Hogarth's Jungle Tales Of Tarzan!

Burne Hogarth had already fashioned a stunning adaptation of the first half of the first novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs about his most famous creation Tarzan of the Apes. We encountered Tarzan's parents and were witness to their sufferings and we followed Tarzan as he grew to manhood in the loving care of his ape mother Kala. We saw him defeat the deadly Kerchak and become King of the Apes and then the story ended. There was no civilization, there was no taking Tarzan back to his ancestral home in England. The Tarzan Hogarth presented was the noble savage of a lush colorful jungle. 

He picks up that saga with adaptations of four of the Jungle Tales of Tarzan as written by ERB in the sixth volume of the long-running series. ERB had taken a break from the ongoing saga of his Ape Man to give another peak at his savage upbringing and Hogarth takes full advantage of those whimsical yet still deadly stories to create his most stunning Tarzan art yet. There are four stories. 

The first is "Tarzan's First Love" in which we find a Tarzan still missing his ape mother Kala seeking some tender companionship. He is attracted to an ape named Teeka but his considers himself very ugly and doubts his chances of winning her attentions. He competes for those attentions with a young ape named Taug. After saving Teeka's life she gives him some of her long-sought attention but then Taug is captured by humans and Tarzan goes to save his rival. He realizes the differences between himself and his peers is too great for romance. 

"The Capture of Tarzan" is just that, a story about how Tarzan is captured in a pit designed to capture Tantor the elephant. He is taken to the village of savage cannibals and escapes by dint of his own wits and strengths with some timely help from the grateful Tantor. The savage battles between Tantor and the natives supply some of the powerful pages in this album. 

"The God of  Tarzan" has the young Ape Man consider for the first time abstract concepts of a potential deity. He attempts in his naive way to find "God" in the Moon and among the animals but finally after much soul-searching and no small use of his burgeoning imagination comes to grasp that "God" is that which is good. But then he is confused when he tries to account for the deadly and loathsome Histah the snake. Hogarth's drawings of Histah in this story are magnificent. 

"Nightmare" showcases some of Tarzan's first dreams, dreams turned to terrible nightmares when he steals and eats some contaminated elephant meat from natives. Sick to his stomach and burning with fever Tarzan dreams of a lion which can climb into the highest branches, a giant buzzard that can catch and fly off with a full-grown man, and a deadly snake with the head of a man. He finally realizes these are not real but then he is confronted by a Gorilla, and it takes him a few moments to realize this threat is no nightmare. 

These pages are all in black and white and reproduction in the Dark Horse reprint is superb. This is Hogarth's finest Tarzan work to my eye, lush and robust and filled with the magical wonder he brought to the Ape Man in his best moments. Hogarth's Tarzan never leaves the jungle, but then why should he. 

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Hogarth's Tarzan Of The Apes!

When the great Hal Foster elected to leave the successful Tarzan of the Apes comic strip and create Prince Valiant he left a big hole for an artist to fill. Burne Hogarth filled it in spades. He drew the adventures of the Ape Man for over a decade in two shifts. Eventually he left the strip and struck out on successful ventures such as his school and his many books about anatomy. He was a celebrated comic artist, especially in Europe where his lush baroque images seemed especially appreciated. Then in the 70's Hogarth was brought back to the great creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs to fashion to graphic albums. The first I will look at today the second I will review next wee. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes was published in 1972. For this large volume Hogarth set about to do nothing less than adapt the first influential ERB tale of Tarzan. And he created this artwork in radiant colors. In this all too familiar tale we meet the Lord and Lady Greystoke aboard the Fuwalda where their lives are saved after a savage mutiny by a grateful sailor named Black Michael. They are put off the ship onto the African coast where they eke out a survival of sorts and Lady Greystoke gives birth. A year later she dies. Then the apes led by the savage Kerchak attack killing Tarzan's human father and a she-ape named Kala takes the babe into her arms, so recently bereft by the loss of her own baby, and she raises young Tarzan as her own. We follow his early years as a naked youth who lives the life of a great ape though he slowly begins to realize he is not like his peers. He discovers his father's cabin and uses the books there to begin his journey to some semblance of civilization. The death of his mother Kala brings him into contact with humans in a most brutal way and he slowly but surely rises out of his grief to use his wits and tools to kill Kerchak and become King of the Apes. And that's where Hogarth leaves it. 

