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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 20, 2017 8:54:12 GMT -5
Burroughs definitely has a formula. Hero finds himself transported to some exotic environment. Becomes fluent in the local language in under two weeks. Hero falls in love with the first girl he meets. Girl likes hero at first, then for some reason grows distant. Hero remains stoically true to her no matter what. Girl is separated from hero (usually being abducted by bad guys). Hero defeats bad guys, rescues the girl, and deeply changes the exotic society he found himself in. For me there is some "comfort" in a formula in fiction when reading the same character. It "feels" right. Like James Bond. You know he will find a beautiful woman in every story. He will drive an amazing car. He will say "Bond, James Bond" & "shaken not stirred". And you probably have a smile on your face when you read/hear those lines. Absolutely! A friend and I wrote a James Bond novel as a High School project, and we really stuck to the formula typical of the movies. As that was in the early 80s, we felt quite happy with ourselves to see our ideas used in later Bond movies. (Not that we were that creative... it's just that according to the part of the formula that says "chase using a vehicle not seen before in the series", a snowmobile was due to show up eventually).
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2017 9:46:27 GMT -5
For me there is some "comfort" in a formula in fiction when reading the same character. It "feels" right. Like James Bond. You know he will find a beautiful woman in every story. He will drive an amazing car. He will say "Bond, James Bond" & "shaken not stirred". And you probably have a smile on your face when you read/hear those lines. Absolutely! A friend and I wrote a James Bond novel as a High School project, and we really stuck to the formula typical of the movies. As that was in the early 80s, we felt quite happy with ourselves to see our ideas used in later Bond movies. (Not that we were that creative... it's just that according to the part of the formula that says "chase using a vehicle not seen before in the series", a snowmobile was due to show up eventually). I sort of did the same thing. I read a book on how TV & Movie scripts were written, so I wrote a script for Star Trek: The Animated Series. I even mailed it. I can't remember where I mailed it to. Maybe it is still in a drawer somewhere in Hollywood.
It must have been good...I never received a rejection letter!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 20, 2017 10:03:53 GMT -5
Among our members, would there be an interest in reprint editions of the Gray Morrow Tarzan Sunday pages? I've seen only a few of them, but they looked pretty good.
I wouldn't mind a collection of the Gil Kane and Mike Grell pages either.
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Post by brutalis on Jun 20, 2017 13:36:09 GMT -5
Oh would it be awesome having such great collections as Morrow, Grell and Kane to stand alongside the Manning and Hogarth. I think the Burroughs organization would build a much stronger Tarzan following today if they were to relent from only publishing the expensive collections and push towards a cheaper reprinting in TPB format. The pure cost alone keeps Tarzan in the COLLECTOR category and away from the general public reader.
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Post by berkley on Jun 20, 2017 23:45:14 GMT -5
Among our members, would there be an interest in reprint editions of the Gray Morrow Tarzan Sunday pages? I've seen only a few of them, but they looked pretty good. I wouldn't mind a collection of the Gil Kane and Mike Grell pages either. Yes, to the Gray Morrow. I'd be interested in any collection of his work. Didn't know he'd done Tarzan, until now. Another yes for Gil Kane, but probably not for Mike Grell. I'm starting to learn to like some of his stuff, but not to the extent I'd buy a collection of his Tarzan strips. Personally, I find the world a Tarzan a bit dull, visually, which is probably a big reason why I haven't read a lot of Tarzan comics. Too little variety - it's all jungle, guys in safari suits, etc. One thing about Morrow, though, is that he could draw animals, and specifically big cats, at least going by a story I once saw, I think in one of those anthology horror series, can't recall which one now. So I'd love to see him drawing lions and panthers and so on, maybe even a tiger (no tigers in Africa but when would a little thing like that stop ERB?).
