Cover Cavalcade

 

October is George Wilson month. This cover is from 1970.

Cover Cavalcade

 

February is George Wilson Month. This one is from 1967.

Cover Cavalcade

A colorful and exciting Morris Gollub cover from 1964.

Shipwrecks and Rescues

Gaylord Du Bois wrote many Tarzan and Korak stories for Dell and Gold Key. He often lifted a plot element or character from ERB's original novels and re-used them in his own stories.

For instance, in the 1940 story "The Quest of Tarzan" (re-titled Tarzan and the Castaways when collected into a book in 1964), Tarzan is injured and temporarily loses the ability to speak. He's captured and caged aboard a ship by villains who intend to make money displaying him as a "wild man." The ship is eventually wrecked upon a reef during a storm, thrusting Tarzan and other survivors into another adventure.

So the "captured and unable to speak" bit was simply to get Tarzan into the larger story. In Korak Son of Tarzan #35 (May 1970), Du Bois and artist Dan Spiegle take this incident away from Tarzan and give it to Korak, once again using it to introduce the protagonist into a larger adventure.

When Korak finds his friend, the ape Akut, a prisoner, he attempts to free him. But he himself is shot by the captors. The bullet grazes his head and leaves him unable to use human speach, though he can still manage ape talk.

As it turns out, Korak's inability to speak is a legacy left over from the Tarzan story, but has no effect on the plot here. It only lasts a few pages until a storm drives the ship onto some rocks. A dunking in the ocean seems to have cured him.

Korak, Akut and a another captive of the slavers named Daniel Moray are the only survivors and manage to salvage a boat. Daniel, it turns out, had fallen into the hands of the slavers while trying to find his son Harry, who had been captured earlier by the same guys.

Well, nobody in the Greystoke family is going to turn down an opportunity to help with a quest like that. When they make it to the coast, they begin to follow a river that should lead them to the guy who bought Harry from the slavers. It's probably a bit of a coincidence that the slaver ship was wrecked near such a convenient spot, but such coincidences are as long a tradition in the Greystoke family as helping those in need.

After some minor adventures, they find the city in which Harry is imprisoned by the local sultan. That panel above, by the way, is a magnificent example of how much fun Spiegle's art could be.

This has been a solid story so far. If I wanted to nit-pick, I could complain that Du Bois waited a little too long before they found Harry. With the page count for the story nearly reached, his rescue from the city goes a little too quickly and smoothly to be as exciting as it could be. But it is still fun to read, with Akut knocking out a guard and Korak knocking out the sultan before they steal the sultan's private plane and make a getaway.

Despite the rushed ending, "The Slave of El-Ghazi" is a solid, straightforward adventure which borrows an element from Tarzan's adventures to use as a jumping-off point for a brand-new tale.

Next week, the Man of Steel teams up with the Boy Wonder.

Valley of Monsters

Cover art by George Wilson

The writers of the Tarzan and Korak books for Dell and Gold Key loved Pal-ul-don. This nearly inaccessible land hidden in the jungles of Africa, which first appeared the 1921 novel Tarzan the Terrible, was a convenient go-to location whenever the comics wanted their protagonists to encounter dinosaurs. And putting a dinosaur on the cover was always a boost to sales.

So Tarzan and his son Korak made multiple visits to Pal-ul-don during the run of their Dell/Gold Key books. One of these visits came in Korak, Son of Tarzan #17 (June 1967). After Tarzan rescues an on-the-run politician named Muhammed Isolo from a hostile tribe, the two escape through a tunnel that leads them into Pal-ul-don.

They soon capture a dyal--a prehistoric bird that a local tribe uses for mounts. Well, Isolo may have been a politican (forced to flee when the government he served was overthrown), but he soon proves to be a kick-butt adventure guy as well. He soon learns how to ride the dyal, then rescues a pretty girl from a tyrannosaurus.

The girl is Kleah, daughter of local chief Jakon. While her dad was away fighting another tribe, a brute named Umakok had tried to have his way with her.  Now escorted by Korak and Isolo, she is returning home when they meet her dad.

Everyone returns to the village. Jakon fights a duel with Umakok (which he wins after Korak prevents Umakok from cheating by using a weapon) and Isolo decides to stay in Pal-ul-don. He and Kleah have fallen in love.

Which is amazing when you think about it. One of the things I like about Galord Du Bois' script is that the differences in language is not forgotten. Isolo doesn't speak Pal-ul-don's tongue and needs Korak to translate. So he's marrying a girl he just met and with whom he can't actually have a conversion. Though, come to think of it, perhaps that second point is a guarantee of a peaceful marriage.

