Tarzan - The Black Edition by Vallejo!

(Apparently, Neal Adams also produced a painting for Tarzan and the Ant Men. I must say his is superior in drama to Vallejo's below.)

When Ballantine contracted with Neal Adams to do a gallery of new Tarzan covers for their paperback reprints of ERB's classic hero, they apparently also contracted with Boris Vallejo to do the same thing. What happened is that we have two of the great artists of the time doing Tarzan covers at the same time. I'll be blunt and say that I don't like Vallejo's covers nearly as well. In fact most of Vallejo's work leaves me a bit cold. He is often compared to Frank Frazetta, who clearly insipred him, but Vallejo is all about surfaces while Frazetta and to some extent Adams are all about interiors. They capture a feeling, a mood, a notion while Boris Vallejo merely illustrates and paints brawny men and voluputous women in motion. There's something missing. That said, these covers are still fairly early in his career and he hadn't lost that certain something that first made him a so interesting. Later though that little bit of magic gets lost as an obsession with the human form overwhelms all else. Rip Off