The Sunday Funnies - Tarzan Of The Apes 1935-1937!

Tarzan The Sunday Comics 1935-1937 by Hal Foster brings to the modern reader the last of the acclaimed artist's work on ERB's most famous character. The comics were written as all of the run was to this point by Don Garden. Foster was well regarded by Edgar Rice Burroughs himself as an ideal artist for the strip, but alas no arrangements were made on his part nor of others in the mix to see to it that Foster was remunerated adequately. Simply put it made more financial sense for Foster to create his own strip and make all the money as opposed to continuing as part of big team. 

On his way out the door Foster had the chance to draw Vikings in "Tarzan and the Lost Vikings", a yarn begun in the second volume. Tarzan had rescued a Viking warrior and was taking him home and then that warrior's beloved Siegrida was kidnapped. Much of the stories here deal with how Tarzan was able to save her and later fend off her affections when she became the queen of her people. Women in this strip always seemed a fickle lot and Tarzan was either saving them from grave harm or trying to save himself from their jealous natures when he ultimately rejected them. Although Jane never appears in these strips after very beginning, she is nonetheless always present since Tarzan will have nothing to do with some beautiful women. Tarzan acts like a certain young Prince from Thule in many of the sea-going battle sequences. 

After he is able to get free of the Vikings he gets back to the jungle in "Tarzan and the Killers", and has to rescue yet another damsel named Gloria from a gang of avaricious white hunters led by two villains named Gorrey and Flint. They have come to the deep of Africa with a map pointing to vast gold deposits and the girl is the daughter of the man who made the map. There is intrigue and counter-intrigue as Tarzan always to do the right thing but often finding his efforts result in more trouble. There is a sense of repetition in this storyline a bit as Tarzan, who is always on the move often has to keep doing things he'd presumably taken care of before. His benevolence is almost never rewarded. 

And this leads us to the final story Foster worked on dubbed "Tarzan in the City of Gold". Yet another princess is on hand, this one named Nakonia, as Tarzan and the gang of criminals he'd been fighting before entering this lost land which is filled with gold and lions. Tarzan is seen as an enemy in the early days and is thrown to the lions, but his jungle breeding wins the day. The criminals take over the city and there then begins an odd extended storyline in which Tarzan becomes the leader of the opposition forces fighting to free the city from its new masters. We are treated to large battle scenes and extended sequences of ariel dogfights as modern war and technology comes to the depths of Africa. Tarzan almost gets lost in the melee and seems to be another hero altogether at times. There is a constant and frankly repetitive back and forth between Tarzan's forces and the villains and as Foster wraps up his run the baddies are in the ascendancy. It will be up to Burne Hogarth to finish this already too long saga. But more on that at a later date. 

There is an excellent essay fronting this collection by Tom Yeates talking about the influence of Foster on adventure comic strips and on Tarzan illustration as well. Nifty examples of work by such notables as Joe Kubert and Roy Krenkel help to illustrate the points Yeates seeks to make. We are treated to an explanation of where these strips have come from and as it turns out Mike Richardson, the big kahuna of Dark Horse used his own private set of Foster's Tarzan strips to supply the work. This explains why much of the stuff is at times muddy and even suffering minor damage in a few places. But any port in a storm and it's better to have the historically important strips in somewhat less than perfect form than not at all. 

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