Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes was first published in 1912, which means that 2012 marked Tarzan's 100th birthday! Happy Birthday Tarzan!!!
Here are some of the books and comics in my collection...
This Tarzan of the Apes book was published by Whitman in 1964. It has been in my family for some time. My mother and her siblings had it when they were just kids, and it was always kicking around the house when I was growing up. When I started seriously collecting Tarzan stuff, the first thing I did was to hunt down where this book ended up in the house and put it on my book shelf! Of course, I read it too! LOL
Here is an illustration from the Whitman book to show how Tarzan was depicted.
This is the Grosset & Dunlap hardcover edition of Tarzan Lord of the Jungle. The original copyright date is 1928, but I think this is a more resent copy from the 1950s or 60s.
This book from 1954 was published by Whitman and has several really cool illustrations by Tony Sgroi, a few of which are shown below.
This is from the inside cover.
page 21
page 165
It would be impossible to collect every single Tarzan book ever published. Even if you just collected the paperbacks it would be quite challenging. There are 24 Tarzan books in the series, and they have all been reprinted numerous times. Above is the Ballantine Books 1969 edition of Tarzan and the Ant Men (at left) and the New English Library 1976 edition of Tarzan Lord of the Jungle (at right). The cover artwork for this book seems to mix up Tarzan with Mowgli. Here is a complete list of Tarzan books:
1. Tarzan of the Apes (My favourite book in the series!)
2. The Return of Tarzan
3. The Beasts of Tarzan
4. The Son of Tarzan
5. Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
6. Jungle Tales of Tarzan (This is my second favourite book in the series. Highly recommended!)
7. Tarzan the Untamed
8. Tarzan the Terrible
9. Tarzan and the Golden Lion
10. Tarzan and the Ant Men
11. Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
12. Tarzan and the Lost Empire
13. Tarzan at the Earth's Core
14. Tarzan the Invincible
15. Tarzan Triumphant
16. Tarzan and the City of Gold
17. Tarzan and the Lion Man
18. Tarzan and the Leopard Men
19. Tarzan's Quest
20. Tarzan and the Forbidden City
21. Tarzan the Magnificent
22. Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
23. Tarzan and the Madman
24. Tarzan and the Castaways
There are also two children's books by Burroughs:
1. The Tarzan Twins
2. Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins
In addition to books, Tarzan has a long history in comics. He appeared in newspaper comic strips since the late 1920s and in comic books since the late 1940s. This is a hardcover graphic novel version of Tarzan of the Apes illustrated by Burne Hogarth. It was published by Watson-Guptill Publications in 1972. Hogarth is one of the original artists who did the Tarzan newspaper comic strip.
In keeping with the original Tarzan of the Apes novel, Tarzan is naked throughout most of this book. (Yay!) As this is a graphic novel it was geared toward older readers (teens and up) rather than kids, though maintains a PG-13 level without showing any explicit "boy parts". We do however get to see Tarzan's bare bum, so there's that. Three cheers for Hogarth! Here are a few examples of how Tarzan was depicted.... au naturel!
As Tarzan's weekly newspaper comic strips were so successful, he soon made the jump to comic books to be featured in his own series. Dell Publishing began the main Tarzan comic book series publishing 131 issues. Gold Key/Western Publishing took over the series at issue No. 132. Shown above, at left, is the (slightly torn) cover of Tarzan of the Apes by Gold Key, No. 191, April 1970. In the early 1970's DC Comics/National Periodical Publications continued the series with No. 207. Shown above at right is the DC Comics issue No. 212, Sept. 1972, with cover art by Joe Kubert.
DC Comics also published Korak, Son of Tarzan which later became Tarzan Family. Shown above is my favourite Tarzan comic cover, DC Comics Tarzan Family issue No. 66, Dec 1976. In the early 1970s DC Comics also published Weird Worlds which featured additional characters of Edgar Rice Burroughs such as John Carter.
In 1977 Marvel Comics took over the Tarzan series, though they discontinued the numbering that had been used through the Dell, Gold Key and DC Comics series, and started again with issue 1. Shown above is Tarzan Lord of the Jungle, issue No. 2, 1977, by Marvel Comics.
