Roy Thomas and Marvel's Tarzan

I want to thank Roy Thomas for taking the time to explain how Tarzan got to Marvel and his experiance writing it.  This was time consuming and kind of him!!!

                                                               

                 First, here have been many comic strip adaptations of Tarzan, here are a few:

Roy Thoma writes:

In the early '70s, after the acquisition of Conan, Stan and I discussed other licenses we'd like to pursue, including particularly ERB, Doc Savage, and Tolkien.  Eventually we  wound up with all but the latter.  However, the ERB properties  had just gone from Gold Key to DC, so we lost out on that originally and by the time Tarzan and co. became available to Marvel, I had moved to LA and was just  an individual writer/editor.  The first I heard about ERB properties coming to Marvel was when Stan called me and told me that there'd be a TARZAN book and a JOHN CARTER book, and I was invited to write the former.

                                         

 

 Naturally,  I preferred JOHN CARTER, but Marv had written that at DC (and been slated to do it for the briefly-considered ERB comics company that Russ Manning and others were putting together in the mid-70s, though it eventually went nowhere, at least in the States).  I felt I could have gotten JC away from Marv, but Marv was a friend so I didn't try.  At least I had TARZAN--with John Buscema.  Marv would  be doing JOHN CARTER with Gil Kane... who was adamant to me that he wanted  me to write that book (for some reason, he and Marv didn't especially get along, at least from Gil's POV), but I told him I'd just keep TARZAN, unless Marv left JC of his own volition.

Stan gave me a special assignment, for some paperwork to be given to Marion Burroughs, who was then running ERB Inc.  She was the daughter-in-law of the late ERB, I believe, and had a deserved reputation as a difficult woman to do business with after her predecessor--a guy named Hodes, if my memory's a-right.  Stan wanted me to basically write an essay and list of what other ERB properties Marvel  could adapt as series if the first two books took off.  Besides the obvious CARSON OF VENUS, DAVID INNES OF PELLUCIDAR, LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, etc.,  I came up with numerous others, including ETERNAL SAVAGE and RED HAWK AND THE MOON MEN.  The latter was based on a part of ERB's book THE MOON MEN that Gil especially liked, so I hoped we could do it together.  Marion loved what I did.  At a sizable lunch in LA with her, Stan, myself, and a few others, she was effusive about my master plan for ERB comics.  But alas, it was not to be, in part because (just as they'd done with DC) ERB Inc. required too large a royalty (I've no idea what it was, but that's what I heard) for Marvel to make a decent profit unless  the books were runaway bestsellers, which, alas, they weren't.  So we never got beyond TARZAN and JOHN CARTER OF MARS.

Oddly John B. didn't really want to draw TARZAN. 

Hal Foster's first Tarzan daily, followed by three Sundays

 He had loved Foster's TARZAN strip in the 30s, but he felt that Kubert had done such a good job with the character at DC that he preferred to just do Conan.  

He inked  the first couple of issues, but after that just did layouts for DeZuniga to ink.  For my part, I  made it clear that I was only interested in doing adaptations of the novels, and I picked up on JEWELS OF OPAR because it followed  after some of the things Kubert and others had recently done.  It worked all right,but I was new to LA and a different life there, and I kept interrupting the flow of JEWELS OF OPAR with some of the JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN, which I'd give John to pencil whenever I was too busy or lazy to do anything else.  That wasn't a good way to treat TARZAN, I know,even though the stories from both sources were fine.  I especially liked the inking of Steve Gan on some of the JUNGLE TALES adaptations,  including in TARZAN ANNUAL #1.  But I'll admit I didn't give much attention to TARZAN.

You probably know the story of how, one night, Marion phoned me at my LA apartment (up the hill from Warner Studios) and waded into me about the several JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN we had adapted so far, claiming we had no right to do them...  though by then we had done several with not a peep from her.  

I told her truthfully that Marvel's lawyers had told me we had the rights to adapt JUNGLE TALES or I wouldn't have done it, so if she had a beef, it was with Marvel,  not me.  Then she launched into complaints about a couple of the JUNGLE TALES that I had adapted that had also been adapted recently by Burne Hogarth in the second of his two TARZAN graphic novels.  She accused me of imitating (basically stealing) Hogarth's wording, which I told  her was ridiculous, because Burne and I were both aapting the same story, so it would be amazing if there WEREN'T similarities in wording.  Then she started on John's drawing, saying it copied Hogarth too closely. 

Two from Burne Hogarth

 That, I told her, was even more ludicrous, because while Buscema was a fan of Foster's early TARZAN, he hated Hogarth's work... had told me so several times.   I doubted he even owned a copy of either Hogarth g.n.  She kept pushing about both of us, until I told her she was getting closed to accusing us of plagiarism (my precise word), and I hoped she wasn't doing that.  She says haughtily, "Well, you can HOPE!"  I said, "I can do more than that," and I hung up on her...called Marvel and quit the TARZAN comic then and there.  

Roy

Here is Roy, in 2017, surrounded by the ORIGINAL Captain Marvel TV crew, getting an award that he shared which the late Rich Buckler.