Michael Wm. Kaluta: One of America’s greatest living artists.

Michael Wm. Kaluta turned seventy-eight on August 25. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do a birthday post for him. I have been a Kaluta fan since I was seven years old. You can read my DMR posts about Mr. Kaluta here.

There I was, barely seven when I started buying DC’s Korak, Son of Tarzan. Kaluta was adapting Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pirates of Venus as a back-up. His art blew my very young mind.

Little did I know that Mr. Kaluta had, at first, bid on doing DC's 'Barsoom' series for Weird Worlds, but Murphy Anderson muscled him out.

What it boils down to is that Mike Kaluta was a Burroughs fan from a young age. That led him to buy Robert E. Howard's Almuric from Ace Books. Roughly the same path I trod, only a decade later.

I meant to dig deep into Kaluta's 'Venus' work back in 2022. I guess I'll hit that in 2027. As it is, Edgar Rice Burroughs' sesquicentennial birthday is September 1st. Now seems the best time to celebrate all of Kaluta's ERB art, from Venus to Pellucidar to Tarzan to Barsoom.

Feel free to check out the Kaluta art gallery below.

Happy belated birthday, Mr. Kaluta! Thank you for half a century of superb Burroughsian art.