Lion Boy's Incredible Changing Age

Not the boy from L'Enfant Lion (1993), a movie directed by  Patrick Grandperret.  This is a weird Tarzan clone from the Golden Age of comic books.  He appeared in 16 issues of Hit Comics between 1940 and 1942, but never got a cover.









Lion Boy has a traditional Tarzan back story: parents killed when their plane crashed in the jungle, raised by lions. Ok, he was raised by lions -- that's why he wears a leopard skin loincloth (sometimes).

How long ago was that plane crash, exactly?  Lion Boy varies tremendously in size.  Sometimes he stands waist-high to the adults, and sometimes he's taller.

And in muscularity: sometimes he's buffed, sometimes not.

And in hair and loincloth-color.

Not just betwen stories: between panels.  Here he seems to have aged from about 6 to about 16 in ten seconds.

Now he is a tall, slim young adult, and his loincloth has changed into yellow shorts.

George Tuska (1916-2009) wrote the script under the pen name Merton Holmes.  He worked on many classic books, including Crime Does Not Pay, Captain Marvel, The Incredible Hulk, Ka-Za, Superboy, The Teen Titans, and Iron Man.

Guess he was too busy to use a model sheet.