How not to be a Horribly Misled Comic Book Dweeb

Not everyone seems to like something without any continuity whatsoever. However, the few things that negative continuity seems to happily bundle with are also the ones that also make it a relative godsend, which is mostly for people who frankly don’t know much better or even any differently. 

For example, Comic Book Time is often done so badly as to hound over or even intrude the sanities of not just the typical comic book readership, but also of the societal majority. Not so for Webcomic Time, which mostly seems to cow over the former in terms of not displeasing (almost all of) society as often. 

History of the Nausicaanade

The Nausicaanade is not just a mixed meta genre, it also is one of the most popular recent meta genres in the history of modern fiction, period. 

The Modern Nausicaanade goes far back to the publication of Albert Robida’s Saturnin Farandoul in 1879. 

The meta genre maker is Wama Son of the Moon, created by the late Mexican comics giant Joaquín Cervantes Bassoco. The comic is so little known to modern non-Hispanophone viewers but indirectly influential outside of Latin America, it’s safe to say that the ridiculous current Mexican copyright laws do not help matters at all. Also, it is basically Nausicaa starring a Tarzan Boy, who is a serial lemon Stu living with certain strange fantasy animals. 

The meta genre codifiers are Wama Son of the Moon’s far more popular and directly influential spinoff, Tawa the Gazelle Man, the Japanese Toku Monster Prince and ultimately its fellow Sagisu family creation Spectreman, plus Star Fleet. The former is Nausicaa starring a Tarzan boy, who isn’t much of a serial lemon Stu in spite of living with certain strange fantasy animals. The second and third are basically Nausicaa starring a Tarzan boy living with remnant cryptid pseudo dinosaurs and Nausicaa starring a dullard spiritual predecessor to both of Tatsuya Yasuda’s Steel Jeegs. The latter is a chronological cross of Nausicaa and Grendizer, starring an outer space team battling a corrupt empire and its wicked military. 

The manga that helped popularise the modern Nausicaanade to Japanese audiences and ultimately other consumers from the rest of the world is the genre namer itself, Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Its compressed film adaptation, which actually was conceived first, is even more influential, inspiring the ATLA franchise and James Cameron’s Avatar amongst many others in recent years. Its sole major imitators are Elfie of the Blue Sea and Green Legend Ran, themselves cult classics featuring humanlike mermaids and monsters representing a bunch of debilitating natural disasters, as well as Fern Gully, which itself stars tropical Australian animals, and Nadia: Secret of the Water, a Jules Verne inspired anime show which itself inspired Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which is Nausicaa with amortal sea dwellers, and another Jules Verne inspired anime show called The Secret Of Cerulean Sand, which is Nausicaa with bright minerals. 

The legendary Farscape by Jim Henson Productions is a cross of Nausicaa and Space Battleship Yamato, starring an outer space team battling wicked empires and corrupt militaries. 

Its own relatives, James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, is Nausicaa featuring a human interacting with catlike, tall and blue but rather annoyingly Stuish aliens. 

Their spiritual successor is Ainbo: Spirit of the Amazon, which is more than just a variant of Nausicaa featuring mildly stereotypical Native Amazonians battling tooth and nail against a mining company. Not only is its links with Nausicaa very apparent, if rather indirect, the first word of its title, which means ‘girl’ in a Panoan language called Shipibo Conibo, rhymes with The English word for the goddamn frigging Rainbow.  

The Public Domain

Implementing a human creator’s rights onto a franchise, while not easy to begin with, is actually far more difficult and at times nearly impossible in both America and Mexico, because of how influential a lot of their corporations are. 

Even if they change as usual, most national versions of the Public Domain will definitely still be under far more threat from corporate raids than any other intellectual property topic shown. 

Family Estates

There are Japanese creator/family estates that double as merchandising and manga studios; with Tezuka Productions, Bird Studio, Dynamic Inc and Ishinomori Pro being very good examples of such a concept. Nonetheless, they sorely do need a huge generational shakeup in order to keep catching up with the times. 

A few of the most influentially litigious Creator/Family Estates in the world are mostly from the USA. Alexander Key Pro, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc, and Robert E Howard Productions are good examples. A lot of exceptions from other countries include Moulinsart Hergé Inc from Belgium and the C B Adams Studio from Mexico. 

A heap of Plausible Adaptations to relatively obscure Pop Culture Works

Hi there! I’m checking out a list of my potential adaptations to relatively obscure pop culture works. The future is so unpredictable that, if I become rich via textiles, guess what? In most cases, I’m thinking of future permissions from the companies behind my favourite secondhand items! 

A potential Multimedia Universe is yet to be on the way for Leo the Lion and his fellas Ki Gor, Nizar, Sheena and Akim. Said Universe will be much more interlinked and satirical than the works that they’re all based on. In addition to both the scare factor and dramedy, it will primarily feature good old secondhand songs by internationally known Japanese pop folk giants the Kome Kome Club; with the sole major exception being Akim, which has a strong south asian soundtrack. 

A whole new Light Novel branch for the Mazinger franchise will include a very consistent yet more adult (and more faithful to the whole roots) take on Mazinger Z and friends, as well as a hotter and sexier variant of Go Nagai’s Star Fleet (Stories).

Two of Alexander Belyaev’s Public Domain works will soon become honorary relatives of Mazinger Z and friends starting with the Amphibian Man, The technically Prototypical DevilMan, which is about a grey eyed orphan named Ichneumon, aka Ichthyander, the son of a female mix race Venezuelan and a male Haratin Mauritanian social worker. Ichneumon is also the pupil of an equally infamous Italo Uruguayan mad scientist named Adamo Salvatore. Its spiritual sequel, Ariel, will feature the somehow more heavily modified titular protagonist as the sole known functioning male heir to a technically dead dynasty of minor Habsburg era nobility. 

A trio of Public Domain works by the late Russian adult and teen fiction visionary Alexander Green will finally have their own animated counterparts. Said works are named The Scarlet Sails, Jessie and Morgana, and The Girl Who Runs On the Waves. The former and latter are quite optimistic but not too Disneyish; plus they both share some things in common. Jessie and Morgana is very different; being a stunning horror novel filled to the brim with nightmare fuel. 

There is a much bloodier spin on the cult classic show SpectreMan, a legendary Toku that predated Steel Jeeg and pals by just two years. Its preceding story is set after the end of civilisation as we know it, simply called Monster Island, which is based on another Tomio Sagisu (aka Souji Ushio) show called Monster Prince. 

