Super Sheena?

I haven't been following the new Sheena series from Dynamite, but this caught my eye while I was browsing new releases on ComicList:



Obviously, Sheena is fit and athletic, but does she have the strength to tear a rifle apart? I'm guessing this is a case of artistic license, but has anyone read the story?

argonaut wrote: I haven't been following the new Sheena series from Dynamite, but this caught my eye while I was browsing new releases on ComicList:



Obviously, Sheena is fit and athletic, but does she have the strength to tear a rifle apart? I'm guessing this is a case of artistic license, but has anyone read the story?

I read a handful of reviews of that particular issue (#05), and nothing suggested her abilities were anything other than what they have always been.

More likely that cover is a bit exaggerated.

But Sheena with quasi-Kryptonian powers would be pretty awesome.

I've enjoyed her character since Tanya Roberts played her in the movie. Tanya was the best casting job I've ever seen yet for a comic-book character. Tanya can't really act, and her dialog is stiff, but then, who expects a half-wild woman living in the jungle to behave like Jennifer Lawrence. What she had was the perfect body and look along with lots of natural athleticism.

She was completely believable in the role.

For what it's worth:



(Caution: the second video is a bit hypnotizing):



Shadar

argonaut wrote: I haven't been following the new Sheena series from Dynamite, but this caught my eye while I was browsing new releases on ComicList:



Obviously, Sheena is fit and athletic, but does she have the strength to tear a rifle apart? I'm guessing this is a case of artistic license, but has anyone read the story?

I haven't been paying attention to this comic at all ... but that's a hell of a cover.

The comic book is super Politically Correct and super boring.

I have a friend who is a Super fan of Sheena and he is just about had it reading this book.

I read the last Sheena series from another publisher, they moved her from Africa in the 1940s to South America in the present day.
It was awful.
The Dynamite series picks up right where they left off so I just skipped it.

Don't forget the Super Sheena TV series from the 1990s. starring Gena Lee Nolan.
I watched the first episode right up to the point where she morphed into an animal then I was done.
I never finished the episode and never watched another one.



It's the Tanya Roberts Sheena movie and her classic comics reprints for me.

Gina Lee Nolin was cute as hell, but she didn't have that wild, crazy look to her that Tanya brought to the role. Tanya was believable as someone who'd grown up in the jungle. She had a fierceness and intensity about her, a sense of being a bit uncivilized, which considering her poor acting skills, had to be a natural talent. Whatever it was, it worked for Sheena.

Gina was just eye candy and sexual tease. She was way too civilized and comfortable around men.

Tanya owned the role in my mind. The rare case of perfect casting.

Shadar

I enjoyed the film and the Gena Lee Nolin TV series, which had some good fights in it allowing Sheena to show her fighting skills. Yes, she transformed into an animal sometimes but most of the action scenes had her in human form.

As for superpowers, there is a scene is one episode where Sheena encounters a hulking bodyguard. They lock hands and she forces him back, definitely implying she has super strength. Unfortunately she and her companions then escape at that point so we never get to see her complete the action.

JOHN

canarysong wrote: I enjoyed the film and the Gena Lee Nolin TV series, which had some good fights in it allowing Sheena to show her fighting skills. Yes, she transformed into an animal sometimes but most of the action scenes had her in human form.

As for superpowers, there is a scene is one episode where Sheena encounters a hulking bodyguard. They lock hands and she forces him back, definitely implying she has super strength. Unfortunately she and her companions then escape at that point so we never get to see her complete the action.

JOHN

I think the working premise was that Sheena was always stronger than most men, maybe all men, but not by much. The cover showing her tearing a rifle in half would take Kryptonian-grade strength. That was the problem.

I think I'll write a vignette staring my version of Super-Sheena. I have four vigs of various topics in the works, but I might put this one first.

Shadar

The Sheena movie with Tanya Roberts has been remarked as being the PG-rated movie with the most nudity of all PG movies ever rated. Particularly the nude bathing scene.

