The Further Adventures of Nyoka the Jungle Girl

(AC, 1988-2005)
™ Americomics, © AC Comics

Even those fans of Golden Age comics in general and jungle girls in particular may find this strangely narrow, expensive AC collection of ’40s and ’50s reprints to be avoidable. Except, maybe, for those looking for unintentional laughs.

Besides a Camilla story and one featuring Ramar (a Great White Hunter) with nice art by Maurice Whitman, the rest of this jungle-themed book belongs to Nyoka, who’s not really a jungle girl as such. For one thing, she dresses more conservatively than Camilla and, for another, never claims to be jungle royalty. Rather, she’s just a nice American girl who lives in Africa and likes helping out.

Strangely, the creators can’t agree on what Nyoka looks like, how she dresses, or who her friends were from story to story. In one, she’s best friends with a zebraphant (I would hate to be around during that mating season), and in another her signature buckskin outfit has been inexplicably replaced by a ordinary housewife frock. It doesn’t help. They’re all pretty dull.

— S. A. Bennett

This black and white title from Bill Black’s AC Comics line brings back movie serial and comic book jungle heroine Nyoka. She is a fearless adventurer who routinely saves her fiancé, Dr. Larry Grayson, from one nefarious trap after another—like a female Indiana Jones… or a Golden Age Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)… take your pick! Black adds to the Nyoka mythos by introducing the high-flying and hard-fighting Skull Squad, a 1940s-style band of super-heroes and fascist-fighters. The back pages of this fun title are filled out with reprints of Nyoka’s Golden Age adventures.

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