Tarzan | |
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Dell's Tarzan #1 (January-February 1948) |
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Publication information | |
Publisher | Western Publishing Charlton Comics DC Comics Marvel Comics Dark Horse Comics |
First appearance | January 1929 |
Created by | Edgar Rice Burroughs |
In-story information | |
Alter ego | John Clayton John Caldwell |
Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes,[1] and then in 23 sequels. The character proved immensely popular and quickly made the jump to other media, including comics.
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Tarzan of the Apes was adapted into newspaper strip form, first published January 7, 1929 with illustrations by Hal Foster.[1] A full page Sunday strip began on March 15, 1931 with artwork by Rex Maxon.[1] United Feature Syndicate distributed the strip.
Over the years, many artists have drawn the Tarzan comic strip, notably Burne Hogarth, Ruben Moreira, 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 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.
Tarzan has appeared in many comic books from numerous publishers over the years, notably Western Publishing, Charlton Comics, DC Comics, Marvel Comics and Dark Horse Comics. 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. It 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 and Tarzan and the Castaways), as well as original stories and other features. Almost all of the Dell and Gold Key Tarzan stories were written by Gaylord DuBois. Western also published a companion series, Korak: Son of Tarzan for 45 issues from 1964-72.
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.[2] 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 (14 issues, 1972-75) (also taken over from Gold Key) and Weird Worlds (12 issues). The Korak comic was later renamed Tarzan Family, from 1975–1976 (7 issues), into which all the non-Tarzan Burroughs adaptations were consolidated. DC published several other Family titles concurrent with Tarzan Family, including Superman Family (1974–1982), Batman Family (1975-78) and Super-Team Family (1975-1978).
During this period, the British arm of Warner Bros. (owner of DC) published Tarzan and Korak for the British market.
In 1977 the series moved to Marvel Comics, retitled as Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle; Marvel also restarted the numbering rather than assuming that used by the previous publishers. Marvel issued Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle #1-29 (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.
Dark Horse Comics has published various Tarzan series from 1996 to the present, including archive reprints of works from previous publishers like Western/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 to save an ancient city- during which the two form an effective team as they acknowledge their similar origins, despite such differences as Tarzan's willingness to use lethal force-, 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", although the two switch roles at the conclusion with Greystoke remaining in the jungle while Kal-El returns to the city, Greystoke stating in a letter to his parents that he feels as though he has found his true place. Tarzan also fought the Predators in a mini-series 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 hardcover comic book versions of the first half of Tarzan of The Apes in 1972 and four stories from Jungle Tales of Tarzan in 1976. These were illustrated by 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.
Between the periods when Marvel and Dark Horse held the licence to the character, Tarzan had no regular comic book publisher for a number of years. During this time Blackthorne Publishing published Tarzan in 1986, and Malibu Comics published Tarzan comics in 1992.
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 pastiche of Tarzan called Lord Blackstock.
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 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 the history of Yugoslavian comics. [3]
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.
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