A crapload of works by Souji Yamakawa will all be set in their own shared universe, albeit on very different time periods. 

Treasures to save for Christmases and birthdays

There are Treasures that can definitely be saved for Christmases and Birthdays. 

Things that I already have

Postwar Showa Shonen Manga History Parts 1 and 2 - Made by Heibonsha at the turn of the millennium, when the Internet was almost always only seen in the minority world, this two part pre-Nine Eleven and pre-COVID Mook anthology is practically a second-hand must for fans of old Shonen tv shows, anime and manga the world over. 

The Great Jungle Graphics for Boys - This Mook, a part of the Children’s History series by Heibonsha, is possibly the breakout spinoff of the two Shonen Manga History Mooks; mostly because it primarily has Tarzanids in most of its pages while each of the latter two have only had a few.  

Crazy Literary Collectibles: Tarzan Boy Edition

Crazy Literary Collectibles: Tarzan Boy Edition

Things that have a few Hotmails and Ebooks shown

The Jungle Born story has a rarely seen but freely available Ebook, which means that it’s not needed for a collection until later in the Tarzan Boy collecting process. Because it’s luckily being added into the public domain for the EU, I adapted its Ebook form into a pretty sad and somehow pessimistic fanfic of the same name, which in turn will be the screenplay for a more hopeful miniseries of the same name. 

There are only two Kwa stories which have their own freely available Ebooks in the Gutenberg Australia site. The rest are also available, but only for buyers of paid Ebooks. All of the six stories are compiled into a cheaply covered but actually decent short story collection in the Lulu self publishing site at only barely six Australian dollars. 

Tam, Son of the Tiger has a freely available Ebook on the Gutenberg Australia site, which indicates that it’s not collected yet until the Tarzan Boy collecting business goes well beyond ten non Tarzan and Mowgli books. 

Both Jan of the Jungle stories have their own free Ebooks on the Gutenberg Australia site as well, thus they’re not yet bought until the collecting process goes way beyond a dozen or more books. I adapted both of them into fanfics doubling as proposed screenplays for a miniseries.

The Jukan series is becoming public domain in 2028, so there’s an increasingly likely chance of all eighteen stories getting a rather dirty Australian English translation in the near future. 

Things that can get away within a couple of absurd publishing world situations

There are so many Akim comic book volumes, I can’t collect them all for reasons related to archive panic; thus only a few hundred of the covers could definitely be integral to a web adaptation of the whole franchise - which is meant to be something made in the style of Tezuka Productions, Sony Pictures and Splash Entertainment’s memetic spin on the not really public domain Astro Boy legend. 

MockBusters: A History of Cheapskates

Hello there! I must have been thinking about MockBusters for a long while now. People have been reading and watching MockBusters since the dawns of both literature and cinema, we are just more aware of the legal and social implications surrounding MockBusters nowadays (in the Present Day) than ever before. 

For a rather long time, but mostly from near the famed if rather unceremonious end to all the Shogun Periods up until the debut of both Mazinger Z and Gatchaman late in 1972, much of Japanese Pop Culture must have been suffering from misleading international marketing, which was mostly because of the fact that there was no Google Translate at the time! 

On a more celebrated note, the Thai Comics Industry started in 1932 with a comic that began life as a local MockBuster to - of all things - Thimble Theatre, starring Popeye the Sailor Man. Said comic was titled Khun Muen after its eponymous titular Hero, who is a plucky Street urchin wearing a Spartan Warrior Hat. 

In The Hispanic World, Heaps of Tarzan Boys would infiltrate the pop culture industry within a bang or two. The first of them all was Nanuk, written and drawn in Barcelona during the last years of the pre-Franco Era in the 20th Century. The most famous, however, was Tawa, the titular hero of the more popular spinoff within the Wama Line, written and drawn by a Mexican Comics luminary, Joaquín Cervantes Bassoco. 

Gift Hunting

Gift Hunting for the most interesting secondhand items is an international pastime. Not just that, it is one of the most integral parts of both geek and broad internet pop culture too. 

Old Shōnen Books: Apart from secondhand Japanese Transformers and elderly Licca Dolls in spades, old Shōnen Books are amongst some of the most easily sold secondhand items in Japan, so are the secondhand museum-centric ‘Mooks’ which acknowledge them as a vital but, in international terms, relatively obscure literary format. Unlike the first two however, unless they’re mangas, old Shōnen Books are usually harder to find outside of Japan. 

Shōnen Pulp Novel: The Shōnen Pulp Novel comes in two sub demographic forms, the Junior Shōnen Pulp Novel and the Senior Shōnen Pulp Novel, which gave way to the modern Senior Shōnen light novel format. 

Shōnen Emonogatari: Of the demographic Emonogatari forms, the most commonly remembered one is for the Shōnen demographic. After all, the Shōnen Emonogatari was basically the rather strange distant cousin of the venerable Kamishibai and the lesser known Shōnen Pulp Novel, which gave way to the modern Junior Shōnen manga and more significantly so, the modern Junior Shōnen light novel. 

Book hunting

People love hunting for old books! I tend to love hunting for old foreign language books as well. 

Once I collect a couple of Alexander Grin’s works, I’m going to transcribe, write and storyboard adaptations of them in preparation. 

Also included are the eighteen Jukan books translated into Swedish. Perhaps the best (soon to be PD) franchise to get adapted into a long eco thriller web series. 

What's The Problem with Digital Destruction?

Digital destruction happens to lots of works the world over. 

Let's look at the kind of Digital Destruction known as Theakstonisation. 

Theakstonisation has affected a huge majority of pre-1950s comic books and manga. 

How to really make a Soji Yamakawa multimedia universe

It is possible that Ashi Productions has to collaborate with Bulgaria’s Studio Sofia, in order to make sure that a Kenya Boy adaptation series is made. The non-Isamu of the Wilderness multimedia universe traditionally comprises of only about three stories but is full of really twisty surprises. 

For his first ever Kamishibai work, Shōnen Champion, a web manga reimagining of it will only have 22 volumes, as the same will go for the web anime film series adapted quite closely from it. Both the manga and anime will share a very different, much less uncannily creepy and much more organically retro style, which in case will be Naoyuki Konno's own style. If it succeeds, a prequel and a sequel can come into play as well. 

Its much better known 1940s-50s postwar variant (also known as Shōnen Champion) will consist of 48 volumes, sans the true backstory and ending, which have sixteen and thirty two volumes each. A manga can be written and drawn by Naoyuki Konno. 

