You just don't hear too much about this old character and trust me, very little helpful information is available on him. Not surprising since he was one of many Tarzan-wannabes running throughout the golden age pop culture landscape. However "gone" doesn't always guarantee "forgotten" and Samar the Jungle Lord does officially make his Catacombs debut with today's story from Feature Comics #35 (Aug. 1940), originally published by Quality Comics.
"Valley of the Cavemen" also introduces Prof. Ford Cawthorne and an unfortunate tribe of cavemen (all but one of whom dies), so obviously things were pretty rotten in Samar's neck of the woods. This strip had an interesting assemblage of artists working on it including the great Chuck Mazoujian and Ann Brewster, a female artist in American comics during the 1940s and 1950s. At that time, she was affiliated with studios like Binder, Chesler and Iger, but her earliest known credit was 'Samar' for Quality Comics (1941). Some of her work will eventually turn up here!
Three of the earliest Samar adventures that I have on file were scanned from microfiche and frankly, they're a bit too grainy for posting, so I've opted to begin this features run in the Catacombs with this fine tale who's artist signed himself as "John Charles", also known as John Celardo.
The Catacombs is grateful to Don "Zu-Gogo" Falkos for providing the scans for this story. Note: The copyright for this issue, its contents and artwork belong to the original publisher and/or creators and is reproduced here solely for entertainment purposes. Enjoy!
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