Tygra of the Flame People

By J.A.Patterson
Posted on: Aug 3rd 2008 at 12:46 PM

Replies: 5

Tygra did get revived once!

AC Comics, during the late 1980s & early 1990s, had an anthology title called 'Jungle Girls' that mainly had reprints of 1940s & 1950s jungle girl material, but also had some new material mixed in. It did well, but a major complaint was that the new stuff did not have any team-ups with the vine-swingers. In response, a jungle-themed version of their Femforce called 'Wild Side' was devised in 1993. There was a tie-in to the Femforce series: Namely, Tara Fremont (Who was a long-standing member of the team at that time, who, by that time, had received the superpower to grow to towering sizes. She was not really a renaming of a golden-age vine-swinger: She was one of Bill Black's new characters!). To fill out this new team, AC added Cave Girl (from Magazine Enterprises), Nyoka The Jungle Girl (Who AC revived in the late 1980s), Princess Pantha (Another Nedor jungle gal), & Tygra!

The 'Wild Side' team debuted in 'Jungle Girls' #14. The Wild Side logo on the cover was larger than the 'Jungle Girls' logo. Unfortunately, the experiment failed, as the 'Jungle Girls' title was cancelled with issue #16. It was in that final issue that AC reprinted a Golden Age Tygra adventure. The 'Wild Side' storyline was resolved in 1994's Femforce #70. The Wild side team is currently disbanded.

J.A.P.

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Comments:

Posted by: Don Markstein

Posted on: 2008-08-04 at 09:34:53 AM

Thanks for the info. Among other things, it resolves for me the question of where Tara came from. I figured she could be a renamed version of practically anybody. She still could, but this clears it up.

As an aside, let me ask what's the driving force behind fans wanting the characters to team up? An early example is "Flash of Two Worlds", which teamed up DC's two "Flash" characters, thus opening up the entire "Earth-2" schtick, which management later decided had turned into such a quagmire for them that they tried to eliminate it with a complete revamp of their entire [url=glossary.htm#universe]universe's[/url] back-story. (Instead, they just added to the confusion and will probably never be rid of it, but that's another topic altogether).

But as improbable as it is for those two to get together (considering Barry Allen had already said Jay Garrick was nothing but a comic book character) other crossovers have been less probable yet. (Red Sonja and Mary Jane Watson? Puh-leeze!) Getting a bunch of vine swingers into the same story? Why?

I know, there's no accounting for taste. I'm just wondering what's so exciting about putting two or more heroes into the same story.

Quack, Don

Posted by: Mike Curtis

Posted on: 2008-08-05 at 09:13:21 AM

I think Julie Schwartz said it best in his introduction to the DC reprint book of team ups. He relates reading the pre-pulp adventures of Frank and Dick Merriwell. Normally the magazine would have one or the other star, but on rare occasions they would share an adventure.

Speaking of which, Don, how about that email? Mine is shandafa@windstream.net

Mike

Posted by: Don Markstein

Posted on: 2008-08-06 at 10:57:43 AM

Okay, I get that he liked seeing both Merriwells in the same story. But what did he say about why he liked it?

(Somebody said in private e-mail that it sounds like I was putting people down for liking to see heroes team up. If so, then I must have been careless about writing it, because that's not the case at all. I certainly don't mean to denigrate the editor who gave us "Flash of Two Worlds", even if it did lead to all the confusion of Earth 1 and Earth 2, who gave ample evidence of liking that sort of thing even without mentioning the Merriwell Brothers.)

And I'm at don@toonopedia.com, tho I've been lax about checking that one every day. (I keep that mailbox on the laptop, which isn't always connected to the Internet.) But I'll get that out to you Real Soon Now.

Quack, Don

Posted by: Ed Love

Posted on: 2008-08-13 at 08:25:11 AM

As far as team-ups go, I'd say it and wanting crossovers are something ingrained in our nature. It happened in the pulps, very popular with the edisonade dime novels as well as the penny dreadfulls across the pond. If they weren't teaming up, they swapped villains or "borrowed" villains like Captain Nemo from other books.

Ivanhoe has an appearance of Robin Hood, the King Arthur mythos grouped knights of various legends under one banner and Jason & the Argonauts predates them all.

The problem with the vine-swingers teaming up is that individually they aren't that distinctive of characters. It would take a talented writer well-versed in the characters' various backgrounds to weave a story together that accentuates each one's individuality into a compelling narrative. Especially nowadays where jungle characters are even more passe and at best a niche genre in an already niche genre.

Posted by: Don Markstein

Posted on: 2008-08-14 at 05:45:30 AM

I suspect that might be because the jungles are mostly gone. It's hard to swing through the trees when they've been cleared away for farmland.

So your theory is, crossovers are popular simply because that's hard-wired into the human psyche. Hmmm . . . could be. And here, I've been looking for something that makes sense. A lot I know!

Quack, Don