Publisher: Dynamite
Writer: Marguerite Bennett and Christina Trujillo
Artist: Moritat and Dimi Marcheras
Colourist: Moritat and Casey Silver
Release Date: Out Now!
Price: $3.99

Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #3 hopes to lay to rest the ghost of the 1984 feature film starring Tanya Roberts, which garnered no less than five Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Actress, Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay and Worst Musical Score, and the equally ill-advised and short lived TV series from 2000 starring Geena Lee Nolin, and restore the reputation of one of the comic book industry’s founding characters, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

Of course, the doll-faced cutie with the eye-popping cleavage on the front cover doesn’t indicate this is going to be a serious attempt to update the Queen of the Jungle to anything that would  pass muster in the twenty-first century ranks of powerful women characters, but, when Sheena first appeared in the 1930’s, co-created by comic book legend Will Eisner and S.M. “Jerry” Iger, skimpy costumes, especially for jungle characters – it’s the heat you know- were de rigueur, so we’ll give Dynamite a pass on that.

Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #3 is written by Marguerite Bennett and Christina Trujillo. Bennett in particular has a reputation for creating realistic female characters but the Playboy inspired version of ‘Tarzan’ depicted here doesn’t really strike any blows for female empowerment and plays instead into the prurient teenage boy market of voluptuous, skimpily clad female characters always have.

The over-wordy plot of Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #3 concerns rabid plants, killer insects, a mysterious and forbidden temple deep in the heart of Sheena’s Amazon jungle home and an incursion into that jungle by villainous outsiders who want to steal its ancient secrets. All good, solid, pulp fiction plot points as befits such a long-standing character but ultimately Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #3 is just another popcorn movie version, which is better than a Golden Raspberry, and the leopard skin bikini is still, disappointingly, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #3’s most outstanding feature.

 

 

Reviewer: Gary Orchard
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker