Posted By Dan Greenfield on Mar 19, 2026 | 4 comments

REEL RETRO CINEMA: New looks at old flicks — and their comics connections…

By ROB KELLY

As a child of the ’70s (Whip Inflation Now!), my relationship to Rima, The Jungle Girl was informed solely by the fact that she had her own DC Comics series and later showed up on various iterations of Super Friends. That told me that she was an official Big Deal, a member of the DC stable on par with the likes of Aquaman, Green Arrow, Hawkgirl, etc. And while all that might not exactly be true, her history in many ways is even more grand and impressive.

Rima was one of the many characters DC adapted from other media in the 1970s and tried to turn into a comic-book star, like her fellow jungle adventurer Tarzan, the Shadow, the Avenger (in Justice, Inc.) and, for one glorious, treasury-sized month, Dick Tracy. While I kinda sorta knew Tarzan wasn’t a DC character, exactly, I always assumed Rima was their attempt to combine the Lord of the Apes with Wonder Woman.

In fact, in one of those, “Wait, Buck Rogers came before Flash Gordon?” kind of things, Rima actually predates Tarzan by a full decade. She made her debut in the 1904 novel Green Mansions, written by W.H. Hudson, while Lord Greystoke didn’t debut until 1912.

Hudson was a naturalist who moved from his home country of Argentina to the United Kingdom, where he found success as an author of both fiction and non-fiction. His most famous work concerns Abel, a failed revolutionary who escapes into the jungle to evade capture. There he meets various denizens of the forest, including a young, wraith-like girl who seems to not only survive in the harsh climate, but possesses supernatural powers.

Green Mansions as a book is a fine enough read, if you can put aside the numerous Lolita-like mentions of how attractive this small, very young girl is to this much older man. Abel is undoubtedly the main character (Rima actually dies near the end of the book), but I will mention that the paperback version I read (published in 1959), does feature some quite beautiful illustrations by artist Sheilah Beckett.

The reason the book was republished in 1959 was as a tie-in to a big-budget movie adaptation, also called Green Mansions. Starring Audrey Hepburn as Rima, Anthony Perkins as Abel, and legendary character actor Lee J. Cobb as Rima’s father, the film was directed by Mel Ferrer, Hepburn’s husband at the time.

Green Mansions — released March 19, as it happens — is one of those incredibly frustrating films, because you can source all its faults to one thing: the direction by Ferrer. Sure, Hepburn at 30 years old was too old to play the teenage Rima, and I’m not sure I buy Anthony “Norman Bates” Perkins as a rugged adventurer, but the scenery is gorgeous, and the two leads have a decent chemistry. Yeah, Cobb is at an eleven during the whole movie, but the elements are all in place — except there is just no life or urgency to this movie. The scenes just sit there, plodding along from set piece to set piece.

In the novel, Rima retains an air of mystery much of the time—she’s only seen in fleeting glimpses for the first half of the book. The movie wasn’t about to hide Big Time Movie Star Audrey Hepburn that way, so even though the film starts with Perkins and the story is from his point of view, Hepburn’s Rima just doesn’t convey much mystery or menace. She seems too gentle, too domesticated, and not at all the fiery, nearly feral creature of the forest you’d expect.

Ferrer had not directed a film in eight years, and even then nothing to this scale. He clearly managed to get the gig because of his connection to mega movie star Hepburn, but he’s just not up to the task of helming an epic like this. There’s never a sense of danger or capital-A adventure and the actors are mostly left stranded. Green Mansions was a giant flop, commercially and critically. Ferrer only directed one more time, half a decade later.

While Rima did previously appear in a comic book, via Classics Illustrated #90 (December 1951), that is an adaptation of the book and long before the film. After the movie flopped, the character lay dormant for another 15 years until, improbably, she was given her own comic book series in 1974. While, as we mentioned, Rima predates Tarzan, it was his success at DC that led to editor and comic book legend Joe Kubert to try Rima out. He believed Green Mansions was in the public domain, so no tricky or expensive licensing agreement needed to be worked out.

