I thought last summer was going to be the summer of Tarzan, and to a very great extent it was. There were lots of interesting releases during the Apeman's centennial. But the material keeps rolling out, and some of it is resplendent.
So it's my birthday again and at the ripe old age of fifty-six I find that my interests remain what they were when I was a tyke, although admittedly I bring a different perspective to what I enjoyed then. Such is the case with Russ Manning, the artist who drew the first Tarzan comic I ever read, which as it turned out was the 1968 reprint of the adaptation of ERB's debut novel. This summer for my presents (which my lovely wife as again left to me to decide...bless the soul of "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed") I have chosen the IDW reprint of Russ Manning's earliest comic strips featuring the Apeman. I snatched a copy of these beautiful pages off the comic shop rack yesterday with glee.
This morning I followed up that purchase by ordering volume one of Dark Horse's reprint of Manning's earliest Tarzan comics, including the very one which introduced me to the Apeman so many decades ago. I own these in other formats, but this volume has been getting raves, and hopefully will be followed up by the rest of Manning's Tarzan adaptations which have not yet been reprinted to my knowledge.
And at the end of the summer I will hopefully be enjoying Hal Foster's original take on ERB's iconic hero. This volume carries a hefty price tag, but I promised myself if these became available again I'd not let them pass me by. I aim to keep that promise if I'm able.
So it will be another Tarzan summer, and that's not a bad thing at all.
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You, sir, enjoy those! I think they are fantastic choices! And your wife is a saint as well! I, too, am blessed in that regard by my bride.
ReplyDeleteDoug
Thanks. When I'm given a chance to pick my own present I always like to get something special, which I'll remember later. In a collection of so many books, it's often easy to forget where something came from. The true embarrassment of riches.
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I was disappointed in the Dark Horse collection that I picked up a few years ago because they re-colored it incorrectly. Tarzan's loincloth went from red to yellow and the gold highlights in Jane's hair are missing, to mention just a few. I thought it looked odd when I first saw the panels and confirmed it when I pulled out my originals from the sixties for confirmation.
ReplyDeleteJacob