Without denying that almost all jungle comics have focused on Caucasian protagonists, there have been a smattering of non-white characters as well. In an earlier post I mentioned Dell's backup strip BROTHERS OF THE SPEAR, and a little after that came this eight-issue feature, WAKU, PRINCE OF THE BANTU.
This jungle-tale took place in a corner of the jungle that implicitly never has any contact with Europeans or North Africans. The titular Waku is a noble young man who helps his Bantu fellows overcome such threats as hostile warlords and the occasional zombie-raising usurper.
Truth be told, the stories, credited on GCD to Don Rico, are largely formulaic. "Vengeance of the Fire God," though, is interesting in that it posits a world where one of the pagan gods worshipped by the Bantu is a real being, and not some medicine-man's hoax.
Waku, who has inherited his rulership from his late father, counsels his people to believe that the fire-god is benevolent. However, a series of accidents cause the Bantus to think themselves cursed, and a guy named Jobu advises Waku to step down to placate the mob. Waku makes the interesting comment that the fire god destroys people who fear him, but "if they stand up to him, he lets them alone." This would seem to run contrary to the usual belief about how gods handle disrespectful mortals, but it's at least an interesting variation on the theme.
The denouement is pretty ordinary: Jobu faked all the "fire-accidents" to gain power. However, the story ends by validating the belief that the fire-god is real, and ends with the deity conferring approval on the honest, forthright hero.
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