For his most famous work that isn't Isamu of the Wilderness, Kenya Boy, its manga reimagining will have forty two stories in fourteen volumes, which will be adapted into 14 films. When both the manga and anime become hugely successful, a prequel and sequel of it, The Land of Ashoka and Jungle Hunt, will get the green light to become a seminal Seinen pair with 2 volumes (and 14 episodes) each. 

For both the Kamishibai and Emonogatari variants of his most famous animal themed work, Tiger Boy, a manga reimagining will also have about fifty two volumes. If both succeed internationally, they themselves will bear at least a twenty six volume interquel. 

Two much lesser known works from competing magazines, Baboon Boy and Wolf Boy, can each have a complete series in the spotlight. 

When a complete 14 volume series is made; Baboon Boy will probably be divided into at least two stages, with the eponymous second stage being the main one. 

The prequel is an expanded backstory, which begins when two girls, their Francophile dad Shotaro and baby brother Chintu had to hop through ships (and planes!) by questionable means. It was before they arrive into what would become Cameroon, where they faced a crapload of classist people, ranging from corrupt politicians to antagonistic (but mainly local Bantu speaking) soldiers to (primarily European descent) cattle ranchers. Afterwards, Chintu’s dad was unwillingly imprisoned, so that his two older sisters become well meant Zorro-like bandits in turn. As a result, he was found by a bunch of gorillas and mandrills who later raised him for a while.

The second stage begins when he made friends with a badass fisherman. Later on, they also befriended a pale, wavy haired Irish tomboy, whose much older sister unintentionally abandoned her (and her surviving fellow sister, as it turns out) as a baby, and whose overworked parents died in a riot before that. 

Wolf Boy is also similar, but with a boy named Shinji being stranded with his parents, before the parents are themselves kidnapped for a science experiment. Sonia is also orphaned in a riot. Then there were treasure looters and bandits kidnapping him and dumping him out into the woods, only for the boy to be raised by wolves and other animals. The rest is history. 

A Nice Letter To Bollywood Casuals

Have you seen a lot of ridiculous films made in many regions, but especially the Indian subcontinent, that are indeed mockbusters of something else altogether? I watched glimpses of these dirty oddballs on YouTube every now and then. 

Yours Surely, Slapstick.

The living Kings and Queens of The Mysterious Habitat Story Meta Genre

Forget the late Elmo Lincoln and Johnny Weissmuller, here come the Kings and Queens of the Mysterious Habitat Story meta genre. 

Even though Swiss Brazilian heartthrob Claudio Henrich Meier wasn't and still isn't a regular for the Mysterious Habitat Story meta genre to begin with, he made a big break when he was in Uga Uga, a turn of the millennium Brazilian telenovela show, playing the Amazon Jungle raised Greco Brazilian company heir Adriano Karabastos, aka Tatuapu. Thus, the tv show in turn was a loose spiritual adaptation to the first few Tarzan books, or even more accurately, much of the whole Jukan series, a literary competitor that hasn't gone anywhere outside of its native Scandinavia, for reasons related to its author's political stance. 

For parts of her rather brief and at times controversial entertainment career, in The Ape Princess, half-Dutch/half-Thai Mon actress, model and currently nun Amelia Jacobs played Iyawadee, an abandoned chief's daughter who was subsequently adopted and then raised by Orangutans in a generic Southeast Asian jungle.

Meet the Sheela trilogy of oddballs

There was a trilogy of quickly made Indian part-mockbusters, which are all quite repetitious if surprisingly accurate gender bender adaptations of Tarzan of the Apes as in the book itself. Despite being somewhat pale, and highly superficial part time imitations in comparison to their Hollywood inspiration, Sony's Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, they're actually far closer to the story that started both an infamous franchise and swarms of clones like Sheena than they are to the latter's film adaptation by what's now Sony Pictures. 

Even though the first one is a hilarious film in its own right, it was surprisingly well researched, if otherwise flawed, for its pre-Internet usage time, thus it spawned a similar Tamil Kollywood adaptation which in turn begat a lighter and softer but more distant Bollywood remake. It also helps that the otherwise notoriously similar theme songs for all three films are hearty gems. 

My favourite Tarzan clones!

From the JJ Nevins site

Janess, Polaris. Polaris Janess, one of the earliest of the Tarzan knock-offs and one of the best executed, was created by Charles Billings Stilson and debuted in All-Story Weekly in 1915. Janess' parents, a glory seeking explorer and a dutiful wife, are stranded at the South Pole, with his mother dying and Janess Sr. crippled, thus leaving Senior to care for the infant Polaris. (As I said, Polaris is a Tarzan knock-off) The duo survive life at the South Pole for the years it takes Polaris to reach manhood; they survive despite horrible snow storms and the attacks of polar bears. (Polar bears at the South Pole? It's a pulp; don't ask, just accept) (They live on polar bears, walruses, and seals) Polaris grows up to be perfect in mind and body, his father having taught him well. Then, alas, Father Janess dies, leaving Polaris to make the long walk back to civilization and to carry certain Papers back to civilization. He saves a beautiful woman, Rose Emer, and meets other men, and discovers a lost city, and has other Tarzan-like adventures.

Sorak. Sorak was created by Harvey D. Richards (Aka Noel Sainsbury Jr) and appeared in the four book "Sorak Jungle Series," which began with Sorak of the Malay Jungle, or, How Two Young Americans Face Death and Win a Friend (1934) and continued through 1936. Sorak was essentially Tarzan, but in the jungles of Malaysia. He was accompanied by a friendly tiger. Among his adventures were an encounter with Cro-Magnons in Malaya.

Sheena. Sheena, the original queen of the jungle, was the daughter of a white explorer. The explorer died in the Congo, leaving Sheena to raise herself. She had long blonde hair and blue eyes, wore a fetching leopard skin outfit, and used knife and bow against bad guys.

Tarzan. I don't really need to go into any depth about Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, do I? Raised in the jungle by apes, white lord of the jungle, all that? I'm not going to write anything else; instead, I'm going to direct you to this site.

Tarcaneta. Tarcaneta appeared in "Tarcaneta" (Tarzaneta), a strip in Strip, a Yugoslav magazine which began publication in 1935. Tarzaneta--I mean, Tarcaneta was created by the Russian artist Nikola Navojev; she was a "half-naked, half-wild girl from the jungle," a distaff version of Lord G. 

