Jungle Comics #2 (1940)
by Fletcher Hanks
cover by Lou Fine
From the same creator of the infinitely weird Stardust The Super Wizard, this obscure comic features that is possibly the very first female superhero.
That would be the “mystery woman of the jungle”, Fantomah.
We begin with a bejeweled elephant marching to his grave. That’s easily the most normal beginning for a Fletcher Hanks story.
A couple of ivory hunters are more concerned about the potential loss of the jewels.
Meanwhile, the elephant is led by a mysterious woman to his death.
Something spooky is going on, as even the bloodhounds are spooked AND THEN MURDERED.
Anyone with a single working brain cell would get as far away from this place as possible.
Meaning these guys are dumb enough to STILL go after the jewels.
As if the FIELD OF ELEPHANT BONES wasn’t terrifying enough…
…IT GETS WORSE.
The blonde woman is our titular Fantomah, and she takes elephant graveyards seriously.
You would think she’d go full Ghost Rider on them…
…but hilariously, they just leave!!!
They do indeed manage to steal the jewels off the elephant, but then one of them suddenly betrays the other.
But it’s all for nothing, as the quicksand of the elephant grave swallows him under the eye of Fantomah.
Historical significance: 0/10
If this wasn’t considered by some to be the first story featuting a super-heroine, it would have been forgotten like the others stories in the book.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Definitely not!
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
There’s something weirdly fascinating about Fantomah’s allure, but that’s about it.
How close is this to the modern character? 8/10
Fantomah is surprisingly long-lasting, being a backup feature of Jungle Comics until #51 in 1944.
Fletcher Hanks sure was fond of saying his character were “the most remarkable the world has ever known”.
She continues to punish treasure hunters who want to steal stuff from her jungle…
…and her powers quickly become as versatile as Stardust The Super Wizard’s.
She can transmute people into monsters, she can fly…
…she can throw giant asteroids or packs of animals into space, fire paralyzing rays to deal with giant snakes…
…fuse multiple people into a single person, sacrifice you to albino snakes, sacrifice you to mud monsters…
…and order a volcano to birth a magnetic moon.
But she doesn’t fight just treasure hunters. She also deals with giant alien lizards, a snake-themed Tarzan turned evil by berries, a mad scientist who created semi-invisible chemical hands…
…an Ancient Egyptian super-science-mummy, glow-in-the-dark tiger-women …
…and OF COURSE fifth columnists. It’s the Golden Age.
Who she fights by controlling the weather and unleashing flying lions, of course.
Initially, whenever Fantomah transforms it would just turn her face into a skull.
Jungle Comics #13 introduces her transformation into a blue hulk.
The most widely used transformation sequence shown whenever anyone is talking about Fantomah Comes from Jungle Comics #15.
Starting with issue 15, however, Fletcher Hanks is replaced by a new artist and the series becomes a more traditional jungle adventure.
She still has SOME powers… mostly flight… but she doesn’t turn into a skeleton anymore, and she rapidly becomes unrecognizable.
Fantomah gets her origin story in #27, where she’s revealed to be a princess from Ancient Egypt.
By the time her serial ends in #51, the jungle premise has been completely replaced by the Egyptian stuff.
Being in the public domain, Fantomah has showed up in modern comics.
Including Hack/Slash #5 from 2011, from Devil’s Due Publishing, which begins with a rather successful attempt to imitate the Fletcher Hanks insanity.
But she also appears in present day to recruit series protagonist Hack, who acknowledges she shouldn’t need anyone since Fantomah can do anything… including a Stardust The Super Wizard easter egg.
I don’t know anything about this series, and in fact I don’t find it all that appealing… but it certainly knows how to use Fantomah.
She ends the story having renounced her powers.
In 2016, she showed up in “Pathfinder: Worldscape” by Dynamite Entertainment.
That’s another series I know absolutely nothing about, but Fantomah is great in this despite the limited screentime.
The series involves characters from multiple continuities, including Red Sonja and the evil sorcerer Kulan Gath… who Marvel readers should recognize, since he was a big deal when Conan was part of Marvel continuity.
Fantomah just RIPS HIM IN HALF.
In 2017, Canadian publisher Chapterhouse used the name and the skull face for a 4 issue miniseries. Aside from the name and the inspiration from the looks, it has absolutely nothing to do with the original Fantomah (making me question why use the name in the first place).
So… is Fantomah the first super-heroine after all?
If we’re being generous, we could classify her as an anti-heroine.
But she does beat by a month the first appearance of someone who has a more legitimate claim to being the first female superhero… we’ll talk about her next time.
What else was in Jungle Comics #2?
Not a whole lot of interesting stuff, honestly… these seem pretty disposable Tarzan wannabes.
Or this Mowgli wannabe.
Or this Simba wannabe.
Let’s agree to never talk about the Red Panther.
Fantomah wasn’t the only woman starring in a story here.
Yeah, uhm, none of this stuff has aged particularly well.
