JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
(A graphic novel)
Editor Patrick Thorpe
Sequential Pulps &
Dark Horse Books
Since we first heard of this project, we were excited to see
it come to fruition. The idea was simple enough, take Burrough’s own book,
which relates the adventures of a young Tarzan in a collection of short stories
and have them adapted to comic strips by various artists. Michael Hudson of
Sequential Pulps was the driving force behind this super cool idea and he
enlisted the talented Martin Powell to adapt those tales into comic scripts.
Then it was a matter of recruiting the right artist for each segment.
Daren Bader’s cover art is simply stunning in both
composition and execution. It sets a very high bar for the interior artists,
some of whom proved to be its equal while others fall a bit short. The nature
of any anthology is in the end a subjective experience between individual
creators and their audience. Thus, of the twelve strips assembled here, there
were some that simply bowled us over and we’d like to single them out as they
were truly exceptional.
If we had to pick a favorite, it would be a tie between “Tarzan
and the Native Boy” from Nik Poliwko and “The Nightmare” by Mark Wheatley. In
the first, Poliwko ssems to be channeling the late/great Russ Manning. As a
comic lover who grew up reading Manning’s Tarzan comics from Dell, this strip
was a loving trip home. Whereas Wheatley’s style of art was perfectly suited to
a tale about what is real and unreal, his colors blending in perfectly to add
the proper mood. We’ve yet to see a bad piece of Wheatley art and have to
believe none exist.
We’d also like to applaud artists Lowell Isaac, Will
Meugniot, Terry Beatty who all turned in inspired work. Whereas we found Jamie
Chase’s style moody and Steven Gordon’s cartoony, both worked beautifully with
their stories. Each is a joy to read and
we truly appreciated the wonderful artwork on displaye in these pages.
As we indicated above, this is an amazing collection and
will please any true Tarzan fan. One can only imagine the logistic chores of
corralling all these various talents and pulling such a project together. A tip of the pulp hat to Diane Leto for
making it all come together. This is a
beautiful book we are happy to have in our library.
6 comments:
Thank you so much for your insight and candor Ron. It is greatly appreciated.
Great review for a great book. But it is worth noting that the driving force and original person for the idea was writer Martin Powell.
One of the most fascinating Tarzan books to his fans. The stories fit into the first Tarzan novel, Tarzan of the Apes, as an expansion of his life before he met people from the outside world. Its a nice little account of what a feral child might think, but of course, highly romanticized. If you enjoy this book, you will love The Son of Tarzan which explores these themes from the standpoint of a child raised in civilization who returns to live in the wild.
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