Sheena Jungle Queen

[Tiana Dubree]

SheenaQueen of the Jungle, is a fictional American comic book jungle girl heroine, originally published primarily by Fiction House during the Golden Age of Comic Books. She was the first female comic book character with her own title, with her 1941 premiere issue (cover-dated Spring 1942) preceding Wonder Woman #1 (cover-dated Summer 1942). Sheena inspired a wealth of similar comic book jungle queens. She was predated in literature by Rima, the Jungle Girl, introduced in the 1904 William Henry Hudson novel Green Mansions.

An orphan who grew up in the jungle, learning how to survive and thrive there, she possesses the ability to communicate with wild animals and is proficient in fighting with knives, spears, bows, and makeshift weapons. Her adventures mostly involve encounters with slave traders, white hunters, native Africans, and wild animals.[1]

Sheena debuted in Joshua B. Power's British magazine Wags #46 in January 1938.[2][3] She was created by Will Eisner and S. M. "Jerry" Iger.[2] One source says Iger, through his small studio Universal Phoenix Features (UFP), commissioned Mort Meskin to produce prototype drawings of Sheena.[4] UFP was one of a handful of studios that produced comics on demand for publishers and syndicates, and whose client Editors Press Service distributed the feature to Wags.[4] To help hide the fact their studio consisted only of themselves, the duo signed their Sheena strip with the pseudonym "W. Morgan Thomas".[5] Eisner said an inspiration for the character's name was H. Rider Haggard's 1886 jungle-goddess novel She.[6] Iger, who maintained that Eisner had nothing to do with the creation of the character, claimed that he picked the name because his mind wandered to the derogatory name "sheenies" that Jewish people were sometimes called in his early days in New York.[7]

Dynamite began publishing Sheena comics in 2017.[10] Co-written by Marguerite Bennett and Christina Trujilo, with art by Moritat (issues 1-4) and Maria Laura Sanapo (issues 5-10), it ran for ten issues. A special 25 issue 0 preview comic surpassed 100,000 pre-orders.[11] A new Sheena comic series came out in November 2021. It is written by Stephen Mooney and drawn by artist Jethro Morales.[12] Another new comic was announced in 2023 with writers co-writers Steven. E. De Souza, Wes Clark Jr and artist Ediano Silva.[13]

Sheena is the young, blonde daughter of Cardwell Rivington, who is exploring in Africa with his daughter in tow. When Cardwell dies from accidentally drinking a magic potion made by Koba, a native witch doctor, Sheena is orphaned. Koba raises the young girl as his daughter, teaching her the ways of the jungle and various central African languages. The adult Sheena becomes "queen of the jungle" and acquires a monkey sidekick named Chim.[1]

According to Jess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes, "Assisted by the great white hunter Bob Reynolds, Sheena fights everything under the sun, including but not limited to: hostile natives, hostile animals, giants, a super-ape, the Green Terror, sabre-tooth tigers, voodoo cultists, gorilla-men, devil-apes, blood cults, devil queens, dinosaurs, army ants, lion men, lost races, leopard-birds, cavemen, serpent gods, vampire-apes, etc."[14]

In time, Sheena's home village is destroyed, leaving Sheena with a white safari guide named Bob Reynolds (alternately called "Bob Reilly" or "Bob Rayburn"), who becomes her mate.[15] In later incarnations, Sheena's mate is Rick Thorne.[1]

Model Irish McCalla portrayed the titular character in Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, a 26-episode TV series, aired in first-run syndication from 1955 to 1956.[17] McCalla told a newspaper interviewer she was discovered by Nassour Studios while throwing a bamboo spear on a Malibu, California beach, famously adding "I couldn't act, but I could swing through the trees."[18] Although the Sheena character was often called "the Queen of the Congo,"[citation needed] the TV series clearly located her in Kenya,[citation needed] which is hundreds of miles from the Congo River. Though the character was created in comic books by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger many years earlier, a 1956 New York Times obituary for Claude E. Lapham, a 10-year editor at Fiction House, says, "His story 'Sheena' was the basis for the television story of that name."[19]

Sheena was revived by Hearst Entertainment in October 2000, portrayed by Gena Lee Nolin. In this version, the character's real name is Shirley Hamilton. Sheena was given a new power in this 35-episode Columbia/TriStar series: the ability to adopt the form of any warm-blooded animal once she gazed into its eyes. She was also depicted as a ferocious killer, capable of becoming a humanoid creature called the Darak'Na; this form killed numerous individuals, though in her regular form she was also seen in numerous episodes stabbing soldiers and other villains to death. As with Tanya Roberts, Nolin's Sheena spoke whole sentences.

