NESTOR REDONDO!!!

Some say that Joe Kubert, who was editor of the DC comic RIMA THE JUNGLE GIRL, drew layouts for that 1970's title.
Nestor Redondo, a gifted cartoonist from the Phillipine Islands is the credited individual for drawinh the series.
In my opinion, Nestor, who drew hundreds of pages of comic book work in his native land was from a whole family of wonderful illustrators, and, in my opinion, Nestor was the best of them.
His work on RIMA is absolutely lovely, it has the lyric beauty of the likes of Hal Foster, who drew PRINCE VALIANT, and of Alex Raymond, who was the original illustrator of FLASH GORDON, and is considered by many to be the creator of FLASH.
In a sort of throwback to the heyday of anthology comic book fashion, the featurette in the back of RIMA was Alex Niño's exquisitely drawn extra-terrestrial epic, SPACE VOYAGERS. I do not believe that there have ever been any more differently drawn companion series in one comic book. Please see my future blog entry here for my further comments on the work of Alex Niño.
Getting back to Nestor, his RIMA series is one of the last of the "jungle girl" features, though such modern comic books as CAVEWOMAN harken back to the era when comic books were full of scantily clad women running through places like the African Rain Forests.
The RIMA comic book was based on a novel by William Hudson, from 1904. Entitled GREEN MANSIONS, this book was also made into a 1959 novel that starred lovely Audrey Hepburn, under the direction of Mel Ferrer!!!
The comic book RIMA does not bear much resemblance to the filmic one, but she is nonetheless beautiful. RIMA only ran as a comic book for seven issues, but I remember soaking in the gorgeous drawing in it like it came out yesterday.
Whether I was admiring the work of Nestor, or that of Alex Niño, RIMA was an artistic feast for the eyes.
DC also gave Nestor the assignment to follow the departed Bernie Wrightson on the original SWAMP THING comic book. Nestor's ST was gorgeous also, but did not seem to compare well to the muck monster as delineated by Wrightson. New writer David Michelinie took the character down a different path than original writer, and co-creator of the series, Len Wein, and, for reasons unknown to me, but I suspect it was due to flagging sales, SWAMP THING was soon discontinued.
Nestor also drew _many_ mystery stories for such DC titles as HOUSE OF MYSTERY and HOUSE OF SECRETS, his lush style being ideally suited for the "gothic" aspect of many of the tales intitles of that type.
I do not have much in the way of examples of Nestor's work from The Phillipines, but I will be posting some of his illustrations here soon.
I must also mention here that Nestor definitely completed some pages for the never published KING ARTHUR series that was to be published by DC in it's large "tabloid" format. This is unbelievably sad, as I once saw some of that work on the internet, and it was beautiful beyond belief.
As one of many creators brought in to the US from The Phillipines, an idea of Carmine Infantino, then the publisher at DC, with cartoonist Tony Dezuñiga initiating the arrangement there, Nestor stands, in my mind, as the most gifted.
His drawings never disappoint the eye, or the imagination!!!