Jan of the Jungle. Jan (not to be confused with the Atlas Comics character of the same name) appeared in a six part serial in Argosy running from April 18 to May 23, 1931. He was very much in the vein of previous and later Tarzan knockoffs. Doctor Bracken, a brilliant scientist but one tetched in the head, proposes to the beautiful redhead Georgia Trevor. This makes him mad, makes him mean and mad, and he vows revenge. He gets it when she gives birth to a son, Jan. He steals Jan and takes him to his lab in the depths of the Everglades. He plans to have Jan raised by a chimpanzee mother, the goal being that he would be a chimp in ape form, trained to kill redheads. (Gotta give it to Bracken, he's not just a little crazed, he's a full-blown psychotic)

Jan somehow maintains his sanity and when he is 16 breaks free of the lab, accompanied by Chicma, his chimp mother, and Borno, a Haitian who had worked as a janitor at the labs. They escape by boat but are caught in a Hurricane and blown ashore in "South American jungle country." Jan learns the skills of the jungle for two years while Chicma and Borno...well, don't do much but wait, really. Then Jan saves sixteen-year-old Ramona Suarez from a panther attack, the first save of many for her and him. (Or is it her and he?) She lives nearby on her father's rubber plantation. They of course become a couple. Jan has various adventures, finds a lost colony of Mu, becomes a Prince of the Sun, is reunited with his family, and makes his way to India.

Bantan. One of several Tarzan rip-offs, Bantan, "the bronzed giant," debuted in Bantan--God-Like Islander (1936), written by Maurice Gardner. The orphaned three-year-old Arthur Delacourt is washed ashore on the South Seas island of Beneiro. He is found by the native chief and raised by him, but educated by the local French missionary, Father Lasance. When Arthur, now called Bantan by the natives, reaches 18 he begins his adventures (the usual Tarzan variety, only on South Pacific islands, many unknown to maps and man and full of Lost Civilizations, dinosaurs, amazons, and weird science) in a series of novels which run through the 1970s.

Ozar of the Aztecs. One of several Tarzan knock-offs, Ozar was written by "Valentine Wood," aka Walker A. Tompkins. Ozar appeared in Top-Notch in 1933. An American scientific expedition venturing deep into the mountains of Mexico find a lost tribe of Aztecs. The entire expedition is slaughtered with the exception of an infant (the expedition brought a pregnant mother with them for some unaccountable reason). The Aztecs see in the baby the "predestined ruler of Karnux," said destinies speaking of a pale-skinned, fair-haired ruler. The Aztecs keep the child, now called Ozar, alive for twenty years, so that he will fulfill the "Five Sacred Commands of Mexlitl, the Sun God." Ozar does, in the end, in part by slaughtering the priests who are plaguing the otherwise peaceful city of Karnux. (Peaceful Aztecs. Suuuuure) Ozar kills dozens of warriors and priests, but in the end, Karnux is liberated. I mean, free.

Kioga. Yet another of the Tarzan copies, Kioga "the Snow Hawk" was created by William L. Chester and appeared in a seven part serial that ran from April through October 1935 in Blue Book Magazine. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln Rand are boating off the coast of Alaska with their "Indian friend" Mokuyi when a current pulls them into the Arctic Circle, to a strange land north of Siberia. This land is surrounded by a ring of volcanoes, and the volcanoes and the current warm the land so that it is inhabitable. The Rands land and are met by the Shoni tribe, a friendly group of natives who are descended from Native Americans. (The Shoni call the land "Nato'wa") The Rands stay there for a while until they are killed during an attack by a hostile tribe. The infant Daniel is adopted by Mokuyi and his wife Awena and given the name "Kioga." Unfortunately, Kioga is driven from the tribe when he is only six because of anti-white prejudice. Kioga survives in the wild, accompanied only by Aki, his pet bear, and the rest of Aki's clan. Later on Kioga befriends Mika, a silver-coated Arctic puma. (Don't ask) Kioga eventually becomes king of the forest bears and "war chief of the Shoni tribe" after they have welcomed him back. Of course, he also saves a woman from hostile mutineers; this woman, Beth La Salle, naturally falls in love with him.

Kwa of the Jungle. Kwa, a Tarzan copy, appeared in Thrilling Adventures in 1932 and 1933. His father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Rahan, who was pregnant with Nathaniel, were flying across Africa when they crossed over a large, round valley ringed with mountains. Unfortunately, the plane crashed into this valley, the Valley of Mu. The father died on impact and the mother survived only long enough to give birth to Nathaniel, who was then adopted and raised by apes and given the name Kwa by an old chimp, Kek, who teaches him to speak with the animals of the jungle. He grows up to be Tarzan, essentially, although his background is much less haughty than Lord Greystoke’s. Kwa’s grandfather lives on a small estate at the edge of the African jungle, and Kwa regularly passes through as he begins the transition to American society. There’s plenty of action, though, and Kwa continues to find the city of Ophir and befriend the other apes and to fight the "Beast Men".

Ki-Gor. Ki-Gor was published in Jungle Stories from the Winter 1938-1939 issue to the January 1954 issue and was first written by John M. Reynolds. Ki-Gor was one of the most popular of the Tarzan imitations. Ki-Gor was actually Robert Kilgour, the son of a Scottish missionary who was killed in the jungles of Africa. Ki-Gor lived alone in the wilds and raised himself. In the first novel he saves Helene Vaughn, a society girl and pilot, whose plane crashed in Ki-Gor's jungle. She, red-haired and beautiful, acts as his Jane, but eventually he helps her return to civilization. She returns the favour by marrying him, and they return to the jungle together to keep the peace between various warring tribes. Ki-Gor fought everything from hostile natives to giant sea serpents to dinosaurs to talking gorillas to Arab slavers to zombies. Ki-Gor had two close friends besides Helene. The first was Timbu George, aka George Spelvin, an enormous African-American who was a former ship's cook but ended up becoming the chief of the M'Bala tribe in the "East Congo." Ki-Gor's other friend was N'Geeso, chief of the "Kamazila Pigmies"; N'Geeso was only four feet tall but was a ferocious fighter. Ki-Gor is blond with grey eyes and darkly tanned skin. Of course, Ki-Gor also has a little monkey pal and occasionally rides on a friendly elephant.