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Post by brutalis on Jun 21, 2017 7:51:48 GMT -5
Among our members, would there be an interest in reprint editions of the Gray Morrow Tarzan Sunday pages? I've seen only a few of them, but they looked pretty good. I wouldn't mind a collection of the Gil Kane and Mike Grell pages either. Yes, to the Gray Morrow. I'd be interested in any collection of his work. Didn't know he'd done Tarzan, until now. Another yes for Gil Kane, but probably not for Mike Grell. I'm starting to learn to like some of his stuff, but not to the extent I'd buy a collection of his Tarzan strips. Personally, I find the world a Tarzan a bit dull, visually, which is probably a big reason why I haven't read a lot of Tarzan comics. Too little variety - it's all jungle, guys in safari suits, etc. One thing about Morrow, though, is that he could draw animals, and specifically big cats, at least going by a story I once saw, I think in one of those anthology horror series, can't recall which one now. So I'd love to see him drawing lions and panthers and so on, maybe even a tiger (no tigers in Africa but when would a little thing like that stop ERB?). You should Google Grell's Tarzan pages sometime and you might be surprised. His Tarzan world is not dull at all. Much more of a fantasy styling to the jungle adventures full of Ape-men of Opar, his La is stunning, African mercenaries, drug runners facing Tarzan and Jane in a snow storm and one scene of Tarzan enraged visually captures Burroughs version of a man so gone in frenzy with the veins of his forehead literally throbbing and bulging ready to burst. Powerful stuff...
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 21, 2017 14:30:13 GMT -5
I'd so love reasonably priced reprints of the material Brutalis mentioned, particularly by Grell and Kane. I've seen scans of these newspaper strips and they look awesome.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2017 14:33:36 GMT -5
I'd so love reasonably priced reprints of the material Brutalis mentioned, particularly by Grell and Kane. I've seen scans of these newspaper strips and they look awesome. Same here.
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Post by berkley on Jun 22, 2017 22:46:03 GMT -5
Burroughs definitely has a formula. Hero finds himself transported to some exotic environment. Becomes fluent in the local language in under two weeks. Hero falls in love with the first girl he meets. Girl likes hero at first, then for some reason grows distant. Hero remains stoically true to her no matter what. Girl is separated from hero (usually being abducted by bad guys). Hero defeats bad guys, rescues the girl, and deeply changes the exotic society he found himself in. For me there is some "comfort" in a formula in fiction when reading the same character. It "feels" right. Like James Bond. You know he will find a beautiful woman in every story. He will drive an amazing car. He will say "Bond, James Bond" & "shaken not stirred". And you probably have a smile on your face when you read/hear those lines. Yeah, if it's a formula I like, I don't mind at all reading variations on it over and over. We were talking a bit in the Books thread a while back about why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't - for example, ERB wrote about 50 novels following that same formula, but some of those novels I enjoyed far more than others.
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 24, 2019 18:00:47 GMT -5
My 1st exposure to ERB was the 2nd season of the "TARZAN" tv series with Ron Ely on NBC. The year before, I was watching "THE GREEN HORNET" and "THE TIME TUNNEL" on ABC, and both got cancelled. This was the same time slot as "THE WILD WILD WEST" on CBS, which was in the top 10 all 4 years it was on.
I'm far, far more familiar with movies & TV shows than with the comics, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit, I've never read any of the books. (Same with Agatha Christie-- shocking, but true!)
I recall sitting in a movie theatre in the summer of 1968 and seeing the coming attraction for "TARZAN AND THE JUNGLE BOY", Mike Henry's 3rd film.... and at age 9, saying, "That's not the real Tarzan!" (heh) What I didn't know for many years was, all 3 Mike Henry films were made before the Ron Ely series... but held back, to "bracket" the series. This was because, Mike Henry was supposed to do the TV series... but QUIT just weeks before filming was set to begin! Looking back, I say, great luck, as I like Ely far more than Henry in the role.
My first non-Ely Tarzan film was in fact "TARZAN GOES TO INDIA", with Jock Mahoney. What I didn't realize at first was, he guest-starred on the Ely show playing 3 different characters-- 2 of them villains. And, that he'd also played a villain in "TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT", opposite Gordon Scott. Producer Sy Weintraub must have really liked working with him. He'd been in the running for the role when Lex Barker stepped down, then almost a decade later finally got it. (I like to joke that Mahoney is the "Timothy Dalton" of the series.) He might have done more than just 2 films, but got a terrible case of tropical disease while filming "TARZAN'S THREE CHALLENGES", and didn't work for several years after that. That's how Mike Henry got the job. He had a magnificent physique, but somehow, his Tarzan seems LESS intelligent than the ones before and after him. ("Daddy, the top came off the car!" -- sorry, wrong film.)
