Zenescope - Omnibusted #41: Jungle Book - Last Of the Species
a.k.a. The Last Omnibuster.
I keep forgetting to mention this, but I intended to call this month Hook and Book January (for the obvious reason that I'm reading The Jungle Book Trilogy and Neverland: Hook, and...).
The Jungle Book Volume Two
Last Of the Species
But speaking of production negatives and backgrounds and confusion headaches, this is what I was talking about:
I don't know if this is present (or rather, absent) in the physical editions, and patch & peg versions are almost impossible to find anymore, but both the Trade and individual issue editions have credits pages (for the first issue only) that were straight up released without a background. The shadowed white-on-white text makes my brain scream trying to read it, and having "Time In the Sun Short Story" repeated over each of its three columns of credits is something that I feel could have been remedied with a different layout (which it is in the two following issues that feature Short Stories, so I fail to see why it was such a challenge to figure out here).
Getting into the story, we learn right away that despite her tribe being slaughtered to endangerment and her having almost died fighting Kaa and the Shere back-to-back and learning that impulsive, emotional ignorance of Jungle Law is sure to invite more war and bloodshed, Mowgli's character has reverted to that of an anti-authoritarian dumbass who doesn't understand the importance of tact (she literally pokes the bear by expressing to Baloo how much the prospect of being the title would probably suck if it happened to her) or stealth (she dismisses Bagheera as a slinky, nosy coward who never engages head-on in a fight, which I hope will be one of those Chekov's Gun lessons that help Mowgli in battle later).
But even with Mowgli feeling like a stagnant or regressive character, the theme behind her behavior (and the title) is a common yet deep one. Each of the man-cubs know that their physical appearance and abilities are different from those of their respective tribes, and in some way that they have more in common with one another, but they have been raised with their tribal identities foremost in mind. It's nature versus nurture taken to its literal extreme and informed by perception and the vast but small world that Kipling Isle presents them with. They are the Last Of the Species...but also not. And the complexities of that simple idea are amazing.
But while pondering the philosophical intricacies of racial and cultural identity and speculating about the histories of Baloo and Bagheera can lead to many interesting questions...there's also Akili. She went from being cargo on a pirate ship as a baby to being raised by a tribe of mongoose, so how does she know what heroes are? Why does she address Tobaqui (her mangy-looking jackal sidekick) as "Old Chum," like she grew up idolizing Adam West's Batman?
These questions will have to wait for the heat-death of the Grimm Universe because after she saves a young elephant (Hathi of the Payari Tribe) from quicksand, there's a brief cut back to Mowgli where she realizes her earlier mistake, and we see that Bandar Dewan is sweet on her...in his own, monkey-mad way. It's a sweet moment of calm. Or it was until Dewan went madder and started trying to choke and drown her, the horny nutjob.
Thankfully, she was saved just in time by Akili making a Planet Of the Apes reference (and once again bringing the thirsty pickup lines) and Bomani (conveniently in the midst of leading the Shere in an attack on the Payari) facing off against Dewan for stealing his kill.
The issue ends with Mowgli getting broadsided by the Payari stampede and being thrown off a nearby cliff, along with Tobaqui.
The majority of the issue is devoted to the fight between Bomani and Dewan (who states that he only views "Mow-gley" as his "play t'ing," so yeah, he's definitely a Wonderland-grade serial killer, and his name comes from the Hindi word for madness), which illustrates (puns!) a step up in the series' paneling. It's creative, dynamic, and chaotic without feeling cluttered or difficult to follow. Other plot beats that bear mention (puns again!) are the conclusion of the Payari slaughter (with more verbal confirmation that the Shere are a shitty family, and some discrepancies in naming convention that I will elaborate on shortly), Baloo and Bagheera exploring its aftermath in search of Mowgli, and Akili being rescued by the young elephant she saved last issue.
So far in these Jungle Book reviews, I've been referring to characters by name with their tribal designation first, like Shere Kahn and Bomani, Seeone Mowgli, Bandar Louis and Dewan, and Tavi Akili (similar to how Eastern name ordering works, and this has been the most common usage amongst the characters, as well). More often, I have simply used their first names for brevity, and because some characters (Bagheera and Baloo, for example) don't belong to a tribe that we know of yet. However, there are instances in this issue, later in the bonus stories, and in the previous Volume, where the naming convention is reversed. Tribes as a whole, for example, are named in dialogue with the word "tribe" or an article first (Tribe Tavi, the Payari, etc.). As for characters with reversed identifiers, there is Rikki-Tikki Tavi (the legendary snake-slayer from Kipling's original work), and early in this issue, one of the tigers refers to an elephant he kills as Radha Payari. I'm unsure if the different order is meant as a sign of status, or if the writers or letterers simply forgot how names had been presented to that point, but it stuck out to my pedantic brain, so I mentioned it.
