Tara Fremont must be the most unusual “jungle girl” character of them all, even if she is the product of the knowing Golden Age-inspired semi-spoof franchise, AC Comics’ FemForce, featured earlier in this blog. Tara is actually the grand daughter of Golden Age spy Senorita Rio and started out as the privileged offspring of Floridian industrialist TC Fremont. As an adult however Tara, shocked by the extent of the environmental damage her father’s enterprises were causing, became a qualified vetinary doctor, zoologist and staunch species protector. Using her inherited wealth, Tara went on to create a “safe zone” for endangered creatures on an isolated island habitat she called “Jungle Island”. Perhaps inevitably this forested paradise became the target of unscrupulous hunters and natural resource pirates, forcing Tara to defend her domain and develop the persona of a fully fledged classic jungle heroine, complete with giraffe skin bikini (presumably fake), as illustrated in the page above.
It was in this incarnation that Tara was recruited into FemForce, taking the mantle of a latter day Sheena the Jungle Queen in this Golden Age super-heroine tribute espionage group. Already highly athletic, strong and skilled in martial arts, Tara also developed the unusual power of being able to grow abnormally tall, effectively becoming a super-strong giantess, which was usually enough to subdue many of the villains that FemForce came into contact with. Tara, with her unusual backstory and rather contrived meta power is certainly an atypical jungle heroine although her exaggerated hour glass figure definitely maintains the sexualised 1940s tradition of this genre. Part activist, part jungle girl hommage and part sci-fi character, Tara’s niche is difficult to define, but we can certainly admire her uniqueness and AC Comics desire to give this heroine a slightly more sophisticated motivation than simply fighting crime or being the female white saviour of a threatened “primitive” culture.
Source: ReadComicsOnline
