Russ Manning's interpretation of Tarzan was incredibly popular in the 1970's, but not so much in the United States. The Tarzan strip despite Manning's revival of the strip was not selling as much as it should and Manning was frustrated by this fact. All his hard work was simply not being seen by as many people as it should've been, myself included. I never found a paper that carried Tarzan in the 70's. But Europe loved Manning's Tarzan and wanted more. To make that possible the Daily strip was discontinued, at least insofar as new material was concerned. Manning wrapped up the dailies in order to give himself and his studio time to create graphic albums for the European market. (More on those later.)
Let's begin with the dailies.
In the third volume of Tarzan The Complete Russ Manning Newspaper Strips we get the final two continuities the series every ran.
"Korak and the White Water Runner" features the son of Tarzan as he helps a film crew made a movie. Pretty normal stuff except that Manning in a bit of forward thinking tried some product placement with this story with authentically rendered Evinrude outboard motors and Zodiac boats. Korak tries to keep a starlet safe who insists on finding danger.
"Tarzan Returns to the Earth's Core" is fantastic story that picks up where the saga of the Mahar from the last collection left off. Tarzan and Korak and a group of Waziri along with a full crew use the zeppelin 0-220 to re-enter the land of Pellucidar from the Arctic entrance. There is much adventure of many kinds featuring several races found in the prehistoric world inside the Earth. Even David Innes himself shows up to take part as well as other characters from the ERB books.
The Sunday feature continued.
"Tarzan Returns to Pal-Ul-Don" tells the story of how Tarzan was forced to go back yet again to Pal-Ul-Don when Jane takes a few of her friends to the edge of the strange land. Of course, that doesn't work and they are soon attacked. Jane is feared lost and even dead for some of this story but in the end she is found. The two women are Carla and Samantha and ultimately both find some measure of love in this dangerous world but only after many misadventures. This one really showcased how Tarzan's love for Jane eclipses all of his other concerns.
"Korak and the City of Xuja" finds the son of Tarzan and Jane in the city of madmen. It's a strange place and Korak is bewildered by the behavior and even spends a few moments feeling sorry for himself. But he recovers in time to save the day.
"Jad-Bal-Ja of the Apes" picks up the adventure in Pal-Ul-Don again and eventually after much agony and even a few poignant deaths Tarzan and Jane find their way home to the modern world, though that one seems as dangerous as any.
"Korak and the Igotha" closes out this collection and has Korak leading two civilized folks back to their tribe which has developed a reputation for brutality. Things are not what they seem in the short little adventure.
Manning and his team are in fine form with these stories. I can detect some minor changes in the art depending I guess on which of Manning's assistants is on hand, but I'm not really able to pick out who did what. Even an artist of Alex Nino's caliber worked briefly for Manning on these it seems. Great stuff of course. One more volume to go. See you next week.
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