Tarzan (comics)

Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the 1912 novel "Tarzan of the Apes", and then in twenty-three sequels. The character proved immensely popular and quickly made the jump to other media, first and most notably to comics and film. This article concerns Tarzan's appearance in comics.

Comic strips

"Tarzan of the Apes" was the first novel to be adapted in newspaper strip form, in early 1929, with illustrations by Hal Foster. A full page Sunday strip began March 15 1931 by Rex Maxon.

Over the years, many artists have drawn the "Tarzan" comic strip, notably Burne Hogarth, Russ Manning, and Mike Grell. The daily strip began to reprint old dailies after the last Russ Manning daily (#10,308, which ran on 29 July, 1972). The Sunday strip also turned to reprints circa 2000. Both strips continue as reprints today in a few newspapers and in "Comics Revue" magazine. NBM Publishing did a high quality reprint series of the Foster and Hogarth work on Tarzan in a series of hardback and paperback reprints in the 1990s.

The comic strip has often borrowed plots and characters from the Burroughs books. Writer Don Kraar, who wrote the strip from 1982 to 1995, included in his scripts David Innes and John Carter of Mars.

Comic books

United States

Tarzan has appeared in many comic books from numerous publishers over the years. The character's earliest comic book appearances were in comic strip reprints published in several titles, such as "Sparkler", "Tip Top Comics" and "Single Series". Western Publishing published "Tarzan" in Dell Comics's "Four Color Comics" #134 & 161 in 1947, before giving him his own series, "Tarzan" #1-131 (Jan-Feb 1948 to July-August 1962), through Dell Comics (as well as in some "Dell Giants" and "March of Comics" giveaways), then continued the series with #132-206 (November, 1962 to February, 1972) through their own Gold Key Comics. This series featured artwork by Jesse Marsh, Russ Manning, and Doug Wildey, and included adaptions of most of Edgar Rice Burroughs's original Tarzan books (skipping only "Tarzan and the Leopard Men", "Tarzan the Magnificent", "Tarzan and the Madman", "Tarzan and the Castaways"), as well as original stories and other features. Almost all of the Dell Comics "Tarzan" stories were written by Gaylord DuBois.

DC took over the series in 1972, publishing "Tarzan" #207-258 from April 1972 to February 1977. This version initially showcased artist Joe Kubert's depiction of the character. It also featured some adaptations of the Burroughs books in addition to original stories, adapting "Tarzan of the Apes", "The Return of Tarzan", "Jungle Tales of Tarzan", "Tarzan the Untamed", "Tarzan and the Lion Man" and "Tarzan and the Castaways". Initially the series also featured adaptions of other Burroughs creations, and had companion books "Korak" (also taken over from Gold Key) and "Weird Worlds". The Korak comic was later renamed "Tarzan Family", into which all the non-Tarzan Burroughs adaptations were consolidated. In 1977 the series moved to Marvel Comics, which restarted the numbering rather than assuming that used by the previous publishers. Marvel issued "Tarzan" #1-28 (as well as three Annuals), from June 1977 to October 1979, featuring artwork by John Buscema. Burroughs books adapted by Marvel include "Tarzan of the Apes", "Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar" and "Jungle Tales of Tarzan". Marvel did not continue the "Tarzan Family" title, electing to issue a series on Burroughs' primary non-Tarzan character, "John Carter, Warlord of Mars", instead.

Following the conclusion of the Marvel series the character had no regular comic book publisher for a number of years. During this period Blackthorne Comics published "Tarzan" in 1986, and Malibu Comics published "Tarzan" comics in 1992.

Dark Horse Comics has published various "Tarzan" series from 1996 to the present, including reprints of works from previous publishers like Gold Key and DC. Dark Horse and DC published two crossover titles teaming Tarzan with Batman and Superman. "Batman/Tarzan: Claws of the Cat-Woman" is a "straight" team-up between Tarzan and the 1930s Batman, while "Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle" is a revisionist version in which Lord Greystoke grows up in England, while Kal-El is raised by the apes as "Argozan". Tarzan also fought Predator (alien) in four comics called Tarzan vs Predator at the Earth's core.

During the timespan of the original comic book series from Western, DC and Marvel, a number of other comic book projects from other publishers also appeared. Charlton Comics briefly published a Tarzan comic in the 1960s titled "Jungle Tales of Tarzan", adapting stories from that Burroughs book, on the mistaken belief that the character was in the public domain. Watson-Guptill Publications published a hardcover comic book version of the first half of Tarzan Of The Apes in 1972. It was illustrated by Burne Hogarth many years after he stopped doing the newspaper strip, and had a level of penmanship rarely seen in comics or even illustrations. It had captions of text from the novel instead of speech balloons.

There have in addition been a number of minor appearance of Tarzan in comic books over the years. Though not mentioned by name, Tarzan is referenced in Alan Moore's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". Places and people from the original Tarzan novels are referred to, suggesting that Tarzan does or did exist in that universe. In a fictional 1999 comic book story featuring "The Phantom", the hero meets Edgar Rice Burroughs, and inspires him to create Tarzan. Warren Ellis in the comic book Planetary has a parody of Tarzan called Lord Blackstock.

Europe

Tarzan comics were the first publications put on the index by the German Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften after its foundation in 1954.

The European version of the Tarzan comic was published from 1983 to 1989 by Marketprint in the Serbian part of what was then Yugoslavia, and later translated and published in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Netherlands and Denmark. There were over 100 published episodes, each of which had 16 pages. In most of them Branislav Kerac was involved, either as the writer, penciller, inker, or complete author. He was also responsible for "The Kalonga Star," a five episode crossover between Tarzan and Kobra. Other notable episodes were "Tarzan and Barbarians," "The Tiger," "The Boy from the Stars," and "Big race." "Tarzan" is considered to have been the longest running comic published in Serbia. [http://members.tripod.com/~bkerac/rest/index.html]

Manga

The Japanese manga series "Jungle no Ouja Ta-chan" (King of the Jungle Ta-chan) by Tokuhiro Masaya was based loosely on Tarzan. It was later made into an anime series. It featured the characters of Tarzan and his wife Jane, who had become obese after settling down with Tarzan. The series begins as a comical parody of Tarzan, but later expands to other settings, such as a martial arts tournament in China, professional wrestling in America, and even a fight with vampires.

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.comic-book-and-strip-service.com/tarzan.html The Tarzan Implications]
* [http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/tarzan/ Tarzan comic strip]