In the latter half of the 70's, it seemed as though jungle heroes were back in vogue. Filmation had obtained a license in 1976 to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle for television, and the series lasted 6 years, but not many episodes were made. The series went into perpetual rerun around year 3, with episodes compressed for time as part of the Super Seven anthology, and later, pairings with The Lone Ranger (1980) and Zorro (1981). Hanna-Barbera's first response came when Rima, the heroine of H. Rider Haggard's Green Mansions, and licensed to DC Comics, appeared in two short featurettes on The All-New Super Friends Hour. However, H-B was either unable to or interested in obtaining a separate license to produce a Rima solo series.
That leads us to today's subject, Jana of the Jungle, one-half of NBC's Godzilla Power Hour, from 1978. Here, courtesy of Muttley16 and YouTube, is the open:
Jana came from the pen of comic book writer-artist Doug Wildey, the creator of Jonny Quest, who had been hired as a producer. Two months into the season, reruns of Quest were added, resulting in the anthology's title changing to Godzilla Super 90. Quest merely played out the string, and, unfortunately, Jana was cancelled after 1 season. It wasn't for lack of trying, especially in terms of creating role models for young women, but considering the competition on the other networks, especially from H-B itself, viewers felt more comfortable with something familiar (i.e. Popeye) than something new.
Could Jana be given another chance today? It'd be a welcome change, but these days, the networks don't gear their Saturday programming strictly for kids, and Cartoon Network is highly unlikely to even pick up an option, especially considering sister network Boomerang can't be bothered to dust off the series and put it in rotation.
Rating: A-.
2 comments:
Jana was a severely underrated show. Tarzan went back to half-hour format after "Super Seven"; was cancelled, and for one year brand new episodes (which were more in keeping with Burroughs than those produced in the super seven years) were produced.
I don't know where you got your info in re.: Tarzan.
Super Seven shifted over to NBC, sans Tarzan & Jason of Star Command, in 1980, while reruns of Tarzan were paired with a new Lone Ranger series. If there were new Tarzan eps to go with the Ranger, don't ya think it'd have been on in an earlier time frame than it was?
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