Wags [UK] #46
Wags [UK] #46 marks the world debut of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle — the first major female action heroine in comics and the character who would eventually headline the first comic book series ever to be named after a woman. Published on January 14, 1938, this British tabloid magazine beat her American audience by roughly eight months, making the issue a genuine transatlantic origination point for the entire jungle-girl subgenre that would populate Golden Age racks for the next decade. Sheena's debut here predates Wonder Woman's comic appearance by nearly four years, a fact that anchors her historical claim as comics' pioneering female protagonist. The content produced for Wags proved so commercially viable that Fiction House reprinted it wholesale in Jumbo Comics #1–8, directly shaping one of the most recognizable anthology titles of the Golden Age.
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Sheena was the product of the Eisner & Iger Studio — a two-person New York packager founded by Will Eisner and S. M. 'Jerry' Iger — which supplied content to Editors Press Service, the syndication arm that in turn distributed material to Wags, a tabloid-format weekly printed in the United States and shipped to the UK for distribution through Joshua B. Powers Ltd. (and later T. V. Boardman & Co.). To give their bare-bones operation the appearance of a larger outfit, Eisner and Iger signed the Sheena strip under the shared house pseudonym 'W. Morgan Thomas.' Mort Meskin is cited as the artist who drew the early Sheena pages, though the precise division of creative labor between Eisner and Iger remains disputed — Iger later claimed sole credit for the character's conception, while most historians regard Eisner as the primary creative force behind the studio's output.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle — the debut of what would become comics' first female solo-title star, predating Wonder Woman #1 by approximately four years.
- Published January 14, 1938 (per the Grand Comics Database) in Wags [UK] #46, a tabloid-format weekly produced in the United States by Editors Press Service and distributed in the United Kingdom.
- Created by Will Eisner and S. M. 'Jerry' Iger of the Eisner & Iger Studio; the strip was signed under the house pseudonym 'W. Morgan Thomas' to disguise the small size of their operation.
- Early Sheena artwork is attributed to Mort Meskin, who drew the prototype pages for the character under the Eisner & Iger arrangement.
- Wags ran for 88 weekly issues (January 1, 1937 – November 4, 1938), transitioning from full color to a partial black-and-white format after issue #16; by issue #46 it measured approximately 10.5 × 14.75 inches on newsprint.
- The Sheena material from Wags was subsequently reprinted in Fiction House's Jumbo Comics #1 (September 1938), the character's American debut; because the source pages were tabloid-sized, Jumbo Comics #1–8 were published in a matching oversized format and entirely in black and white.
- Sheena later starred in her own self-titled series (Spring 1942 – Winter 1952, 18 issues), recognized as the first comic book to be headlined by a female character, preceding Wonder Woman's solo title by several months.
- The character inspired numerous adaptations beyond comics, including a 26-episode syndicated television series (1955–56) starring Irish McCalla and a 1984 Columbia Pictures theatrical film starring Tanya Roberts.
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Chieko sets a trap for the Hawk- for the reward money.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).