We get no mention of Jane Porter, nor will we meet D'Arnot or any of the the other influential humans who soon come into Tarzan's life and bring him into the larger world. Hogarth is limited by space to tell the story of young Tarzan with lush and beautiful pictures. Hogarth's Tarzan is an idealized man, beautful in the extreme and as ERB intended suggesting that the Ape Man is the apogee of what a human being can become if unfettered by the cares and woes of modern life. Tarzan is a human being returned to the wild, but not a life which is brutal nasty and short, but one which allows him to rise beyond the limits of normal men. 

I am not completely impressed with the reproductions here by Dark Horse in the reprint edition in which I read the story. The art is still mighty impressive but at times appears muddy. The colors are nigh iridescent, but I wish they'd pop just a bit more. The blend of text, taken from ERB's original novel and adapted by Hogarth and Robert Hodes sweeps the reader along at a breakneck pace and frankly I had to remind myself to slow down and savor the pages. But as good as this adaptation of the Tarzan lore is, it's not Hogarth's best. He will do his best work on Tarzan in his follow-up to this volume, but more on that next week.  

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The Sunday Funnies - Tarzan And The Adventurers!

Tarzan and the Adventurers from Titan Books wraps up their run of Burne Hogarth Tarzan of the Apes comic strips. These strips are from Hogarth's second tour of duty on the strip from 1947 until 1950. In that time Hogarth drew Sunday color strips with scripts from Rob Thompson and James Freeman. His Sunday run narrative is completed in this collection by a few strips from Bob Lubbers who picked up the Tarzan strip from Hogarth. Hogarth also worked on the daily strips, first as a consultant for artists like Dan Barry, Nick Cardy and others. Later still he scripted a few adventures with art by Bob Lubbers. Of note too is that the Sunday pages here are presented in a half-page format which was dictated to the creators due to shifts in the needs of newspapers after the war years had diminished some interest in the Sunday adventures. 

On the Sunday pages here are most of the iconic images I associate with Hogarth's run on the character. He draws the Ape Men as a sleek athlete with grim dark eyes and jet-black hair. The strip is very much about the physicality of Tarzan and given the limits of the times must've come across as quite alluring in many ways. 

As usual Tarzan deals with treacherous white hunters who in the story "Tarzan and the Adventurers" stir up trouble among the natives. Tarzan evades one deadly trap after another as he attempts to stop these men from stealing a hidden submerged treasure. Later in "Tarzan and the Wild Game Hunter" he runs across jungle novices who don't realize the full dangers they are confronting in the wild. 

In the daily strips we begin with the lengthy "Tarzan at the Earth's Core". This was the work primarily of Thompson and Barry with Hogarth giving guidance in the early stages. This is a strange Tarzan tale as much of it focuses on a retelling of At the Earth's Core and the adventures of David Innes in Pellucidar. Tarzan agrees to go to Pellucidar with Jason Gridley and others. They find the hidden territory in the middle of the Earth but are quickly separated. The story goes many days if not weeks without a sign of Tarzan, a strange approach. 

Then we jump ahead a few years to two daily storylines written by Hogarth and drawn by others. "Tarzan and Hard-Luck Harrigan" features art by Nick Cardy and focuses on an old-timer who requires Tarzan's assistance when he fall into the clutches of a gang of bandits. Bob Lubbers draws "Attack of the Apes" which reveals a deadly scheme to turn men and apes against each other when a villain disguises himself as an ape. Tarzan soon clears this mess up. And that abruptly is a wrap on the work of Burne Hogarth on the Lord of the Jungle...with two exceptions. Those have to wait a few decades. More on that next week. 

