Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: artbrooks
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 02:52 PM

I wonder if it will address the fact that Dejah Thoris lays eggs?

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 03:27 PM

But does she first establish a meaningful relationship with the eggs she lays? That's the question.

That movie looks like it could be reasonably good fun.

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Wesley S
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 03:36 PM

I would have preferedm that Dejah Thoris look a little more like how she was described in the book:


And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life... Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.

She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: artbrooks
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 04:03 PM

Yeah - especially the last part.

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 07:21 AM

Re the learning to read bit above from John on SC ~~ the original Frankenstein's creation, in the Mary Shelley novel, is sensitive & highly intelligent, & learns to speak, & read, by overhearing & then goes on to read Paradise Lost. Is there perhaps an echo here?

On the racial question, re more innocent, or alternatively more horrible, times: anyone remember the old Wizard comic, which was mainly prose stories for older boys, like Hotspur, Rover, &c, but did have a running cover strip: about a man and a boy shipwrecked on a desert island who have somehow pacified the natives, whom they always referred to as 'the nigs' [can such have indeed been the case during my brief existence!], whom they enlist to aid in various projects. A sort of Tarzan spinoff? Tho overtones of the Ballantyne of A Coral Island [1857] too, perhaps: how far did ERB learn from that tradition, does anyone think?

Rapparee, have you really the privilege of living in Pocatello, Idaho; where Judy Garland's persona in A Star Is Born, was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater. Wowie! BTW Pindah-likoyee is given as Apache in the Flashman books, about which I used to correspond with Geo MacDonald Fraser, but alas he is now dead so I can't ask him about it.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 10:50 AM

The woman they have chosen doesn't look like Dejah Thoris to me. But as for the clothing aspect....this society of ours is too inhibited about nakedness to deal with a mainstream movie that depicts the Martians as ERB described them. That's unfortunate, but that's simply the way it is. The censors wouldn't allow it, and people would think it a threat to children, but it isn't. If you have a situation where everyone in a society walks around naked or almost naked...as in nudist camps, for example, or in various tribal societies that have existed here and there...it presents no threat to children or to anyone else, it's not erotic, it just becomes the norm and no one thinks anything of it.

It's because we have built up taboos about certain parts of the body that we are frightened by public nakedness. The Martians in ERB's books didn't suffer from that particular phobia.

Whether ERB thought he could sell more Mars novels by igniting the prurient imagination of an inhibited population with his descriptive prose, of course, is another question altogether! ;-D

They need a slender, young, brunette exotic-looking type to portray Dejah Thoris. The young Angelina Jolie might have done rather well for the part.

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Wesley S
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 12:59 PM

"The woman they have chosen doesn't look like Dejah Thoris to me. "

Agreed - I with that they had gone with the copper colored skin at least.But this girl is as white as they come. Thandie Newton or Grace Park come to mind as better choices.

"It's because we have built up taboos about certain parts of the body that we are frightened by public nakedness. The Martians in ERB's books didn't suffer from that particular phobia."

Certain parts of my body should be taboo...

As for the books - my Grandfather gave me a first printing of the Gods of Mars - the second book in the series. And the artwork from that book shows clothed Martians. The early teens would not have allowed pictures of nekked people - even if they were Martians.

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 03:00 PM

When Disney Studios had Tarzan retire the vines as a means of travel and essentially skateboard from tree limb to tree limb to pander to a gaggle of teen-agers with skateboards—

—and when Disney Studios had Tom Hulse (a good actor when in his own element) provide the voice for Quasimodo in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and had Quasimodo singing and dancing with Victor, Hugo, and Laverne, three gargoyles whose architectural function is to hang out from the eaves of the cathedral and barf rainwater on anyone below—

—and when Disney Studios took "The Little Mermaid," a story that, when we were little, my sisters and I listened to as one of the fairy tale presentations on the radio program, "Let's Pretend" on Saturday mornings and had a thoroughly wonderful cry at the very sad ending—and gave the classic fairy tale a happy ending—

I wrote Disney Studios off as an aggregate of tasteless boobs, pandering to the gods of shallowness and not giving children (or adults, for that matter) credit for being able to handle—and be enriched by—a wide range of emotions. Twits! Making a buck by taking classic stories and works of literature, works that had some real verve and depth to them, and turning them into the shallowest forms of entertainment.

BUT—

If Disney Studios does an at least halfway decent job of the "John Carter of Mars" movie, I might consider altering my opinion a bit.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 03:45 PM

I feel your pain, Don. And I share it. ;-)

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 03:27 PM

Yo, Little Hawk,

I first started drawing at the age of six or so. I was fascinated by "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" in the Sunday "funnies," and I couldn't wait for next Sunday's episode, so I would take a sheet of my father's typewriter paper, rule it into panels, and draw what I thought it might be. Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering zipping around space in rocket ships and doing battle with "The Fiend of Space" and his army of mechanical men (robots). Great stuff!

I kept at it. And when I moved into my teens, I was drawing my own characters. World War II was under way, and my hero was a fighter pilot who bore a bit of a resemblance to Steve Canyon, winning the war single-handed.

My Dad was very supportive, and bought me "How to Draw" books and the kind of art materials the books recommended. The right kind of paper, pens, brushes, India ink. . . .

I learned the hard way that I'd better write up the continuity ahead of time, or I could draw my hero into a fix I couldn't get him out of. So I would write up the story like a movie script:   a description of the illustration, and the dialog that would appear in the speech balloons. When I was about thirteen or so, I had about twenty weeks of both daily and Sunday strips (complete with color) all drawn up, four times the size they would appear in the papers, ready for reduction and printing.

