Rima the Jungle Girl was a relatively late arrival to the jungle woman comic book genre, featuring in a seven issue DC series that ran from May 1974 to May 1975. Although adhering to many of the Golden Age tropes - young blonde white woman; statuesque guardian of a jungle domain; skimpy dress; ability to communicate with the animals - Rima was less a kick-ass heroine in the Sheena mode, and more an ethereal mystical figure with an almost supernatural presence. This may reflect the post-hippy world in which she arose, with the result that she is therefore altogether softer than her postwar sisters. The comic book Rima was created by Robert Kanigher and delicately illustrated by Nestor Rendondo and Jo Kubert. Despite this seemingly original premise, writer and illustrators actually drew on a relatively long history of the character.
Rima first appeared in a 1904 novel by WH Hudson, deceptively titled Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest in which Rima is a naive representative of a lost tribe of white people living in the Amazon rain forest discovered by a male fugitive from oppression named Abel. The theme of the book is of lost innocence and the vulnerability of pastoral spiritual societies to the advance of civilisation. It is this spirituality that also features in Kanigher’s and Rendondo’s version of the heroine. A film of Hudson’s novel called Green Mansions and starring Audrey Hepburn, was made in 1959 and was faithful to the book’s depiction of Rima as a wraith-like figure who communicated in whistles and other vocalisations. A key difference between the comic book Rima and that of the Green Mansions versions is that DC’s character is an adult woman and a powerful presence whereas Hudson’s original was a young girl, somewhat damaged and viewed as a demonic spirit by the natives. In many other respects however, the comic series is faithful to both the novel and the movie, setting the action in Venezuela and also featuring Abel, a fugitive from a failed revolution as the man who encounters the mysterious Rima and whose life is saved by her. The local Indian population also have an ambivalent attitude to Rima, viewing her as a not altogether benign witch. As an adaptation, perhaps it is appropriate that the comic series did not go on to become an “inspired by” franchise, but, equally, perhaps Rima was just a little too otherworldly to make it as a true “jungle girl”.
Sources: Wikipedia for some of the detail; readallcomics.com for the artwork.
