Tarzan - and the Lost Tribes (Vol. 4) (The Complete Burne Hogarth Comic Strip Library)

First the we must start with the reason why I can't give this volume five stars. That is because the publisher Titan Books has a decreased the page count in each successive volume and this time increased the price. The Burne Hogarth Years was announced as a 4 volume set and now is a five volume set with the final volume to be in the Landscape format (Wider then Tall). The Series has stayed at the $40 Sugested Retail Price for the first three Volumes until this one jumped to $50. It is half the page count of the first one which ran 208 pages. The third volume was barely over 150 and this one just over 100 pages. This $50 volume contains slightly less pages and is the same size as a the new Prince Valiant Sunday Collections which sell for $35.Part of this page shortage explanation probably lies in the fact that the Publisher has unearthed a rare set of Horizontal Strips. I had at first assumed that they where just a half page version, but according to the publisher they are Horizontal Strips designed to run at full page size , the other way in the Comics Section. Very few Publishers wanted to have to make their readers turn their Newspapers around to read them so almost every paper carried the Vertical version. Why this discovery is important is that the that Vertical version is the only version ever printed before and it cut out panels of art. So this new version reprints new art never seen by most collectors. This volume includes 4 examples of the Horizontal Strips as Burne started this format as he was concluding the last storyline featured in this volume. The Concluding two storylines in Volume Five will be all Horizontal Strips and done in the Landscape Format. While it does make sense to have the first four strips included here I don't understand the publishers decision to not run both strips on adjoining pages face the same direction. Instead the top of both strips both face the center gutter, making the reader have to spin the book 360 degrees to read these pages successively.Story wise we get three storylines from new writer Rob Thompson. In the previous volumes Don Garden wrote the dialogue but in the final story in collection 3 Burne did it himself before Mr. Thompson was brought on board for the duration of the Hogarth run. The size of the stories vary greatly as the first story runs four months while the middle Adventure runs a full year before we return to a shorter format for the final five month storyline.Tarzan and N'ani is the first story and is fun but not exactly original as Tarzan finds a lost Civilization of Africans ruled by Beautiful but evil White Queen. In what is a Plot hole these people who Tarzan has never met before know Jane is his wife and know where she resides to abduct her. It was fun seeing Jane in this storyline in her matching Animal Skin Print Dress.Tarzan On The Island of Mua-Ao starts out really great but kind of wanders around and loses focus. Tarzan is abducted by this Trio of Explorers from New Zealand who operate a captured Japanese Submarine. Eventually they wind up on the lost Island. Tarzan becomes a Gladiator in some Arena Sports. After Tarzan escapes to the jungle the story changes to a storyline about two war factions which might as well be set in Africa. It almost seemed like the creators forgot the whole Lost Island story. It ends abruptly and we get one panel of the submarine indicating Tarzan is going home. They really should have shown the reunion with his previous traveling companions and concluded that storyline, but they are not even shown.Tarzan And The Ononoes is the final story and a bizarre one. Tarzan encounters a dying Caucasian Explorer who's beautiful daughter has been abducted by the Ononoes. The lost race of the Ononoes are a comical race with giant heads and no bodies. They have a pair of hands one just below each ear in which the apparently drag their big heads around with. While I believe these creatures are meant to be terrifying they do look like a race of Humpty Dumptys.The art by Burne Hogarth is beautiful and gorgeous. The man is a master at both Human Anatomy and Jungle Foliage. This book would get Five Stars from me, except their outrageous price per page rate. $1 for every 2 pages is just too steep.

Excellent quality

The stories are not as inspiring as the earlier strips but better than the later volume. Also the gradual move toward modernizing the adventures of Tarzan was Not as enjoyable as the industrial age of his early adventures. When the locomotive and the Telegraph are the height of technology Tarzan seems more natural. Like many historical fictional characters, Tarzan carries the stink of racism and colonialism with today’s world. But I’m reality this Couldn’t be further from the truth. In Tarzan of the Apes and the Return of Tarzan Tarzan has reverence for the native Africans. He even brags about killing one In battle justLike he does about one of the great Apes (that’s his group of apes - Tarzans family) to the first European he meets. In Tarzan’s world it’s yes or no, kill or be killed no shades of gray no maybe. When Tarzan goes to Europe and then America he has no taste for the modern world and in true fauvian way he returns to Africa and the Natural world. Those stories are Retold in other volumes. The real draw here, is the amazing art of the great Burne Hogarth, probably the only American cartoonist in the permenent collection at the Louvre.

