SO, ABOUT THOSE TARZAN COMICS…

This post is different in three ways from my recent reminciences about the Spawn Middle Grade books and the Raise the Titanic! graphic novel.

First, I am more interested in sharing some wicked cool art you wouldn’t otherwise see than I am in blowing off some steam.

Second, it has an uplifting ending. Well, three uplighting endings.  At least I think so.

And third, it is scarce on details.

So here’s the dealio, or at least what little I remember after 40 years.

Sometime near the end of 1984 I wrote to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. to ask if they would consider granting me permission to adapt and publish comic books based on the Tarzan and John Carter novels.

What inspired me to ask them?

I wish I could remember.

As best as I can tell, there were no Tarzan or John Carter comics being published at that time. Marvel appears to have had the comic book publishing rights but canceled its John Carter comic in 1979 and the last thing Marvel published that featured Tarzan was Marvel Super Special #29 in 1983. So it could be that I recognized a vacuum existed and I thought it made economical sense to try to fill it. Or perhaps one of my friends who were into Burroughs pointed this out to me and I decided to roll the dice. Or perhaps I was hoping to cash in on the 1984 film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan if it did well.

You tell me. I don’t know.

What I do remember is that I was not (nor never have been) a Burroughs fan. I hadn’t even read any of Burroughs’ books. I did read Marvel’s John Carter, Warlord of Mars comic and I do like the character (and the 2012 film), but I had never read any Tarzan comics. I hadn’t even watched very many Tarzan films or episodes of the Tarzan TV show starring Ron Ely. Not because I disliked the character. I just didn’t get him, perhaps because jungle adventures have never really appealed to me, with the sort of exception of Mike Grell’s Jon Sable, Freelance.

ERB was nice enough to reply but said they were in no position to even consider my request without knowing what these comics would look like. Now maybe I misunderstood, but I took that to mean that I needed to present some samples, which meant I needed to find an artist who was good enough and willing to submit those on spec. So I placed a display ad in the Comics Buyer’s Guide, a weekly news-opinion-and-ad ‘zine dedicated to the comic book market.

Since that time I have lost any copies I may have kept of that display ad along with any correspondence between me and ERB, but piecing together what I can from the replies I received from the ad it apparently said something like I was seeking comic artists who work in a Burroughs vein. That sounds about right because I would have known better not to be specific at that point. I also like to think I would have mentioned that this project was in the speculative stage, so there was no guarantee it would be approved, but I honestly do not remember.

In any event, I received several replies, three of which jumped out, and I asked those artists if they would draw 6 pages of sample pages that I could show to ERB.

One was from Dave Hoover, who was working at Filmation and whose future comics work would include The Amazing Spider-Man and Tarzan.

Another was from Terry Tidwell, who is probably best known co-creating and drawing The Twilight Avenger comic book. (More on Terry in a moment.)

And the third was from Ben Dunn, who would go on to co-found Antarctic Press and create Ninja High School.

I informed each artist what I was attempting to do and provided them with two three-page Marvel-style scripts that adapted different scenes from Burroughs’ second Tarzan novel The Return of Tarzan (1913). Then I waited to see if any artist would want to submit spec samples.

Each one did.

Now I would have preferred to have adapted scenes from a John Carter novel, but to snub the much more popular Tarzan seemed ridiculous to me. I realized, though, that the first novel Tarzan of the Apes (1912) had been adapted with varying degrees of fidelity in different media, but as far as I knew no one had adapted the second novel into any medium, so this would be virgin territory.  It also allowed me to present Burrough’s Tarzan in action in civilization and in the wilds of Africa as well as give the artist the opportunity to demonstrate how he could handle both settings.

CAVEAT LECTOR: I have done a little editorial spit-and-polishing, but these scripts were written when I was 24 and still learning my craft.

The first script adapted a scene that occurs near the beginning of The Return of Tarzan while our hero is on his way to Paris to visit a friend:

ONE: Opening panel is an of ESTABLISHING SHOT an ocean liner cutting the waves at full steam.
On board, sitting in a deck chair, is LORD GREYSTOKE. His dress is stylish, his mood contemplative.
Looking up at the clouds, it seems he can almost make out the face of his Jane there, calling for him.
There is pain and loss on his face as he tears his head away and leaves the deck.

