Lorna the Jungle Queen Primer
Series Overview
Lorna, the Jungle Queen was a series that Atlas pumped out to cash in on the popularity of jungle adventure stories of the era. Lorna, the titular character went on adventures in the jungles of the Congo with her pet monkey Mikki, explorer Greg Knight, and M’Tuba one of the tribal natives. By today’s standards this series is pretty problematic since Lorna is a white person who goes into the jungle and is almost instantly considered a goddess by the locals, because — you know — white people who can do shit are apparently gods in the eyes of the people of Africa. That’s what they wrote about in those days.
Anyway the series ran under the title Jungle Queen for five issues when they changed it to Lorna the Jungle Girl, because I guess calling her a Jungle Queen was too empowering? Also this is a grown woman, not a mere girl. Well despite all this, Lorna was actually a pretty progressive female character for the time, often facing danger head on and ignoring Greg Knight when he tries to tell her something is too dangerous. So there’s that at least?
The title ran for 26 issues and featured mostly stories about Lorna and solo stories featuring Greg Knight. The series also featured text stories and on-off jungle tales. Like everything else in this index, non-continuity stuff is omitted. Which brings up the next question, is Lorna considered part of Marvel Continuity? The character has not been seen since her series was cancelled, not even in any of the more recent Marvel Handbooks. However, at the time of this writing, Marvel has reprinted the first 9 issues. She’s a recurring character who had her own title that was created by Atlas comics so there’s no reason why she can’t be part of continuity, particularly since her inclusion doesn’t interfere with anything else.