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To The Moon Maid And Back!

That's a lovely pair of Moons don't you think. (That Frankie Frazetta was a scamp.) As it turns out the Dojo is going to the Moon. Specifically, we are visiting the fictional Moon of the savage "Va-Gas" and the brutal "Kalkars" as imagined by Edgar Rice Burroughs for a trio of yarns that reveal a tragic and terrifying invasion in Earth's future. This saga of the Moon Maid is not only wild science fiction and bizarre adventure but really a striking political commentary as well. 

The main focus will be on ERB's most famous creation --Tarzan of the Apes. In particular on Saturdays this month the Dojo will feature those Tarzan stores drawn by Tom Yeates. Yeates has been illustrating Tarzan stories for decades and every outing offers an inviting fresh take on the classic Ape Man. Tarzan as rendered by Yeates feels more like a real man than a noble hero, though he's that too. 

And speaking of noble heroes, I will wrap up my look at Burne Hogarth's Tarzan of the Apes work on the comics strips as well as the stunning work he did in the 70's for graphic albums intended primarily for overseas markets. Look for these glimpses of some great art on Sundays. 

During the weekdays, I will be dusting off and revising some vintage reviews of the Tarzan movies from the 1930's. In addition to the famous Johnny Weissmuller take on ERB's classic hero in the MGM classics, look for Tarzan as interpreted by other actors such as Herman Brix, Glenn Morris and Buster Crabbe. The world was never quite so rich in Tarzan goodness as it was during the Great Depression years when escaping into the wilds of darkest Africa might've seemed even more appealing. 

I'm also reading Tarzan adventures as drawn by Jesse Marsh. Marsh was the artist who first rendered the Ape Man on Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan for Dell Comics back in the late 40's. He was considered the definitive comic book Tarzan artist until the arrival of a chap named Manning a few decades later. Not everyone cottons to Marsh's take on the character, but I like it just fine. 

And there might be other jungle surprises along the way as we slowly wend our way to Summer. 

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The Sunday Funnies - Tarzan And The Lost Tribes!

Tarzan and the Lost Tribes is the fourth and penultimate installment in Titan Books series putting together the comic strips by Burne Hogarth starring Edgar Rice Burroughs mighty Ape Man. Hogarth had stepped away from the series for a few years but was hustled back onto the scene when Burroughs himself took an interest in the declining Tarzan comic strip and demanded some changes. Rex Maxon was hustled off the daily strip and replaced by Hogarth (sort of -- more on this next week) and Hogarth took over the Sunday page from Ruben Moriera with a new writer named Rob Thompson taking over for Don Garden who had helmed the series since its inception. 

This is the work that Hogarth is best remembered for, this is the stuff that made his rep for all these decades and made him a sought-after instructor for many up-and-coming artists. It's from these pages that the images I've long associated with Hogarth are derived. The first of the three continuities in this volume is titled "Tarzan and N'ani". The N'ani in the title is a queen of yet another remote tribe who worship a pagan god that resembles a giant ape. 

It's a rarity in the Hogarth Tarzan stories in that Jane makes an appearance is the center of the action, or at least the catalyst for the action as Tarzan fights to save her from the tribes that seek to sacrifice her. Needless to say that Tarzan does indeed save Jane (we knew it all the time) and poor N'ani meets a terrifying end. 

"Tarzan on the Island of Mua-Ao" is a departure from the norm in that Tarzan leaves the African continent entirely when he is abducted and taken aboard a submarine which voyages to the region near Polynesia. On an island there he and his abductors (some scientists) are captured by the Lahtians, a race that inhabit an underground grotto kingdom. Turns out that in addition to a bounty of tigers on the island there are two other societies (Orang-Rimba and Thalia) and Tarzan along with his ally, the giant Soros seek them out and band them together to overthrow the Lahtians. I noticed that in this series Hogarth loved to draw large cats and has Tarzan fight all manner of lions and tigers and such. 

