The misadventures of Ken the wolf Boy

The characters
Sylvia Vel - Sylvia is from a dysfunctional elite family. Is the younger sister to Hannah.
Lila Washington - Lila is a survivor of a boat crash resulting in only herself surviving, running away into the savannah to be with friend Shu.
Babu - Before fighting against and then reconciling with Ken, Babu was a childhood acquaintance of Ken at one stage. His real first name is Andrew.
Mariella - Queen of the underground and of all the ghouls in the purgatory. Was born in New Asura, a downward backwater that was once a prototype civilisation in the northeast of Dagon, which in turn was south of the Kazinga Channel.

Tarzan comic editions

Not rewritten until November 2022

In the USA, Dark Horse seems to treat Tarzan: the Joe Kubert years with more respect than it did to Tarzan: the Russ Manning years in any way. Thanks to all the legal limbos, it’s invevitable that a Buscema years omnibus collectors edition for the Tarzan comic books, drawn primarily by the Buscema brothers John and Sal, has pretty much been nulled out anyway. 

France’s Graph Zeppelin made a French version of Tarzan: the Russ Manning years, while its competitor Delirium made a French version of Tarzan: the Joe Kubert years collectors edition, itself translated from English like the Brazilian Portuguese one. 

Even though Brazil’s Devir has finally produced a complete Tarzan: the Russ Manning years omnibus collectors edition, it similarly has quite a lot of problems with the digital recolouring, whereas it treats Tarzan: the Joe Kubert years in a considerably better light, which is still interesting, considering that the latter was translated from English. 

Devir’s competitor, Pipoca e Nanquim, did a decent (but not quite great) recolouring of Tarzan: the Buscema brothers years omnibus collectors edition, which, although expensive, is much more affordable than the forever zombified Tarzan: the Buscema years omnibus collectors edition by a large margin. Unfortunately, it’s only available in Brazil for a moment, but it can be exported out of it. 

Disney's Jungle Book: stepping into the lives of villains

Stepping into the lives of villains, or more accurately visualising them for the screen, is a fairly huge task.

It's fair to say that I've briefly read the story that featured Buldeo in a Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book complication. Yes, he's a recurring antagonist, but I can give him more sympathy and make the audience sympathise him more because he's a human character.

In one of my episodic dreams, titled 'The Day Shere Khan Died', the animated version of Shere Khan finally regains a lot of sympathy, even though he lost his prey to poachers, and his estranged mate (she's such a big villainess) taunts him everyday, which I think of as the combined reason why he's the main antagonist for the current two animated Jungle Book films.

Collecting things

I wonder if who will do it? 

A pair of Epoch Family Kamishibai sets may be nice.

The scenery of Joe Kubert’s Tor

Joe Kubert’s Tor is known not just for its large array of stone punk archetypes, it is also known for its amazing scenery. 

The 1953-54+1975-76+Sojourn incarnation has the prototypical Tor living in a subtropical savannah, indicating that the prototypical series is somehow set in a fantasised cross of Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, PRC, Myanmar, and northeast India.

The 1993 incarnation has its variant of Tor living in a patch of the Himalayan foothills, indicating that it’s set in a fantasised mix of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand, which are three North Indian states. 

The 2008 incarnation has another variant of Tor living in both the jungle and savannah, indicating that it’s set in a mix of south and southeast Asian nations. 

Adapting the Classics: Tor

After a sludge of potentially good concepts never came up within Joe Kubert’s lifespan, his character Tor strongly needs an animated series of his own, which is mostly because another prehistoric fantasy concept, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, has become a success both nationally and internationally due to having little dialogue. 

Sometimes I’ll add female characters into a proposed animated series centring around Tor himself, such as the lady wearing a diadem (who appeared in the original 50s prototype and its 70s remake), a fawned over redhead (who appeared in the 90s series) and a mysterious grey skinned lady (who appeared in A Prehistoric Odyssey). 

In the proposed animated series, Tor himself is the bereaving son of a brutal female warrior and her somewhat nebbish bodyguard, and it is he who also has a redhead son, a brown haired grandson, and a crapload of great grandchildren. 

Rulaman: the prehistoric fantasy novel that inspired generations

Rulaman is a popular public domain classic which has been translated into Russian, Korean and other languages, but not into English yet. 

