Jungle Comics #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeJungle Comics #5 (May 1940) is a snapshot of Fiction House's anthology machine firing on all cylinders just five months into the series' remarkable 163-issue run — the kind of longevity only a handful of Golden Age titles ever achieved. The issue features an early Fletcher Hanks Fantomah story, one of the first super-powered female protagonists in the medium, still in the thick of Hanks's singular fourteen-installment run before any other hand touched the character. Alongside the Fantomah chapter, the issue advances the ongoing narratives of Camilla, Kaänga, Wambi, Tabu, and Captain Terry Thunder — the full Fiction House jungle roster that would anchor the title for a decade and a half — making it a useful cross-section of how the publisher's anthology format normalized serialized genre storytelling in an era when most comics were still loosely episodic.
In "Strange Case of Ezra Ark: Case 3: File 1: Clue 2," Fletcher Hanks delivers a pulpy, surreal adventure where the mysterious Mundoor unleashes giant reptiles from a fallen asteroid, setting his sights on world domination. With Fantomah wielding her otherworldly powers to break his hypnotic grip, the fate of Earth hangs in the balance as chaos erupts across the jungle skies. The story’s eerie, dreamlike visuals are brought to life by Hanks’ distinctive art, while Will Eisner’s striking cover captures the tale’s wild, other-dimensional menace.
In "null," the Red Panther’s rescue of a safari from a swarm of deadly ants ignites a deadly vendetta from the Ant Woman, who swears revenge on both the Panther and the expedition’s leaders. As the safari falls into her trap, the Panther uses cunning to turn the tide—leading to a shocking confrontation where the Ant Woman meets her fate at the hands of her own swarm.
In "null," Tabu faces the deadly rituals of the leopard cultist Zsingos, who have taken the children of the Jibus. With his own magic, he navigates the traps set to ensnare him, racing to save the children before the cult’s dark rites are complete.
Ezra Ark finds himself nursing a painful toothache and dealing with a troublesome nephew who seems more interested in his uncle's money than anything else—tensions that threaten to boil over in the library. With Clue 2 now revealed, readers are invited to keep collecting pieces of this mysterious puzzle as the detective tale unfolds across multiple issues.
In this 1940 science fiction tale from Jungle Comics #5, Camilla uses her mastery of magic to outwit and defeat the Viking king Lief Thorgson, securing her authority over his surviving warriors. With Thorgson gone, his men—once his fiercest followers—now find themselves bound to her will.
In "Mundoor and the Giant Reptiles," the enigmatic Mundoor stumbles upon the eggs of colossal reptiles embedded in a fallen asteroid, setting in motion a scheme to dominate the world. With the help of Fantomah’s formidable powers, the balance shifts as she shatters Mundoor’s control and sends the reptiles, their creator, and the asteroid hurtling into the depths of space.
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Fiction House had moved from pulp magazines into comics with Jumbo Comics in 1938, then launched Jungle Comics as one of its 'Big Six' titles in January 1940, drawing characters and themes directly from its existing pulp properties — most notably Kaänga, who carried over from the pulp title Jungle Stories. The series started life as a fat 68-page anthology and was produced with a rotating pool of freelance and in-house talent under editors Joe Cunningham and later Jack Burden. By issue #5, the Fantomah strips were being written and drawn entirely by Fletcher Hanks under his pseudonym 'Barclay Flagg' — Hanks being one of the few creators of the era who handled scripting, art, lettering, and coloring on his own pages without assistance.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Jungle Comics #5 is cover-dated May 1940 and was one of the earliest issues of a series that would run for 163 issues through the Summer of 1954, making it among the longest-running anthology titles of the Golden Age.
- The Fantomah story in this issue, titled 'Mundoor and the Giant Reptiles,' is the fourth installment of Fletcher Hanks's fourteen-story run on the character; Mundoor is introduced as the story's villain and is ultimately dispatched into deep space along with his asteroid and giant reptiles by Fantomah's powers.
- Fantomah herself had debuted in Jungle Comics #2 (February 1940) and was, per multiple historians, among the earliest super-powered female characters in American comics — predating Wonder Woman by over a year.
- Hanks wrote and drew the Fantomah story under the pseudonym 'Barclay Flagg'; he was unusual for the period in that he handled every production element of his strips solo, including writing, art, lettering, and coloring.
- The Camilla installment in this issue, scripted by Tad Carter with art by Bob Powell, features her confronting Viking king Lief Thorgson — who is introduced and killed within the same story — and adds another chapter to the evolving mythology around her lost empire and immortality.
- The issue's full lineup includes stories for Kaänga, Wambi the Jungle Boy, Red Panther, Tabu (Wizard of the Jungle), Captain Terry Thunder, and Simba, demonstrating Fiction House's strategy of packing each issue with a stable of recurring characters across multiple creative teams.
- Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle — another Fletcher Hanks creation — also appears in this issue, reinforcing that Hanks was contributing to multiple features within the same anthology simultaneously.
- Some early Fantomah stories from this period of the Hanks run were later reprinted by Fiction House in Ka'a'nga Comics and subsequently by AC Comics in Golden Age Greats #14 (March 1999), giving the run a modest publication afterlife.
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Reprints
Reprinted in You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! #[nn] (2009), Action! Mystery! Thrills! Comic Book Covers of the Golden Age: 1933-45 #[nn] (2011), Fletcher Hanks : œuvres complètes #[nn] (2018)
Key issues in Jungle Comics
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