Tarzan 101 | Tarzan and the City of Gold

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Tarzan and the City of Gold sounds like reheated material at first. There's another lost city with another white queen who falls in love with Tarzan, but the novel goes beyond that concept in a couple of interesting ways. First, Tarzan is genuinely fascinated with Queen Nemone in a way that should make Jane fans nervous, but the book also focuses on palace intrigue in a cool way as the city's nobility seek to get rid of Tarzan and take more power and influence for themselves.

There are actually two cities in the novel, the titular one as well as a City of Ivory that Burroughs intended to spin off into a sequel. The second story was never written, but the cities of Cathne and Athne did eventually return in Tarzan the Magnificent.

Griffin includes a supplemental chapter called "Femmes Fatales" that isn't exactly about what the title suggests. It does include some dangerous women, but is really about all of Tarzan's romantic interests over the years. Three of them (Countess Olga de Coude, a nameless dancing girl, and La of Opar) appeared in The Return of Tarzan while the ape-man was separated (forever, as far as he knew) from Jane, but the list continues even after Tarzan and Jane were married. In addition to Nemone, there's German spy Bertha Kircher, whom Tarzan met in Tarzan the Untamed when he thought Jane was dead, and Teeka, the ape with whom Tarzan fell in love in Jungle Tales.

Griffin mentions a bunch of other women too, most of whom had feelings for Tarzan that were unrequited by him, like Janzara from Ant Men, Mentheb from Forbidden City, and Itzl Cha and Patricia Leigh-Burden from Castaways. Griffin also includes a thumbnail gallery of nine paintings by Joe Jusko that depict women from the Tarzan novels, including Balza (Lion Man), Janette Laon (Castaways), Rhonda Terry (Lion Man), Magra (Forbidden City), and Meriem (Son of Tarzan), in addition to some of the others he discussed in the chapter.

Tarzan 101 | Tarzan Triumphant

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was experimenting in hyperlink stories long before movies like Pulp Fiction, Magnolia, and Love Actually made them popular. In Tarzan the Triumphant (originally titled Tarzan and the Raiders and then The Triumph of Tarzan; no relation to the Weissmuller film Tarzan Triumphs), Burroughs follows several different characters who start out on separate adventures, but ultimately converge in the jungles of Africa. There's an Amelia Earhart-like aviatrix, a young gangster on the run from the Chicago mob, a Soviet assassin seeking revenge on Tarzan for his actions in Tarzan the Invincible, a hapless geologist, a deserter from the Italian army, and a big game hunter from England. All of these stories intersect with a lost tribe descended from a deranged disciple of the apostle Paul.

It's a lot going on, with barely enough room for Tarzan who flits from story to story rescuing the good characters when needed and interfering with the bad ones.

Griffin's supplemental chapter for this story is about tales of lost races, starting with H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and talking about why the genre became so popular as Western cultures began filling in the blank spots on their maps. Burroughs was obviously in love with the idea and included lost civilizations in all but five of the Tarzan novels. The trend continued into the Tarzan films and even exists in more recent work like Michael Crichton's Congo and the Dinotopia series.

Tarzan 101 | Tarzan the Invincible

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Burroughs went political again (like in the anti-German Tarzan the Untamed) for Tarzan the Invincible. This time the villains are an international gang of communists from the Soviet Union, Mexico, and East India. They're taking advantage of Tarzan's still being away in Pellucidar (from the preceding novel, Tarzan at the Earth's Core) to pillage Opar in order to fund their revolutions. Fortunately, Tarzan doesn't spend the entire novel absent, but the question is whether he'll arrive in time to figure out what's going on and stop the commies.

Burroughs was a devout capitalist anyway, but his feelings on communism were likely also fueled by Soviet disrespect for copyright. Griffin notes that Russian bootlegs of Burroughs' work robbed the author of an estimated million dollars. The story's focus on economic ideology makes it appropriate that starting with this book, the Tarzan series was self-published by Burroughs. They were already wildly popular books by then, but it was still a bit of a gamble and Burroughs was warned that the economy of the early '30s wouldn't support the endeavor. It did though, and - boosted by the release of MGM's Tarzan the Ape Man starring Johnny Weissmuller - the book made a profit. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. stayed the publisher of Burroughs novels until 1948.