There’s a high probability that Rulaman inspired Joe Kubert’s Tor, Shotaro Ishinomori’s Ryū the prehistoric boy, Jong Jin Yi’s Baba the cave boy, and various other prehistoric heroes. 

The significance of Joe Kubert’s Tor

Tor is a prehistoric fantasy comic franchise co-created by the late Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer (but owned from the 80s-90s onward by the super talented artist and later his own studio, Joe Kubert Productions). 

There’s the 1950s Tor comic book series and its own kin. 

The 1950s series is the prototype for all the other incarnations. The prototype’s eponymous hero is considerably lighter and softer than other incarnations. He strived for a better world. 

While the 1975 DC series is largely a remake cum reprint, it’s safe for me to assume that this incarnation’s eponymous hero also appears in a then all new volume 1, itself a revised origin of his own backstory, which began life as a failed comic strip. The two sojourn strips made in 1977 are technically both loose sequels to the St John incarnation and the pilots to both the Marvel and DC incarnations. 

There’s also the 1993 Marvel series, which is perhaps a darker but more ponderous continuity reboot to both the 50s and 70s incarnations. There’s also a short story made in 1991 which is its beginning. Its eponymous hero, now a gritty fella, must survive in a world just as unforgivingly deadly as it was when his father was once alive. 

The 2008 DC series, a more optimistic continuity reboot of both the St John-Sojourn and Marvel incarnations has its eponymous hero go into a mysterious mountain containing a deadly underground world. 

The Gora Gopal conundrum

The Gora Gopal conundrum

Gora Gopal is a comic character created by Spanish artist Carrillo. Unlike various other Jungle Guys and Girls out there, it seems that Gora Gopal, in Carrillo's original version, was a post-war Anglo-Indian (albeit of British descent) 'lost child/man' named Tom Colvin raised by elderly mentor and guru Chandenagor in the jungles of Bengal. His girlfriend is Carolina.

My three other Indo-centric projects will be Rikki Tikki Tavi (the mongoose in this version will be a short tailed one) and The Tea Lords. One of which is Rudyard Kipling's story whereas the latter is by Hella Haasse. Rikki will be relatively short for a full length film at 52 minutes, whereas The Tea Lords will be a sprawling tv series set in colonial Java.

Cast of Argentine telenovela Teach Me to Live

Clodine / Asai (Violeta Urtizberea): She is the daughter of the Fernández Salguero couple and the true granddaughter of Amanda. She was raised by monkeys in the jungle and is a natural, fresh, tender and wild young woman unaware of evil. Since she cannot speak, she repeats everything she hears.

Lucas Linares (Pablo Rago): He is a young and handsome teacher. While he is responsible and gentleman, he is fun and informal. He only fell in love once and suffered. The arrival of Asai, whom he must teach to behave like a person, will be his second chance in love.

Lorena Beatriz Benítez / Clodine (Julieta Zylverberg): she is the true daughter of Benítez and Emilia, but after the accident they made Amanda believe that she was her granddaughter. It is whimsical, frivolous and superficial. She strives to be the leader of her group and her friends idolize her. She is attracted to Lucas Linares and will do her best to grab her attention.

Amanda (Adela Gleijer): She is Clodine's tender and kind grandmother. After the accident, the Benítez family make her believe her granddaughter is Lorena. Seeing on the news that a girl was found in the jungle, he decides to bring her to the mansion, since he believes she is the daughter of the servants.

Benítez (Jorge Suárez): He is the cruel butler of the Fernández Salguero family mansion, and the true father of the false Clodine. All his life he envied Agustín's economic well-being, but that, he exchanged with the babies after the accident that killed him. When the fake Clodine turns 21 and becomes the heir to the fortune, she plans to reveal her true identity and live like a king. He is Emilia's husband, the maid, and he stays by her side only to prevent her from revealing the whole truth.

Emilia (Patricia Etchegoyen): She is the wife of Benítez and mother of the false Clodine. Although she agreed to the exchange of the babies, she thought that the true heiress had died in the accident. She is very afraid and wants to tell the truth, but her husband does not allow it. Day by day she endures the mistreatment of her daughter, who despises her without knowing that she is actually her mother.