The Ramones song "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" was inspired by Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.[21] The song first appeared on the band's third album, Rocket to Russia, in 1977. A cartoon drawing of Sheena appears on the record sleeve of the LP version.[citation needed]

The film starred Tanya Roberts, Ted Wass, and Trevor Thomas. It was directed by John Guillermin and written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., who had previously collaborated on the 1976 remake of King Kong.

Released by Columbia Pictures on 17 August 1984, Sheena bombed in theaters and was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture, Worst Actress (Tanya Roberts), Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Musical Score, but it did find some cult success on home video and DVD. Since then, it has been considered a cult film.

While investigating rumors of a mystical "healing earth" whose powers are said to flow forth from the sacred Gudjara Mountain, geologists Philip and Betsy Ames (Michael Shannon and Nancy Paul) are killed in a cave-in, leaving their young daughter, Janet, an orphan. Janet is adopted by Shaman, a woman of the native Zambouli tribe (Princess Elizabeth of Toro), and because of a prophecy about the cave-in ("when the sacred mountain cries out"), she is viewed as a child of the gods and renamed Sheena, "Queen of the Jungle".

As Sheena (Tanya Roberts) grows up, she learns much from Shaman about the lore of the jungle and the ways of all its creatures. She is even entrusted with the secret of telepathic communication with the animals. Outsiders rarely disturb their territory, since that part of Tigora is under the special protection of king Jabalani (Clifton Jones).

Trouble is brewing in Tigora, although; the king's ex-football champion younger brother, prince Otwani (Trevor Thomas) is conspiring with his brother's fiance, Countess Zanda (France Zobda) to have Jabalani assassinated so they can exploit the titanium-rich Zambouli land (this may or may not have something to do with the healing properties of the soil, but this is never explained).

Otwani's old friend, reporter Vic Casey (Ted Wass) and his cameraman, Fletch Agronsky (Donovan Scott) are in Tigora to do a story on the former football player. When king Jabalani is killed and Shaman is framed for it, Vic and Fletch realize that they are on to a much bigger story than they had anticipated.

Heading to a remote prison compound to interview Shaman, they bear witness to her rescue by Sheena and her animal friends; "Chango" the elephant, "Marika" the zebra and "Tiki" the chimpanzee. As they escape back into the jungle after destroying the prison, Vic and Fletch follow. However, Shaman soon dies from her injuries.

Otwani obtains the services of colonel Jorgensen (John Forgeham) and his small army of soldier mercenaries, the Black Berets. Their mission is to eradicate the Zambouli people so their territory will be open for strip-mining. Vic join forces with Sheena to stop the evil prince and his army, along the way, Vic and Sheena fall in love.

The climax of the film takes place on the African Serengeti. Zanda attempts to shove Sheena on the Zambuli Falls, but the heroine connects telepathically to a bunch of flamingos that attack the helicopter and throw the countess down the waterfalls to her death. Sheena leads her people against the mercenaries and Otwani. Sheena successfully shoots Otwani in the heart with her arrow and fulfills the prophecy, but she is also positioned to be hit by Otwani's vehicle. Vic saves her life by crashing into Otwani's vehicle; resulting in severe burn wounds. Vic is healed with the earth and wants to stay with Sheena, but realizes that if he tells his story to the outside world, then other corporations will destroy Sheena's home.

Before leaving to return to New York, Vic and Sheena have sex (off-screen). Vic and his cameraman, Fletch leave on an airplane back to New York. Before leaving, Sheena records a farewell message on his tape recorder wishing him a safe journey.

"At first it looked incredibly easy", Aratow says in the interview. "After only two months I had an office at the studio and Raquel Welch was going to play Sheena."[7] Robert and Laurie Dillon wrote a script that took a tongue-in-cheek approach to the material. Universal invested around $65,000 in the project. The studio then decided not to proceed with the movie.[7]

The producers then took the project to Filmways, where then-head of production Ed Feldman wanted "to create an out-and-out adventure story, with humour, of course, but basically an elaborate adventure."[9] Feldman had a poster designed illustrating his idea and showed it to Mike Medavoy of United Artists, who agreed to finance a new script. Michael Scheff and David Spector did a screenplay. Raquel Welch, who had been Universal's choice for the role, was still a possibility, but Feldman said, "at this point we have no actress in mind. I wouldn't say we wouldn't go to Raquel Welch, but I wouldn't want to rule out a worldwide search, either."[9]

3a8082e126