JACK SPARLING - Bomba the Jungle Boy # 7 p 21

A minor DC series that was current when I was first old enough to read comics, and when ebay started selling comic art I was happy to buy originals from that period. I think of Sparling as a 2nd-tier DC artist of the era, reliable and professional, but unexciting. I'm sure someone will defend him, and I'd be happy to hear it, he surely deserves it. He didn't follow the clean line DC house style, but maintained a brushier approach, with more chiaroscuro shading. Anyway, this page shows that he was also absorbing the Kirby-esque dynamism that other DC artists, like Gil Kane and Neal Adams, were emulating at the time as well. A Sparling "Bomba" page was inexpensive at the time (2002), and would remain so today, I think.

I'm not quite sure why DC tried to revive this character which, Comic Vine informs me, was a Tarzan imitation from a series of novels in the 1920s, and B-movies in the '50s. The 1968-69 DC revival ran 7 issues, so this is a page from the final issue. DC also attempted another jungle character, "B'wana Beast" around the same time, the late '60s, when awareness of the racist undercurrents of the "jungle" genre must have been starting to emerge.

Who wrote this series, anyone know?