Back in his home territories (more or less) in "Tarzan and the Ononoes" our jungle hero comes across perhaps the weirdest of the societies he's met yet in the comic strip when he enters the land of the bizarre Ononoes, a race of giant heads with arms who appear to achieve mobility by rolling around. I'm never quite able to picture that as the rolling always leaves them face up, but they are striking creatures. Tarzan is looking for a lost daughter of an explorer, and finds her and rescues her, albeit with the assistance of an ape-like tribe called the Wolos. 

One thing that is notable is that the format of the Sunday page alters to a horizontal one for the last few installments of this story. This new format as well as some of the dailies produced under Hogarth's watch will be the focus of the next report. 

But that report will be delayed for a month or so for reasons that will become clear. Next month in "The Sunday Funnies" something completely different. 

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The Sunday Funnies - Tarzan Versus The Nazis!

 Burne Hogarth is front and center in Tarzan Versus The Nazis, the third volume in Titan Books' series dedicated to the vintage comic strip series. Don Garden had been the writer of the series from the very beginning, working first with Hal Foster and then with Hogarth when he took over the artistic reins. Now he was called away to military service in 1943 and Hogarth became both the writer and the artist of the high-profile comic strip. 

Hogarth's first storyline was "Tarzan Against Kandullah and the Nazis". It's a tale that calls upon Tarzan to help his old allies the Boers who are now facing a threat from Nazis who are stirring up the black natives yet again to take up arms against the white settlers. The next story is "Tarzan Against Don Macabre" and it brings in a villain who is at once suave and deadly, a sophisticated Spaniard who uses his charisma as well as violence to maintain his power. The centerpiece of this story is Tarzan's battle against a ferocious bull. Macabre also keeps a "Garden of Death" filled with deadly flesh-eating plants. Tarzan is able lead a small insurrection against Don Macabre before he heads off to battle with Nazis again in "Tarzan and the Nazis". This time he has as an ally a white ape named Bulak. It turns out the battle is against both the Nazis and the Japanese as both have representatives using locals to fight for them. When they prove unreliable modern troops are brought in but Tarzan is able to deploy a small army of wild animals to help quell the threat. He leads the forces into a trap where he destroys their munitions in a mighty panel. 

"Tarzan Against The Gorm-Bongara Monster" has the Ape Man once again battling a deadly dinosaur, a variation of the T-Rex this time but drawn in Hogarth's distinctive style. Hogarth's animals often don't look exactly like you'd expect but they are brimming with power and speed. In "Tarzan and the Tartars" Tarzan once again is battling to return a rightful heir to the throne. He seems to do an awful lot of this in the series but then he does so in the novels as well. This time the saga takes on echoes of King Arthur with a magic sword and scepter being retrieved by our hero to prove the bonafides of the heir apparent. There's even a wizened old man guarding them in the manner of Merlin. The art begins to slide during this period and eventually Hogarth steps aside for the artist Ruben Moreira who signed his work here as "Rubimor". Rumbimor is decidedly less impressive than either Foster or Hogarth and the series takes a tumble in quality as the stories themselves seem perfunctory. But most of Rubimor's work is not collected here since the focus is on Hogarth. 

The last story in this collection is "Tarzan on the Island of Ka-Gor" which begins with scripts by a returning Garden with art by Rubimor who was wrapping up his tenure on the strip. Then Garden continues in tandem with Hogarth until Hogarth takes over in the third and final part of this tale, which is neatly divided into three in the collection. Tarzan battles all sorts of critters in this tale which ends with a triple volcanic eruption.  And for the first time in the Hogarth era, we meet Jane though she doesn't stay around long as a young woman wants Tarzan to find her diamond-hunting father. Tarzan recovers from an illness in the last part of this tale and is cared for by the animals of the jungle. 

