(The original Jenny Everywhere illustration - Steven Wintle)

Now, I've been deliberately avoiding open-source characters for this series most of them don't have much beyond their premise, meaning my shallow, semi-comedic summaries would end up very bare-bones. However, since Jenny Everywhere Day is coming up this Sunday, I'll make an exception for our favourite Shifter.

So... where do we start? I suppose we have one paragraph already written for us:

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

Okay but who is she exactly? Well, Jenny Everywhere is usually a woman, usually either Asian or Native American, and usually wears at least a scarf and a pair of goggles. Personality-wise, she's usually quite upbeat and carefree. The reason for all these "usually"'s is because Jenny Everywhere exists in every universe with many different forms - which also serves as an easy excuse to take this character and make her into whatever you want.

Well, actually the Scarf and Goggles are also non-negotiable, you have to include those. Even if they're a nudist.

She gained the nickname "The Shifter" due to her ability to teleport (or shift) to different universes, or different parts of the same universe. With a premise like that, it's unsurprising how many of the writers and artists who use her are also Doctor Who nerds.

Through her use in various webcomics, short stories, and at least one short film, she also gained a large cast of supporting characters, like Laura Drake and Lord Grallyx, some of which were released under similar conditions to Jenny (though often they just make the character open source without the paragraph or credit being necessary). This includes a frankly obscene collection of similarly named characters with different premises, like Jenny Nowhere, Jenny Somewhere, Bunny Everyhare, Jimmy Wherever, Jenny Anywhere, Jenny Elsewhere, Karlie Somebody, Sophie Everytime, Jimmy Anytime, and Jenny Over-There (oh hey, that's my one!).

It's amusing to see Jenny Everywhere have such a long list of characters directly inspired by her, considering that Jenny herself was at least partially influenced by Octobriana (a very early example of an open source character who will definitely be covered here some other time because there's a story behind her).

With a character like this, it's difficult to track all their appearances, but thankfully I don't have to bother with that. If you want to find more stories featuring her, there's a very dedicated Jenny Everywhere Wiki where you can see just how much Jenny Everywhere stuff is out there. If you're looking for specific recommendations, Scott Sanford's much more coherent bio for the character lists a few starting points, so I'll also link to that below.

Finally, as I've alluded to earlier, Jenny Everywhere Day is coming up! Yes, Jenny Everywhere Day is on August 13th (aka this Sunday), meaning plenty of people will be sharing their Jenny Everywhere works, whether it be writing, art, comics, and maybe one day we'll get an interactive text adventure. The Tumblr will be linked below in case you want to give it a follow and see all the stories as they come up (including a story of my own).

https://jennyeverywhere.fandom.com/wiki/Jenny_Everywhere_Wiki
https://scott-sanford.dreamwidth.org/53923.html
https://www.jennyeverywhereday.com/

I feel like one thing we rarely see in this series is some real freak behaviour from the women superheroes. I mean, there's Fantomah, a real unhinged queen right there, but are there any others? Well, there is at least one other...

Meet Dianne Grayton, just your average wealthy socialite... or is she? Turns out, she has her own fun hobby - she goes out dressed as a Witch (complete with green mask) and fights crime using her ability to command a hoard of Black Widow spiders that she just has on her at all times. As you do. It's not clear if this ability is magical in nature or if she just trained them at some point,

With this behaviour, it's only natural she attracted an almost equally bizarre boyfriend - the Raven, an anonymous rich man who dresses up in a bird costume and fights crime for no clear reason... possibly they're the first example of an avian-based furry. Good for them!

It's not revolutionary or anything, but at the time their dynamic was quite unconventional - mainly because the Raven (a man) acted as the sidekick to the Spider Widow (a woman). Usually this ended up being the other way around with teams such as Bulletman & Bulletgirl, and the Flame & Flame Girl.

Other fun facts about these characters:

• As shown in the various crossovers with The Phantom Lady, both characters are aware that they're comic book characters, making them a very early example of that sort of meta-awareness.
• Speaking of those crossovers, it's one of the few times you'll see a Golden Age comic crossover with more than one female superhero
• Along with Nazis, the Spider Widow also went up against fearsome foes such as a circus clown, the Tiglon man and... my notes say "Spider Man" but that can't be right-
  
  Huh.

The Spider Widow appeared in 17 comics total but unfortunately has sort of fallen into obscurity, save for a mention on an internet listicle about Badass Golden Age Superheroines. I suppose someone in a Halloween Witch costume isn't exactly the most compelling character design. Still though, hopefully, she does get used again someday...

Whenever something becomes popular, many people will inevitably try to make something similar to cash-in on their success. So far this series has seen superpowered flying men made to cash-in on Superman, as well as flag-clad American crusaders designed to cash-in on Captain America, but there also exists a wide variety of bare-chested white jungle swingers made to cash-in Tarzan (and I might even cover some of them if I really run out of ideas).

On the surface, Tabu should be yet another one of these - he certainly nails the aesthetic... but also, if you read the title, you may notice he's a wizard? Yes, he possesses magical powers thanks to being gifted a sixth sense by a Witch Doctor (let's not forget that these comics were often at least a bit racist), which naturally gave him the ability to fly, cast magic. and transform into various animals - powers that he'd use to exact cruel justice on people who wronged the jungle, saying that he'll give the villains "a Jungle Fate"... that sounds a bit familiar...

Yes, Fletcher Hanks fans may remember a similar phrase being said by Fantomah. This isn't entirely coincidental, since Fletcher Hanks created both characters, and Tabu really ends up functioning as a proto-Fantomah (since his comic predates Fantomah's first issue). Unlike Fantomah however, he faded into obscurity after one issue (despite the promise of further escapades by Tabu being gifted a seventh sense)...

Or did he?

I've been a bit sneaky here, since one of the pictures of "Tabu" I included isn't from Tabu's only comic, but rather a Fantomah story. This one deals with an unnamed jungle man who is rescued by a snake as a baby and raised by them into adulthood. He lives peacefully until, one day, he eats some bad berries and turns very very evil, prompting him to paint himself in blotchy blue paint and terrorise the nearby village. Unlike most Fantomah comics, she doesn't directly punish him. Instead, she guides him to some herbs that would cure him and then sort of banishes him and his snake, saying "FROM NOW ON, YOU BOTH SHALL DWELL ENTIRELY ALONE!"

While Fletcher Hanks probably intended this to be a different character and was just reusing art, I like to think that they're the same character. We learn nothing about the characters that would contradict anything (Tabu's backstory is unspecified, and obviously we don't know the name of the Fantomah character). We don't know where the giant snake is, but it's not like they're joined at the hip, they can do their own things. Perhaps the most compelling bit of evidence is a magic phrase they both sort of share. In Tabu, Tabu says "Alla ka tabu nee paph en yal!" to cause a minor earthquake. In the Fantomah comic, they say "Ali kah bab loo ne paph en yah!", which you may notice is spelt differently but mostly pronounced the same way. This might also imply that the unnamed one's name is "Bab Loo". For this theory, maybe it also means he got the name Tabu at a later point (maybe in response to his actions in the Fantomah comic - it's a bit nonsensical to think of the name in relation to the English word it sounds the most like, but I don't think Fletcher Hanks would've considered that).

Now, obviously, the more likely reason for these similarities is just Fletcher Hanks being lazy and racist, but still.