I eventually saw nearly every Tarzan film frm 1932-up, though it was many years before I saw decent prints of some of them, and at least half of my TARZAN video collection is seriously in need of an "upgrade".
Many complain about Johnny Weismuller as being so far from the character in the books. A valid complaint, but, his films are SO MUCH fun, I often wish they'd just called his character something else.
Somehow the Philly station that ran all the films on Saturday afternoons didn't have "TARZAN THE APE MAN" from 1932... and so, I didn't see it until some months after Weismuller passed away, in the early 80s, when a NYC station ran it. WOW. It's easy to see why his version caught on so quickly. The sequel, "TARZAN AND HIS MATE", is like 10 times more of the same. More violence, sexier, more exciting... and except for the 2 title characters, EVERYBODY dies by the end. That's because initially, MGM only had a 2-picture deal with ERB!
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Post by berkley on Oct 25, 2019 2:19:06 GMT -5
Like Bond, Frankenstein's Creature, Dracula, and a few other things, the film Tarzans have taken on a life of their own, so I don't have a problem separating them from the books as a different character, related but not really the same.
BTW, you owe it to yourself to read at least the first two ERB books. Though I'd read 3 or 4 Tarzan novels as a kid, I didn't get to those first two until fairly late in life - I think I was in my 30s - and they are totally different from the later ones - I'd say more akin in spirit to 1890s romances like The Prisoner of Zenda than to the early 20th century SF/fantasy I usually associate with ERB (though there's obviously a lot of overlap there).
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Post by brutalis on Oct 25, 2019 7:27:52 GMT -5
Weissmuller and Ely were my entry into the world of Tarzan along with the Russ Manning Tarzan newspaper strip. Soon after came the books in paperback. Being exposed to such varying types of Tarzan as a young boy I never had any problem the different styles of his characterization from movie to television to book. No matter the minor variances, he was still instantly recognizable as the Lord of the Jungle to me. Tarzan is one of those concepts which either speaks you or it doesn't. Running about naked through the jungle, lord of all you survey while having a gorgeous wife and dealing out justice in your realm? Whats not to like? And he was raised by APES, and he talks with them and respects the other wildlife and people of the jungle he lives in. That is a true hero!!!
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Post by MDG on Oct 25, 2019 9:25:17 GMT -5
Like Bond, Frankenstein's Creature, Dracula, and a few other things, the film Tarzans have taken on a life of their own, so I don't have a problem separating them from the books as a different character, related but not really the same. BTW, you owe it to yourself to read at least the first two ERB books. ... And watch at least the first two MGM movies
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Post by dbutler69 on Oct 25, 2019 11:17:59 GMT -5
My first experience with ERB was the Saturday morning Tarzan cartoon in the late 70's and early 80's. Loved it! It was my favorite cartoon for a while. And frankly, it was more faithful to the books than a lot of the movies. I've read a handful of Marvel/DC Tarzan comics in recent years, but none, or maybe one, back in the day. I don't I've ever seen one of the old movies. In the past few years, I've read the first few ERB Tarzan novels and the first two or three John Carter novels. I've read maybe the first John Cart Marvel comic somewhat recently, too. So overall, the vast majority of my ERB experience as a youth was the cartoon, and I've only in the past 5 years really gone beyond that with the original novels and a handful of the 70's comics.
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Post by brutalis on Oct 25, 2019 13:20:17 GMT -5
My first experience with ERB was the Saturday morning Tarzan cartoon in the late 70's and early 80's. Loved it! It was my favorite cartoon for a while. And frankly, it was more faithful to the books than a lot of the movies. I've read a handful of Marvel/DC Tarzan comics in recent years, but none, or maybe one, back in the day. I don't I've ever seen one of the old movies. In the past few years, I've read the first few ERB Tarzan novels and the first two or three John Carter novels. I've read maybe the first John Cart Marvel comic somewhat recently, too. So overall, the vast majority of my ERB experience as a youth was the cartoon, and I've only in the past 5 years really gone beyond that with the original novels and a handful of the 70's comics. The Filmation Tarzan is a superb example of a cartoon treating the original concept with respect in honoring it's origin while creating something interesting for the "new"current" generation who may have never seen or heard of it before. From design to voice work and look and tone, the Tarzan Cartoon (like the Filmation Flash Gordon) only enhances and promotes further exploration into the alrady existing books or comic books or movies.
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