Rima The Jungle Girl!

I have a mild fascination with Jungle adventure tales that probably traces back to my childhood love of Tarzan. The Jungle Girl sub-set of these stories have become a special interest for me in the past several years leading me to track down the Sheena pulp tales and any other examples I can locate. Until just the other day I had somehow missed this one though.

Rima, The Jungle Girl is a character that was created (and killed!) in a 1904 novel called Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest. A film of the book was made in 1959 starring Audrey Hepburn in the Rima role - a fact that had me thinking I was accidentally reading information from a parody website! But, it's true. How have I missed this movie? And when can I finally catch it?

Anyway - in 1974 DC comics published seven issues of their Rima comic book and this prompted her inclusion in several episodes of The All New Super Friends Hour between 1977 and 1980. That means that, as a kid, I must have seen her in that show but completely managed to forget about the odd sight of a Jungle Girl running around with Wonder Woman and company.

So, the other day when I was looking through a dollar bargain bin at a comic shop I spotted the first issue of the DC series and impulsively grabbed it, of course. It seems to be an adaptation of the Green Mansions novel with excellent interior artwork from Nestor Redondo and a great cover from Joe Kubert. I will be searching for the other six issues to see what they did with the character other than adapt the source book. That there are still hidden little series like this lurking out there to be discovered really puts a smile on my face!