Korak And The Quest For The Golden Key!

I've been trying to get hold of Russ Manning's Korak, Son of Tarzan comics for a little while and last week they arrived at long last. This series served in many ways as a warm up for Manning before he took over the reins of Gold Key's primary apeman, Tarzan himself. The Korak stories are generally lighter in tone and Manning's sleek style is ideal for the idealized handsome youth who is the "Son of Tarzan".

Volume one contains the first six issues of the run, all by Manning on the art with Gaylord Dubois supplying scripts. Morris Gollub was tapped for the covers and did all of the covers below.

The second and final volume of Dark Horse's archives of Korak is bit more of a mixed bag.

These issues, again all but one sporting lush Gollub covers offer up the last of the Dubois-Manning stories. Most of them were for Gold Key.

Manning left Korak with the eleventh issue to go to Tarzan. But he returned to Korak at Gold Key one more time.

The twenty-first issue under a George Wilson cover, features Manning artwork on a wild story in which Korak encounters outer space aliens. Wild.

The volume closes out with a real lost gem. Dubois and Manning put together a Korak strip for possible syndication. That strip was eventually run as a back up in some of the issues of Korak produced over at DC when they acquired the ERB licenses.

These are really slick handsome stories by solid pros. I'm eager to give them a read.

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