Don Garden it seems has wrapped up his tenure on the strip, but more on that next time, as well as sme of Hogarth's greatest work. 

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The Sunday Funnies - Tarzan Versus The Barbarians!

Tarzan versus The Barbarians from Titan Books is the second volume in the series collecting up all the Tarzan comic strips by Burne Hogarth. Hogarth followed the legendary Hal Foster on the strip when the latter went to work full time on Prince Valiant and at first as you'd expect his work was similar to what had come before. But not too far along in the process the individuality of Hogarth began to express itself as he asserted his dominance on the character. In this second volume Hogarth's vibrant artistic styles are even more pronounced and many of the classic touches I associate with the artist become more and more evident. Among those touches are endless movement, with Tarzan in seemingly non-stop motion, only stopping when someone decides to hold him prisoner for a few minutes until he divines a way to swing free. The jungle in which Tarzan lives becomes more and filled with gnarled trees and limbs loaded with multi-colored leaves. In fact, the whole strip seems more filled with vibrant color. 

Don Garden is still the writer of the series as he had been throughout Foster's tenure and truth told his storytelling was getting rather predictable. That might be a problem save that such repetition was a staple of ERB's Tarzan novels. Most plots go thusly -- Tarzan sees a damsel (usually) in distress and intervenes to save her but is hated by the villain or villains who begin a series of schemes to trap the Ape Man, all of which fail ultimately. Depending on the sagacity of the baddie the plots run longer and shorter but all end with Tarzan seeing that he'd done justice and chivalry as best he can and then he hops ito the trees and is off for another adventure, usually beginning a few panels later. 

The first adventure is titled "Tarzan and the Peoples of the Sea and the Fire" and in this sprawling event the Ape Man must confront two cultures derived from ancient Carthage, one which worships the sea and another which lives on a volcano and worships fire. Both are led by devious men who Tarzan must contend with, but by the end an enormous volcanic explosion puts the rout to both civilizations. It's some of Hogarth's most dynamic art yet. 

"Tarzan Against Dagga Ramba" has our jungle hero confront a modern warlord who has plans for vast sweeping conquest. The idea of a malevolent warmonger was a ripe one for the times being as these strips appeared in 1941. Tarzan also runs afoul of a nomadic desert culture but by the end our chief villain has met an appropriately dastardly end, but you already knew that. 

"Tarzan and the Fatal Fountain" is to my mind the most outlandish and fantastic of the stories presented in the strip to date. In this one Tarzan encounters a tribe of giants who live in a jungle filled with giant animals. They get their size from the water which has unusual properties to say the least. A malevolent dwarf gets hold of the magic water and makes himself into a deadly giant. Also part of this story is a deadly fellow on an island who hunts human beings and Tarzan proves to be a tempting target. There's more than a hint of "The Most Dangerous Game" in this outing. 

"Tarzan and The Barbarians" is actually three adventures rolled under one title. The first takes Tarzan and a crashed British airman up on an escarpment ruled by savage barbaric warriors. After escaping these brutes Tarzan and his seeming ally confront a deadly Queen who rules a sea-going city. There is much derring-do on the waves, with Mastodons yet. The British pilot turns out be a Nazi, a topical reference which will fuel the next volume. This saga wraps with another tie up with the tree-dwelling Amazons and features the return of several of Tarzan's allies from previous adventures. 

These are action-filled adventures with Tarzan seemingly always having to make tough decisions to do the right thing, even for those who ought to be his allies. There is a good degree of treachery in these stories with dames falling head over heels for the Ape Man but furious when they are scorned no matter how gently. Next time the Nazis come to call in force. 

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The Sunday Funnies - Tarzan In The City Of Gold!

