Thun'da, King of the Congo

Entry updated 23 February 2026. Tagged: Comics, Publication.

US Comic (1952-1953; vt Thun'da). Magazine Enterprises. 6 issues numbered #1-#6. Artists Frank Frazetta and Bob Powell. Script writer Gardner Fox. Cave Girl, from the same publisher, is also discussed in this entry and had 4 issues (1953-1954, numbered #11-#14), with Powell's and Fox's involvement. Both comics had 36 pages with 4 long strips; unusually, there are no short text stories. Aside from their first issues, these comics had three strips by the title character, plus one featuring the other.

"Deep in the mist and fog of Africa is a lost land ... untouched by civilization, where strength is king, and the weak die or are conquered" (see Lost Worlds). During World War Two a plane carrying supplies to the Allied troops crashes there; its pilot survives and, though suffering from Amnesia, fends off attacks from a brontosaurus (see Dinosaurs), a pterodactyl and cavemen (see Origin of Man) in quick succession. There is also a lost civilization (see Lost Races): the pilot wins the heart of Pha, their queen (who tells him her people came from the sky ages ago). By killing an enormous snake ("the ancient god of evil ... the snake that surrounds the world", possibly a nod to Jörmungandr) with his last bullets, he gains the deference of the cavemen, who hail him as "Thun'da – King of the Lost Lands". In #1 he also gains a sabretooth tiger as a pet and deals with attacks by apemen riding mastodons. Following earthquakes, the valley has been isolated for centuries (at least), but fresh quakes open it again, allowing plots involving Russian agents (see Cold War) after uranium, contact with local imperial authorities, and interactions with black and Berber populations. Unfortunately Frazetta was instructed by his editor to drop the Lost World elements: he resigned and Bob Powell took up the artwork. From #2, whose three Thun'da stories are all mundane, the setting becomes contemporary Africa with occasional exotic intrusions.

#3 has "The Dragon Devil", with fish men who can control crocodiles, along with their queen and the tyrannosaurus they worship. "The Women Warriors" (#4) has an advanced Amazon civilization who decide Thun'da is fit to become their Queen's mate and capture him. He is upset ("Defeated by women! ... the jungle will laugh at Thun'da"), but on learning he will go free on defeating their champion, he becomes over-confident ("I promise to 'go easy' on her") but is beaten. It turns out he had been drugged; Pha saves him. "Flying Devils" (#5) has women flying on birds, kidnapping people for sacrifice; Thun'da pursues but is captured and taken to an altar, whereupon a huge Roc arrives; Thun'da sees it off. "Terror of the Tusks" features men with elephant heads (that prove to be rubber masks) terrorizing the region: Thun'da works with a young tribal chief, King Rex, to defeat them. King Rex is exceptionally strong and his weapons keep shattering, until Thun'da gives him an unbreakable axe. The pair team up again in "The Women-Stealers", where Bedouin slavers abduct Pha and some of the Amazonians.

#2 introduces Cave Girl whom "all animals know and love" and who joins with Thun'da to defeat a tribe of hostile ape men who worship a white ape. She has a strip in subsequent issues; apart from her ability to communicate with animals, genre elements are rare, though #4 features a white queen dressed like an Egyptian, ruling yet more ape-men. Cave Girl was given her own comic, Cave Girl, whose first issue (numbered #11) gives her origin story: parents murdered by locals and daughter carried off by an eagle that is killed by a wolf who then raises the child. This version of Cave Girl is fiercer than that in Thun'da, but still communicates with animals, with whom she is usually friendly, though killing lions and gorillas if they attack. In the opening story, "Pool of Life" she fights cave men and the titular pool of Rejuvenation, whose effects do not stop and whose drinkers grow ever younger, eventually reduced to "a swirl of thick black powder". Another tale has her visiting Nairobi, where she attacks cars and electric fans, then decides to return to the jungle. "Prey of the Headhunters" (#12) has a scientist's bottle containing a vapour which – should the container be broken – will kill anything within a mile. The Amazonians return in #12, then again in #13, riding elephants (they are less sympathetic than in their Thun'da appearances). In "The Man Who Conquered Death" (#14) a Scientist finds a Time Machine in a cave and theorizes it was either left by Aliens or is a relic of an ancient Earth civilization wiped out by nuclear war. Though it does travel in time, any passenger will grow older or younger by the number of years involved (return to the present does not seem to correct this). In this way the scientist ages Cave Girl; but she has wild animals threaten him, allowing her to be rejuvenated by a new journey. She then sends the machine permanently 50,000 years into the past; he goes with it, and ceases to exist.

A Thun'da strip appears in Cave Girl #12-#14: "The Gold-Maker" (#12) has "what might have been a meteor – or a Spaceship" crashing in the distant past, containing a "queer machine" with "thin metal legs" that is buried, but freed in the present day by an earthquake. This Robot wanders the jungle turning things to gold, so attracting villains. Thun'da solves the problem by asking the British to drop a bomb on it. "Mugongo the Mighty" (#14) is an immense gorilla (see Great and Small) accompanied by a tribe of cavemen: Thun'da leads him over a recent lava flow whose cooled crust breaks under Mugongo's weight; he falls into molten lava.

The interior artwork for Thun'da #1, all by Frazetta, is very good indeed (though oddly his cover is less impressive): it can be considered a minor classic. Fox's stories here and in some subsequent issues are also lively, though of their time. Powell's work from #2 onwards (including for Cave Girl) is good but suffers by comparison. The Thun'da Cave Girl stories are a little dull, but improve in Cave Girl (particularly "The Man Who Conquered Death"); Cave Girl also has the most interesting of the non-Frazetta Thun'da strips, "The Gold-Maker". Though the era's issues regarding the portrayal of Africans are often apparent (see Race in SF), this is noticeably less of a problem with King Rex (who makes a third, brief, appearance in "The Gold Maker").

The Columbia Pictures Serial Film King of the Congo (1952), starring Buster Crabbe, was based on Thun'da; the comic is credited on some film posters. [SP]

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