Jana of the Jungle

An email conversation at work started out the other day with a friend’s love of the Godzilla cartoon from the late 1970’s. Those of you unfamiliar with the cartoon, I pity you deeply. It revolved around a group of explorers and ocean scientists on a ship called the Calico who could call on Godzilla to help them out when they got in trouble, which was frequently.



My nostalgic feelings run deep for the show, and I was reading about it on Wikipedia when I learned that the show was originally released as part of the Godzilla Power Hour. The second half of the hour was a show called Jana of the Jungle. A show I don’t remember. So naturally, I hunted the show down so I could see it again.



One hurried and rushed Monday evening, I carved out a 25 minute block to sit with my kids and watch the show. I want to rave about it and rant on about its gloriousness… but the truth is that the show is pretty standard fair. Everything was highly recognizable. Being a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the style of animation, characters, situations, and even the actor voices were the same as dozens of other shows from the seventies. The actress who voiced Jana also did a stint as Wonder Woman on Super Friends and her veterinarian co-hort was Zan from the Wonder Twins. Her stoic sidekick, Montaro from the lost warrior tribe, was voiced by Ted Cassidy. He was Brainiac and Black Manta on Super Friends. Oh yeah… he was also Lurch on Addams Family.

It says a little something about our culture that this cartoon can be so incredibly familiar, even though I have no memory of seeing it, the Hanna-Barbera style being so influential to children of the seventies. I remember the eighties and being annoyed at Thundercats, G.I. Joe, and Voltron because they just didn’t seem quite right.

I turned to my daughter Katie and asked how she liked it. She said she loved it. (She always says that, she was bored.) Ashton was visiting grandparents, so I was unable to get his “that was the dumbest cartoon ever” opinion. I turned to my six-year-old son Alex and asked how he liked it.

He gave it careful thought, rubbed his chin, looked up at me and said “That was a Tarzan rip-off.”


Well… duh. Jana even puts her hands to her mouth and calls for help from her animal friends.


Certain fantasy elements seem to strike a deep chord in our culture. There are broad genre’s like science fiction, horror and fantasy that are one thing. But then there are more specific genre’s that kind of get me thinking. Western’s, which were hugely popular in the forties, fifties, and sixties, are rare today. Why? What was it about this genre that so ignited kid’s imagination back then? And what is it about the genre that prevents it from getting a foothold today?






Underwater adventure. Aquaman gets teased a lot for his limited scope when with the other Super Friends. But if you look at our entertainment overall, underwater adventure definitely holds a place. Any movie that comes along and takes place underwater immediately goes on my IMDB watch list. (Have you seen Sanctum? Oh man… you won’t breath for 108 minutes.)



One of the genres that I enjoy, but don’t really get, is jungle adventure. Everything seems so derivative of Tarzan. I’ve read a couple of the original Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan books from 1912, and they’re great. Even my "too cool for Dad" twelve-year-old son Ashton loves them. But how do we spin a whole genre out of this one character? Is that truly what happened?

I’ve also read King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard with his jungle hunter hero, Allan Quartermain. Fun book, and, as I understand it, very popular. It was written in 1885, and you get the feeling that there’s a sense of romance and adventure in such a setting when your primary audience is late 1800’s England.



Just as with Westerns, you don’t really see a lot of jungle adventure out there today. There are a few things, and I hear the Burroughs estate is preparing another Tarzan push in honor of his centennial. But reading through 1940’s Golden Age comics… jungle adventure was EVERYWHERE.

Here’s the star-studded line-up of characters from Jungle Comics #24, December 1941.

Kaanga (almost direct Tarzan rip-off, but blonde)


Roy Lance (great white hunter type)


Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle



Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle


Captain Terry Thunder



Simba (a lion that fought evil in the jungle)



Camilla, Queen of the Lost Empire



Wambi the Jungle Boy



Red Panther (super hero type that wore a panther’s pelt as a Batman-like cowl)



Every one of these stories took place in and around the jungle. Which, apparently, is a very happening place.

TV shows like the freshly cancelled The River, last spring’s jungle adventure offering, or the late 1990’s horror movie Anaconda, really show the deep mystery the jungle can have in setting an atmosphere of unknown and mystery. And I guess the primal idea of man’s ability to master it given enough ingenuity is an attractive one.

But I have to wonder as time marches on if westerns and jungle adventure will truly start to slope off in popularity. And if the reason is the simple fact that we’ve explored our planet and true wilderness grows smaller every day. Underwater adventure will still be around for quite awhile, as our understanding of our ocean’s is minimal. But that is a limited resource of mystery and will someday be fully understood. Which leaves us with space…

…the final frontier.



Thanks,
DCD