Invincible is the last appearance of Opar and Queen La in Burroughs' novels. A lot has happened since their previous appearance in Tarzan and the Golden Lion, so in addition to saving La from the communists, Tarzan also has to help her regain power from the rival priest and priestess who've overthrown her and taken control of the city.

Griffin's supplemental chapter for Invincible is on Opar, tracing Burroughs' influences for it and its appearances in the novels and on screen. The city owes a lot to H. Rider Haggard, starting with its beautiful and mercurial (and white) Queen La, who's so similar to Ayesha from Haggard's She. The city itself was likely named after the Biblical Ophir, a place of great wealth in Africa that was the source of many of King Solomon's riches (1 Kings 9:28; 10:11, among others). The African origins of Solomon's wealth was of course also the basis for Haggard's most famous novel, King Solomon's Mines.

Tarzan A to Z | Queen La

Tarzan A to Z | Opar

Art Show: Where do all the Croco-People go?

Love at First Sight



By Mattias Adolfsson. This is just a detail. Click the link to see the whole thing.

Aquaman



By Dave Barking.

Namor vs. Shagreen



The artist is keeping anonymous, but he or she blogs at Marvel Flipside.

Rusty Recon on Gear Island



By Jeremy Vanhoozer.

Art Show: Grrrreat!

HMS Hornblower



By Mattias Adolfsson.

Floating



By Sulamith Wulfing. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Atomic Commandos in Action!



Possibly by Ogden Whitney. [Admiral Cal]

The ABCs of Awesome

Since finishing that huge music meme, there's a hole in my Sunday blogging. Not sure what I'll eventually fill it with, but for today, I've totally gacked this idea from Cal.

Apes



Barbarians (fighting Apes)



Cephalopods



Detectives



Elasmosaurus



Frankenstein's Monster



Giant Things



Head Kicks



Islands



Jungle Queens



Keira Knightley



Lost Civilizations



Musketeers



Namora



Obelisks



Pirates



Quetzalcoatl



Ray Guns



Space Girls (with Ray Guns)



Treasure



Underwater Cities



Valkyries



Wonder Woman



X-Ray Vision



Yeti



Zorro

Friday Night Art Show: Into the Wicked Beak of the Monster

The Courage of Sir Francis Drake



By Frank Godwin. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Sunken Cities



By Frank R. Paul. [Poulpe Pulps]

Jules Verne



By Scott Campbell [Hey, Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin Time!]

Avoidance Situation



By Mel Hunter [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Not What I Expected



By Jeremy Vanhoozer.

Octopus Attack



I'm not sure who the artist is, but it's from the September 1940 issue of Weird Tales. Sleestak was kind enough to email it to me. Thanks, Sleestak!

Anime Aquaman



By Cliff Chiang. Based on this earlier idea of his.

Marrina



By J Bone. Marrina's one of my Top Three favorite members of Alpha Flight. I like Puck a lot too, so I kind of wish she'd leave him alone, but this isn't nearly as bad as what she did to him in the comic.

I Heart Sharks



By Jess Hickman. I'm totally using this character in the pirate-fantasy comic Jess and I are going to do.

Ancient Jungle Cool



By Frederick Catherwood. [Admiral Calvin of the Tentacle Wars, operating from his Canadian Cave of Cool. And there's way more in the link. Go! Look!]

Concert of the Apes



Artist unknown. [There's a whole Rulah cover gallery at The Comic Book Catacombs.]

Stream of Consciousness



By Robert Conrad [Collectors Showcase]

Penny vs the Cownt



By Jess Hickman from the upcoming Cownt Tales comic. The Bride of Frankenstein kitty is one of three hosts who narrate the comic Tales from the Crypt- or The Witching Hour-style.

Oz Monkey



By Jim Pearson.

Zatanna



By Cliff Chiang...



...and Charles Holbert. [Meagan Van Burkleo]