When the great Hal Foster left Tarzan to make more time for his masterpiece Prince Valiant it put the Ape Man in a hard place. Foster had become for many (including Burroughs himself) the definitive artist for the character and anyone who stepped in to fill his shoes was going to have a tough job. That person turned out to be Burne Hogarth who came to the strip in the middle of Don Garden's long saga "Tarzan int he City of Gold". Already the yarn had seen Tarzan wage a small-scale war alongside the citizens of the city against greedy invaders from the modern world. And for his efforts he'd been ordered into prison by the Queen who felt she had no choice when the miscreants seemed to hold all the cards.

But as the saga continues under Hogarth she suddenly relents and allows Tarzan to take command once again and to this end he attempts a different strategy and goes into the jungle to round up an army of wild beasts to counter the soldiers who want to ransack the city. He finds apes and lions and even elephants to help him after much effort and alongside the citizens they are able to eventually stave off the threats from the outside world. The city of the gold is safe and Tarzan makes a hasty exit to return to his old stomping grounds. 

After a revitalizing Dum-Dum or two get those old ape juices flowing Tarzan heads home to his ranch but is almost immediately called away to help a tribe with some invaders. These invaders called the Boers are actually settlers who have bought the territories they are heading to and the chief of the tribe just wants to renege and kill them off with Tarzan's help. But the Ape Man gets wise and what follows is more akin to a classic Western than a jungle epic. We have wagons arranged in a defensive posture and guns and arrows and even eventually a cavalry save. There's plenty of intrigue in this one as well. 

Then it's a displaced Asian culture which come into view in "Tarzan and the Chinese".  Actually, it seems that we get a tiny version of the invasions of Genghis Khan into China. Tarzan finds a immense wall and crosses over into a new territory where despite his help and nobility he is doomed to die. But eventually the invasion of barbaric natives creates a need for someone of Tarzan's talents and the highly civilized Chinese are then able to defend themselves somewhat more effectively. Eventually of course Tarzan wins the day and heads out for regions he's more at home in. 

That brings him in conflict with a strange race of "Half-Men" in "Tarzan and the Pygmies". A villain named Marsada is leading yet another safari to find treasure and it finds trouble instead. The daughter of the man paying for the quest is quickly the object of desire of the baddie and is saved by Tarzan and whisked away into the trees not unlike his original romance with Jane, though he has not such intentions with this young lady named Linda. 

They are only saved from the savage "Half-Men" when a powerful band of women appear to help in "Tarzan and the Amazons". Then Tarzan becomes the object of desire for the most powerful of these savage women Kuleeah and he has to do his best to let her down easily, though it proves mostly impossible. It's all he can do save Linda and get beyond the reach of these women. 

The final storyline in this volume has Tarzan once again meeting up with the Boer settlers and he must battle furiously to save them from a greedy villain named Klass Vanger who wants the diamonds he suspects is on the land owned by the Jan Van Boeren and his allies and works up the local natives with lies of the settlers breaking their promises to them. His daughter Matea falls under the spell of the villain despite the true love of a powerful man named Groot Carlis who fights alongside Tarzan to great effect. There is much back and forth intrigue in this storyline but as you'd expect by the end the lovers are united and the battle is won for the moment though danger sill lurks. 

We'll get a glimpse of that danger when we take on volume two of Burne Hogarth's Tarzan in Tarzan Versus The Barbarians next week. 

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Black Heroes Matter!

It's Black History Month in these United States and we need that annual period of reflection more than ever in this struggling democracy. Racism has of course been a mainstay element of United States history from its very beginnings and shaking off that curse required a civil war. But the racism which quickened slavery and made it palatable has not gone away with the loathsome legal practice of owning other people. Black Americans were second class citizens officially in many if not most of the states of the Union until federal legislation in the 1960's made such distinctions illegal. But despite that sweeping change (which has been somewhat pushed back in recent years sadly) the underlying attitudes which empowered it remained but did soften somewhat it seemed. 

