When I was a kid in the 1970s, I bought any comic book with a loincloth-clad muscleman on the cover: endless Tarzan clones with chittering monkeys on their shoulders, sword-wielding barbarians withi naked ladies hugging their thighs; cavemen from 1,000,000 BC and the postapocalyptic future.
I thought I had all of the bases covered, until one summer at the Denkmann School Carnival, I came across a pile of Dell Comics featuring Toka the Jungle King. Someone donated five of the 10-issue series (1964-67).
Toka was distinct among the various jungle lords for two reasons.
1. He was Indian, drawn with black hair and brown skin (except on the last five covers, where for some reason, probably racism, he becomes a white guy).
2. He was 431 years old.
When the Inca Emperor Atahualpa was executed by the Spanish conquistadors in 1533, a priest named Balsa Cuzco rescued his infant son, fled to the Amazon jungle, and put them both into a magical sleep. They awakened 411 years later, and Toka grew into a grew up in a loincloth-clad muscleman.
Though he was the Once and Future King, destined to restore the exiled Inca empire, Toka didn't do a lot of rebelling against the Peruvian government. The most he could muster was protecting his tribe from natural disasters like volcanos and fire ants, and getting captured by upstarts challenging his authority. More commonly he was out in the jungle, getting captured by explorers: "That's Quechua! An ancient Incan dialect that hasn't been spoken for 400 years!"
Um...in Spanish class we learned all about Quechua. It was spoken by 8.9 million people in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile!
The top photo is a Quecha speaker getting ready to pound someone during the Takankuy festival (where people dress up in distinctive costumes and get into fistfights).
In the five issues I read, he doesn't even know that heterosexual desire exists. When one of his rescued damsels -- an archaeologist who specializes in ancient Incan dialects, like Quecha -- starts smiling at him, he has no idea why.
When he drops a "she-Jivaro" at her people, she doesn't want to go. Toka asks himself: "Why does she wail and beat her head? Could all her misfortunes have weakened her brain?"
I don't know if I liked Toka or not. He and all of the other tribesmen were massively muscular, and the lack of heterosexual interest was refreshing, but -- that Quechua thing!