Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, No. 2

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, No. 2

Written by: Robert Rodi

Art by: Matt Merhoff

It’s always exciting to read a fresh take on a series or character that has been around for a while. And the character of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, has been around for an eternity—Will Eisner and Jerry Iger created her almost 75 years ago

So after decades of interpretation and reinterpretation, after countless iterations across all media, why does Sheena still prove captivating? Why does she prove herself to be timeless time and time again? And in an age of retconning, complex characters and plotlines, and series overhauls, is she still capable of being incorporated into new adventures full of new characters and new twists?

Sheena’s most salient attribute is and always has been her overwhelming power, a power that is at once frightening and enticing, at once violent and sexual. In this latest manifestation—written and drawn by Robert Rodi and Matt Merhoff, respectively, and published by Devil’s Due—we are hardly disappointed either by her hyper-sexualized appearance or by her overwhelming physical power. She is a master of lulling people (usually men) into traps, where her ferocity and bloodlust are made that much more potent. She is unbound—but she is not a wild animal, surviving on base instincts or sheer force of will.

In a very Faulknerian sense, Rodi’s Sheena seeks not just to survive but to thrive, to seek out the source of her troubles, to live not as animal but as human being. And that is where, or rather how, this character takes on a more sophisticated persona: She is the victim of machinations much larger than she, but she does not shy away from mystery, nor is she intimidated by, or irrationally fearful of, the industrial metropolis where she finds herself at the beginning of the story.

Rather, Sheena seems almost to embrace fundamental change. She is certainly a child of nature, but she is an inherently human creature nonetheless—to wit, she cannot escape her humanity, though she would perhaps be just as happy not to have anything to do with humankind. Rodi writes a character that is questing—questing after knowledge, questing for answers, and questing for revenge. She wants desperately to reconnect with Mother Earth, to go back from whence she came—the harsh jungle world, the only home she has ever known.

But there are forces at work, dark forces that would manipulate and control her, that would seek to bind that which cannot be bound. By far the story’s most intriguing character, Laura Jeffries is the manifestation of everything Sheena is not—Jeffries is a corporate tour-de-force; she is sadistic and conniving, lacking any real sense of humanity. It is Jeffries who wants Sheena neutralized, or at the very least under lock and key. And it is Jeffries who would seek to “cage the beast,” of course to her own diabolical ends.

And therein lies the thing that makes this issue so damned interesting—there is a diametric opposition, that of Sheena to Laura Jeffries. The two don’t actually meet face-to-face, but they are VERY aware of each other.

So to come back to the question of whether Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, can survive (and thrive) in today’s fast-paced, sophisticated comic book environment—well, I say she can, and I think issues like this one will go a long way toward ensuring that Eisner and Iger’s masterful creation will be around for a long, long time.