually a lightly-edited reskin of The Dauntless Dowager, a July 1949 story starring Jo-Jo the Congo King, which changed character names while leaving the story and art intact. While Matilda Marshall and Dorothy Gray's names remained the same, Jo-Jo was replaced with Kaza and Tom Payne with Tom Rubio.
Plot
In New York City, the elderly wealthiest woman in the world, Matilda Marshall, annoys her gold-digging suitor Tom Rubio by announcing that she's wide to his pecuniary designs. She tells him that she has instead decided to set her sights on a very different new husband: Kaza, a dreamy jungle-hero she's heard about.
In Congo, the Commissioner gets wind of her interest, and, because the British government has ordered the Commissioner to help her in any way he can due to her connections in high places, warns Kaza that he will be forced to cooperate with her scheme to take him back to America to marry him if put on the spot, thus advising Kaza to lie low for a while. However, due to being attacked by big-cats and serpents on the way to the Commissioner's house after receiving his summons, Kaza arrives too late, and finds himself faced with the arriving Matilda — as well as her rather more attractive companion Dorothy Gray, who takes a shine to him in turn.
The talkative foreigner soon bullies a sullen Kaza into going on an elephant-ride with her, while Tom Rubio, who has followed Marshall to Africa, decides to try and murder Kaza so she'll be forced to give up on her fanciful plan and wind up marrying him instead. When the tribe of natives for whom Kaza acts as a protector is attacked by a pack of enraged gorillas, Kaza leaps into action, single-handedly fighting the “hairy brutes”; when one makes off with Dorothy, he goes to save her, leaving Matilda behind much to the old woman's ire, especially when another gorilla begins to climb onto the elephant. However, he soon loses interest in her and leaves, which Matilda attributes to Kaza coming back and scaring it away.
While Kaza is distracted, however, Rubio takes his shot, missing him and wounding one of the natives in the shoulder instead. Kaza pursues him and charges straight at him, saved from another gunshot by Rubio's gun jamming on him at the last moment (which Kaza attributes to “the Jungle Fates” favouring good over evil). He quickly disarms the ruffian and forces him to explain himself. Upon learning that they essentially want the same thing (for Matilda to give up on Kaza and return to America), however, he decides to strongarm him into working together in a non-lethal way, telling him to challenge Kaza to a fight and then win it. Though not really understanding the situation, Rubio agrees, and after Kaza melodramatically throws the fight, Matilda loses her interest in the seemingly quite weak Kaza and sees Rubio in a new light, returning to New York with him. Meanwhile, Dorothy is free to pursue her interest in Kaza, which seems to be reciprocated.
Worldbuilding
Universes
- This story takes place all in one universe.
Behind the scenes
Read online
Being in the public domain in the U.S., the comic is available for free on the Digital Comics Museum website. It can also be read here:
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