Minerva (Ana María Picchio): She is Amanda's lady-in-waiting, for whom she left her life in the background. She is reckless and does not express herself very well, but she is the only one in the house who dares to face Clodine. Although she closed her heart, she does not know that love will soon come again into her life.

Goyena (Germán Kraus): Correct and always very willing to solve any family issue, he is the attorney for Amanda. Although he is married, he will fall in love with Minerva, and next to her he will be in charge of unmasking Benítez.

Farsa (Pepe Monje): He is a corrupt lawyer who knows the secret of Emilia and Benítez, and is allied with him because he hopes to obtain an economic return when Clodine inherits the fortune.

Cristóbal Linares (Felipe Colombo): He is Lucas's younger brother, with whom he lives. He promised to mature and help with spending, but he can't handle his instincts. He escapes commitments and his weakness is women, until he meets Ro and falls hopelessly in love. Since she constantly ignores him, she resorts to the false Clodine to help him conquer her, promising to intervene so that her older brother can notice her.

Macu (Fernando Dente): He is a handsome young man and in a good position who is hopelessly in love with the false Clodine, but the appearance of Lucas makes the picture more complicated.

Ro (Laura Cymer): She is the best friend of the false Clodine. Although she is not very graceful, she has a very high ego. Together with Clodine, she will make life impossible for Asaí.

Ana (Valeria Lorca): She is the doctor who took care of Asaí when she was brought to Buenos Aires. By a request she is fired from the hospital, and will be in charge of warning Lucas about the dangers Asai is running in the City.

Marcela (Laura Azcurra): She is a teacher and is Lucas's girlfriend. Asaí's appearance will put her relationship at risk, so she will carry out all sorts of macabre plans to keep her at all costs.

Names

Beasts

Once Upon A Time, A Bunch of Beasts went into the park. But one day, a bunch of exterminators are going nuts. 

What could be: Barumba’s Distant sequel

The Barumba’s Adventures sequel will have a scrawny feral girl, who is also a descendant of Mowgli and Nashi, his wife. 

It may become possible and yet will be much darker than most Jungle girl depictions that have stood the test of time for decades or longer. Though her father was raised by literal snowmen type apemen, she will be raised by him! 

Swinging from tree to tree

I like gibbons, ‘cause they’re the acrobats of the jungle. The same can strikingly be said for Tarzan in his original literary form. 

To swing from tree to tree throughout the rainforest canopy and within a crap ton of ancient trees, a character has to flex his or her arms. 

MNCTV’s Tarzan Cantik Summary

Tarzan Cantik became the latest Sinetron (soap opera) on MNCTV. This soap opera again showed a bare amount of hilarious action from Aryani Fitriana, who acted as Fathiyah.

Synopsis of Tarzan Cantik MNCTV: 

Fauzi (Adam Jordan), who, from a wealthy family, chose to work as a plant researcher and did not think about his family's assets. Fauzi is actually married to Lisna (Nana Khairina) but he has a loving girlfriend, Rianti (Lyra Virna), a fellow researcher. When he learned that Rianti was pregnant, Fauzi decided to divorce Lisna and marry Rianti, and they lived happily in a remote forest.

Time flies.

Rianti will give birth. While on their way to the hospital in the nearest town, the car carrying Rianti and Fauzi was intercepted by the Pharmacy Superpowers, a pharmaceutical company that had long targeted Fauzi, until an accident occurred and Rianti was separated from Fauzi.

Rianti who splashed into the river ended up inadvertently giving birth in the water. Rianti is caught by Lisna's unloving men.

Rianti and Fauzi's baby girls were stranded on an uninhabited island, mostly only big apes and other wild animals.

17 years passed. Fathiyah (Aryani) who grows up to be a lively, cheerful, loving feral girl. While looking for food with her best friends, the 3 monkeys, Fathiyah accidentally met and fought with a very tall human named the Madman (Arianto). Since the first meeting the Madman fell in love with Fathiyah.

When Fathiyah’s forest is disrupted by a group of people who will destroy it and capture its animals, Fathiyah gets to know Erfan (Kevin Kambey) and Revi (Rafael Sm*sh), and they work hand in hand together. Until finally Fathiyah accidentally carried their car to Jakarta.

