Customer Reviews

Tarzan Archives: The Jesse Marsh Years Volume 1 (v. 1)

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Of all the Dell comic book series, Tarzan is one of the classic series that begged to be reprinted. Fondly remembered for the scores of photo cover from Gordon Scott to Ron Ely, the first appearance of Tarzan in Four Color #134 introduced comic book readers to the King of the Jungle.
Jesse Marsh was a constant in the pages of Tarzan, while writer Robert P Thompson turned his talents from radio to comic books for "Tarzan and the Devil Ogre" and "Tarzan and the Fires of Tor and Black Panther". Comic book legend, Gaylord DuBois contributed to the regular series (#1-4) with "Savages of Vari", "Captives of Thunder Valley", "Dwarfs of Didona", and "Lone Hunter". Each of these stories resonated strongly with the 1940's audience for Tarzan, and still do today for modern readers. Contemporary readers are familiar with the Kubert/DC Tarzan, but not the first appearances.

Like all Dark Horse books, this is a gem. As an art afficienado, I truly appreciate the uncluttered covers by Marsh for the books, and can only imagine what a child of 10 discovering these books for the first time would have thought.

"Mommy, can you buy me that Tarzan comic, please? I'll mow the lawn and clean my room. Please? I promise I won't ask you to take me to the movies this week."

That would have been me. It was probably my father. Today, it can be you. Swing over to your local comic store and grab the Jesse Marsh years. You will not be disappointed.

www.darkhorse.com
Tim Lasiuta

This reprint of the first issues of Dell Comics Tarzan with art by Jesse Marsh is a must for comics fans and historians. The art is rather primitive, Marsh reached his peak a couple of years later, yet there is much atmosphere and wonderfull fantasy and adventure in the pictures. Volume two of this book is already on it's way. It is a very, very fine initiative by Dark Horse Comics. Thank you.

My youthful introduction to Tarzan came from Lex Barker movies and the Dell comic books, but my comic books went the way of most comic books, read to pieces and disappearing over the years for one reason or another. After the Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback boom of the early 60s, I became a big fan of collecting the original books but still picked up some Dell comics here and there when I could find them. When Dark Horse published the Jesse Marsh Tarzan archives, I wasn't too sure I wanted to start buying them, but Amazon.com's special free-shipping offer enticed me and I went ahead and ordered Vol. 1. As soon as it came in the mail, I realized I had made the right decision. I immediately placed an order for Vol. 2 and now, since that has arrived, I've advance-ordered Vol. 3.
I love these old comics far more than I remember, especially since they have stories that are actually pretty much in line with the original books by ERB. They feature some of the same characters -- Tarzan's friend, D'Arnot, for example, as well as Jane -- and the stories are tied in with the strange lost cities and tribe's of Tarzan's Africa, as originally penned by Burroughs. So, it's almost like having new Tarzan stories! True, there are differences between the comics and the original books: One is the annoying inclusion of a young lad called "Boy" when those old comics could just as easily have referred to him as "Korak," the name Burroughs gave to Tarzan's actual son. However, these Archives are so well done, with slick, full-color pages and reproductions of the original covers, that one tends to be forgiving of such things. I'm enjoying these books and highly recommend them to fans of Tarzan, fans of Jesse Marsh, fans of Gaylord DuBois who wrote the stories, and fans of old comic books. If you're none of the above, it's entirely possible you'll find another reason to like them!

Once again, Dark Horse has dug into the pile of long-forgotten comics to produce another fabulous hardcover archive edition. Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years Volume 1 collections Tarzan stories from the 1940s that originally appeared in the pages of Dell Four Color Comics #134 and 161, and in Tarzan #1 - 4. Tarzan has been a stalwart in comics and newspaper strips for over 70 years and Dark Horse has rescued these stories which otherwise would have remained lost.

Marsh had worked for Walt Disney as an animator on films such as "Fantasia" and "Pinocchio" before going to work for Western Publishing who put out Dell and Gold Key Comics. These stories were the first original Tarzan stories to appear in comics. Previously, only reprints of the newspaper strips were published. There's an adventurous simplicity to the seven stories in this volume. They are all book-length tales, the best being "Tazan and the Black Panther" where Tarzan battles slavers. Marsh's art is also quite simple, perhaps even a bit primitive but he knew how to tell a story and frame the action perfectly. Not for everyone's tastes certainly but Tarzan fans will certainly appreciate these stories being back in print after so many years.

I'm absolutely baffled by what the justification for preserving this material in a deluxe, high quality hardcover edition might be. This is a bowdlerization of Edgar Rice Burroughs' immortal jungle lord which owes far more to the poor movie adaptations which persisted for decades than to anything ERB ever wrote. Meanwhile, while I'm grateful that Dark Horse was smart enough to reprint Archive volumes of comics grandmaster Joe Kubert's run on Tarzan for DC Comics, they are completely ignoring the major contribution made by Russ Manning in returning the ape-man to his roots (i.e., adapting ERB's actual Tarzan novels to comic form). Yes, I know they reprinted some of them in 3 small digest-sized editions about 10 years ago, but they gave up before reprinting even half of Manning's output for Gold Key! Manning's work on Gold Key's TARZAN OF THE APES (and KORAK SON OF TARZAN) deserves far better! Those stories completely blew me away as a kid and forced me to take the character of Tarzan seriously for the first time, and of course they led me straight to the paperback book rack to pick up the reprints of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels (and not just the Tarzan ones) then being published by Ballantine and Ace Books. And while they're at it, why not reprint Russ Manning's work on the Tarzan syndicated newspaper strip as well? Then they should reprint Doug Wildey's Tarzan stories, which rounded out the end of Gold Key's license on Tarzan. As for Jesse Marsh's Tarzan, I wouldn't pay the 12 cents they were charging for them in the early 1960s, and I certainly wouldn't pay $50 for them now. I hope to hell I don't have to wait until they run out of this awful stuff (at this rate, it'll be around 2020) before I can see Manning's work treated with the respect it deserves. There is just so much better Tarzan comic material out there not being reprinted (what about Foster and Hogarth?), why bother with this stuff?

I purchased this volume because I am a fan of Tazan and liked the Joe Kubert volumes. I have to admit I was not familiar with Jean Marsh's art in advance. While the book cover and some of the pin-up pages look interesting, the overall art if child-like at best.