Timeline 20: The Rise of Rulah Notes

I am going to be straight up with everyone here. I love Tarzan. It doesn’t even matter how many terrible reinventions or terrible actors play him, I love him. The entire concept of the jungle hero is something I truly love. And it’s not just Tarzan. I absolutely love the new Sheena material from Devil’s Due. I still miss Bruce Jones, Mark Waid, and Priest on Ka-Zar. I go to newspaper websites well out of my area just to read Phantom strips online. Heck, I love Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire for its jungle hero Atlanteans. So it should come as no surprise after I say all that, that I wanted my own jungle hero. Generally, I try to use literary characters wherever I can to avoid pastiches. I didn’t want Torzo, Jungle King, or anything equally preposterous.

So, what should I see, while cruising Toonepedia. for info on more golden age heroes for Tales of the Living Legends, but Rulah, Jungle Goddess. A quick surf of my favorite public domain download site quickly found her first and subsequent appearances. All with art by the amazing Golden Age artist Matt Baker!


So my jungle hero choice was made clear, Rulah was the one for me.

My plans are to continue irregularly writing new Rulah stories for the foreseeable future, but I will cover more on that at another time. Before I could really start making original stories, I thought it would be best to adapt her origin story from the horrendously title Zoot Comics #7. I updated a few bits and tried to clean up the dialogue. I also took the time to explain why all these African tribemen spoke perfect English. And finally I inserted Tembo, a character that will play an important role in my stories for the next few years.

As to the means for Rulah’s new stories to appear. I will just say that an old sister site, dating all the way back to MHP’s days as a subsite, will be making its return in a big way come 2010.