Bomba the Jungle Boy. Bomba was created by Howard A. Garis and debuted in Bomba the Jungle Boy (1926), lasting through 20 more novels into 1938 and in 11 films, from 1949 through 1955. Bomba was a fourteen-year-old boy who had been found in the jungles of Brazil, in the upper Amazon, by Cody Carson, an aging, possibly demented naturalist and botanist. Cody taught Bomba English and helped raise him, but he fell prey to an amnesia-causing fever, leaving Bomba to search for his parents (who he found after ten novels--they were the Bartons, a famous painter and opera singer pair). Bomba was in most ways a Tarzan copy, albeit one far more successful than the Ka-Zars and Polaris Janesses of the fictional world. Bomba was a handsome white boy, bronzed and well-muscled and an ace at Tarzan-type tasks, from swinging through the jungle on vines to shooting arrows to cosying up to the local tribe, the Araos. Naturally, Bomba had his savage side, and thought nothing of killing pumas, snakes, and jaguars. He could also communicate with the animals, especially the apes which somehow lived near him, despite the fact that the simians in Brazil were much smaller than the simians of Africa. Bomba's animal pals were Kiki and Woowoo, two parrots, Doto the monkey, and Polulu the puma. Bomba's arch-enemy was Nascarora, chief of the local tribe of head hunters.

The case against extensions of both Copyrights and Trademarks

As always the case, a majority of both entertainment corporations and middlemen abuse an idea and its extensions, to the point of their subsequent works becoming outright train wrecks. Another scenario is that both profit from an idea for a short while and sit on it very abusively for a long time, even hundreds of years after an actual live creator creates it for both, or has sold it to both and passes later on.

Then, there is the fairly agitating problem with visibly orphaned and abandoned works. Not only are such orphaned and abandoned works not in the public domain, they don’t have any of the original human owners left remaining. Fortunately, some of these works are already in the public domain for most nations, regardless of how recent their public domain status is, while various others have become what I can call ‘adopted works’. 

A surprisingly good (though rarely reported) example of a franchise being adopted by a huge fan of pulp fiction is the Kaspa series, much of which has only recently been released in an online paywall by its current owner, the Cajun editor Camille Cazedessus, aka Caz, while only the first two were being released within the original author’s lifetime. However, I am not allowed to scan the books as they are on the paywall much of the time, and I also only own the first Kaspa sequel instead of the original. Not helping is that the first two published Kaspa stories aren’t becoming public domain until 2036 in much of the world. That, and the franchise’s titular character being both registered and trademarked by said current owner, so nah. 

Another awesome example is Isamu Of The Wilderness, which originated as a prototypical graphic novel series distributed by Shueisha in the early 1950s. Unfortunately, such a graphic novel series consists of only three bland volumes, mostly due to Souji Yamakawa being a considerable perfectionist who begrudged a lot about the (somewhat wrong) executive meddling. Only in 1971 did a much more popular (and technically superior on all levels to the original) manga version appear in Weekly Shōnen Jump to last for three years. It was Souji who was gradually softening his still demeaning stance on manga, just by the time that Noboru Kawasaki met his own idol and thereafter drew the manga version, while Souji himself wrote it all along the way of the Rio Grande River. The manga itself spawned a considerably much lighter and softer, denser and wackier anime version made by the esteemed anime studio TMS entertainment, a few decades before it got acquired by video game giant Sega. By the time Souji Yamakawa died a week before Christmas Day 1992, Noboru Kawasaki technically owns his own studio, while Shueisha still owns and distributes the rest of it. 

Meet Zenith!

From the JJ Nevins site.

Zenith the Albino, in case you don't know, is one of many enemies of Sexton Blake. This site aims to provide some information about him. (The images above and below, by the way, are taken from Savoy Books' site on Zenith, and are copyrighted by them.)

Zenith, as I said, is an enemy of Sexton Blake. If you aren't familiar with Blake, you should really go my page on him (the link is given right above) to familiarize yourself with Blake and provide the context for the following. If you are familiar with Blake, well, go to the page anyhow, you might learn something.

Now then. Zenith the Albino was not Blake's arch-enemy, Blake didn't really have one of those, having too many recurring enemies for any one of them to be supreme, but Zenith is the best- and most fondly remembered of all of Blake's enemies. Zenith was created by "Anthony Skene," aka George Norman Phillips, and debuted in "A Duel to the Death," Union Jack #837, 21 November 1919. Phillips, by his own account, was inspired to create Zenith in this way:

In 1913, I encountered, in the West End, a true albino, a man of about fifty-five. He was a slovenly fellow: fingers stained with tobacco, clothes soiled by dropped food. Yet he was dressed expensively, and had about him a look of adequacy. I should have forgotten him in a day or so; but when, an hour afterwards and five miles away, I sat down to have my lunch, he walked in to the restaurant and sat himself within a few feet of me.

This coincidence made an impression upon my mind, and when I needed a central figure not quite so banal as Blake for the Union Jack series, I re-created this albino fellow 'moulded nearer to the heart's desire.'

From this encounter came the immortal Zenith. Jack Adrian, in the Sexton Blake Wins anthology, describes Zenith nicely: snow-white hair, leprous skin, pink-irised eyes; his opium-soaked cigarettes, ivory-headed swordstick, melancholy disposition (in this, not unlike his creator), and the bizarre habit (considering he was an eternal fugitive from the police) of wearing, even in broad daylight, immaculate evening dress.

To quote from the text and the jacket copy of Phillips' 1936 novel, Monsieur Zenith:
'Zenith's crimson-irised eyes were reflective. He stood there long of leg and broad of shoulder, immaculately dressed, groomed to perfection, cold as an icicle; and dangerous; transcendently dangerous.'
Monsieur Zenith is an albino. Craving excitement because it brings forgetfulness; thrust into crime by his abnormality, by his illimitable egotism, by the caprice of his recalcitrant nature, he finds himself involved in the quest for a mysterious something on the finding of which life--and more than life--depends.

Indifferent to gratitude or reward, asserting--and, perhaps, believing--that he seeks only the final diversion of the damned, to dice with death; threatened on the one hand by the police, and, on the other, by political chicanery, this strange creature crashes through.

Monsieur Zenith is the strangest, most bizarre, character ever devised in thriller fiction.

