Jo-Jo Congo King (comic story)
Jo-Jo Congo King is a now-public-domain comic story which was originally printed in July 1947 in Jo-Jo Congo King #7A (which, despite appearances, was actually the first issue of the comic in that form; its numbering carried on from six issues of “Jo-Jo Comics” by the same publisher which did not feature the Congo King character at all, instead focusing on a cast of funny-animals characters).
It introduced the titular Jo-Jo the Congo King, as well as Gwenna. After falling into the public domain, a rebooted Gwenna would gain a new lease of life as the protagonist of the Jenny Everywhere-adjacent webcomic Kaza's Mate, Gwenna, now paired up with Kaza, a distinct jungle-hero character who originated a renamed version of Jo-Jo in a reprint of a later Jo-Jo Congo King story.
Gwenna was short-lived within the pages of Jo-Jo, being replaced as early as the very next Jo-Jo story by a largely-identical character instead known as Geesha. Notably, although Geesha (like multiple further renamed variations on the same character archetype) was a love interest to Jo-Jo, this was not explicitly the case with Gwenna, who was referred to only as his friend. Another notable trait of this original Gwenna is that the script patently assumed her to be a native woman, only for her to be coloured as white (an ethnicity retained by the Kaza's Mate Gwenna version).
Plot
A white outlaw visits the jungle Jo-Jo the Congo King calls home, looking for the origin of a golden statuette he found. The corrupt tribal chief Ungulla informs him that the object originated with, and indeed depicts, his hated rival Gwenna, the Queen of the Bonangi. He is more than willing to go along with a plan to rob her village of all its gold, but fears Gwenna's friend, Jo-Jo — who at this very moment is imploring Gwenna to get rid of her prized golden kitchenware and decorations, having foreseen that they will attract evil to the village sooner or later.
This comes to pass sooner rather than later as the white outlaw initiates his plan: he brought steel plates and uses them to armour Ungulla's elephant, dubbing him “the Iron Beast”. With this living and invulnerable battering ram fronting the army of Ungulla's men, they attack the village and quickly ransack it. Jo-Jo runs rather than stay to be shot, and, gathering surviving Bonangi, stages an ambush on the way back to Ungulla's village, collapsing trees in the Iron Beast's path. Leaping onto the elephant, Jo-Jo uses a burning torch to smoke the outlaw out of the tank-like compartment he'd built into the Beast's armour. As he tries to flee, the villain is crushed by the panicking elephant.
Subsequently, the Bonangi capture Ungulla but, on Jo-Jo's advice, let the rest of his people go free. Gwenna, now seeing the truth of Jo-Jo's earlier warning, promises to heed her friend's advice in the future.
Worldbuilding
Universes
- This story takes place all in one universe.
Behind the scenes
Background
On the cover of Jo Jo Congo King #7A, which ostensibly depicted the climax of this first story, Gwenna was depicted as being tied to the side of the Iron Beast during the final showdown, thus presenting Jo-Jo with a dilemma as he hesitated to throw a spear at the outlaw, which would risk injuring her if he missed. However, no such scene occur, or could occur, in the actual story, where Gwenna is clearly shown to simply be walking with the convoy with her arms bound behind her back, some distance behind the elephant, on the second panel of Page 5. Jo-Jo also never tries to attack the outlaw with a spear; he initially ambushes the convoy, and, when he does attack the Iron Beast head-on, it is with a burning torch in hand instead of a spear.
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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