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Jan of the Jungle. Jan of the Jungle was created by Otis Adelbert Kline (Alan Buell, Dragoman, Ted Dustin, Robert Grandon, Bart Leslie, Tam) and appeared in nine stories in Argosy from 1931 to 1935, beginning with “Jan of the Jungle” (Argosy, Apr. 18, 1931); he also appeared in the film serial Call of the Savage (1935).

Jan of the Jungle is a Jungle Hero. The brilliant but insane Mad Scientist Doctor Bracken proposes marriage to the beautiful redhead Georgia Trevor. She declines, which infuriates him, and he waits for years until she, now married to someone else, gives birth to a son. Bracken steals Jan and takes him to a laboratory in the depths of the Everglades. Bracken plans to have a female chimpanzee raise Jan, so that as an adult the boy would be a chimpanzee in human form, trained to kill redheads.

Jan somehow maintains his sanity and when he is sixteen breaks free of the lab, accompanied by Chicma, his chimpanzee “mother,” and Borno, a Haitian who worked as a janitor at the labs. They escape by boat but are caught in a hurricane and blown ashore in "South American jungle country." Jan learns the skills of the jungle for two years and then saves sixteen-year-old Ramona Suarez from a panther attack, the first save of many for both. She lives nearby on her father's rubber plantation. They become a couple. Jan has various adventures, finds a Lost Race lost colony of Mu, becomes a Prince of the Sun, is reunited with his family, and makes his way to India.

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