Charleton’s Stab at the Lord of the Jungle: A Review of ‘The Unauthorized Tarzan’ HC

Title: The Unauthorized Tarzan

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Writer: Joe Gill

Pencils: Sam J. Glanzman and Bill Montes

Inkers: Sam J. Glanzman and Ernie Bache

Pages: 112

Format: Hardcover

Retail Price: $29.99 with a limited edition of 250 copies featuring a tip-in signed by Glanzman available for $59.99

Release Date: March 20th

From Dark Horse:

A classic run of Tarzan comics, reprinted for the first time! In the 1960s, believing Tarzan to have fallen into the public domain, Charlton Comics enlisted Joe Gill (Flash Gordon, House of Mystery) and Sam Glanzman (Hercules, Our Army at War) to create a new comics version of the Lord of the Jungle. Only four issues were produced before Charlton was forced to end the series, and much of the original print runs were destroyed. Collects Chalton’s Jungle Tales of Tarzan #1–#4.

* Includes never-before-seen Tarzan comic strips by Glanzman and historical essays by Roger Broughton!

In 1964, believing that the rights to Tarzan had become public domain, the comic book company Charlton decided to directly confront rival Dell’s Tarzan series with their own.  While the Dell book looked to the movies for inspiration, Charlton would instead go directly to the source material, the original books. Unfortunately, the books were not in the public domain, and Charlton was forced to not only cancel the book unceremoniously, but give all the artwork to the Edgar Rice Burroughs company, where it was promptly destroyed. Of course, the comics that were published remained, and because of that, fifty years later, we have a nice companion to the Dark Horse Tarzan archival collection.

The first thing you notice when you crack open this beautiful book is that you’re looking at is right on the cusp of old-style 1960’s comic sensibilities and later experimental artwork, partly pioneered by the artist in question, Sam Glanzman. Yes, you have the rock solid rectangular panels and straightforward, non-stylized backgrounds, but you also have clever perspectives and mood shadings, and the interesting choice to not have a single word balloon. The artwork is intensely detailed; the animals and the jungles are fully realized – we’re talking Mark Trail close-up quality here – and the human figures are given a lot of subtle nuances. The only real cringe-worthy moments are the depiction of black African tribes; although it’s not terrible, some of the visuals are…unfortunate, especially in “The Nightmare” from the third issue, although since most of that story is essentially a bizarre acid trip via rotten elephant meat, I can overlook it.

The stories are adapted from the sixth book in the Burroughs canon, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, by legendary workhorse Joe Gill (you might know him from basically creating and writing every Charlton comic in the 1950s and 60s).  The writing is competent, with the aforementioned lack of word balloons being the most startling scripting choice.  It works in context, as it would be more disconcerting to have the animals “speaking” as opposed to their words in narration, and there is very little dialogue in the Tarzan stories (and what there is, technically, I suppose, is a whole lot of grunting), but it’s still…odd. A good choice, however, is to skip the first story in the collection, “Tarzan’s First Love,” in which he tries to court an ape, because yuck.  We begin with the second story, “The Capture of Tarzan,” and we’re off and running. Gill never seems to directly quote the text, which is nice, instead compressing and explaining just enough to complement the art. The story selection is pretty good, with my favorite actually being the final published story, “The Jungle Joke,” in which Tarzan gets revenge on the tribe that killed his adopted mother, with the help of his jungle friends (and not so much friends).

There are three text pieces by current Charlton head Roger Broughton to round out the collection. The first, a typical making-of piece is of mild interest as it tells the story of how the collection was put together. The second is a much more fascinating piece about the rise and fall of the four-issue Charlton collection, including how its legacy affected not only the Dell Tarzan comic, but the business practices of Charlton itself. The final piece, however, is the gold mine, with the story of the abandoned and largely unknown Tarzan comic strip Charlton was planning to do before the hammer came down. Since the Burroughs company never actually knew about the strips, they weren’t able to take and destroy them, and Glanzman had them in a manila folder in his office for decades, only now seeing the light of day. Fun stuff!