As Siskel and Ebert said in their review of the movie, "you see more of Tanya Roberts than you did of last month's Playmate Centerfold."

That's only a slight exaggeration.

But given Tanya was in outstanding physical condition at the time, and a beautiful woman to boot, this is no problem at all. <grin>

Shadar

Sheena Reboot? www.syfy.com/syfywire/sheena-queen-of-th...-reboot-in-the-works

slim36 wrote: Sheena Reboot? www.syfy.com/syfywire/sheena-queen-of-th...-reboot-in-the-works

If they could take the visual imagery of the 1984 movie (and not just Tanya, but the incredible photography in an otherwise badly written and acted movie), and put it behind a truly good story with the right actors, then maybe.

But that's a lot of ifs.

But more significantly, a blonde northern-European woman as the Queen of the Jungle, and a bit of a goddess to boot, in aboriginal lands in central Africa, with the tribe worshipping her... I can already hear the cries, even if that would be accurate to the comic. This wasn't an issue at all in the 80s and before.

And if they cast a black woman as Sheena, then a different group would cry.

Some things are better left in the time and culture they were created in. Not everything has to be recast and rewritten for 21st-century sensibilities. And frankly, the chances of casting someone who can exceed Tanya's portrayal of Sheena is very unlikely.

Speaking of casting, the producers originally offered the role to Jodie Foster, but she was too busy attending Yale University to take the role. She can definitely act. Still, I'm trying and failing to see this movie work with Jodie. Would have been very different.

Backups were Rachel Welch and Bo Derek, neither of which can act but they had the body for it. Tanya wasn't in the initial running, but her work on the Beastmaster movie (in a very similar role with the same wardrobe) a couple of years earlier must have struck a chord. Tanya was in even better shape for Sheena than she had been for Beastmaster, and it was nice seeing her as the lead.

Shadar

No fur on her costume was a sticking point in the Tanya movie.
That was 1984

Imagine the PC sweep of Sheena for 2018.

If you hate yourself read the PC Sheena in the Dynamite comic as a meter to what a modern movie would be.

Woodclaw wrote:

shadar wrote: But more significantly, a blonde northern-European woman as the Queen of the Jungle, and a bit of a goddess to boot, in aboriginal lands in central Africa, with the tribe worshipping her... I can already hear the cries, even if that would be accurate to the comic. This wasn't an issue at all in the 80s and before.

I think it was more a problem of it not being a well known issue. While I can agree that a lot of people today seem to be a bit on the oversensitive side, I don't think that representation wasn't an issue back then. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been the issue of pairing famous white actors with black actors to give them traction up until the mid-90s at least or filming the famous kiss between William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols wouldn't have been such a big deal that both the producers at NBC and the director were almost ashamed of it.

It's been a point of some sensitivity (in the US, anyway) for some time, but now in different ways. Back in the 60's, it was scandalous for a black women to be with a white man, or vice versa. Today that isn't an issue. Now its messages of differences in of opportunity, etc, that have been hyper-sensitive. Plus every old convention (like white people going into Africa to be dominant) is getting examined anew.

Sheena is a white goddess/Queen that black people in her adopted tribe worship. Seems fine to me because I understand the backstory, and know there is nothing racist about it, but there are a lot of people out there who wark very hard at not being understanding.

Of course, a good part of that is Russian bots, which try to blow up every issue where there is possible contention. Their bots are very good. Until we get past this awkward phase of social media, it's going to be hard to make movies like Sheena again.

Shadar

Sheena seems similar to Avatar, in greedy corporations seeking to exploit natural resources at the expense of the natives.
What if Sheena was a Kryptonian orphan?

slim36 wrote: Sheena seems similar to Avatar, in greedy corporations seeking to exploit natural resources at the expense of the natives.
What if Sheena was a Kryptonian orphan?

I have a somewhat different explanation which I'm going to explain in a story. Should be ready tomorrow, I hope.

Shadar

And here's the cover of issue #6 ...

OK, I've published my Super Sheena story in the main story area. It was too large to post as a vignette.

Hope you enjoy it.