By Burne Hogarth (Watson-Guptill Publications)
ISBN: 0-8230-2576-4
Following his return to graphic narrative with his bravura adaptation of Tarzan of the Apes (ISBN: 0-600-38689-9) Burne Hogarth produced this adaptation of the short tales that formed the novel The Jungle Tales of Tarzan. The book is a series of episodes reminiscent of Kipling’s “Just So†stories, set before the first fateful meeting with Jane and his introduction to civilisation wherein the Lord of the Jungle confronts various cognitive stages in his own development.
If that sounds dry, it’s not. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a master of populist writing and his prose crackles with energy and imagination. With this book he was showing how the Ape-man’s intellectual progress was a metaphor for Man’s social, cerebral and even spiritual growth from beast to human. He also never forgot that people love action.
Hogarth was an intellectual – as the lengthy discussion of his graphic symbolism by Walter James Miller in the preface shows – and the four tales he adapted afforded him vast scope to explore the cherished perfect temple that was the Ideal Man. His flowing organic compositions are strengthened by the absence of colour, allowing the classicism of his line-work to create stark divisions of form and space that contribute to the metaphysical component of ‘Tarzan’s First Love’, ‘The Capture of Tarzan’, ‘The God of Tarzan’ and ‘The Nightmare’. But you don’t need a dictionary to enjoy this work; all you need are eyes to see and a heart to beat faster.
This is vital, violent motion, stretching, running, fighting, surging power and glory. This work needs to be back in print, if only to give comic lovers a thorough cardio-vascular work-out.
© 1976 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All Rights Reserved.