Rima the Jungle Girl featured stunning covers by Kubert and equally stunning interior art by Nestor Redondo. Redondo doesn’t shy away from the prurient appeal of a beautiful, wild jungle woman, half-dressed in a loincloth; but he at least clearly ages her up to an adult, memorably conveyed in the first issue’s splash page.

Despite adapting Green Mansions for the first four issues of the series, no mention is made of Rima’s non-DC Comics roots — which was why it was so easy for readers (like me) to think she was an original creation. There’s an off-hand reference to the book by a letter writer in the fourth issue, which is not addressed.

Kubert added a small, cover corner box-esque shot of Rima to the cover of the sixth issue, suggesting she was a member of the DC Comics publishing stable in good standing. After all, why create this little piece of branding unless there was going to be a use for it?

Alas, it was not to be — Rima was abruptly cancelled with Issue #7, with no indication that it was the last issue (they did that a lot back then, leaving nerds like me to woefully wander the newsstands, looking for the next issues of series that would never come). All in all, a very solid series with some of the finest artwork to ever appear in a DC comic.

Over the course of the 20th century, Rima had swung from novels to comics to movies and then back to comics. The fact that both the movie and comics series were not financially successful didn’t stop her from moving to yet another medium — television!

Two years after Rima the Jungle Girl ended, she showed up on Super Friends on October 1, 1977 to team up with Batman, of all people, for a segment called “Fire.” Somehow the Dynamic Duo are called away from Gotham City in to help stop a raging forest blaze. Rima even gets to ride in the Batmobile! Wonder Woman voice actor Shannon Farnon pulls double duty as the voice of Rima.

Speaking (heh) of the Amazing Amazon, Rima returned to the show just a month later to team with Wonder Woman for “River of Doom,” to rescue some archeologists. (She’s again voiced by Farnon.)

I grew up watching Super Friends obsessively, so seeing Rima alongside the “A” team of DC heroes suggested to me, instinctively, she was significant. At the time, I probably wondered why she never teamed up with Batman in The Brave and the Bold or got her own back up in World’s Finest or something. But then, I thought the same thing about El Dorado, Samurai, etc., not knowing they were unique to the series.

Rima got one more shot at TV fame by teaming with Wonder Woman and Aquaman in the 1980 episode “Return of Atlantis.” I was, and always have been, a huge Aquaman fan, and I never quite accepted the canard that his appearances on the show made him seem like a joke to a generation of kids, because he was underserved a lot of time on the show. IMO, it was better he was on the series at all instead, of, you know, Green Lantern!

But this segment goes a long way to proving the Aqua-Haters’s point: When Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Rima get tied by up by the bad guys, the Sea King loudly proclaims something to the effect of “It’s hopeless, we’re doomed,” leading Wonder Woman to save the day. Jeez, Arthur, come on!

That was pretty much it for Rima as a DC Comics star. No more cartoon appearances — though she did get a belated action figure from Figures Toy Company decades later.

Back in the mid-1980s, I always wondered why she didn’t get an entry in Who’s Who. She headlined her own series, for Pete’s sake, what’s a jungle girl gotta do?!?

Only in retrospect did I understand that DC wasn’t going to include characters in that series they didn’t create, even if said character was in the public domain. (They made an exception to that rule for Doctor Mist, but he was a member of the Global Guardians.) Makes me wish E. Nelson Bridwell had thought to pluck Rima out of her jungle setting for a few adventures with those heroes — maybe she’d still be in print today.

Rima did return, briefly, in DC’s 2010 series First Wave, in a version more directly inspired by Green Mansions.

It’s safe to say when W.H. Hudson created and then killed Rima off in 1904, there’s no way he would imagine his creation would still be swinging around, over a century later. What medium will she conquer next?

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MORE

— The 1985 RED SONJA MOVIE 40 Years Later — Such a Missed Opportunity. Click here.

— 1975’s DOC SAVAGE: A Promising Movie Buried Under a Pile of Camp. Click here.

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ROB KELLY is a podcaster, writer, illustrator, and film commentator. You can find his work at robkellycreative.com.