League of Extraordinary Oddballs: FANTOMAH

Jungle Comics, as the name implies, was generally devoted to a collection of Tarzan imitators, but one strip stood out: Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle.  Arriving before Wonder Woman, she may be the comics’ first female superhero.

Never given an “origin” per se, Fantomah simply shows up fully-formed (ahem) in a fairly sheer nightgown, patrolling the jungle and looking for trouble.  Her powers are pretty much whatever the story needs them to be but include levitation (of herself and other things), transmutation, flight, the ability to talk to animals and a “super superiority ray” that wins every fight against a man (a power usually acquired only after marriage).

Here she is flying through the power of “concentrated will-power waves.”

When evil rears its ugly head (and it always does), Fantomah puts on her own ugly head and goes into action…

Sometimes to add to the “intimidation” factor — or maybe just because the artist is lazy — her head flies around by itself.

Like our old pal “Stardust” (and from the same writer/artist), Fantomah is prone to going Biblical in the “vengeance” department.  In one story, a villain develops a serum to turn gorillas into a gun-toting army, and Fantomah ain’t havin’ it.

She drops the evil-doer into the path of his own monstrous army, with predictable results, no doubt to the delight of 10-year-olds everywhere.

Other threats call for more creative approaches.  When a squadron of planes tries to bomb the jungle, Fantomah sends winds to tear the planes apart. Then when the pilots bail out, she sends a force of flying lions to the attack.

The few pilots who make it safely to Earth are set upon by enlarged reptiles, and that’s that. Fantomah heads back home to work on her perm until the next threat.

In time, other artists will replace the (frankly disturbed) Fletcher Hanks and the supernatural elements of the strip will fade as Fantomah becomes a more traditional “jungle girl.” Later still, she’s re-imagined as a character with ties to ancient Egypt. But she was the coolest — and oddest — in these early tales.

You can read Hanks’ take on the character (if you dare) in Jungle Comics #2-16.