Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1975-01-01 00:02:10 |
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Jungle Action #13-15
Issue(s): Jungle Action #13, Jungle Action #14, Jungle Action #15
Cover Date: Jan-May 75
Title: "The god killer" / "There are serpents lurking in paradise" / "Thorns in the flesh, thorns in the mind"
Credits:
Don McGregor - Writer
Billy Graham - Penciler
P. Craig Russell / Pablo Marcos / Dan Green - Inker
Review/plot:
The Black Panther fights his way through arctic wastes and finds that Sombre has gained control of the sacred White Gorillas (the creature that the Man-Ape emulates).
The Black Panther is able to defeat the Gorillas, but McGregor's text talks about the ramifications of man slaying Gods.
There are also some good sub-plot scenes: Monica takes one of the tribal Wakandans to the modern hospital, Killmonger's henchmen Tayete and Kazibe display some humanity and loyalty, and W'Kabi and his wife fight over his job responsibilities.
W'Kabi hits his wife during the fight, scarring the children.
Badly injured, Panther trails Sombre through a jungle. They fight...
...and Sombre seemingly dies, sinking into quicksand. He meets a strange man in the jungle, who questions his desire to fight.
Following Killmonger's trail with the strange man, Mokadi, at his side, the Panther finds his enemy trapping dinosaurs!
The Panther finds himself in a fight with a Tyrannosaurus...
...and amazingly he wins, although he comes out of the fight looking even more torn up and exhausted. The scene shifts a few times to a bird that has been caught in the tar...
...emphasizing Mokadi's questions about the purpose of fighting by showing an innocent that has been neglected during all the violence.
Venomm continues his conversations with Taku, but warns that he will still kill Taku if he gets in the way when he tries to escape.
Panther is next attacked by another of Killmonger's mutated henchmen, this time an archer covered with spikey boils named Salamander K'ruel.
K'ruel defeats him and ties him up out in the jungle, leaving him to die. However, due to the actions of a pterodactyl...
...the Panther manages a lucky escape and returns to defeat Salamander.
As with all the issues in this series, there is another level of thought going on beyond the action scenes. Starting with this arc, Klaus Janson is no longer on inks (P. Craig Russell fills in for one issue) but the art style is remarkably consistent.
Quality Rating: A-
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A
References: N/A
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
| Previous: Punisher: The Origin of Microchip #1-2 | Up: Main 1975 / Box 9 / EiC Upheaval | Next: Master of Kung Fu #24 |
Comments
At about this time, FOOM #9 had a parody of McGregor's Black Panther scripts by Marv Wolfman.
Peter Gillis has a letter in #14.
According to an article by Scott Edelman, Wein's first duty as EIC was to write the Bullpen Bulletins page. Edelman was his assistant and eventually took over the BB page, writing it through the end of Wolfman's EIC tenure. Gerry Conway wrote his himself and Archie Goodwin wrote his for at least a while. Edelman convinced him to do 26 BB headlines in alphabetical order, but apparently nobody noticed. Edelman also wrote text for house ads, those bottom-of-the-page one-line promos(though he probably didn't originate them), and he wrote all the "Stan Lee Presents" boxes at the splash page tops that explained who the title characters were.
The White Gorillas from issue #13, at least to my eyes, show at least a passing resemblance to the yetis shown in the penultimate episode of the original 1964 "Jonny Quest" series, "Monster in a Monastery". Also, seeing the pterodactyl in issue #15 reminded me of the creature that appeared in the 15th. episode of the aforementioned Quest series, "Turu the Terrible". Reckon someome on the creative team was a Jonny Quest fan, and/or a fan of Doug Wildey art?
Spell correct: Someone on the creative team.
