Zenescope - Omnibusted #40: The Jungle Book
A Wild Omnibuster Has Appeared!
Welcome to the Jungle, Ticketholders!
Take a look around while you're here. It won't bring you to your shananana-knees and you're not gonna die, because I've taken this Limp Bizkit/Guns 'n' Roses gimmick as far as it can go without crashing around to the tune of "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang" like Jim Carrey forgetting his lines.
Yeah; my Wonderland madness hasn't worn off yet, so I'm still kinda random right now.
When I originally talked about Zenescope comics in Cover Charge #3: Grimm Fairy Tales (FROM June 8, 2014), I briefly summarized it and its sequel (I will be covering that next week) as follows:
"I don't yet see how it's connected to the Grimm Universe. The story is decent and the action is easy enough to follow, but all they did was make Mowgli a girl so there would be an excuse to write an unrequited lesbian romance between her and a human mongoose."
You'll also notice that the cover identifies this as Volume One, and publication dates for the individual issues and trades suggest that production on Last Of the Species had already begun when this trade was being compiled, so they knew a second Volume (if not a third) was in the bag. It especially stands to reason because Jungle Book was being advertised as far back as the Dream Eater Saga, a year before its release.
The Jungle Book Volume One
One of my original points against this series was that I had no idea why, if it is a Grimm Fairy Tales presentation, it has no bearing on the larger continuity. But through this Retrospective process and some research I did a long time ago, I've rediscovered a few possibilities for connection to justify its inclusion here. As I said in my Little Miss Muffet: Part 2 review, it could be set in an obscure Wonderland island jungle. The Alice In Wonderland miniseries even tells us through the Walrus' backstory that it was once possible to accidentally sail into other Realms Of Power. Which tracks with the tale that the first issue opens with.
On Kipling Isle (named for Rudyard Kipling, obviously, who wrote the original Jungle Book), the various animal species are locked in a war for survival (it's presented as a literal interspecies war because the animals are at least a sentient level of intelligence with their own languages and social structures, as well as an interspecies language) when a ship carrying infant slave cargo crashes into their midst, killing all humans but the four children on board and forcing a truce among the animals.
The four were divided among the Bandar (Primates), the Tavi (Mongoose), the Seeone (Wolves), and the Shere (Tigers), and kept ignorant of each other's existence as they matured, so as to prevent the war from continuing.
And this is where I talk about the covers. As you can see in the above ad and credits page (apologies for showing the same image half a dozen times), each of the human Champions got their own cover, all of which connect (feeding that collectibles market) and received a fifth variant that gatefolds all four into one poster. Another couple of new features (there have been gatefold covers before, but few this large) are the hype quotes and the Launch tag. I think this was abandoned by the following year, but 2012 was intended to be an ambitious fiscal period, and advertising like this was an earmark of that mindset at the time.
Getting back into the story, time has passed and Seeone Mowgli (originally treated as the runt of the four) has grown into a young, mouthy Zenescope heroine willing to talk trash to Bagheera and challenge Baloo to a fight as the issue ends.
The second issue introduces us to Shere Bomani, a muscular man armed with the claws of a tiger fallen in the Great Animal War (a decent explanation for how the children got clothes, I guess, but it would have made more nature sense for them to be trained and shaped and made to earn their skins and claws by defeating one of their own in battle, especially in Bomani's case, considering his found family call him "failed tiger"—honoring someone as a future leader, despite their unproven strength, by giving them the raiments of a warrior who died in battle has that Roland Emmerich, "we failed, but we're going to show you how to succeed" energy about it that feels dumb when you stop to think about it for too long). He can't catch a gazelle because despite his size and peak-human stats, humans lack the fast-twitch muscle density to match a tiger's feats, and a 500lb human (comparable to a fully grown Bengal tiger) wouldn't have the metabolism to sustain pure muscle mass like what Bomani is shown to have here.
Because his shitty family thinks he sucks (to be fair, he does), he's made to watch while they perpetuate the cycle of violence against the wolves with the extra bonus of eliminating a threat to their conquest of Kipling Isle (which, if you remove the anthropomorphic race war and greedy monarchy stuff from the story, amounts to killing all other animals on the island and then cannibalizing each other until they starve to death). And because his shitty family are shitty (they're the greedy monarchy allegory here) and rarely have anything supportive to say, Bomani doesn't listen and screws up the tigers' chances of victory out of a misguided desire to prove himself.
Okay; enough about Bomani. Didn't Mowgli decide to challenge a fully-grown bear to a fight last issue? Yes, and it's revealed to just be a fun training spar, which is an easy little twist to figure out if you've seen the Disney version like I have (I even found myself reading the vulture's dialogue in a Ringo Starr voice because of that movie), but it serves a purpose of juxtaposing her diverse upbringing (a bear, a panther, and wolves) against Bomani's harsh, elitist background, so when they come face-to-face at the end of the issue, it feels as significant as it should.
Also, the Jungle is the Force. Yeah; characters often mention "feeling a shift in the Jungle" when danger approaches, so The Jungle Book has the Force now. Yay?