So much so that America was able to elect a black President over a decade ago now. But that very act of healing only made those who still harbored ugly feelings stiffen their backs and grow more vocal in their objections to equality throughout the land. They muffle their rhetoric with lots of gimmicks and tricks, but the old ideas are still there, that white folks and in particular white men are the ones who have been chosen (by God I guess they imagine?) to lead this nation and the world too I suppose. This of course will change with time and demographics and the white power worshippers will slip into the minority, but until then, there will be a fierce struggle that gnaws at the timbers of the country itself as supporters of racism rationalize attacks on legally elected governments and endorse open insurrection as "patriotism". 

But enough of my speech. Above is the first comic book series Lobo (all two issues of it) which featured a black main character and hero. It was published in 1965 by Dell Comics. It was the idea of artist Tony Tallarico (who just passed away this past January) and writer D.J. Arneson and they produced the first issue and sent it on its way and went to work on the second. But there was a snag, the news vendors in the land weren't quite ready yet it seemed, and many bundles returned to Dell unopened. The series was ended after just two issues. But it didn't matter, the times they were "a-changin'"and soon black heroes were to spread throughout the pop culture of the American scene and help shape and redefine what the scene was. This month I want to look at some of the comics and movies that brought about those changes. 

The mainstay read this month will be the three volumes of Brothers of the Spear from Dark Horse. This back-up series from Tarzan of the Apes by Gaylord Dubois, Jesse Marsh and later Russ Manning was groundbreaking in the sensitive way it portrayed the relationship between Dan-El and Natongo who were "brothers" literally as a result of Dan-El's adoption. Dan-El was from a lost white tribe in Africa but he and his black brother Natongo battled together against many threats for many, many years. A remarkable series that showed many a comic book reader how the color of skin is not a significant and limiting consideration in how humans should interact with one another. 

I also want to read yet again the early adventures of Luke Cage Hero for Hire. Produced in the early 70's in the heat of the "Blaxploitation" era this comic brought a black hero front and center demanding spinner rack space alongside his fellow supertypes. Eventually he teamed up Iron Fist and the pair not unlike the Brothers of the Spear showcased a way that men could work together in spite of the limits society seeks at times to put on them. In these early Hero for Hire stories though, Luke Cage is very much like Richard Roindtree's portrayal in Shaft -- street smart and channeling a rage about how the larger society attempts to put limits on him. 

Another focus will be Tony Isabella's Black Lightning. This street-level superhero was a late Bronze Age addition to the DCU, but proved a sturdy one over the decades. I'll be pulling these posts and others as well from Rip Jagger's Other Dojo, a blog I operated for a time some years ago when this location became difficult for a bit. Look for Lightning each Wednesday. 

Marvel has had some remarkable black heroes over the decades and Falcon and Black Panther are among the most successful, both thriving in the new Marvel movies. I want to look at some of their early struggles against oppression. Expect to see other heroes from Marvel as the month tumbles along. Again Rip Jagger's Other Blog will supply these posts with a fresh perspective at times.  

"Showcase Corner" will feature Men of War, a later Bronze Age addition to DC's remarkable war stable of comics. It's notable in that its cover feature was Codename: Gravedigger which starred Captain Ullysses Hazard, a black soldier during WWII. This was DC's last new WWII hero from their classic period of great war stories. 

And I want to take a glimpse at some classic "Blaxploitation" horror flicks such as Blacula, Blackenstien and suchlike. These also will be exported from my other now defunct blog. Look for "Soul Cinema" on Fridays this month. 

And in keeping with that "Blaxploitation" theme I'd also like to take a gander at two of Marvel's 70's horror titles which played into the trend -- The Living Mummy and Brother Voodoo!  

And "The Sunday Funnies" returns as once we again focus our attention on those vintage Tarzan comic strips, these by Burne Hogarth who had the difficult job of following Hal Foster's definitive act. The story literally picks up where Foster left off. Hogarth added a whole new dynamic dimension to the Tarzan universe.

It's going to be a full if short month. And remember that black heroes and black lives matter, not just this month but every month. 

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