Tracy Griffin’s New Book Celebrating Tarzan’s 100th Birthday is an Inspiring Work
If you are a Tarzan fan, this is the single greatest book you could wish for. It is oversize, giving room for lavish color artwork. Tracy and ERB, Inc have rounded up all the fabulous dust jackets for the Tarzan novels, the action-packed magazine covers, the startling comic book and newspaper artwork, and a lot of color and black and white photos from the Tarzan films and television shows. Tracy guides you through the history of Tarzan and the fabulous artwork that accompanied him during his adventures in Africa and its lost cities and the forgotten remnants of ancient empires.
Tracy has included a lot of things that fans have seen in collections but could never afford themselves. He even reproduced the great full color map of Africa by Mel Greifinger (way back in 1974) that locates many of the lost lands in the Tarzan stories. This is not done is some little weenie postage stamp size, but is big, a double page spread. Wow!
The thing that strikes you about this book immediately is the large size of the reproductions. Full page, stunning color of original artwork from some of the greatest illustrators of all time will just floor you. Since the book is so large, the artwork is most impressive. And since most of us could never afford to own an original Frazetta, a Hogarth, or a Neal Adams, this is the next best thing. The book is so reasonably priced that you could buy two, and use one of them to pull out the full page color artwork, frame and mat the pages, and have your own art museum of the greates Tarzan illustrations.
The book covers all aspects of the Tarzan legend: the novels, magazine appearances, comics, radio, television, movies, even Broadway. At 39.95 this is the biggest Tarzan bargain you will ever find. Top quality writing by Tracy, and top quality color graphics. You won’t ever tire of looking at this in wonderment. All of the great Tarzan illustrators are here, many in full page, glorious color of their finest book and magazine covers. Many, many original paintings, without the logos, full page and fantastic to look at. Do you like Neal Adams, Hogarth, Foster, Manning, Frazetta, St. John, Krenkel, etc? Here they are, under one roof. Huge splash pages. Mind blowing.
I consider this to be one of the 10 greatest books that I have in my popular culture library. Thanks Tracy and ERB, Inc, we appreciate all the work that went into this for the enjoyment of Tarzan fans.
The book is available at Larry Edmunds Bookshop in Hollywood, California. They may have some signed copies if you hurry.
The Centennial Celebration: Tarzan – The Stories – The Movies – The Art
by Scott Tracy Griffin
Introduction by Ron Ely
Titan Books, London, 2012, printed in China. Large size 13” high, 10 1/4” wide. 320 pages.
–Paulie