| Sheena, Queen of the Jungle | |
|---|---|
 Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #18 (Winter 1952–53). Cover art by Maurice Whitman. | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | List
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| First appearance | Wags #46 (January 1938) |
| Created by | Will Eisner Jerry Iger |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Sheena Rivington Janet Ames Shirley Hamilton Sheila Fortner Rachel Cardwell |
| Abilities |
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Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, is a fictionalAmerican comic bookjungle girl heroine during theGolden Age of Comic Books. She originally debuted in the British magazineWags #46 (January 1938).[1][2] and later made her first American appearance inFiction House'sJumbo Comics #1 (Sept. 1938). She was the first female comic book character with her own title, with her 1941 premiere issue (cover-dated Spring 1942) precedingWonder Woman #1 (Summer 1942).[2]
Predated in literature byRima, the Jungle Girl ofWilliam Henry Hudson 1904 novelGreen Mansions, Sheena was essentially a female version ofTarzan. An orphan who grew up in the jungle and learned how to survive and thrive there, she possessed the ability to communicate with wild animals and was proficient in combat with knives, spears, bows, and makeshift weapons; her Golden Age adventures mostly involved encounters with slave traders, white hunters, native Africans, and wild animals.[3]
Sheena debuted in Joshua B. Power's British magazineWags #46 in January 1938.[1][2] She was created byWill Eisner andS. M. "Jerry" Iger.[1] One source says Iger, through his small studio Universal Phoenix Features (UFP), commissionedMort Meskin to produce prototype drawings of Sheena.[4] UFP was one of a handful of studios that produced comics on demand for publishers and syndicates, and whose clientEditors Press Service distributed the feature toWags.[4] To help hide the fact their studio consisted only of themselves, the duo signed their Sheena strip with the pseudonym "W. Morgan Thomas".[5] Eisner said an inspiration for the character's name wasH. Rider Haggard's 1886 jungle-goddess novelShe.[6] Iger, who maintained that Eisner had nothing to do with the creation of the character, claimed that he picked the name because his mind wandered to the derogatory name "sheenies" that Jewish people were sometimes called in his early days in New York.[7]
Sheena first appeared stateside in Fiction House'sJumbo Comics #1, and subsequently in every issue (Sept. 1938 – April 1953), as well as in her groundbreaking 18-issue spin-off,Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (Spring 1942 – Winter 1952), the first comic book to title-star a female character.[2] Sheena also appeared in Fiction House'sKa'a'nga #16 (Summer 1952) and the one-shot3-D Sheena, Jungle Queen (1953)[2]—the latter reprinted byBlackthorne Publishing asSheena 3-D Special (May 1985). Blackthorne also publishedJerry Iger's Classic Sheena (April 1985).
Fiction House, originally apulp magazine publisher, ran prose stories of its star heroine in the latter-day pulp one-shotStories of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (Spring 1951) andJungle Stories vol. 5 #11 (Spring 1954).[8]AC Comics has published reprints of classic Sheena stories.
The property then remained dormant until the release of theSheena film. Since then, it has passed through the hands of several publishers:
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Sheena is the young, blonde daughter of Cardwell Rivington, who is exploring in Africa with his daughter in tow. When Cardwell accidentally dies after drinking a magic potion made by Koba, a native witch doctor, Sheena is orphaned. Koba raises the girl as his own daughter, teaching her the ways of the jungle and various central African languages. The adult Sheena becomes "queen of the jungle" and acquires a monkey sidekick named Chim.[3]
According toJess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes, "Assisted by the great white hunter Bob Reynolds, Sheena fights everything under the sun, including but not limited to: hostile natives, hostile animals, giants, a super-ape, the Green Terror,sabre-tooth tigers, voodoo cultists, gorilla-men, devil-apes, blood cults, devil queens,dinosaurs, army ants, lion men, lost races, leopard-birds, cavemen, serpent gods, vampire-apes, etc."[14]
Originally costumed in a simple red dress, Sheena acquired her iconic leopard-skin bikini by issue #10 ofJumbo Comics.[3]
In time, Sheena's home village is destroyed, leaving Sheena with a white safari guide named Bob Reynolds (alternately called "Bob Reilly" or "Bob Rayburn"), who becomes her mate.[15] In later incarnations, Sheena's mate is Rick Thorne.[3]
The 1988 Jungle Comics began with the original 1940's Sheena living in retirement in contemporary New York, under the nameSharon McClory. She is given the opportunity to be rejuvenated by magical means so that she may return to Africa and join her similarly de-aged 1940s Fiction House stablemate (and Tarzan pastiche) Kaanga in a struggle against a murderous gang of terrorist poachers.