Zenith was a sinister individual of the "gentleman crook" variety, elegant, sophisticated, and quite lethal. He was, as mentioned, an albino, with "snowy white hair" and "rabbit pink eyes." His background was variously described as being Romanian nobility and a famous old English family, but more often it was left vague (see below), as perhaps was best. Zenith had a first-rate education, regardless of what country he came from, was a top violinist and an Olympic-level fencer, but, alas, his background and attainments did not stop him from turning bad. He smoked prodigious amounts of opium, used his own inventions for criminal ends (his infra-red binoculars were a threat to all of London's wealth, and his special drill, made of a steel unknown to science, could "perforate a hardened steel safe as a a gimlet will perforate a cardboard box"), used his sword-cane for lethal ends, and in general left a trail of broken minds, bodies, and fortunes behind him. Zenith was the admitted model for Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné, and had a definite style to him; he always referred to Blake as "dear detective" and uttered one of the best villainous lines of all time: while speaking to the rude henchman of another villain Zenith said, "I would treat you as you deserve, but the blood would get on my cuffs."

Better still, I've found "The Box of Ho Sen," from Detective Weekly #8, 15 April 1933, a prime example of Zenith (and Phillips) at the top of his game. I'm going to push the Fair Use doctrine as far as it will go and provide as many good passages as I can from the story, so you can see why Zenith is just too cool for words.

My favourite Pulp Villains!

These are my favourite pulp villains from the JJ Nevins site.

Antinea. Antinea was created by Pierre Benoit and appeared in L'Atlantide (1919). Antinea was not a serial character, but Benoit wrote nearly fifty novels, all with dangerous heroines whose names began with "A" and who usually caused the death of the hero(es) devoted to them. Antinea is typical of Benoit's female characters, and so I'm using her as a stand-in for the rest of Benoit's output. She is the "Mistress of Atlantis," a Lost Empire in the middle of the Sahara Desert which survived up to the present. She is a cold, hard, cruel woman, surrounded by leopards and a harem of helpless, devoted men. Antinea is found by two French Army officers lost in the Sahara. Things end badly, with the officers being seduced by Antinea nd then turned into metal statues. It's all very H. Rider Haggardian, though much better written (and critically respected) than most Haggard-influenced literature.

Mâh le Sinistre. Mâh le Sinistre was created by Charles Robert-Dumas and appeared in The Lead Idol (1935). Mâh le Sinistre is a Mongolian secret agent for Germany, one of the German Bolsheviks' best agents in the war with the decadent West. Mâh is a brute and a fanatic, someone who not only disembowels his enemies, typically in seedy hotels in the poorer parts of Paris, but who also takes great pleasure in doing so. Mâh works by day as an exporter in Paris, but by night he steals French military secrets and sells them to the Germans. Mâh is not only a spy but is also a master chemist, who brews up not just "Ecstasy 136," a sure-fire aphrodisiac that he uses on any white woman he desires, but also a gas capable of wiping out Paris' population in a matter of hours. His only weakness is for Muguette, a beautiful French spy who puts a bullet through Mâh's head. Mâh is, in short, a weird spin on the Yellow Peril stereotype, combining sexual threat, anti-White hatred, Red Menace, and low cunning (as opposed to the brilliance of a Fu Manchu or a Kiang-Ho.)

Waldo the Wonder Man. Rupert Waldo, the "Wonder Man," was created by Edwy Searles Brooks, creator of Falcon Swift; his first appearance was in "Waldo the Wonder Man," Union Jack #794 (28 December 1918). Waldo ended his career as something of a well-heeled gentleman crook, not much different from many other of that type, but his beginning was quite different. In his debut he is not a lovable rogue, attractive despite his willing disobediance of those pesky laws. He is a murderer, having knocked off a blackmailer who was trying to get rich by threatening to reveal an awful deed in Waldo's past. Waldo is also cunning enough to frame an innocent man for the murder by planting evidence in the man's caravan. Waldo also began as a superman, with the strength of six men--he was quite capable of turning over trolley buses with his bare hands--impervious to pain due to his sufering from Morvan's disease (Syringomelia), capable of amazing recuperative feats, and able to shrug off and ignore being shot, burned, trampled, and other normally-crippling injuries. Over the decades he became better natured and his deeds less criminal and more in the line of other pulp heroes, but when he began he was a real rotter. He clashed with Nelson Lee and Sexton Blake, the latter two being responsible for his first capture, and possibly others I've been unable to discover; his relationship with them began as a standard hero-and-villain situation, but fairly quickly evolved into a much more friendly one, and as Waldo became a better and more "chivalrous" person and more heroic he became much more welcome at Blake's flat on Baker Street and Lee's lodgings on Dover Street. He even became an Deputy Commissioner of Scotland Yard, being helped by Chief Inspector Lennard (they had an amiable dislike for each other when Waldo was a crook and a genuine friendship when Waldo was on the right side of the law), and not only upstaged Sexton Blake himself on some few occasions but even took Blake's place in the pages of Detective Weekly between August 1935 and December 1937! During these times he was a Peril Expert, someone who hired out for outrageously dangerous jobs, just for the adrenaline rush of it; his advertisement ran, "If it's dangerous get it done by Waldo." He wasn't always a Peril Expert, however, and didn't stay that way. He began as "Waldo the Wonder-Man and Crook" (Union Jack #794-942), turned into the more do-gooding and less despicable "Waldo the Robin Hood of Crime" (Union Jack #948-1222), became the Peril Expert (Union Jack #1266-1490), and then reverted back to crime, though not to his murderous beginnings (Union Jack #1499-1530).

Waldo, perhaps surprisingly, had a son, who had all of his talents but never turned bad. Introduced in "Waldo the Wonder Boy," Nelson Lee Library (Second Series) #175 (7 September 1929), Stanley Waldo explained that until recently he hadn't known that he had a father, but Rupert, at this point the law-abiding "Peril Expert," had appeared in his life and brought him back to England, to attend school at Nelson Lee's St. Frank's College. No mention was made of Stanley Waldo later, during Rupert's final criminal phase.

Baron Bunny. Baron Bunny, created by The. Offenstetten, appeared in Baron Bunny's Erlebnisse (Baron Bunny's Experiences) #1-5, in 1922. He was one of a number of German Arsene Lupin lifts. 

Khyzil Kaya. Khyzil Kaya was created by Guy d'Armen and appeared in Les Géants du Lac Noir (The Giants of the Dark Lake, 1931). Kaya was a Yellow Peril type who ruled a secret city; the city was protected by giant spiders, giant microbes, and giant mutants.

