A jungle girl (so-called, usually an adult woman) is an archetype or stock character, often used in popular fiction, of a female adventurer, superhero or even a damsel in distress living in a jungle or rain forest setting.

The jungle girl is generally depicted as wearing either a scantily clad animal print (usually leopard) bikini or some type of jungle dress made from either fur or leather. Most of them are barefoot while others are shown to be in some type of primitive shoes. They could possibly be feral children or come from a wealthy, educated family that grew up in the jungle. They are the female counterpart of Tarzanesque characters. They are usually depicted in either one of 2 ways, as a tough heroine or as a bound and gagged damsel in distress.

Cave Girl is a fictional jungle girl heroine who appeared in comic books published by Magazine Enterprises from 1952 to 1955, created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Bob Powell. The character’s adventures are an example of artist Powell’s good girl art.

There are so many jungle girls… White Princess of the Jungle is a jungle girl anthology comic book published quarterly by Avon Periodicals in the early 1950s. Its first issue is cover dated July 1951 and its last November 1952, for a total of 5 issues. The title’s creative team includes editor Sol Cohen, and artists Everett Raymond Kinstler, Louis Ravielli, Gene Fawcette, and Vince Alascia. Issue 1 presents the origin of the White Princess of the Jungle, Taanda.

Historically, Taanda is predated in literature by Sheena, (a distaff Tarzan who inspired a number of comic book jungle girls), jungle lovely Rulah, and by Rima, the heroine of William Henry Hudson’s novel Green Mansions (1904).

Like most comics jungle girls, Taanda is white, intelligent, voluptuous, scantily clad in animal-skin bikinis, in possession of the ability to communicate with jungle beasts and birds, and wise to the ways of cruel men. Her life is devoted to preserving the peace and beauty of the jungle, confronting men up to no good, dickering with hostile, superstitious tribesmen, and exposing the deceits of bone-rattling witch doctors.

Meriem is an example of the “Jungle Girl” archetype, in that she lives in the forest, dresses in skins and scavenges for food. In fact, Meriem is a character in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s series of Tarzan novels, and the heroine of the fourth, The Son of Tarzan. Born Jeanne Jacot, the daughter of French general Armand Jacot, she is taken captive by Arabs as a child who give her the name Meriem. She is later rescued from her captors by Korak, son of Tarzan, with whom she afterwards lives in the jungle. She is beautiful, strong, athletic, brave, daring and sensitive. She will kill for food, but not for sport.

The emerging relationship between the two feral teenagers is described sensitively, as the embittered boy and the abused girl learn to live and love together, saving each other from various dangers and drawing to the happy ending in which Meriem marries Korak and is reunited with her father who reveals that she is a “princess in her own right”. In the tenth Tarzan book, Tarzan and the Ant Men, readers are introduced to her young son Jackie.

Click here for another post featuring art of Rulah, Jungle Goddess