Fathiyah lives in the house occupied by Revi and Erfan. Erfan initially disliked the presence of Fathiyah because he considered only disturbing, noisy and could not do anything. Revi who is more easily familiar with Fathiyah and want to teach Fathiyah all kinds.

Erfan and Revi turned out to be neighbours with Lisna and 2 of her adopted children, Carla (Gita Sucia) and Carlo (Lavicky), who had also reached their teens.

Carla, who has a long crush on Erfan, immediately hates Fathiyah. Carla and Carlo always collaborated to work on Fathiyah but as a result they were always unlucky.

One day Fathiyah, who ran away from the pursuit of Carla and Carlo, accidentally hid in the Superpower Pharmacy factory. In the factory, in a hidden room, Fathiyah instead found Fauzi. Apparently Fauzi is still alive!

Tarzan Cantik soap opera aired on MNCTV every day at 17:00 WIB, starting Monday, May 26, 2014.

Adventures in preservation piracy

Not written until years later.

Preservation piracy is a sensitive, touchy topic. However, it is increasingly socially acceptable for nerds to go out of their original comfort zone and into the Wild West of preserving something as relatively obscure as a clunky piece of old Kamishibai. 

Outer Space Madness: is Disney ripping off the fairy tales?

Welcome to my Outer Space Madness

I like Ambassador Magma, the one manga that both The Space Giants and its OVA remake are based on. In the live action/animation version, Magma could shrink into a human size (when standing behind the scenes), but in the manga and almost alway in the Ova, he still remained a clunky, heavily armoured and almost robotlike giant anyway.

In both manga and live action/animation versions, he transformed into a rocket (via his hidden head, arms and legs), but in the OVA, he simply (and quickly) morphed into the same thing, probably as a blessing in disguise. Many hairstyles are part of the character too: a scruffy wig in the live action/animation version, a bundle of achingly long but lightly coloured bangs in the OVA, and the original manga hairstyle which grew into a big flame.

In his first manga appearance, Magma was probably (and inappropriately) slate-coloured with dull hair. As the chapters go into their first climax, he became gold coloured and blond haired. Later on, a then-unlikely pair of simplified 'four fingers-single thumb hands' got added to the body part roster, which is very thankfully cost effective because a pair of actual human hands is still so hard to draw. The reason why they got added was (and still is) the demanding handiness of the character's creator. At the same time, the hair also grew into a flabbergasting flame of locks and bangs!

In all versions, he could talk like a human! He can wrestle a shapeshifter in dinosaur form, can attack a Godzilla-sized crayfish-like monster, and can roar.

Am I thinking about the classic Magma in most of my crapped out blogging time? Oh yes, my mentor Tim Danko had watched what is now the really boring 'Kimba The White Lion/Leo The Lion' show as a kid. I agree with him that the late Osamu Tezuka's first major success is (relatively speaking) the dullest and most ordinary of his major works.

Even though the whole classic meta-show was loosely based on an equally boring manga called 'Jungle Emperor', its titular character Leo (who was nicknamed 'Kimba' in the first two seasons of most dubs) was a rebellious young antihero, who evolved into a sensibly intelligent if supposedly vegetarian beast!

This led to two medium-length films, as well as a blandly dark reboot show (which flopped miserably or had some success in most countries) and its considerably more nationally unpopular (but more internationally successful) 'film finale' of 1997. Nine years after the film finale's English-dubbed release, a somewhat satirical television special, acting as the franchise’s first and only official continuity reboot, got aired on Fuji Tv as the final (and only almost entirely non-canonical) instalment of the whole franchise's continued existence.

But there's something that any Disney fan will never know about until now. Both Magma and Kimba/Leo have partly inspired The Lion King to become a major hit in 1994, perhaps because 'the circle of life' (Tezuka was fond of this term too!) is also 'the beauty contest of life' according to the Canadian 'In Your Face' author Shari Graydon. Gee, I have read the same term from 'In Your Face: The Culture Of Beauty And You' by that Canadian (Shari Graydon)! 

What most likely inspired The Lion King to become a hit is that it was a notoriously costly 'technical ripoff' of Shakespeare's Hamlet, amongst many other tales about the poor fallen hero and his fellows. Fairy tales get ripped off very easily and are pretty much prone to significant and at times adaptation decaying variations, since they're very ancient and out of copyright.