TWO: Greystoke enters the passenger deck where TWO MEN walk by him as he makes his way to his cabin.
As soon Greystoke’s back is towards the men, they both turn their heads to give the Lord apprehensive, studious glances. Greystoke seems not to notice.
Just as Greystoke is about to enter his cabin he hears a scream.
Running the length of the corridor, Greystoke swiftly ascertains which cabin the scream originated from but finds the door locked.
He bashes in the door, startling the two men, one of whom has a young and proper Russian lady, COUNTESS OLGA DE COUDE, by the throat.

THREE: The two men attack Greystoke and he repels them using his jungle skills. Striking. Scratching. Even biting. When the two men are down, Greystoke approaches the Countess to see if she is all right. Naturally she is a little bit put off after seeing the way Greystoke overpowered his attackers.

The second scene takes place near the middle of the novel and is set in the lost city of Opar:

ONE: Setting is a cavernous, ornate sacrificial chamber. Tarzan is bound to an altar by leather straps tied around each arm. The high priestess LA approaches, knife held high and ready to strike.
Suddenly ONE OF LA’S PRIMITIVE PRIESTS ENTERS the sacred chamber with La’s murder on his mind.
La does her best to ward off the priest, but the brute easily overpowers her. Meanwhile Tarzan is using all his strength to attempt to free himself. He strains. Strains. Strains. Finally the bonds break but he is projected forward by the force of his strength.

TWO: Tarzan lands on his feet and watches as the priest carries La through the closest exit.
The pair reach the fringe of the jungle before Tarzan can catch them.
He tackles the brute, La is sent flying away, free of the struggle to come.
The priest regains his feet a second before Tarzan does and uses his brief advantage to grab Tarzan around the waist and grind his ribs.
Tarzan grabs the back of the priest’s hair, pulls the brute’s head back with one hand, and with his other hand he rains blows on the priest’s face.

THREE: Tarzan keeps pounding away until the priest falls, lifeless.
Tarzan places a foot on the dead priest’s chest and gives out with his ape call. The victor claims his prey.
An astonished La approaches and asks, “Why did you save me? I was going to kill you.”
“I am Tarzan of the Apes and I could not see a woman murdered. Could I?”

Here now is how each artist interpreted these two scenes:

HOOVER

TIDWELL

DUNN

Okay, okay, maybe I crammed too much action into these pages, but I do think my narrative breakdown was effective. As for the artists, all three did a terrific job in their own unique way. Hoover’s pages not only highlight the exotic nature and brutality of the scenes but demonstrate the best parts of his Frazetta influence. Tidewell’s pages capture the sense of period as well each scene’s pulp attributes. And Dunn’s pages demonstrate his dynamic camera work and sense of action. I also think Dunn best captured the ethereal beauty and melancholy of Jane Porter’s face in the clouds. I figured ERB would appreciate at least one if not all of these samples, but before I could send them off, I got hit out of left field by a letter from ERB. The letter said the company had been made aware that I was requesting comic book artwork featuring its characters and that I was to cease at once.

“Ooooooooookay. Do you remember talking to me just a few weeks ago?”

I wrote ERB to remind them of our earlier conversation and that it had never been my intention to try to use its characters without ERB’s permission. I didn’t think it wise to include Hoover, Tidwell and Dunn’s pages with this letter, but I like to think that I mentioned that I could send them along for the company’s consideration if they liked.

Whether I mentioned it or not, I never heard back from ERB.

Now as far as disappointments go, I have experienced much, much worse. I was actually more confused than crestfallen, and, as I said, I wasn’t a Burroughs fan. I was just trying to make a break for myself in the comics business. Still, it would have been nice if ERB had looked at Hoover, Tidwell and Dunn’s pages after the work they put in to them. Odds are ERB would have said, “Not interested,” but at least their efforts would have got their day in court.

In any event, though, three nice things came out of the experience for me. (Remember those happy endings?)

The first nice thing was the idea I got for a series that was inspired by the artwork below, which Hoover included in his initial package to me along with Xeroxes of several other comics pages and cover pieces:

I got to wondering what this lady’s story was. Who was she? Where was she? She seemed quite at home in her surroundings in Panel 1, so why did she seem so concerned in Panel 2? Most likely she spotted the stairs we see in Panel 3, but had she been searching for them? Yes or no, what would she discover below the earth at the bottom of those stairs?