Apparently, Dewan won the fight between issues and brought Bomani to Bandar Log (the Primates' hideout in the remains of the pirate ship) as an offering to King Louie, a.k.a. Bandar Louis in this version. While the Shere continue to express disdain for their man-cub failure of a leader and make their own plans to continue wiping out the other tribes (they actually have a checklist of small reliefs or paintings of at least six different animal species, probably drawn by Bomani because not even sentient wild animals have the dexterity or creativity to be so artistic), the Bandar get Bomani addicted to their "treasure," and try to use him as a weapon against Kaa. I'm taking this as further evidence that Kipling Isle is in Wonderland because fruits don't normally have a narcotic effect on obligate carnivores like tigers (small amounts would provide vitamin C and fiber, but a complete dietary switch would lead to a fat, toothless Bomani who shits himself) unless the Bandar have allowed it to ferment and are eating essentially alcoholic fruit. But basically everything edible or potable in the original Alice In Wonderland was drugs, so that's what I'm going with. This is how you make research fun, people!
Anyway, as you may know if you've been reading Last Of the Species, Mowgli and Tobaqui survived their fall (which means Shere Kahn probably did, too) and found themselves in an underground cave system at the end of the previous issue, and the story turns into kind of a "two people who can't stand each other must work together to escape a bottle episode" thing because apparently I'm reading interspecies erotica where a jackal has jealous romantic feelings for a human girl mongoose who is horny for a human girl wolf.
This is backed up by the surface plot, where Baloo, Bagheera, Akili, and the young Payari Hathi join forces to search for them (Akili warns Hathi about Tobaqui's jealous streak when they offer to be Akili's temporary sidekick).
Starting last issue, the world-building got more interesting with the reveal that the Payari know what humans are (identifying Bomani as "one of the human cubs"), and this issue reveals that the cave system is lit with "lightning flowers" (fire on torches), meaning that other humans are likely to still be on the island. But first, Shere Kahn is still alive! I'm so shocked!
Seriously, I even knew this was coming when I first read the Jungle Book Trilogy almost a decade ago. It comes with watching so much action and horror over my lifetime, but with such an anticlimactic final battle in the first miniseries where the villain's death isn't shown, a reveal like this isn't that much of a surprise.
What is a surprise reveal (and works better even though it's a common shōnen trope and was literally foreshadowed moments earlier in the previous issue) is that Baloo isn't in the title, after all. Yeah, bears (the Tribe Bada Dar) are still a thing because caves. And they employ bats (whose dialogue I found myself reading in a Peter Lorre voice even though Bela Lugosi would have been more appropriate because bats) as a surveillance system. Unfortunately, as imposing of a threat as they are, the Bada Dar hint at worshipping a greater threat, whom they call The God Of Fear And Fire.
While the surface group's search brings them into contact with the incredibly creepy scavengers of Kipling's End (which include crocodiles even though they were already crossed off of the tigers' hit list), Bomani and Dewan search for Kaa, and the Shere mobilize to completely wipe out the Payari, we get an entertaining but cliche sequence where Mowgli and Shere Kahn
join forces to defeat one of the Bada Dar, inciting the wrath of his tribe as the issue ends and we head into the finale.
Oddly (but not really, because Zenescope often starts an important issue by delaying a return to the action), the finale of Book II of the Jungle Book Trilogy begins with a flashback to the day of the shipwreck, where we see a man with facial tattoos who might be related to Dewan fall overboard in a storm, and particular focus is placed on a TNT barrel that was somehow thrown ashore without exploding.
I mentioned previously how I hoped Bagheera's stealth would be a Chekov's Gun realization in Mowgli's favor, but that didn't come to pass. Instead, the TNT barrel (I say, feeling like I'm suddenly doing a Donkey Kong Country review) is a retcon Chekov's Gun this issue, and Mowgli learns an important lesson from Shere Kahn of all people. Yeah; it turns out that his years of surviving in the caves brought perspective on the cycle of violence and revenge in the Jungle, and he's content to just die a warrior's death alongside his greatest rival (who is still physically weaker than him for gender and species reasons, and barely survived their "fight" in the last finale by being lucky, but themes and the Rule Of Cool abide, I guess).
So with it being established that this issue is wrapping up old plot threads, the Shere's genocide run against the Payari causes one of the elephants to trample the barrel of explosives (it's probably been long enough that the contents are unstable enough for this beat to make sense) and blow a hole into the cave system where Mowgli and Shere Kahn are making their last stand against the Bada Dar, unleashing hell on the surface of Kipling. Baloo starts fighting off his own people, the elephant slaughter continues, and Bomani and Dewan find themselves helping defend Mowgli's unattended pack from Kaa (but once again, Bomani earns that "Failed Tiger" title and misses out on an endless supply of monkey drugs because Kaa survived this encounter, too). Despite the obvious plot convenience of it all, this battle was one of the coolest Zenescope ever put to page by that point, what with Mowgli and Kahn's arrival feeling like a Moment, Baloo's fight being so personal and visceral and packed with history, Bomani being an unlikely savior to his sworn enemies, and the multi-faceted mayhem being so coherently composed.