Any Tarzan/Korak story with dinosaurs in it is fun almost by default, though this one has its flaws. The artist, Nat Edson, is very good, but the script is a bit top heavy in protagonists.

For a short tale, there are an awful lot of guys doing the heroic stuff--first Korak; then Isolo, then Jakon. And, as I implied above, the romance part happens too quickly and feels very forced.

But it's a fun story despite its faults. And there's an insightful bit of dialogue at the end. Isolo says that he's done with politics and, "besides, there are no poltics here." Korak reminds him there was just a power struggle for leadership, so politics do exist and Isolo might soon need his old skills in this area. You can run away to a hidden valley full of dinosaurs, but as long as there are people, there's no escaping politics.

Next week, it's back to the Old West to visit the Rawhide Kid.

Damsels in Distress are EVERYWHERE!

cover painting by George Wilson

It just can't be helped. If you are a member of the Greystoke family, then you are always going to have Damsels in Distress underfoot. You can't go anywhere or do anything without yet another Damsel in Distress popping up and in need of rescue. "Awwww, I just stopped in to buy a quart of milk and that woman in the potato chip aisle is getting attacked by a hungry lion! Darn it, I suppose i need to do something about that."

For instance, in the story "Alien Jungle" (from Korak #21--February 1968), we discover that Tarzan's son Korak can be kidnapped by aliens and taken light years away from home--only to still stumble across a damsel in need of rescuing.

In this story (written by Gaylord Du Bois), Korak and his ape friend Ahkut encounter some aliens tramping through the African jungle. The aliens have stun-guns, paralyzing the two friends and taking them into their flying saucer.




Korak can't move, but he's still conscious, making careful note of the control settings as the ship takes off. Soon, though, they are on an alien planet. Korak and Ahkut manage to make a break for it, capturing a stun-gun as they do so.

Here's where the Damsel in Distress enters the picture. Tarzan finds a human woman being menaced by a giant ant. After the ensuing rescue, the woman--named Ateena--begins teaching Korak the local language and takes him to her band of resistance fighters.

It turns out the aliens have been enslaving the humans native to this planet, using their stun guns to maintain military superiority. When a swarm of giant ants rampage through the human camp, Korak tries his captured stun gun on them, discovering that they are immune to its effect.



That gives him an idea. They can use a fungus the ants like to lure them to the alien city, then lay down insulation over the electrical barrier that surrounds the city, and watch the ants rampage amongst the villains.

This works. The aliens, unable to fight the ants with their stun guns, flee in confusion to their space ships. Korak and Ahkut rush one of the ships and capture it, with the human setting the controls they way they were when the ship was on Earth. Which seems a pretty uncertain way of piloting an interstellar craft, but since it works, I guess it was a reasonable plan after all.

But, though Korak manages to fly the ship, he turns out to be lousy at parking it. It ends up in a swamp. All the same, he manages to crash-land in a swamp, bringing him and Ahkut home. As they say--any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

I like this story. It's an entertaining variation on Korak's usual jungle adventure. We're still in a jungle. It just happens to be an alien jungle were you are more likely to be eaten by a giant ant instead of a lion.

Russ Manning does his usual top-notch job with the art. I especially like his designs of the jungle and the giant ants. In both cases, they are familiar enough so that we immediately recognize them for what they are, but there are enough bizarre details to the designs to make them appropriately alien-esque. 

The story packs in a lot of action and a lot of story in its 17 pages. Last week, I whined about a Phantom story being too short to properly flesh out its plot. If I were going to complain about "Alien Jungle," I might raise a similar point--there are moments where the storytelling does seem a bit rushed. The ants attacking the aliens, for instance, is covered in two pages when it really should have been a much longer battle with an epic feel to it.

But "Alien Jungle" is still satisfying. You get the feeling that Gaylord Du Bois was doing the best he could in the confines of a limited page count, while Manning's art helps gloss over the flaws.

Next week, we'll leave the jungle behind and travel to war-time Germany, where one of Sgt. Rock's soldiers will get a day in the limelight.

Captive of the Vulture

A few months ago, I reviewed one of the stories from Korak, Son of Tarzan #3 (May 1964), but not the cover story. The cover, though--painted by Morris Gollub--is nothing short of awesome, so I feel obligated to review the story it advertises.

Not that this is a problem. The story, illustrated by Russ Manning, is a fun one and is a prime example of why Manning is considered one of the best Tarzan family artists.

