I didn't mean to suggest that after checking the IMDb I still harbored doubts about the nature of the program. And they also indicate no voice cast beyond the late Mr. McDowall, so I'm sure you're right about that, too.

I assure you it's the real deal. It's a straight-up adaptation of trhe first Mowgli story, pretty much, and -- it's been an awfully long time since I saw it -- but it was done the same way as Rikki-tikki-tavi where Roddy McDowall essentially just READ the story and changed his voice as needed, I think he did all the vocal work, and they animated the scenes he was reading. It was enormously effective, especially the night scenes where Mowgli is confronting Shere Khan with the Red Flower.

That cover box image for "Mowgli's Brothers" didn't download for me before. What little information the IMDb has does indeed make it sound like a straight adaptation of the original story, even though the title suggests a sequel or spin--off. They date it to 1977, years after his two other Kipling adaptations mentioned above, while Amazon.com places it a year earlier. Note the label: Family Home Entertainment/fhe (lower case their choice), so there's little chance of it being owned by somebody who could package it in a DVD set with the other works, which were made through MGM.

I've remembered another, better precedent for Marvel/Ka--Zar's Hidden Land, one which is nearly identical (just the place itself, you understand): "The Land Unknown," a B--thriller from Universal International (as the studio was known at the time), 1957, starring king of the stuntmen Jock Mahoney, and Shawn Smith (Shirley Patterson in her first go--round as an actress in the 1940s, including the first Batman serial). It's concealed in Antarctica (ERB's Caprona wasn't THAT far south and was a surface island, I freely admit), is inhabited by dinosaurs, and so on. Only a VHS release is indicated.

The Frank Cho Shanna is also not in continuity at all. They pretty much let Cho do whatever he wanted for 6 issues or so, so this Shanna shares a name and an outfit with the original. She and Ka-Zar have been mostly MIA, as far as I know.

And does anybody else see "Lorna, Queen of the Jungle" and envision some school-marm-ish bespectacled type ruling over apes and tigers and elephants?

Anyway, great post!

"Korak becomes 'live bait' to trap alien beings into a battle with ferocious giant insects!"

How could you not want to find out what happened in a comic with that plot line?

Perhaps open to debate : )

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Looked beautiful - Russell brought a delicate, fluid line to Kane's work.

By the way, it's just an offhand comment of yours, but I'm not sure I'd agree that the Disney version is ALWAYS the definitive version of a fairy tale or story. I'd argue Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty both have a life of their own outside Team Rodent, as does Aladdin (though I guess not lately)...

The cover of the guy in a loincloth, riding a Pteradactyl and shooting down a Jap Zero with a tommy gun is my favorite in all of comics history. (And I can't find a scan of it on the web anywhere!)

The War that Time Forgot. Greatest. Comics. Ever.

I'm proud to say that I've read the Collodi 'Pinocchio' (as well as Dodie Smith's 'The Hundred and One Dalmatians' and Eric Knight's 'Lassie Come Home').

Sir Percival may be something of an intermediate step between Romulus and Remus and Mowgli. He wasn't raised by animals or anything, but when he first arrives at Camelot he's often portrayed as being dressed in sticks and leaves and stuff, and completely ignorant of civilization. Maybe it's a reach.

3. Marvel/Ka--Zar's Hidden Land always reminded me of ERB's Caprona, a.k.a. "The Land That Time Forgot," rather than Pellucidar. I CAN see where you're coming from here, however.

1. Chuck Jones' "Rikki--Tikki--Tavi" and "The White Seal" specials are adaptations of OTHER stories from Kipling's work, actually entitled "The Jungle BookS" [emphasis mine], and are so labeled. Jones did not do Mowgli himself, no doubt because Disney just had.

2. "Jungle Jim," originally a newspaper comic strip (by Alex "Flash Gordon" Raymond, if memory serves; him or Lee "Phantom" Falk, one, anyway; the other's second strip was Mandrake the Magician) owed much more to H. Rider Haggard's "great white hunter" Alan Quartermain ("King Solomon's Mines" and several now mostly forgotten sequels) than to the
Ape--man, despite the baggage ex--Tarzan Johnny Weismuller brought with him to Columbia's 16 "B" features (even though the studio dropped the name to save licensing fees for the last three films and he ostensibly played himself) and 39 TV series episodes (reconciling this production with those last three "Jim"--less movies has never been done, to my knowledge, so don't blame ME for the seeming contradiction in terms). DC did a knock--off of this feature itself, "Congo Bill," and it also became a Columbia serial.