Comic Review: Jungle Girl: Omnibus (Dynamite Entertainment)

If you can’t get enough of a girl in the jungle who fights huge creatures, check out the “Frank Cho’s Jungle Girl The Complete Omnibus” from Dynamite.

This massive book collects all the issues from Volumes (seasons) 1, 2 and 3, and has lots of extras as well.

The stories of Jana contained in Jungle Girl are not deep and complicated, of course. Jana is at home in the jungle and is in the strange position of saving and/or fighting newcomers on the scene. Drop-ins like the movie crew who were scouting locations until their plane crashed. Or the underwater beings, the natives, the extra-large mutated reptiles, and so on. There’s a new battle every six or seven pages.

Jana runs, spears, swims and battles hand to hand. She’s brave, independent, and wise to the ways of man and beast.

Master ‘girl and beast’ artist Frank Cho contributes beautifully crafted front covers for each of the issues collected here. Plus, he co-plots the stories with writer Doug Murray.
Adriano Batista draws and inks the stories for the first two seasons, showing a strong ability to render Jana in action and repose. Pose after pose emphasizes her unnaturally cultured beauty amidst the vines and inclines of the jungle environment. Likewise, Frank Martin Jr and Giovani Kososki colour the first two seasons, imposing gorgeous skin tones, moody shadows, and thunderingly vivid scenery.

The final season of Jungle Girl is drawn in a different style by Jack Jadson, who brings more subdued poses for Jana, and perhaps a more predictable approach to panel dynamics. It’s a slightly more tame and fully dressed Jungle Girl, and Inlight Studios gives us quieter, more somber colouring.

In addition to the twists and turns of the storied torsos and many variations on jungle warfare, this collection has bonus material: a dozen variant covers by Cho and Batista, along with a very generous sketchbook of Batista’s rough pencils, showing his capable knowledge of anatomy and body dynamics.

Dynamite, Frank Cho’s Jungle Girl The Complete Omnibus, $39.99 for 362 pages, Teen +