I fully intended to become another Milton Caniff or Hal Foster or Alex Raymond when I grew up.

But at one point, I had many weeks of "script" written up, and I became so interested in constructing the story that I never got around to drawing the strips. So I stated writing stories.

By that age, I was reading things like Scott's Ivanhoe, Sabatini's novels, Master at Arms, Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, Scaramouche, et al., various science fiction stories and novels (Heinlein, Asimov, Van Vogt, etc.). I took a creative writing class in high school and majored in English Literature (Creative Writing specialty) when I entered the University of Washington.

It was a few years later that I fell in with Questionable Companions (pretty little gal named Claire Hess, Walt Robertson, Sandy Paton, who lived in Seattle at the time, Dick Landberg, others) and became interested in folk music. A few years later, I was making a good living at it (had changed my major to Music). Educational TV series, coffeehouses, concerts, for about ten years. Then came The British Invasion (Beatles, etc), and folk music oriented venues all switched to rock. I kept right on singing, but gigs were a bit scarcer and I needed a "day job."

When I went to work for the Boeing Airplane Company, my drawing experience stood me in good stead. I was hired for the Production Illustration department where I would take engineering blueprints and do "3D" renderings (draw what the part or piece if equipment would look like when installed in the aircraft). I did drawings for the 707, 727, 737, and 747 before Boeing lost a couple of government contracts (the cancellation of an American SST in particular) and thousands of people, including me, got laid off. But by then, I was working as a radio announcer on a local radio station on week-ends, so I was a bit luckier that a lot of people in Seattle at the time, I moved into full-time broadcasting. Nice to have a back-up plan.

But during the time I was at Boeing, in addition to production illustration, I did a lot of cartooning (officially). The P.I. department put out a weekly "newspaper," and I got a chance to do a comic strip. James Bond movies were big then (late 60s, early 70s), so my character was an undercover trouble shooter in the company—Secret Agent 00707 (what else?). Fedora, dark glasses, Dick Tracy chin, trench coat with the collar turned up, and tenny runners.

One of 00707's assignments was to guard a new, special order airplane being constructed for Mukilteo Airlines, to fly between Mukilteo, a small town (real) north of Seattle and Whidbey Island (a twenty minute ride on the ferry). The engineers found, to their amazement, that when they installed the new computer system into the aircraft, it became sentient. It developed prehensile wing-tips—and to everyone's horror, a bad case of acrophobia (extreme fear of heights)!

The strip ran for a couple of months and the people in the P.I. department and a few other departments (including some of the engineers on the line) followed it avidly and thought it was absolutely nutso-hilarious!

But some stiff-lipped executives were not amused. They thought I was poking fun at The Company and they order that the strip be stopped. I wasn't making fun of the Lazy B, I was just following the story where it wanted to go (such as the plane absolutely refusing to fly, but it was perfectly willing to use its prehensile wings to dog-paddle to the island and back).

Sic transit gloria smart-ass.

I still have copies of the department paper with my strip in it.

I do a lot of writing these days. I actually worked for a couple of years as a technical writer for the Bonneville Power Administration (the same agency Woody Guthrie wrote songs for in the 1930s), and I've got about twenty some-odd articles, mostly having to do with folk music, published in various magazines, and a book in the works, almost finished. I don't do much drawing anymore, but I still draw the occasional irreverent cartoon.

You do much drawing these days?

Don Firth

P. S. I had a marvelous experience about twenty years ago. The Frye Art Museum, not far from where I live, had an exhibit called "History of the 'Funny Papers.'" They had prints—and in some cases, the original drawings!—that went as far back as "The Yellow Kid," one of the very first comic strips, up to a lot of very recent stuff.

To me, the real centerpiece of the whole exhibit was the original of one of the "Prince Valiant" strips. I have several compilations of old comic strips in large-format books (Fantagraphics), including Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Prince Valiant. And there on the wall of the Frye Museum was the original of one I had in the Prince Valiant collection. Large (about four times the size it appeared in the Sunday paper), pen, brush, and India ink. No color, which would have been added later on a transparent overlay.

I had a chance to stand there in front of it and closely examine the details of how Foster did the drawings—and (most instructive!) the goofs he had made (covered with White-Out), and in one place, where he had cut out a segment of the illustration board in one panel, pasted another piece in, and re-drew that part of the panel. None of which was noticeable in the final printing.

Things I wish I had known when I was hard at it! As I said, MOST instructive!!

Hal Foster was bloody brilliant! More than a cartoonist, his strips were illustrated.

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 04:57 PM

I don't do much drawing these days, Don, but I used to when I was a child and into my early 20s. I drew cartoon stories of a world peopled not by we homo sapiens, but by civilized alligators and crocodiles. Relatively civilized, that is! ;-) They had walled cities and sailing ships and stuff, but they also engaged in a lot of mayhem. Out in the countryside there were numerous dinosaurs and other creatures, so a hunting expedition could involve some very big game and entail very considerable risk, needless to say.

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Duke
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 05:08 PM

I read all the books that Boroughs wrote and not just as a kid. I was in my twenties. I would still enjoy them today! I loved the Weissmuller movies and if you think about it, that was all we had back then for movies. I also liked Lex Barker and Gordon Scott but not so much. As for closeness to the books, it was Greystoke, The legion of Tarzan.

Subject: RE: Tarzan comics & 'Ape-English' memories..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 07:26 PM

Yes, "Greystoke" was by far the most faithful to the legend of Tarzan as presented by ERB. I really liked that one.