Square-jawed with flowing, blonde, improbably-feathered hair, Kyra (”Mistress of the Jungle”) appears on the front cover of her eponymous 1985 comic in an extreme example of what in the past decade has become known as the “brokeback pose,” whereby her waist is impossibly twisted so that her breasts and ass are visible at the same time. In this case, the pose not only presents Kyra’s secondary sex characteristics to the reader’s gaze, it also depicts coiled energy, her muscles bulging as she prepares to pummel a couple of snarling henchmen. Her pale skin pops against a shadowy background, and the rudimentary coloring gives the cover a primal graphic appeal.
Creators Larry Heller (editor/publisher) and Robin Ator (writer/artist) explain the impetus for Kyra, their contribution to the mid-1980s “black & white boom” in comics publishing, in the introductory essay on the inside covers of this premiere issue. They created their buff, scantily-clad protagonist, they say, out of a desire to see a properly muscular action heroine: “...[T]his jungle girl is no wimp. She looks physically like she can do the things she’s doing. ... Surely the strong active heroine saving the world from imminent destruction needs something more than a fashion-model physique.” Kyra was imagined as the daughter of Kageena, a “jungle queen” who starred in a series of fetish comics created by Eugene Bilbrew in the 1950s and whose loincloth had a tendency to flip up and reveal her ass, as shown in the sample pages that illustrate the introduction. The creators’ invocation of "the woman’s movement of the ‘60s” combined with the role of exploitative source material in the genesis of the character imbues the whole comic with a fascinating, unresolved tension. I wonder if Adam Warren has ever read this stuff, as he treads similar ground (with much more winking self-awareness) in his series Empowered.
As if to prove the authors’ high-mindedness, the comic opens with an epigram attributed to Aristotle about the nature of greed. Alone in the Asian jungle, Kyra comes across and disrupts a scene of occult torture, making a powerful enemy who resolves to find and destroy her. Ator uses a break in the action to develop Kyra’s character while building tension: in a single-page sequence, the panels cut back and forth between assassins’ hunt for Kyra and Kyra using her brawn and brains to help a village build an irrigation system. The action quickly resumes and Kyra overcomes the assassins and a persistent zombie, again using her physical prowess (”I can’t afford to play nice jungle damsel -- I’ve got to hit them as hard and fast as I can!”) and her wits (”How can I de-zombify this thing? Wait! What was it Dad read to me once--?”). Kyra displays a libertarian self-sufficiency (”I suppose I love the forests... In fact, there’s no real government here”) and her proficiency is depicted as chosen and earned.
Apart from Kyra’s bodacious physique and revealing bikini/loincloth outfit (and the brokeback cover illustration), Ator is restrained in depicting her in an overtly sexual way, eschewing pinup poses in favor of exhibiting her athleticism (which, granted, may still be a turn-on for some). The story is strictly PG-13, with one brief scene of subtle nudity. Neither is Kyra sexualized by the other characters, who seem oblivious to her physical attributes other than her muscles and the power they impose. The hordes of henchmen she battles want to fight, not fuck, and the combat is not sexually coded. Her antagonist, Johanna Starling -- a witch and, apparently, a Bangkok-based developer who wants to exploit Kyra’s jungle home for its mineral resources -- displays no envy of Kyra and simply sees her as an obstacle. For her part, Starling gets a single-panel sexy reveal in a lace-up bodice, but remains mostly concealed and is only described as “a tall woman in black and blue.” When the two women face off, the story passes the Bechdel test.
At its best, Ator’s loose, dynamic artwork resembles Steve Ditko (no stranger to fetish comics work) as inked by Frank Stack. There are a few clumsily composed sequences that border on incomprehensibility, but overall the drawing has an appealing energy. As a writer, Ator is above average: the action moves briskly (sometimes too briskly; at one point I wondered if there was a missing page), exposition and panel captions are brief and to the point (as she downs her foes, ”Kyra walks bodies like a paved path”), characters’ decisions and motivations are clear, and Kyra’s plucky, youthful personality is well defined. Ator imbues her with Spider-Mannish charm, for instance having her refer to her supernaturally-powered foe as “Spooky” and quip “Pay attention, cutie!” before she (spoiler alert) defeats her rotting undead attacker with a borrowed pot of stew -- and then can’t believe it worked (”You mean, that’s all it takes...?”). Clearly, Ator’s intention was to make a fun comic, and in this he succeeded.
The backup story “Jungle Justice,” which predates the main story, hews closer to the character’s fetishy origins, with an abundance of crotch shots and the old death-by-thighs trope. It comes across as a bit of unfortunate juvenilia in comparison. And I won’t get into the problematic aspects of the whole “white savior of primitive lands” genre, but the comic does little to subvert that cliche. Thankfully, the work is free of stereotypical racial depictions. (I’ll give a pass to a couple of background villagers in conical “rice paddy” hats.)
Kyra, published out of Norwalk, Connecticut under the “Elsewhere Productions” banner, ran for 5 issues 1985-1987, which were compiled in a 1988 trade paperback which also collected some Kageena material.
RBK