It all begins when Korak and his ape sidekick Pahkut rescue a man from a leopard. The man, named Jeremy Carter, is a pilot who landed his float plane nearby to consider a rather unique problem. He had flown over an extinct volcano and had seen a village inside. He also saw a woman frantically waving to him for help. She's apparently a captive.

But there's no way to land the plane inside the volcano. So Korak volunteers to make a rescue attempt.

Accompanied by Pahkut, the junior Jungle Lord scales the steep cliffs of the volcano and enters the village. He finds the girl and they attempt to escape through the aptly named Cavern of Death.

Here, they find Jeremy has been captured and is about to be sacrificed to Goka, the giant vulture worshiped by the villagers. This leads to a great action sequence in which Korak (with a little help from Pahkut) slays Goka. They continue with their escape, finding and freeing the girl's missionary father along the way.

It's a fairly straightforward adventure story with a simple plot, but Manning lifts it above the average simply by making it look so cool. In fact, the page in which Korak attacks the vulture, which includes a wonderful half-page panel, could be used as the cover image for a Russ Manning biography. It's a perfect example of how well Manning understood visual storytelling.

If I'd been old enough to buy comics in 1964, I would probably have bought it simply because of Gollub's cover. But if for any reason that hadn't sold me, thumbing through it and seeing the Korak/Goka battle would have definitely clinched the deal. Who wouldn't fork over a dime and two pennies to see that?

Running the Gauntlet

In real life, Running the Gauntlet was often a military punishment--a soldier being punished runs along a line of his comrades while they all whack away at him with straps or clubs. In some cultures, enemy prisoners were forced to make the run. In 1778, for instance, Daniel Boone was captured by Shawnee and forced to run a gauntlet while they hacked away at him with knives and tomahawks. Fortunately for Boone, he was really good at ducking and dodging.

In fiction, heroes are often required to run a gauntlet when they are forced to face off with one villain after another in quick succession. In Spider Man's 1964 annual, for instance, the web-slinger ran a gauntlet of enemies when he had to face off against the Sinister Six one by one. A DC Imaginary story we looked at not long ago had Batman running a gauntlet of booby traps set by Lex Luthor.

In Korak, Son of Tarzan #3 (May 1964), the Jungle Lord's spawn ends up running a gauntlet.

By the way, the cover image for this issue is for the other of the two Korak stories in this issue. Since it's impossible to look at that cover without wanting to know the story behind it, I promise I'll cover it on another day. But for now, we'll take a look at "Warrior's Test."

Gold Key's Korak stories were similar in many ways to their Tarzan stories, since both father and son had identical skill sets and spent most of their free time traveling through the jungle and stumbling into adventures. But for the first 11 issues of his own book, Korak differed from his dad by traveling with a sidekick. This was an ape named Pahkut, who popped up in at least one later issue as well during Korak's 45-issue run.

So when Pahkut and one other ape disappear from their tribe, Korak takes an immediate interest. During the ensuing search, he finds a big village located on a river island. The villagers are holding a young elephant prisoner. Like his dad, Korak is the friend of all elephants, so a rescue is in order.

This doesn't go well--Korak is overwhelmed by guards and captured. The villagers' queen then gives Korak a choice: he can either be fed to crocodiles OR he can take the warrior's test. Not surprisingly, he opts to take the test.

This involves Korak essentially running a gauntlet. He's given a spear, a bow and two arrows, then sent into a maze of thorn hedges. There he encounters two archers with four arrows. When he's able to outshoot them, he encounters a warrior in full armor (and discovers his spear is made from rotten and easily breakable wood).

Once past this guy, he finds himself facing off against Pahkut and the other missing ape, who have been starved and tortured to turn them vicious. But Pahkut knows his best friend, so they let Korak pass. (They themselves are chained to a wall, so Korak will have to come back later to free them.)

THEN there's a whopping big crocodile. But he's past the gauntlet after that, forming an army of apes and elephants to attack the village and free his friends.

The story was written by veteran writer Gaylord Du Bois and drawn by the great Russ Manning. It's a wonderfully compact tale, moving along quickly as it effectively tells its tale in just 10 pages.

Edgar Rice Burroughs created Korak in the novel The Son of Tarzan (serialized in All-Story Weekly in 1915/16, then published as a book in 1917). It's a great novel, but after than Korak was confined to a few cameos in the remaining books. I think Edgar Rice Burroughs found that Tarzan was more than awesome enough to carry the series without the need to bring in a proxy.

But Gold Key (and later DC Comics) discovered that Korak carries his own unique sub-set of awesomeness around with him, resurrecting the character to give him his own adventures. Whether father or son, you just can't keep a Lord of the Jungle down.