Amarbal was created by the Australian writer Joyce Vincent and appeared in The Celestial Hand: A Sensational Story (1903). Amarbal is another of those very interesting prototypes of Fu Manchu. In this case Amarbal is a German-Chinese "half-caste" who leads a Chinese invasion of Australia. Amarbal is an educated man whose driving ambition is to "lead the Chinese to universal dominion."

Mendax. Mendax was created by Guy d'Armen and appeared in Les Troglodytes du Mont Everest (The Troglodytes of Mount Everest, 1929). Mendax, a Yellow Peril type, threatened the world and ransomed ocean lineers with his technologically advanced plane/submarine.

The Doc Savage Brat Pack

From the JJ Nevins site.

Lobangu. Lobangu, created by Cecil Hayter, first appeared in Union Jack Library in 1906 in "The Slave Market," and later appeared in the Brave and Bold Weekly, appearing in both magazines for at least a decade. In 1922 he was revived by Rex Hardinge in the pages of Union Jack, and he appeared there, as well as in Cheer Boys Cheer and a few other magazines, through the 1930s. Lobangu is a mighty African warrior of the Umslopogaas/Lobangu stripe. He is the chief of the Etbaia tribe of Zulus and began as the faithful native sidekick to Sir Richard "Spots" Losely, Her Majesty's Governor of the Province of Musardo, a kind of Sanders of the River who was responsible for maintaining the peace and British rule (not necessarily in that order) in Lobangu's section of Africa. (Losely had been Sexton Blake's fag at school and remained his close friend.) Later on Lobangu became the lead in various stories, becoming a noble chieftain, adventurer, and hero in his own right. When Blake came to Africa he usually was helped by Lobangu, although on at least one occasion (Union Jack: Second Series #1354, 20 September 1930) Lobangu went to England. Lobangu also teamed up at least once with Gordon Keith (see his entry in the Detectives section), in Brave and Bold Weekly #227, 27 April 1907. There was also at least one other story, the "In Search of the City of Gold" sequence in Cheer Boys Cheer in 1913, #28-52, which had Lobangu and Losely active on their own, fighting against rebel Senoussi in the desert city of Kupra.

Satanas. Thanks to Marc Madouraud I can provide some small information on this character. He was created by Gabriel Bernard and appeared in a novel (not a series of novels, as I originally wrote; thanks to Marc Madouraud for correcting my error) in 1922; the novel was about a group of telepaths. The novel's title was Satanas, with the chapters' titles being Satanas ou la TSF humaine ou la télépathie (Satanas or the Human TSF or the Telepathy), Les Chevaliers de l’Etoile (The Chevalier of the Star), L’Énigme du désert (The Riddle of the Desert), La Cité des prodiges (The Riddle of the Prodigies), Le Secret de Patrice Oriel (The Secret of Patrice Oriel).

Nace, Lee. Created by Lester Dent, of Doc Savage fame, Lee Nace, the "Blond Adder," appeared in Ten Detective Aces in 1934. Nace was a scientific detective and user of gadgets, a tall, gaunt, solemn man who dealt with weird and almost unnatural villains--angry skeletons, crazed murderers who lined caves with the skulls of their victims, mad scientists who could make men explode with their death rays, and a master villain known as the Green Skull. Nace was "very long, bony, blue-eyed," with a scar in the shape of an adder on his forehead. ("A Chinaman had once hit Nace on the forehead with a knife hilt which bore a serpent carving.")

Savage, Doc. Doc Savage, one of the two or three most famous pulp heroes, was...well, there are so many other good web sites on Doc that I just don't feel like doing, poorly, what so many others have done well. So, as with a few other, major figures, like The Shadow, I'll limit myself to a brief recap and then send you on your way to other, better sites devoted solely to Doc.

Doc Savage was created by Henry Ralston, John Nanovic, and most especially Lester Dent, and appeared in a large number of novels, short stories, radio shows, and movies, beginning with "The Man of Bronze" in Doc Savage Magazine #1, in March 1933. He is a "man of superhuman strength and protean genius, whose life is dedicated to the destruction of evildoers." Doc is in the best physical shape possible for humans and knows everything about everything; in the words of one critic, he is a "walking compendium of mankind's total knowledge."

Clark Savage was raised by his widower father to be the perfect human, taught by a series of experts in every field ranging from "Indian fakirs to Yale physicists, from circus acrobats to jungle trackers." He was especially trained in surgery, and became the world's best (hence his nickname). His headquarters and home was his Fortress of Solitude, a superfortress located on a desolate island in the far north, beyond the Arctic Circle. The Fortress was packed with his technologically advanced equipment and weapons, and served as a place for Doc to periodically retire to, to meditate and invent.

His New York headquarters was the 86th floor of "one of New York's tallest buildings," in all likelihood the Empire State Building. From there, and from a warehouse on the Hudson River, owned by the "Hidalgo Trading Company," Doc and his assistants fought a never-ending war on crime, funded by a massive supply of gold hidden in a lost valley in Central America guarded over by the descendants of the Mayans. He was assisted by six people, all of whom were exceptionally capable in their own right. Monk Mayfair is one of the world's foremost chemists and a millionaire with a penthouse lab near Wall Street; he is also an ugly, ape-like man with a taste for the ladies (he never forgets a pair of legs once he sees them). Brigadier General Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks, a British-acting American (thanks to Win Eckert for correcting my error here), is one of the best lawyers in the world, a Harvard graduate with a sharp tongue. He is also a sharp dresser, he's tall, handsome and slender, he carries and uses a sword cane, and he carries on a long-running feud with Monk. John "Renny" Renwick is a top civil engineer, a tall man (almost as big as Doc) with enormous fists and great strength. Major Thomas J. "Long Tom" Roberts is an "electrical wizard," always looking pale and unhealthy and always as vigorous as any five men. William Harper "Johnny" Littlejohn is an expert archaeologist. And, finally, there's Patricia "Pat" Savage, Doc's cousin and a stalwart adventurer her ownself.

Doc was not superhuman, but was at the peak of human ability, not just physically but mentally. In addition to his physical skills and expertise in every field imaginable, Doc was also a great inventor, capable of coming up with just about any sort of weapon or instrument or air/sea/land craft. Doc was also so good at surgery that he'd created a crime college to which he brought criminals so that he could operate on them and remove their evil impulses.

Doc's Rogues Gallery was not quite so memorable as the Shadow's but he did have one very memorable enemy: John Sunlight, the only man to survive a bout with Doc and return for a second try, and the only man to ever break into the Fortress of Solitude.

