No one could mistake master artist Alex Raymond for a proto-feminist. In his and scribe Don Moore’s dual successes of the 1930s, Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim, barely-clad distressed damsels abounded. To be sure, Raymond understood better than any comic strip artist the erotic potential of the formal, His male and female bodies were delicious. But it also goes almost without saying that the adventure genre has always been about male prowess and potency against forces natural, exotic, institutional and especially feminine. Comics artists like Carl Barks and Al Capp, among others, have recounted that newspaper editors often cited the 12-year old boy as the ideal target market for adventure strips. Well, yeah, sure…along with their horny Dads.

The adventure hero’s cavalier approach to women, romance, and all that icky girly stuff is clear in Jungle Jim’s caddish handling of two rival gal pals Lil and Kitty in this late 1941 interstitial between two episodes. Jim has no time for romance, and writes to Dear Jane letters, excusing himself from commitment. Lil gets the I’m-just-a-ramblin’-sorta-guy” brush off and Kitty gets the mock magnanimity ploy. “Find a nice substantial businessman… .” What a gentleman.

Jungle Jim was a three and four panel topper to Flash Gordon that started on the same day, Jan. 7 1934. Both strips were conceived as King syndicate’s direct responses to rivals’ successes, Buck Rogers and Tarzan. The juxtaposition of jungle primitivism and outer space futurism was never as stark as one would suppose. In fact, Moore and Raymond’s vision of space-age Planet Mongo and beyond was disarmingly feudal. Despite the rocket ships and ray guns, the politics of these other worlds were tribal and often primitive, the landscapes as vast and challenging as Jim’s jungles capes. The fascination with pre-modern fiefdoms, ethnic rivalries and monarchical social arrangements was a curious response in 1930s pop culture to both the Great Depression and looming war in Europe.