QUICK "WHITE GODDESS" COMMENT

An example of a jungle-hero who does conform to [so-and-so's] description [of a jungle hero who excels the natives at their own arts], rather than Tarzan or Phantom, would be Sheena of the Jungle. She's a white woman brought up in the jungle, and in her introductory stories at least, there's no particular reason why she's as good a fighter as any of her Afro-Tartar people. (Yes, for some reason not evident to me, the writer decided that Sheena ruled over a lost people made of a Tartar expedition that made its way down to Africa, staked out a colony, and intermarried with the natives.) Later she stops being a queen as such and just hangs out in the jungle with her "mate," waiting for trouble to strike the local tribes-- all Black Africans by this time-- whom she then saves with her extraordinary skills.

There had been white jungle-queens before Sheena, like the one from 1931's TRADER HORN, but they seem to rule by some implied "white authority" principle. Sheena is at least an exceptional fighter, which could explain why she awes people-- and she does have a vague perceptor, a witch-doctor named Koba who raises Sheena after he (maybe) kills her real father with magic. He sets her up as a goddess and then fades from the picture for the most part, so I guess he had taken his "white goddess" lessons from watching TRADER HORN or reading the Tarzan comic strip.