The 1998 London Night reboot moved the action toSouth America, made Sheena a redhead, and gave her real name asSheila Fortner. This incarnation of the character headed a substantial organization, with a crew of assistants and an elaborate underground base.
In the 2007de Souza reboot (also set in South America, but in a differentfictional country), Sheena's name wasRachel Rivington Cardwell (also spelled "Caldwell" in the later Devil's Due and Moonstone series, and "Cadwell" in the early Dynamite series), a homage to her father's name in the original 1940s comics. An orphan raised in the hidden city of Piatiti, Sheena was actually the long-lost granddaughter of the ruthless industrialist Harrison Cardwell, and was revered by the tribal peoples of the Zona Prohibida (the unexplored interior of Val Verde) as the "Matayana," the legendary protectress of the Mother Forest. In addition to several human sidekicks – the idealistic environmental activist Bob Kellerman, cynical Cardwell security head Martin Ransome, college student Chamo, and fellow rich girl Tyler Pinto – she shared a telepathic link with three animal partners: the black jaguar Yagua, scarlet macaw Pete, and spider monkey Chim.
In 2011,Brent Frankenhoff ofComics Buyer's Guide described Sheena as likely the best known "jungle queen"-type character, and called her one of the sexiest female characters in comics.[16]
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ModelIrish McCalla portrayed the titular character inSheena: Queen of the Jungle, a 26-episode TV series, aired infirst-run syndication from 1955 to 1956.[17] McCalla told anewspaper interviewer she was discovered byNassour Studios while throwing a bamboo spear on a Malibu, California beach, famously adding "I couldn't act, but I could swing through the trees."[18] Although the Sheena character was often called "the Queen of the Congo,"[citation needed] the TV series clearly located her in Kenya,[citation needed] which is hundreds of miles from the Congo River. Though the character was created in comic books by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger many years earlier, a 1956New York Times obituary for Claude E. Lapham, a 10-year editor at Fiction House, says, "His story 'Sheena' was the basis for the television story of that name."[19]
The 1984Columbia Pictures filmSheena, produced byPaul Aratow, starredTanya Roberts, who had previously co-starred as Kiri inMGM's 1982 filmBeastmaster. In this version, the character's name isJanet Ames, daughter of Philip and Betsy Ames, before being renamed Sheena byShaman. Roberts's Sheena had a much-expanded vocabulary from McCalla's (as well as a telepathic connection with jungle animals).Marvel Comics published a comic-book adaptation of theSheena film asMarvel Comics Super Special #34 (June 1984), reprinting it asSheena, Queen of the Jungle #1–2 (Dec. 1984–Feb. 1985).
TheBollywood film industry in India produced a string of uncredited Hindi versions of Sheena, beginning withTarzan Sundari, also known asLady Tarzan (1983);Africadalli Sheela (1986); andJungle Ki Beti (1988).[citation needed]
Sheena was revived byHearst Entertainment in October 2000, portrayed byGena Lee Nolin. In this version, the character's real name isShirley Hamilton. Sheena was given a new power in this 35-episode Columbia/TriStar series: the ability to adopt the form of any warm-blooded animal once she gazed into its eyes. She was also depicted as a ferocious killer, capable of becoming a humanoid creature called the Darak'Na; this form killed numerous individuals, though in her regular form she was also seen in numerous episodes stabbing soldiers and other villains to death. As with Tanya Roberts, Nolin's Sheena spoke whole sentences.
In 2017,Millennium Films was developing a Sheena reboot.[20]
TheRamones song "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" was inspired by Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.[21] The song first appeared on the band's third album,Rocket to Russia, in 1977. A cartoon drawing of Sheena appears on the record sleeve of the LP version.[citation needed]
TheBruce Springsteen song "Crush on You" contains the lyrics "She makes the Venus de Milo look like she got no style/she makes Sheena of the Jungle look meek and mild."
Ike Turner credited Sheena, Queen of the Jungle as one of his inspirations for creatingTina Turner's stage persona. He chose the name "Tina" because it rhymed with "Sheena."[22]
