Recently, I've posted a lot on science fiction, especially on television and particularly Star Trek. I mean for the scope of this blog to be considerably more broad, so today I bring you this item that surfaced recently as I was re-organizing my book collection.I came across my Tarzan books from the early 1980's. I have 20 of the original 24 in Edgar Rice Burroughs series about the man raised by apes. Actually, until recently, I had 18, but I've picked up two more recent finds on eBay and alibris.com. There are of course numerous publishings of this series, both hardcover and paperback, in the nearly 100 years since the debut of "Tarzan of the Apes" in 1912. My books are one of at least two mass-market paperback editions published by Ballantine from the 1960's thru the early 1980's, and have black-bordered covers and cover art by Neal Adams and Boris Vallejo. (According to an online interview I found with Boris Vallejo, no single artist has ever illustrated the entire Tarzan series book covers.)
While Neal Adams is certainly no slouch and his art has a somewhat more primitive look that seems very appropriate for books about a jungle-dwelling ape man, I always preferred the Vallejo covers. An example is shown below right.
Pictured here is my copy of "Tarzan and the Lost Empire," about Tarzan's encounter with a group of soldiers separated from the Roman Empire who have been living for generations in a state of cultural suspended animation in the isolated African mountains. This was one of several Tarzan tales that featured "lost cities" hidden in the jungle.
The cover art exemplifies the atmospherics that make Vallejo artwork so interesting to me. Note how the background recedes as if into a mist. Even the fists of Tarzan's gorilla friends seem to be sinking into ground fog. This softening of the background seems to be a Vallejo trademark. "Tarzan and the Castaways" shows dust stirred up by an elephant that appears about to charge, while "Tarzan and the Madman" features Tarzan clinging to the neck of a deadly cape bufflalo in a struggle not to be thrown off and trampled, again with a cloud of dust raised by the fracas.The color palette is warm, as if the scene is lit by the light of sunrise or sunset or perhaps campfires or torches outside the scene. Chiseled musculature, another Vallejo trademark, is strongly defined on both Tarzan and the menacing Roman Warriors. As for the overall book cover design, the black background and strongly contrasting yellow border lend a simple but graphically pleasing design to this series of books.
Also notice this book's cover price. How long has it been since a paperback could be had for a buck-twenty-five?
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