My Favorite Tarzan Art

As I stated this time last year, a significant portion of Tarzan fandom considers November 22 to be the ape-lord’s “real” birthday. That’s fine with me. It makes a perfectly good excuse to talk about my favorite works of Tarzanic art.

Tarzan versus Ska from Tarzan the Untamed, 1920.

I considered going through my faves in the order I first discovered them, but it was long enough ago—and much of it was in a fairly short span of time—that I decided to go chronologically as they were first published. Thus, the iconic cover for the first McClurg edition of Tarzan of the Apes has to start things out. While Tarzan’s silhouette may be a bit on the boyish side, I still think the overall composition is powerful. Plus, Tarzan is just a boy/young teenager for much of the book.

Next up would be a couple pieces of classic Tarzan art from J. Allen St. John, whom Edgar Rice Burroughs rated as his favorite illustrator. St. John’s illustration of Tarzan versus Ska the Vulture is awesome on its own merits, but the scene also very likely inspired a young Robert E. Howard to write a similar tableau starring Conan in “A Witch shall Be Born.” The other classic illo is from Tarzan and the Golden Lion.

Bob Abbett’s covers for Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar and Tarzan and the Lost Empire—encountered courtesy of the Oswego Public Library—were almost my first graphic intro to the Lord of the Jungle. I consider both of them badass in different ways.

Very soon after I read the Abbett-covered Tarzans, I read Tarzan at the Earth’s Core, which sported a classic Frank Frazetta cover, and Tarzan and the Castaways, which was graced with both a Frazetta cover and awesome interior illos. I always found Frank’s rendition of Tarzan’s capture in that book particularly striking. I posted two of my favorite Frazetta covers for the Ace Tarzan editions here. Frank always claimed to have been a Tarzan fan from boyhood and that love and enthusiasm shows through.

The very first Tarzan art I ever saw was by Joe Kubert on the cover of Tarzan #222. I found it in a pile of comics in a barber shop. I begged the barber to let me have it and he was cool enough to acquiesce. It was quite the cover, featuring Tarzan battling against a horde of Oparian troglodytes with bloody La in the background. Reading it spurred me to check out those Tarzan novels from the library. In the gallery below, you can also find an excellent charcoal portrait of Tarzan by Kubert from 2010.

Next up are three cover paintings from Neal Adams. In my opinion, Neal—as is is the case with his Conan artwork—doesn’t get the credit he deserves in the pantheon of Tarzan artists. Facially, his Tarzan looks much like Kubert’s—and many consider the Kubert Tarzan to be definitive—and Adams’ ape-lord also has that Kubertesque kineticism and grace. However, Kubert never depicted Tarzan with the untamed savagery and ferocity that Adams brought to the table. The Adams Tarzan is a jungle beast, red in tooth and claw, with the thin veneer of civilization long-since swept away in a storm of primordial fury. In many ways, the Adams Tarzan is a near-perfect blend of the Kubert and Frazetta versions. I’ll note that I love Neal’s savage cover painting for Tarzan and the Leopard Men in its own right, but I also have a soft spot for it because my mom bought it for me for Christmas one year without me asking for it. Considering the fact that she didn’t totally approve of my young self reading such violent fare, that was pretty cool.*

I have to say that no other Tarzan artist really captured my interest after that until I stumbled upon Simon Bisley’s version of Tarzan. I was blown away. I knew about his paintings of Slaine, Lobo and Conan, but his Tarzan stuff was a very cool surprise. As with the Adams Tarzan, this was a jungle-lord that exuded the wildness and menace that ERB described in the original texts, but which was too often lacking in most graphic art and film adaptations.

Well, that about wraps it up. I’ve probably left out a few worthies, but that just leaves things wide open for another look at more of my favorite Tarzan art. Narrowing things down for this one was hard enough.

*It’s too bad that Tarzan and the Leopard Men was one of the lesser Tarzan novels. Oh well, I spent hours staring at the cover.

Bisley’s prelim for the Tarzan “cover pic” on this post.