The Silver Chair!

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis was published in 1953 and is the fourth book in The Chronicles of Narnia. The book featured illustrations by Pauline Baynes. It is the first book which does not feature a member of the immediate Pevensie clan as a protagonist, but it does feature Eustace Scrubb, a cousin. Eustace was featured in the previous novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and he matured mightily as a consequence of his adventures in that book. 

This book starts a year or so later and introduces us to Jill Pole, a young girl in the same school as Eustace, who is being harassed by other students in the school. Lewis is highly critical of modern schools which deviated from traditional formats for education and which in his opinion failed to form the character of their charges. In an attempt to save her Eustace and Jill end up in Narnia where she meets Aslan who gives her a quest. She shares this with Eustace, and they find themselves seeking the lost prince of the kingdom, the son of King Caspian. As it turns out, this time decades have passed since Eustace was last in Narnia and Caspian is an old man. 

Eustace and Polly are led to Puddleglum, a Marsh-Wiggle who despite his dour outlook becomes a reliable guide for the two children as they trek through harsh conditions to find the lost Prince. There are many hardships, but none so immediately dangerous as a city full of giants who consider mankind a delicacy. They are led on their journey by signs given to our young heroine by Aslan himself, but they keep bungling the signs. Nonetheless they eventually end up in a sprawling underground realm where all manner of secrets are revealed, including that of the insidious silver chair. 

In many ways this story struck me as the most classic adventure yet. We have limited personnel on his trek and the danger they encounter feels somehow a little grimmer than in previous books in the series which always kept a somewhat more whimsical character. The book may suffer from too many endings, but that's common in fantasy I find. 

Next time wrap all this up with The Last Battle. 

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Tarzan - The Black Edition

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.)

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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