Redondo, Nestor - Rima the Jungle Girl, issue 1, page 13 (May 1974)

Artists: Nestor Redondo (All) , Joe Kubert (Layouts)

2 Comments - 109 Views - 1 Like

Redondo, Nestor - Rima the Jungle Girl, issue 1, page 13 (May 1974) Comic Art

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Artwork Details

Title:	Redondo, Nestor - Rima the Jungle Girl, issue 1, page 13 (May 1974)
Artist:	Nestor Redondo (All)
Artist:	Joe Kubert (Layouts)
Media Type:	Pen and Ink
Art Type:	Interior Page
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	109
Likes on CAF:	1 2
Comments:	2
Added to Site:	11/13/2024
Comic Art Archive:

Description

I’m thrilled to add the complete first issue (this is page thirteen) of Rima: Jungle Girl to my collection. Rima is the exotic woman who communicates with animals and lives amongst the natives of the South American jungle where she resides. Published across 7-issues in the mid-1970’s, she was a DC Super-Star and Hanna-Barbera Super Friend (three cartoon appearances). While that’s how many of us know her (if you know her), Michael Eury of Back Issue Magazine deeply looked at the character who predates Tarzan, which many think she was based on. Not so.

Eury lets us know that Rima debuted in William Henry Hudson's novel Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest, which was first published in 1904. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan would not see print until 1912. Hudson was an Argentinian naturalist with a passion for birds who relocated to the U.S. in the 1860’s and authored a series of ornithological texts & South American ecological studies. His book, Green Mansions, tells of a failed Venezuelan sophisticate-turned-revolutionary forced to seek refuge in a forest, where he encounters native tribes and a supernatural figure with control over fauna. He ventures into the forest to find her, and we meet…Rima. Hudson’s Rima is not the blonde supermodel we eventually meet in the comics – she’s small, dark-haired and more of a seductive nymph. But the book and the character were popular enough that a radio opera of them was created in 1937 and Ray Bradbury would mention Rima in “The World the Children Made”, a short story he published in the September 23, 1950, issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

About two dozen years before DC’s Rima: Jungle Girl premiered, Rima made her first comic book appearance in Gilberton Company, Inc.’s Classics Illustrated #90 in December 1951. She then made it to Hollywood in Green Mansions, MGM’s 1959 film adaptation of Hudson’s book. Incredibly, Audrey Hepburn, amongst an A-list cast, played the role of Rima.

This brings us to the early 1970s at DC Comics, which has recently been overtaken by Marvel as the industry leader. DC was unhappy with that, and then-editorial director Carmine Infantino was open to anything to try to grow their audience. That lead to a super diverse line of comics – super-hero, mystery, war, humor, romance and adventure – all branded under DC and ‘The Line of DC Super-Stars’. This would include pulp favorites such as The Shadow and Tarzan.

Speaking of Tarzan, Joe Kubert’s revitalization of that character made him a natural to follow-up as the creator behind Rima, which would premier in January of 1974. By that point, Tarzan was in its third year and had been moved to a bi-monthly, 100-page format with reprints supplying a good chunk of that page count. In addition to his work on Sgt. Rock, The Losers, the Haunted Tank and the Unknown Soldier, Kubert could only do the layouts and edit the title.

Which brings us to Nestor Redondo, among the number of artists from the Philippines & South America that DC hired in the early 1970’s as a cost-cutting measure. In addition to Redondo, this ‘Filipino Invasion’ brought the likes of Alfredo Alcala, Tony DeZuniga and Alex Nino. But Redondo was Kubert’s first choice to pencil and ink his breakdowns for Rima, likely due to his fine-art illustration skills. If Kubert could not do the work himself, he’d certainly want someone that would make the work he was responsible for look good, right? Redondo was clearly thought of as highly-skilled by the DC brass – he’d fill the art vacancy left by Bernie Wrightson after his departure from Swamp Thing. Redondo’s failing eyesight would eventually cut his career short, but not before leaving a body of work that awes those able to see it in person.

Bringing things full-circle, Rima #1-4 is basically an unattributed adaptation of W.H. Hudson’s Green Mansions – both the DC scripter, Robert Kanigher, and the books author, Hudson, received any attribution (for Hudson, the property had fallen into the public domain – Kubert would admit that was one of the key things that made the property attractive to DC). In the adaptation, Rima is a statuesque young adult who gave readers the impression (particularly with the connection to Kubert) that she was a female version of Tarzan.

Somewhat ironically, Rima the Jungle Girl would only make it to issue #7 in January of 1975. Having exhausted the source material in issues #1-4, the letter pages reveal some reader frustration with plot while Redondo’s art was always celebrated. Either way, readership by that time did not warrant printing an issue #8.

From there, we don’t see or hear of her for 25+ years until a 2003 mention (no depiction) by Alan Moore in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, volume 2, issue 3.

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Marcus Wai
Member Since 2005

1 - Posted on 11/13/2024

She beckons... we follow to the ends of the earth if need be!

Mark Howland
Member Since 2004

1 - Posted on 11/13/2024

A really nicely-balanced artistic page. Great score, Chris, on the whole book!

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