Nothing satisfactory came to mind in 1984, but around ten years later I remembered Hoover’s page when Gary Reed, the publisher of Caliber Comics, asked if I would submit some properties that he could include on Caliber’s Properties site, all of which were being submitted to some Hollywood studios that he was having discussions with. (SIDEBAR: These discussions were on-and-off for quite some time but in the end things didn’t work out. But, oh!, how my life would have been different if they had!) I pulled out Hoover’s page looking for inspiration and concocted a new adventure property called On The Watch. Its elevator pitch:

“A private research center recruits a team of temporal explorers to study the past after stumbling across the secret of time travel.”

What made On The Watch different was that it didn’t concern itself with the dread character-stepping-on-a-butterfly or character-killing-his-great-great-grandfather tropes. The mission statement for On The Watch is, “Use time travel to explore the past,” and its objective are:

• Affirm/correct history
• Expand present knowledge of history
• Discover the answers to some of history’s strangest mysteries

I wrote what I thought was one dang good a proposal, but as far as I know On The Watch never got so much as a nibble from any studio. Still, I think it’s a neat-o concept, and, hey, you never know. Somebody still might want it someday.

The second nice thing was the most serendipitous moment of my writing career to date.

In 1987 I made my annual venture to the Chicago ComiCon to hit the Portfolio Room, where I could pitch my writing and hopefully pick up some work. The con started on a Friday but by Saturday afternoon I was ready to throw in the towel for this trip. I was walking out of the main room when I noticed an artist sitting on the floor arranging the pages of his portfolio, and even though I had never met Terry Tidwell, I recognized his art. Terry remembered sending me his Tarzan samples and we got talking about the whole ERB debacle, then he started showing me pages from The Twilight Avenger comic he was drawing for a new independent company called Malibu Graphics. Terry told me that Malibu was actively taking submissions for creator-owned series and started to give me the company’s contact information when a blonde gentleman with glasses stopped to say hi to Terry and Terry told him:

“Hey, Dave, this guy’s a comic book writer, and he’s got some series you can look at.”

“Dave” turned out to be Dave Olbrich, Malibu’s publisher, and unlike the reps in the Portfolio Room, he was actually happy to meet me. Actually, for the first and only time in my writing career, a rep smiled and acted like he couldn’t believe his good fortune to run into me. Apparently Malibu was having trouble finding writers, so I gladly gave him copies of my synopses for Vanguard and Street Heroes, and a few weeks later Tom Mason, Malibu’s Creative Director, wrote to say he had to pass on Vanguard because independent superhero comics could not compete with superhero comics from Marvel and DC, but he was interested in Street Heroes and asked me to submit a full proposal.  A few weeks after that Malibu accepted Street Heroes and so began my professional comics writing career.

And then there is the third nice thing.

It turns out me and ERB weren’t finished yet. Sort of.

About twenty years after that fortuitous Chicago ComiCon, I spotted a post from Campfire Comics on a freelance writers board. Campfire was looking for writers to adapt literary properties into graphic novels ala Classics Illustrated. I had already adapted Dracula, Carmilla and several stories by H. P. Lovecraft for Malibu and Caliber, so I replied to the post. Campfire Comics turned out to be based in India and it had a lengthy list of novels they wanted to adapt, including Burroughs’ People That Time Forgot. By this time I had read Tarzan of the Apes for a college course and was surprised to discover it was pretty decent, so I asked Campfire if I could adapt this ERB property and it gave me the green light.

I decided to approach the adaptation as if I was writing another Lost World story, Grell’s Warlord, by marrying a minimum of words with layouts that took advantage of a few large panels per page. Let’s see this savage empire! And when I submitted my script to Campfire they asked for a few changes but nothing at all major, and I soon found myself very much looking forward to seeing the final product.

Unfortunately, when my copies of the graphic novel arrived, I realized that only about 5% of the dialogue and narrative from my script had been used. As one reviewer put it, whoever wrote the final script attempted to make it as accessible as possible. I would have been happy to do the same if I had been asked, but Campfire never did.

Such is the life of a freelance writer.

On the plus side, the art looked pretty decent. K.L. Jones, did a solid job of following my layouts and narrative breakdowns. And hey, I got paid. And another hey, Penguin Random House offered the Campfire graphic novels through its website, so for a while I actually looked like I had been published by a Big Time New York Publisher.

So all in all, in the end this turned out to be a very good experience. A very good experience indeed.

Take that, ERB!