Jana is essentially a female version of Tarzan who traveled to the rain forests of South America in search of her lost father. Her father vanished in a boating accident when she was still a child, but the introduction shows that he survived. She has long blonde hair, wears a dress made of unspecified animal skin and a necklace which doubles as a throwable weapon and makes a high-pitched resonating sound when thrown given to her by her father before the boating accident. Besides her animal friends, Jana has two human friends: Dr. Ben Cooper, a young wildlife biologist who maintained the preserve started by Jana's father and helped in her continuing search for her father; and Montaro, a descendant of a lost warrior tribe armed with a supernatural weapon known as the Staff of Power that can cause earthquake shockwaves when it strikes the ground. Montaro rescued Jana from the boating accident in which her father disappeared. These are some of the jungle animals Jana called to, many for help:
Jana of the Jungle was originally broadcast in these following formats on NBC:
The Godzilla Power Hour
The Godzilla Super 90
A total of 13 original episodes of Jana of the Jungle were produced in 1978, with the first eight broadcast as part of the second half of The Godzilla Power Hour from September 9 to October 28. In November 1978, when The Godzilla Power Hour was expanded to 90 minutes and re-titled The Godzilla Super 90, the five remaining episodes of Jana of the Jungle continued on this new format until December 2. The Jana character also made a cameo appearance piloting a rocket-car in an episode of Yogi's Space Race in 1978. Jana of the Jungle resurfaced in 1985 as part of USA Cartoon Express which is the last time any of the original 13 episodes were shown on television. This is one of the very few Hanna-Barbera series that has yet to be seen on either Cartoon Network or Boomerang; however, one of the episodes, "The Cordillera Volcano", was available for a limited time on WB's Hanna-Barbera online stream.
In January 2007, Dynamite Entertainment launched a comic book, with plot by Frank Cho and script by Doug Murray, called Jungle Girl, featuring a blond female character called Jana. She is a Tarzan-esque heroine that lives in some kind of "Lost World", a jungle inhabited by strange creatures including dinosaurs and cavemen. While bearing the same name and taking place in a jungle setting, the Cho/Murray comic character is not really connected with the TV series.
