Written by Arvid Nelson
Illustrated by Roberto CastroThe original Lord of the Jungle returns! If you thought you knew the story, think again! For the first time in its 100 year history the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs story, Tarzan of The Apes is told UNCENSORED!
One hundred years after the initial publication of Tarzan of the Apes in Story Magazine, Dynamite Entertainment celebrates literature’s most famous ape-man with the new ongoing series, Lord of the Jungle. And just like us, you’re probably wondering if it’s worth your time and your dime to pick up yet another adaptation of a story we’re all familiar with. Well, lucky you — your friends here at Multiversity Comics picked it up first, and are more than happy to share our appraisal of the premiere issue.
Swing over to the cut and we’ll tell you all about it.
The first thing you should know is that this is definitely a Tarzan comic book, okay? Even though you won’t find Tarzan’s name anywhere near the first issue of Lord of the Jungle, it’s definitely the first part of what looks to be a faithful adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes. And although the story Tarzan of the Apes is public domain, the actual Tarzan name is something the Burroughs estate tends to frown on others using, hence the somewhat wooly title.
With the exception of maybe Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan is almost certainly the most adapted character in literature, and a ton of those were comics. Some of them have been pretty good, while others have been more mediocre than anything else. I, myself, am kind of embarrassingly partial to Dark Horse’s Tarzan comics of the 90s, and in particular, Tarzan vs. Predator. No, really. And with those comics in mind — both good and bad —
I just can’t quite figure out why Dynamite would even want to do a Tarzan comic, and especially one like this.
Despite it’s touting of being “UNCENSORED”, this first issue’s pretty much a straight forward, is a frills-free retelling of Tarzan’s origin, and really, only the first third of it, at that. Series scribe Arvid Nelson has gone on record in other interviews saying that this version is intended to be the closer to the source material than any other comics iteration of the character before. So it should be no shock, I suppose, that what we find inside is exactly what happens in Burroughs’ original story.
I don’t have a problem with that, per se. My problem is, I already know this story, and I’m willing to bet that most people picking this book up already know it too. I could be wrong here, but Tarzan’s origin is part of the popular culture lexicon. I mean, it was a Disney movie, afterall, and if I remember correctly, that did a pretty solid job of introducing the larger world to Tarzan. And let’s not even mention the numerous live action films made over the last century, or the widely read syndicated newspaper strip, or the various television shows. Sure, choosing to start at the beginning isn’t crazy, but I guess my issue is mostly with how it’s done in Lord of the Jungle, and not necessarily that it is done. There’s very little creativity in Nelson’s and artist Roberto Castro’s retelling, and some might say I’m just expecting too much from a $1 introductory issue. But it is my dollar, and I’m probably not alone in saying that I’d rather not feel like I’m paying for something I’ve already paid for more than a few times before.
It’s not my place to tell a writer how to do something better, so I’ll refrain from playing the “how I’d do it” game. But “UNCENSORED” of not, this first issue doesn’t even feel like a complete thought — it just introduces Lord and Lady Greystoke, which considering their unfortunate end, seems kind of like wasted opportunity and just plain sadistic. I mean, if you’ll allow me to put on my Jim Shooter hat here for a minute and say: this is a comic about Tarzan, with him on the cover, and therefore, should have featured him prominently in the first issue. I agree that it’s important to know his origin, and where he comes from. But why not kickoff the series with Tarzan’s famous battle with Kerchak, and end with him actually becoming Lord of the Apes. Working back from there would be easy, and could actually build some honest-to-goodness surprise into the story when it’s revealed to the twelve people who don’t know a thing about Tarzan that he is both a Lord of the Jungle, and a Lord of Greystoke; a jungle king by circumstance and an English nobleman by birth.
Continued belowSeriously, if you’re going to go to all that trouble of adapting the first 20 pages of a novel, then most of us would’ve probably just been better off reading that.
You’ve probably figured out by now that Lord of the Jungle wasn’t the book for me. But in full disclosure, I’m pretty familiar with the source material and can’t help but let that cloud my opinion. It’s not that Lord of the Jungle # 1 was bad. Average, maybe, but certainly not bad. Still, if the first one’s an indication of what the series plans to be, the whole thing’s going to end up as just another missed opportunity to do something original with one of America’s finest, but all too often wasted icons.
Final Verdict: 6 — Nothing we haven’t seen before.