In 1981 MGM released the first R rated Tarzan movie, Tarzan the Ape Man, with Miles O'Keeffe as Tarzan. Oh... and Bo Derek was in it too. I didn't care at all about that though, I was too in awe of Tarzan's gorgeous body! The above photo is from an article in Starlog Magazine, issue #156, July 1990. It's a retrospective article about O'Keeffe's career in movies, but mostly about his role as Tarzan. Below is another photo from the article. In all honesty, my interest in Miles O'Keeffe as Tarzan was one of my first inclinations that I was gay. I was just so in awe of him! He's quite a beautiful and handsome man!
This is the front cover of the magazine with the O'Keefe Tarzan pics in it.
Oddly enough there's no mention of Tarzan or O'Keeffe on the cover. What, what???
In 1984 the Burroughs estate, which licenses Tarzan, produced several logo style images of Tarzan that were used on several products. The packaging for some Tarzan action figures made around that time used this artwork, as well as the Marvel comic book covers shown below. I've also seen a Milton Bradley board game, a Coleco video game, Ballantine Tarzan novels, a large wall poster, and four children's "book and record" sets by Kid Stuff that used similar art.
This is a two issue comic book series published in July and August 1984 by Marvel.
I love the artwork for Tarzan in this image so I had to include a nice close up!
This is a very sexy Tarzan!
This is how Tarzan was depicted in the comic, from issue 2. Very cool artwork!
As mentioned above, in the original 1912 novel Tarzan is actually naked throughout most of the story. He doesn't wear a loincloth until toward the end of the book when he first sees another human being in a nearby tribe, who he ends up killing and stealing from... which is how he gets his loincloth. Although this was a kids comic book Marvel Comics went ahead an showed Tarzan completely buck naked (shown above and below from issue 2).
Of course they obscured his boy parts but had no problem showing his bare behind. Times have certainly changed! Imagine a comic book company making a kids comic book like this nowadays! People have become so politically correct that Marvel would have been torn asunder, not unlike being attacked by Sabor or an angry Kerchak! LOL :) I think it's pretty cool that Marvel went this route and presented the story to kids the way the original novel was written. It's unfortunate that we live in such a prudish world! But that's just me, plus I collect Tarzan stuff so I'm kinda biased! Just a little! ;)
Hey look! Tarzan has a bubble bum! :)
Here is a Tarzan Pop-up Book published by Random House in 1984. Below is the last page in the book showing several of the pop-up characters.
Here is the Read-Along book and cassette tape sold in 1999, based on the Disney film released that same year.
Many storybook versions of Disney's Tarzan have been published. This hardcover book is from 1999 and has a gold foil section around the title. It didn't show up too well in my photo because of the flash, it's actually not that dark.
This hardcover book is also from 1999.
This hardcover book is titled "Studio Album - Tarzan" and is a graphic novel based on the movie.
This is a very large sized, soft cover book "How to Draw Disney's Tarzan" from the Walter Foster How to Draw series. It was published in 1999.
Here's an example of the drawing instructions inside. Several characters from the movie are shown being drawn step by step in this way. This page shows Tarzan's head, and the next page in the book shows how to draw the complete figure.
Here's my drawing of Tarzan, above, made in 2001. It was copied free-hand (no tracing) directly from an episode of the Legends of Tarzan animated TV series, which premiered in 2001. A YouTube video of the show's opening sequence is included below. I'm a huge fan of Disney's Tarzan, so I recorded as many of the episodes as I could. To make this picture I paused my VHS tape and drew what I saw on the TV. This is the exact pose that was seen on the show, I just had to add Tarzan's feet as they were cut off along the bottom of the screen.
I'll be honest, Disney's version of Tarzan is the sexiest cartoon character in existence! There I said It! He's clearly the male version of Disney's Jessica Rabbit. While I find it silly of me and a tad embarrassing to be enamored with a cartoon character, this version of Tarzan was clearly designed by the Disney artists to have such an effect on their audience! In fact, when the movie was in theatres there was controversy in some countries because of how skimpy Tarzan's loin cloth is. It was considered as being too risqué, and rightfully so! However, being risqué and pushing the social boundary of what is considered decent or indecent has been an element of Tarzan books and movies since the very start.
The opening for The Legend of Tarzan animated series from 2001.
No matter how many times I watch this I'm always amazed at what a remarkable job the artists did on the animation for this opening sequence. It's just phenomenal! I wish Disney would have made the series available on DVD but to my knowledge it never was. I'd love to own this entire series!
Lastly, here is another hardcover Tarzan storybook from 2005.
Text and photos © Mike Artelle, 2013, 2019
