Rima The Jungle Girl

Rima The Jungle Girl was another one of those casualties of the great DC implosion, where for a myriad of financial reasons, potentially interesting series were cancelled right at birth.
Rima lasted seven issues, and started with an adaptation of it's source novel, the 1904 Green Mansions: A Romance Of The Tropical Forest by the Edwardian naturalist W.H.Hudson.

The first four issues seem to be a fairly speedy run-through of the novel ( having not read it, I couldn't say ) with occasionally quite stiff, literary dialogue that reaches for, but never quite achieves, poetry.
Rima herself has had quite a speckled history under the radar, appearing in such varied places as The All-New Super Friends Hour on saturday morning TV,  The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and a 1959 film adaptation where she was played by Audrey Hepburn.

If I'm honest, she's not really up there with Shanna The She-Devil or Sheena as far as great jungle queens go. She's an ethereal spirit of the forest who generally seems to speak in birdsong, which is fine for a supporting character, but not for a marquee headliner.
Her boyfriend Abel is a reformed mercenary who falls instantly in love with her on sight, and is the typical dullard that inhabits jungle stories, declaring undying love one minute, then running off with any ' civilized ' woman that happens to stroll past the next.
And once we get past the fairly unexciting novel, scripter Robert Kanigher unfortunately falls back on tried and tested Tarzan tropes for the rest of the run, like sneering bad guys abusing the natives, and irksome kids who need life lessons.

So why am I recommending Rima The Jungle Girl? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Firstly, the covers are by Joe Kubert, a man incapable of delivering a dull illustration. And secondly the insides are by Nestor Redondo.

Hello..? Eyes up here, buster. Yeah, Rima The Jungle Girl is drawn by Nestor Redondo, and if any numbskull ever tries to tell you that comics aren't proper art, just point them in the direction of this series.

It also has great colouring, particularly for the processes of the time. Check out this beautiful moonlit scene:

Basically, Rima The Jungle Girl is a class act. Here's a done in one issue as proof.

Ragman

How great was Ragman? The ultimate working class / poor boy superhero, with layouts by Kubert and finished art by Redondo. Ragman was one of those characters always on the periphery of fans' consciousness. Certainly I was aware of him, but by the time I was able to check his book out, it had already been cancelled.

Looking distinctly odd and unheroic, Ragman looked exactly like what he was: Batman if he'd been born in a junk shop.
He was Rory Regan, the kind-hearted son of a pawn shop dealer, fresh back from 'Nam, and a man with no chance to escape the ghetto, even if he'd wanted to.

In his ridiculously short 5 issue run, Ragman fought the lowest kind of street crime, rarely venturing outside his neighbourhood, and working the same mean streets as The White Tiger and Luke Cage ( though, of course, Cage would never've trusted that ' jive fool with th' sheet on his head ' )
In fact, the tattered Tatterdemalion only ever wins small victories in his ghetto world, and there's a real sense that nothing he does really makes a difference in the larger scheme of things.
Actually, re-reading Ragman, it does feel like there's a stranger, weirder strip struggling to get out, in line with the spooky costume and 'somber mask with bottomless sockets of anguish.' Wonder what Steve Gerber would've done with him?
Here's the two part origin:
' Who are you? '
' Just...a Ragman! '