I couldn't think of a better segue or place to mention this, but certain kinds of characters have their own dialogue font and speech bubbles. They're mostly inoffensive, but the tigers' ragged, angular font can be a detriment to the reading experience, and I remember being extremely relieved when (spoilers for Jungle Book noobs) Shere Kahn was eventually forcibly removed from the story.
Unfortunately, the ones to be forcibly removed from the story here are the majority of the wolves, including Mowgli's adoptive wolf mother (well, damn! Now I have three music choices for the Instagram post...), and she lets her anguish be heard across Kipling Isle. Seriously, canon be damned, this series' artists and writer know how to do moments right. Like, the composition can feel chaotic and crowded at times, but things like Mowgli's anguished howl at the moon or her first encounter with Bomani just hit.
Speaking of moments that hit, while Mowgli and Baloo trek through the Jungle on their way to take out the Shere (cycle of violence and revenge, remember?), they end up passing through Bandar territory (which happens to be near the wreckage of the ship, I think, considering all of the skeletons, and the man-made resources they have access to) where their human, Bandar Dewan, gives Mowgli the stuffed animal she lost as a child. Hit.
But also, despite them being kind of environmentalists (King Louie hoards grape seeds and refers to the fruit as "treasure"), the Bandar are described in the story as engaging in "madness," which is proof enough for me that Kipling Isle is in Wonderland.
Meanwhile, Mowgli and Baloo are being tracked by Bomani (out of curiosity and possible attraction, as much as a need to repair his own pride by besting her), who ends the issue at the mercy of Kaa, the River Of Scales!
The bulk of this issue is devoted to the fight with Kaa. He's presented here as an ancient, gluttonous snake with a healing factor who has grown so much from his years of surviving and eating that he stretches the entire length of the island, so he can sense worthy prey with his body (using that Jungle Force I mentioned earlier, or from animals just not realizing they took a dip in the River Of Scales) and know exactly where to go for a good meal. This kind of feels like a case of Wonderland irony (healing factor from shedding, plus gluttonous appetite that can never be sated because his body grows with each meal) crossed with the writers coding the villains as all-consuming conquerors, and it's good, subtly provided lore that gave me something to say about an issue that's basically, "heroes fight giant snek who is not friend."
The other introduction here is Tavi Akili, the "giantess" (because she is, from a mongoose perspective) hero of her animal tribe. Baloo laments this (and Mowgli learning of the other man-cubs' existence in general, really) as a bad omen of a Second Great War, which, yeah, Baloo; people suck. Great instincts, old bear!
But the flaw with Akili's appearance here is that the creative crew have broken their streak of making moments that hit. Foreshadowing her arrival starts things flat so that when she does jump into the fray like some kind of Jungle Batgirl (and, I might add, starts thirsting on Mowgli almost immediately), there is no pop to it. Furthermore, the paneling (using a right-third instead of a mongoose-packed splash page) kills the impact of Akili having an "Endgame moment" a bit later when her tribe come to even the odds. One dynamic but bland double-spread later and it's "Kaa retreated; where's Mowgli," almost as if the last twenty-one pages didn't matter.
The commentary on judging people by the actions of their race (Mowgli blaming Bomani for the death of her pack and wanting to kill him because he is Shere—Bomani is also black, by the way) is unsubtle but makes its point, even as we learn that the tigers are taking this opportunity to set up an ambush without his knowledge, because stories like this always need a third act misunderstanding to make things worse, right?
Well, it's the third act of The Jungle Book, but the beginning of the falling action (literally, because Mowgli throws Shere Kahn off a cliff in an anti-climax with some badass context paneling) for the trilogy that would be. The final issue begins by elaborating on the racial vengeance commentary from the previous issue's ending, interlaced with flashbacks of Mother Wolf telling Mowgli the Laws Of the Jungle (don't hunt outside your borders, don't take more than your share of what the Jungle provides, and only kill for food—basically the Circle Of Life with different talking animals, because The Lion King also has the Force), which Kaa is an affront to, the Shere believe they are above, and Mowgli ignores because of youthful emotion, revenge, and people suck. In the end, Mowgli looks a badass, almost dies, and learns a valuable lesson about law and order while preparing for war and marveling at the beauty of peace trying to reassert itself (the surviving wolves got...busy while Mowgli was away, and the pack has repopulated, but Bomani leads the Shere now, so on we go with the cycle of violence and revenge, to be continued...).
The Jungle Book miniseries, like most Zenescope miniseries, started out with more promise than expected, but ended up focusing more on continuation efforts than resolving things in a congruous and satisfying way. The interior art (Carlos Granda, Liezl Buenaventura, and Tim Yates) was beautiful and consistent but sometimes crowded and mis-paneled, and the writing, while dry in places and falling off near the end, had plenty of personality and emotional moments, and did a competent job of moralizing and world-building without holding the reader's hand that much.
I'm really proud of this review, and I'll be continuing my coverage of the Jungle Book trilogy with Last Of the Species next week, so Stay Tuned for that, and as always, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because it's a jungle out there (disorder and confusion everywhere, but no one seems to care), and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content, like tomorrow's TBT '26 on another of my HeroMachine characters.
124
Omnibuster,
Out.
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