All of that said, go to these sites for better treatments of Doc and his assistants.

Zigomar (II). Zigomar (II) was created by Nikola Navojev and Branko Vidic and appeared in Mikijevo carstvo, a Serbian magazine appearing in 1939. Zigomar (II) was a masked avenger type not dissimilar to the Phantom; in the words of one critic, Zigomar (II) also wore a costume clinging tightly to his body, and a mask on his face; on his hand was an engraved ring with an engraved letter Z. But unlike Phantom whose inseparable companion was the tamed wolf Devil, this hero, Zigomar, adorned additionally by a black cape, had a different companion, a short Chinese named Chi Yang.

Atalanta. This was another Robert Kraft character, appearing in Atalanta (1904) and Atalanta, the Secrets of the Slave Lake (1911). Atalanta was a German adventuress active in America and Canada. Some of her stories were titled, "A Nightly Visitor," "The Heiress of Moorfield," "The Vultures of the Sea," "At the Court of the Ox King," "In Lemuria," "In Flight," "At the Mountain Hermits," "Fred Barkor," "The Death Ship," and "Gentlemen of the Island."

Atalanta. This was the French version of the German heroine. In France she appeared in Atalanta, La Femme Enigmatique (Atalanta, the Enigmatic Woman) #1-80, from 1912-1913.

Anthony, Jim. Jim Anthony was created by Robert Leslie Bellem & W.T. Ballard and appeared in Super-Detective from 1940 to 1943, starting with "Dealer in Death" in October 1940. He was half Irish and half Native American and was a…well, Doc Savage “homage.” He used lots of gadgets and unlike Doc Savage had an eye for the ladies.

In response to my request for more information on Anthony, Ed Love, a gentleman and scholar, sent me this:

Jim Anthony: swarthy half Comanche and half Irish, left a fortune by his father, chief of which seems to be the newspaper Daily Star. He was probably the most successful of the doc savage wannabes lasting three years and some twenty five stories (according to Pulp Review vol 1, #2). the best description of Jim comes from the text itself. "Mark of the Spider," 1942: "Anthony was a murder man of International repute. Not the murderer, of course, but the hunter of men, the seeker of killers. This was his major hobby, homicide, though an amazing mind and physical perfection, allowed him tremendous insight into fully half a hundred of the other -ologies usually assumed by college professors alone. Possession of one of America's major fortunes was always an advantage - for Jim Anthony charged no fees, and consequently was called all over the world on interesting cases."

In this novel alone he displays knowledge of criminal and general psychology as well as forensics. In his cases, he was often assisted by freckled aviator tom gentry. or as Jim would describe their relationship:

"Friend? My God, more than friend! They'd grown up together, they'd been all over the world together, there were a million and one intimate experiences shared that made them closer than brothers, a thousand adventures, hardships, battles where they had fought back to back against hard odds, successes that were so much sweeter because they were won together." Since the pulp was part of the spicy line and it's author was Dan Turner's scribe you got situations that would make doc savage blush. when confronted with a scantily clad woman:

"Anthony was no better and no worse than other men, he was no plaster saint. Blood that flowed in his veins could race hotly, emotions common to others were his as well. There was a heady scent about her, filling his nostrils, not a mere perfume, but an unnameable, mysterious something that belongs to all beautiful women. Her eyes, lids half lowered, were at once a challenge and an expectancy, deep brown, almost black, flecked with dancing little lights. Her lips were full, deep red, moist and parted."

You wouldn't find this kind of passion (lust?) in the doc novels.

Frank Allan. Frank Allan, created and written by diverse hands, appeared in Frank Allan, der Rächer der Enterbten (Frank Allan, Avenger of the Disinherited) #1-612, 1920-1932, and in another magazine of the same name for 55 issues from 1930-1932. Obviously, given his longevity, Allan was one of the major characters in German heldroman (hero fiction). He was a general do-gooder and avenger type, rather than being specialized as a pilot or detective. Naturally, he ranged around the world, fighting opium smugglers in China, submarine pirates in the Pacific, evil Indians in the American West, rioting prisoners in Sing-Sing, the masked criminal, the "Scorpion," in Gotham, the evil Chain Bearer of Krakow (no, I don't know what that means, either), jewel thieves on the Orient Express, pirates on the Yangtze, art thieves in Tokyo (who took the "urn of the Mikado," whatever that is), the Wolf of Bucharest, the Vampire of Baltimore, Mr. Satan, and much, much more. For the crossover-conscious among you, he fought with "Der Luftpirat," someone who had to have been Captain Mors in issues #472 & #491 (as far as I can tell "Der Luftpirat" was the only Allan enemy who survived for a return engagement), and he humiliated the very Holmesian "Inspector Doodle of Scotland Yard" in v2 n39.

Jack Allan. I know nothing about this character, but his magazine's title, Jack Allan, le vengeur des desherites (Jack Allan, Avenger of the Downtrodden) (16 issues published during the 1930s) interests me.

Sandaukan reimagined

Sandaukan reimagined 

The novel series is finally having a continuity reimagining sometime in the 2020s. With the stories being over a century old and rather values dissonantly full of old stereotypes, even if the whole series was quite fair for its day, it is time to reimagine all of them in epic detail. Moving the location southwards from Malaysia’s Sarawak and Sabah into Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan may help matters, due to the fact that the actual late Sandokan was most likely a man of Kadazan-Dusun nobility, who believed in Momolianism, the native religion of Kadazans and Dusuns.

A coming of age story also focuses on a new characters like Marianna Capaldi, Louise Stapleton, and Gabriela Gusmão plus mainstays like Sangam, Lien Guillonk and Pau De Gomera. The spinoff, following the coming of age origin story, focuses on the somewhat dysfunctional marriage of Lien and Pau De Gomera, plus the birth and growth of their twin children Dan and Mae De Gomera, as well as a majority of the screwed up Guillonks actually going to intentionally kill her because her father was the CHIP WILSON of his time. 

The prequel, focusing on Sandaukan growing from infant to adult, is basically his origin story. Also, the reimagined Sandaukan isn’t going to be a kingly pirate, but rather a character who begins life as an infant who lost both parents to a rampage of psychopathic landlords having a poisonous fan-celebrity relationship with an infamous sultan. Also, he is partly raised by many of Kalimantan’s various jungle animals, but usually the Mawas, a cryptid much larger than a human, thus becoming an adept climber at a young age. It is hinted that he is of predominantly Dayak Ngaju ancestry.