These are hands down my favorite versions of ERB's Tarzan of the Apes. Much of that is nostalgia. I literally gave up food money to land the first six volumes of this set. I completed it as the years rolled by and have even dropped dime on the Neal Adams art portfolios which feature this art and more. I have more to say at the end of what is a divine gallery.
(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.)
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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 most of Vallejo's work leaves me a bit cold. He is often compared to Frank Frazetta, who clearly inspired 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 nubile 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.
This Post is a Revised Dojo Classic.
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