Writer – George Kashdan
Artist – Jack Sparling

Bad things are going down in the jungle and Tina sends out a distress call on the drums for Bomba to come and rescue her and the villagers. As it is, Bomba is too late to save anyone but Tina and she has lost her memory due to seeing the entire village slaughtered. At the moment, Bomba cannot do anything without the information that is locked away in Tina’s mind except to get her away from the encroaching tribesmen who are intent on killing her. What makes this quite a fun tale from George Kashdan and Jack Sparling is the fact that Bomba, despite his best intentions, is unable to get away from the encroaching villains. He always manages to make an escape from whatever it is they have set or those moments when he is about to get boxed in but it finally gets to a point where he is surrounded on all sides. Suffice it to say, Bomba is a smart guy and so with a combination of things, such as setting a fire and then escaping into a crocodile-infested river. Sparling does his best to make it all quite exciting and the pace is quick and the action thick and it drags the reader along for the ride, a willing passenger. If there is one minor complaint about anything in this issue it is Sparling, as he is making Bomba look a little too old. Here, he is not necessarily the ‘jungle boy’ but the jungle man and it seems a little strange to age him so, though one has to guess that it was unintentional. Kashdan does not leave it there though with Bomba and Tina simply escaping, there is also the matter of dealing with the invaders and thankfully, that dip in the river seemed to wake Tina up and she remembers just what it is that the foreigners were after. So with a little luck and a bit of trickery, Bomba manages to take care of the invading force who were led by greed which leads to a happy ending for all involved, aside from the slaughtered villagers that is. As for Tina, she is glad to be alive and be with Bomba and he is glad to have her as well. The fourth issue of this series was definitely a lot of fun and perhaps the best one yet as it featured a quicker pace than the previous three and the creators kept things moving from start to finish.

3.5 out of 5