It’s sad to state that the classic Tarzan newspaper comicstrip ended several years ago. The daily ended in 1972, and the Sunday in 2002. However, recently through the efforts of artist Thomas Grindberg, he was able to convince Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. to restart the comicstrip as a web exclusive.
Since it restarted, they added a second Tarzan strip and several more adapting different Edgar Rice Burroughs properties.
And, thankfully, Dark Horse has recently put out two hardback volumes collecting the first of the two Tarzan comicstrip series: The New Adventures of Tarzan and Tarzan of the Apes.
Both are over 100 pages, and both series are written by Roy Thomas. And both volumes are published in landscape mode because the strips are oriented like Sunday strips. And as they are also both marked “1” on the spin, I am hoping these will be the first of several volumes.
First up is The New Adventures of Tarzan. This series had new adventures of Tarzan, set after the Burroughs books, and they only accept those as “canon.” This first volume has the first three stories. The first has art by Grindberg, with the other two by Benito Gallego. Grindberg found he didn’t have the time to sustain the series, and so ended his association amicably at the end of the first story.
The first story has Tarzan’s friend Paul come to the jungle in a plane to take Jane to see her father, who is dying. But along the way, they crash and Tarzan heads to their rescue. But he is instead sidetracked by La of Opar.
The second story shows what happened to Jane and Paul. They are found by a group of Trojans. They mistake Jane for another person, as she resembles their ruler Helen. This pulls the two of them into the conflict between the Trojans and a nearby city of Greeks. Tarzan shows up, followed by La and the Oparian males for a three-way fight. Can Tarzan end the conflict?
In the final story, Tarzan is pulled into an issue in a local village with the Leopard Men, whom he defeated but are back. They are working for the granddaughter of the mad scientist who created the Monster Men (from the Burroughs novel of the same name), as well as the work of Dr. Moreau (from the H.G. Wells novel). Can Tarzan stop it before more people die?
Thus ends volume one of this reprint series. I hope we get more.
The Tarzan of the Apes strip ran adaptions of the original Burroughs novels. Art is by Pablo Marcos. This first volume has adaptions of “Tarzan of the Apes” and “The Jungle Tales of Tarzan,” but here they are doing the storyline chronologically, so they go so far in adapting “Tarzan of the Apes” and then move into “The Jungle Tales,” with the first five of the 12 stories. Once they complete them, they will continue with “Tarzan of the Apes,” which will (hopefully) be collected in the next volume.
While I prefer the adaptions by Russ Manning, these are still well done. Again, I hope we have more volumes reprinting these strips and would like to see some of the other strips reprinted as well.