But for losses and failures stemming from their actions, Bomani, Kahn, and Mowgli are exiled from their respective tribes, Baloo assumes leadership of the Bada Dar and commands them back into the caves as penance, and we get the reveal that the tattooed ginger from the opening is the God Of Fear And Fire.
Much like the "Shere Kahn is alive!" issue cliffhanger, this Book II Epilogue reveal was easy to see coming the first time, as well, because the caves were lit by fire and the title given to him by the Bada Dar is a pretty big hint, but though I originally read Last Of the Species out of a sense of completionist obligation, it and this final reveal were what made me want to read more Jungle Book despite my initial reservations about its canonicity or lack thereof.
And I will do that next week, when I review Jungle Book: Fall Of the Wild. But now, some more production formalities before I get into the two Short Stories in this Volume. Last time, I briefly mentioned the Launch tag, which is absent here (and on all covers for the first Jungle Book except #1) because Last Of the Species is a sequel series, not a Launch title. And as further evidence of the "just smash the issues together verbatim and call it good" production model being evermore in play as time passes, the short stories are included at their original positions from the individual issues (separated from the content of the main story by ads for the Unleashed event series that I plan to get to this year) and again in the Trade Paperback bonus material position after the Cover Gallery, where they are followed by ads for the Jungle Book Volume One Trade Paperback, the upcoming Oz miniseries, and two separate ads for Zenescope themselves.
Passages From The Jungle Book
Time In the Sun
Released in two parts with the first two, individual issues of Jungle Book: Last Of the Species, Time In the Sun originally lacked the "Passages From The Jungle Book" designation, which was added in the Short Story compilation at the end of the Trade Volume.
As told by Rikki-Tikki Tavi (there's that reversed naming convention again! And he even refers to Baloo as Baloo Bada Dar, though we know from the Payari fight that this name reversal is not strictly a quirk of Tavi speech), Time In the Sun is the Tale of the Bada Dar, the fearsome bear tribe whom Baloo exiled from the surface of Kipling Isle. Much like how the Shere are a commentary on selfish aristocracy and the villains in general warn against unchecked consumerism, the Bada Dar serve as a commentary on fear-mongering, industrialized military, war crimes, the misguided indoctrination of patriotism into the young, ceremony vs. purposeful tradition, and greed, among other subjects. From Baloo, they learn how great they are and how great and fearsome they should be seen in the Jungle. Through a pretense of ritual combat, they gain a leader less concerned with the Law Of the Jungle than with breeding (even with Baloo's mate) and indoctrinating an army to dominate and consume all on Kipling for their own sustenance and the promise of excessive living. They hoard fresh kills and make gruesome trophies of the dead. And for his role in creating such a culture, rather than stay and try to correct his mistakes before institutional corruption and the interpretive vagaries of idealism twist his people beyond saving (it's arguably too late, but also arguably not), Baloo chooses to make himself an outcast and traitor to his kind, and seal the Bada Dar underground, burying his past and accountability (and assassinating the portrayal of him as a wise but tragic figure that has been presented thus far) so that the toxic culture he had a hand in creating can compound and fester in isolation like an off-the-grid community of political extremists. All hail the conquering hero, [insert sarcasm joke here], The End.
Passages From The Jungle Book
When Tobaqui Met Akili
I won't have what she's having....
This short story was first released as part of the third individual issue of Jungle Book: Last Of the Species, and has no ad break between it and the main story in either the single issue or Trade Paperback versions (and no "Passages From The Jungle Book" addition to the title in the latter). We simply get the cliffhanger reveal of
from issue #3, and it's straight into the short story, which, the title says it all, and not much is left for me. Rikki-Tikki Tavi narrates this one more than he did Time In the Sun (which makes sense because it is a Tavi story), and the tikka-tics in his Yoda-lite dialogue verge on annoying. But that isn't the worst thing about When Tobaqui Met Akili, because it makes light of a Jackal with a hero/savior complex developing obsessive romantic feelings (and the suggestion of a shifting sub-dom dynamic as Akili grows up) for a human toddler.
Some Tales should go untold, but please remember to Stay Tuned and 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 so I can afford a new meal instead of re-tasting the rainbow, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content, like tomorrow's TBT '26 push of a HeroMachine heroine and a Budweiser reference.
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Omnibuster,
Reminding you to drink responsibly.
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