Black artist Matt Baker broke into the industry in the mid-1940s. Modern readers might find it problematic for a Black creator to work on a feature starring a White jungle queen, as Baker did with his longest running jungle-concept, "Rulah, Jungle Goddess." But arguably he put an unusual spin on the trope. Without explanation, the various Black African tribes encountered by the stately brunette Rulah (herself an American girl who took up the wild life on a lark) mostly had sexy White wives. I don't believe this anomaly is ever justified. My guess is that Baker was so good at drawing sexy girls, and thus captivating lots of young male readers, that his editors didn't care about the racial makeup of his African tribes, as long as he didn't actually depict romantic interactions between Blacks and Whites.
The story "Bloodstained Fangs," though, may show Baker pushing the envelope a bit. The "bad jungle queen" here, one "Mava," is indisputably Black, and sounds like she intends a general uprising that will liberate all of Africa from colonial influence, though of course she's not a liberator in any real sense. Moreover, she's clearly romancing the White European "bomb expert" Konrad in order to secure his cooperation.
Mava's also aware that jungle guardian Rulah is a danger to her plans (yeah, who cares about silly things like the standing armies of colonial Europeans). Mava sets traps involving electrified barb wire and hordes of rats, but Rulah finds her way to the evil rebel's lair nonetheless. Mava happens to be conducting her ablutions, and thinking about how she's going to take Konrad as her "mate," when Rulah bursts in and tries to drown the bad queen. Only the presence of Mava's guards foils the heroine's assault.
But then, as happens more than once in the RULAH comics, the male villain takes a shine to the raven-tressed heroine. Konrad tries to cut Mava out of the deal, and while he's probably not planning to offer Rulah a choice in his plans for her, he never gets a chance to press his suit. Clever Mava has a knife concealed in her hair (so THAT'S where that idea came from) and she disarms Konrad. Then she consigns him to have his flesh eaten by killer ants.
Not feeling any more friendly toward Rulah, Mava sets her up to be starved slowly in the presence of ample food and drink.However, the "bloodstained fangs" of Mava's rats lead to her undoing. The rodents are attracted by the food, and Rulah rubs food on her bonds so that the rats set the heroine free. Though Mava is preparing to leave the area--another example of a villain just leaving a hero unattended so she can escape!-- she's evidently still in the vicinity of the ant-hill when Rulah comes for payback. Mava trips on the conveniently placed skull of Konrad and falls into the ant-hill, and the killer ants don't even need her to be dipped in honey to view Mava as their new favorite food.
Mava, appearing in 1948, is certainly not anywhere near the first Black villainess in jungle comics. However, she does have a lot more on the ball than the average lady witch-doctor, and so might be the first GOOD Female Fiend of Color in this particular genre.
SIDE-NOTE: Baker pursued roughly the same policy in another jungle comic of the period, JO JO CONGO KING. Although heroic Jo-Jo had a White girlfriend, the tribe they hung out with was a tribe of Black males with White females. Amusingly, when a story from JO JO #23 was reprinted in an issue of Skywald's JUNGLE ADVENTURES, the White tribes-women were colored Black, though they all still kept standard Caucasian features.
No comments:
Post a Comment