South Sea Girl, The Non-Jungle Girl
Leader Enterprises, also known as Universal Phoenix Features, had a brief time as a comic book publisher starting in 1946. Since this was post WWII, most of their content was adventure and comedy titles. One anthology was Seven Seas Comics telling tales of pirates, sea voyages, and the compelling Tugboat Tessie, plus a character featured in each issue was South Sea Girl who was created by graphic novel progenitor Manning Lee Stokes and drawn by the groundbreaking black artist Matt Baker who most comics fans are familiar with his cheesecake style on characters like Phantom Lady and Tiger Girl. The title character of these tropical tales was Alani who was referred to as South Sea Girl because white tourists weren't very good at remembering the names of natives in the South Pacific. Taking place in the Vanishing Isles, Alani wasn't just some island princess who only knew how to do the hula, but was in fact the queen of her people and very knowledgeable of the outer world who had d...