The Sunday Funnies - Tarzan And The Adventurers!

Tarzan and the Adventurers from Titan Books wraps up their run of Burne Hogarth Tarzan of the Apes comic strips. These strips are from Hogarth's second tour of duty on the strip from 1947 until 1950. In that time Hogarth drew Sunday color strips with scripts from Rob Thompson and James Freeman. His Sunday run narrative is completed in this collection by a few strips from Bob Lubbers who picked up the Tarzan strip from Hogarth. Hogarth also worked on the daily strips, first as a consultant for artists like Dan Barry, Nick Cardy and others. Later still he scripted a few adventures with art by Bob Lubbers. Of note too is that the Sunday pages here are presented in a half-page format which was dictated to the creators due to shifts in the needs of newspapers after the war years had diminished some interest in the Sunday adventures. 

On the Sunday pages here are most of the iconic images I associate with Hogarth's run on the character. He draws the Ape Men as a sleek athlete with grim dark eyes and jet-black hair. The strip is very much about the physicality of Tarzan and given the limits of the times must've come across as quite alluring in many ways. 

As usual Tarzan deals with treacherous white hunters who in the story "Tarzan and the Adventurers" stir up trouble among the natives. Tarzan evades one deadly trap after another as he attempts to stop these men from stealing a hidden submerged treasure. Later in "Tarzan and the Wild Game Hunter" he runs across jungle novices who don't realize the full dangers they are confronting in the wild. 

In the daily strips we begin with the lengthy "Tarzan at the Earth's Core". This was the work primarily of Thompson and Barry with Hogarth giving guidance in the early stages. This is a strange Tarzan tale as much of it focuses on a retelling of At the Earth's Core and the adventures of David Innes in Pellucidar. Tarzan agrees to go to Pellucidar with Jason Gridley and others. They find the hidden territory in the middle of the Earth but are quickly separated. The story goes many days if not weeks without a sign of Tarzan, a strange approach. 

Then we jump ahead a few years to two daily storylines written by Hogarth and drawn by others. "Tarzan and Hard-Luck Harrigan" features art by Nick Cardy and focuses on an old-timer who requires Tarzan's assistance when he fall into the clutches of a gang of bandits. Bob Lubbers draws "Attack of the Apes" which reveals a deadly scheme to turn men and apes against each other when a villain disguises himself as an ape. Tarzan soon clears this mess up. And that abruptly is a wrap on the work of Burne Hogarth on the Lord of the Jungle...with two exceptions. Those have to wait a few decades. More on that next week. 

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