(More Fun Comics 063, 1941)
I won't lie to you: this initial panel really did all the work in guaranteeing the Jungle Scientist some time in the spotlight rather than a place in a mad science roundup with three other randos. There are exactly two reasons for that: 1) that he was supplied with a name in the very title of the piece and 2) that wretched little outfit that he has assembled for himself. This man was divorced just before he moved to the jungle.
So after his divorce, the unnamed Jungle Scientist moved out into the middle of nowhere, assembled a terrific look and proceeded to create animate, carnivorous trees "by almost impossible grafting." The next phase of his plan, that Congo Bill and his pal Professor Kent have shown up just in time to foil, is to implant the brain of his step-daughter into one of the trees. And yes, the step-daughter fits into the divorce narrative I am constructing - she could be the child of a recent (and not very picky) second wife, for example.
It all ends as you might expect, with the scientist's special protective perfume getting washed off just before he flees into a grove of man-eating trees. In a way though, isn't death the ultimate divorce?
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