This book is very hard for me to grade because there are several ways to judge it. I don’t really have an issue with Titan’s presentation. The images are clearly reduced in size from the original Sunday comic sheets but it’s still a pretty tall book and I wouldn’t want anything bigger. The colors appear to be the original colors and not cleaned up colors but that’s fine because the original colors look pretty good. There is a four page introduction by artist Joe Jusko who REALLY goes all out in praising the skills of Burne Hogarth. The only complaint I can possibly find is that the book is a mere 112 pages long. It doesn’t look that slight when you’re holding it but it uses some fairly heavy paper stock. Volume one had 208 pages, volume two 200 and volume three 176 so the series seems to be shrinking quickly yet this one has the highest cover price.The product description lists Don Garden as the author but it’s actually Rob Thompson and you can see his name on the cover. In my opinion Garden was a very weak writer which is why all the focus of the series is on Hogarth. None of the stories from the first three volumes stood out to me. If I hadn’t noticed that the writer had changed from Garden to Thompson I wouldn’t have known since their writing styles are pretty much identical. Despite the writer change the narrative continues to be in the third person which I really don’t think works well in comics. I kind of accepted it when the comic was in its infancy in the 30’s but now we’re in the late 40’s and it feels archaic.Despite the gushing praise from Joe Jusko I’m not in love with Hogarth’s art. Hogarth has a very rough style which again I could accept in the 1930’s but by the late 1940’s the better comic artists had cleaned things up. I get it that a jungle adventure is more likely to contain some inherent sloppiness but I highly disagree with Jusko that with Hogarth’s art you could, “hear the insects buzzing, smell the remains of a fresh kill and hear the chattering of monkey’s high above the jungle floor”. I have seen contemporaries of Hogarth who drew better jungle landscapes and I’m not super impressed with his figure drawings. Tarzan is always drawn as if every muscle is being flexed at once even when at rest. I get the feeling that Hogarth had a set of about 20 or 30 stock action figure drawings that he would choose from. Even the other males in the comic all have the same physique. Joe Kubert is another Tarzan artist who had a very rough style but his figure drawings looked much more natural.So we have a very well done presentation of some very forgettable writing and somewhat dated artwork. This is a tough one for me because I’m a huge Tarzan fan. I’ve read every Burroughs novel and have tons of comics but the material here is far from five star. I assume a lot of the people interested in buying this are big Burne Hogarth fans and I recognize his place in history. I just don’t feel like he was adapting with the times and his artwork seemed stuck in the past. The other big issue is Titan’s decision to raise the retail price to $50. At nearly 50 cents per page that’s a lot to ask. This is for Tarzan’s super fans who want his entire comic history.

schöner großformatiger Nachdruck. Die Seiten gab es aber schon einmal in Deutsch vom Hethke-Verlag und dies vollständig von allen Zeichnern.Daher kann ich diese Bände nur als Ergänzung zu den Manning-Bänden sehen. Um einen Überblick aller Sonntagsseiten ab Hal Forster zu gewinnen,, ist für mich die Hethke-Ausgabe weit besser.Schade daher nur 3 Sterne

Frente a los volúmenes anteriores, éste contiene las viñetas con un tamaño un poco mayor y por tanto bastante mejor.

Edição caprichadíssima! Vale o investimento!!!

O melhor desenho só hal Foster é melhor

GOSTO DO TIPO DE LEITURA DESDE CRIANÇA E OS LIVROS SÃO BEM FEITOS O QUE ME AGRADOU. TAMBÉM É O MEU HERÓI DE INFÂNCIA