Fine- (5.5). 1/2" split to bottom spine with bit of paper loss, a few small spine rubs, toning to edges, touch of foxing to page edges. Cream to light tan pages. Cover: Jack Kamen? Art: Uncredited. GPAnalysis: A 5.5 sold for $134 in 8/17; a 5.0 sold for $308 in 2/22.

Two apes manhandle a busty brunette as a third ape taunts her with a cheetah claw on a stick, prompting Jo-Jo the Congo King to swing into heroic action. At best, the gorillas, with their weirdly priapic claw-on-a-stick, seem to have bestiality in mind. At worst, the cover trades on sordid jungle-pulp tropes, using apes as surrogates for black sexual menace, a device epitomized by Edgar Rice Burroughs' description of a "black ape rapist" menacing Jane Porter in Tarzan of the Apes (1914).

Grand Comics Database postulates Jack Kamen as cover artist, but although traces of Kamen are apparent (see the Kamenesque shading of Jo-Jo's right calf), we suspect that these are Kamen's inks over another artist's pencils. The interiors are just as nuts as the cover, with a gal getting shot though the neck with an arrow, an elephant stepping on a guy's head, Jo-Jo slicing a guy's hand off with a knife, multiple impalings, a bevy of babes squished by a giant juggernaut, an African ramming his spear thru a white gal's throat in another racially/sexually-fraught image, etc.

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