Bill Hillman's

Volume 494
presents

ERB C.H.A.S.E.R ENCYCLOPEDIA

Edgar Rice Burroughs'
TARZAN THE TERRIBLE

Art Gallery of J. Allen St. John Interiors ~ Publishing History ~
Summary ~ Cast ~ Titles ~ Paperback Covers
For Nkima's Art Analysis and even larger images of this St. John art
- part of our Tarzan the Terrible Compendium series -
please see ERBzin-e 105

PUBLISHING HISTORY (USA)
ERB commenced writing in August 1920

PULP
Argosy All-Story Weekly: 1921: February 12, 19, 26; March 5, 12, 19, 26
    P.J. Monahan: cover ~ no interiors
FIRST EDITION
A.C. McClurg: June 20, 1921 ~ 408 pages
    J. Allen St. John: DJ and nine interior sepia plates ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs: map of Pal-ul-don and glossary
REPRINT EDITIONS
A.C. McClurg: 1922
Grosset & Dunlap: 1923 ~ 408 pages
    J. Allen St. John: DJ and only four b/w interiors ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs: map and glossary
Grosset & Dunlap: 1934
Grosset & Dunlap: 1940 ~ ERB map and glossary but no other interiors
Big Little Book Whitman Publishing: 1942 ~ 432 pages
    John Coleman Burroughs: cover & interior flip animation art ~ Rex Maxon: 209 illustrations abridged from 1931-32 daily strips
Grosset & Dunlap Madison Square wartime edition: 1943 ~ 305 pages ~ St. John DJ & title page but no interiors
Grosset & Dunlap: 1949, 1955, 1958 ~ 305 pages
    C. Edmund Monroe: DJ ~ Rafael Palcios: Africa map on endpapers (omitted in 1958)
PAPERBACK REPRINTS
Ballantine paperback: July & November 1963 ~ 220 pages
    Richard Powers cover
Grosset & Dunlap: 1967 ~ 305 pages
    C. Edmund Monroe: pictorial boards using previous DJ illustration
Ballantine paperback: October 1969 ~ 220 pages
    Robert Abbett cover
Ballantine paperback: November 1976
    Boris Vallejo cover
Del Rey-Ballantine Double paperback with Tarzan the Untamed: March 1997 ~ 467 pages
    J. Allen St. John cover

Edgar Rice Burroughs' TARZAN THE TERRIBLE SUMMARY FROM BALLANTINE BOOK BLURBS Lieutenant Obergatz had fled in terror from the seeking vengeance of Tarzan of the Apes. And with him, by force, he had taken Tarzan's beloved mate, Jane. Now the ape-man was following the faint spoor of their flight, into a region no man had ever penetrated. The trail led across seemingly impassable marshes into Pal-ul-don—a savage land where primitive Waz-don and Ho-don fought fiercely, wielding knives with their long, prehensile tails—and where mighty triceratops still survived from the dim dawn of time. And far behind, relentlessly pursuing, came Korak the Killer.

From 1921, where it was published as a seven part serial in ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY, this is more like it! Starting off these reviews with some of the weaker, less energetic entries from later in the series gave me a wrong impression. I had forgotten just how good Edgar Rice Burroughs could be.

TARZAN THE TERRIBLE is one of the very best of the entire series, filled with imaginative details, strong characterization and tighter plotting that`s unified by the Apeman`s search for his missing wife. It showcases one of Burroughs` most intriguing and believable Lost Worlds.

Seperated from discovery by a huge nearly impassable morass, Pal-Ul-Don features a few prehistoric beasts still surviving, notably the sabretooth and the triceratops- like `gryf` (I`m sure the triceratops is the favorite dinosaur of many of us, and if one could be still extant and lumbering around, I`d prefer it to a T. Rex, that`s for sure).

Pa-Ul-Don is inhabited by two species of pithecanthropoi...essentially modern humans except for their opposable big toes and odd thumbs. Oh, and there is the fact that they have long, prehensible tails. The black skinned denizens are the Waz-Don, and except for the fact that they have a beautiful glossy pelt, they`re mirror images of the white skinned Ho-Don. The Ho-Don live in settlements, while the Waz-Don build elaborate caves which honeycomb cliff walls. (I love the images of these guys scurrying up and down sheer cliffs with their system of removable pegs set in holes in the walls...if the people I know who pay to practice indoor rock climbing could spend a weekend in Paul-Ul-Don, they`d be delirious.)

What`s most appealing about this story is how open-minded Burroughs was. The Ho-Don and the Waz-Don are essentially equals in intelligence and morals; and characters from both species are likeable. Tarzan himself is more complex and subtle than the simplistic one-dimensional portrayal he was later shown as. For one thing, he enjoys primitive art for its own sake. In an interesting moment, he appreciates gazing at scenery ("that spiritual enjoyment of beauty that only the man-mind may attain..."). Later, we`re told that he had differed from the apes in many characteristics "not the least of these were in a measure spiritual, and one that had doubtless been as strong as another in influencing Tarzan`s love of the jungle had been his appreciaton of the beauties of nature."

This dual nature is one of the things I love best about the character. Tarzan is not a mere animal in a human form, he is a unique symbiosis of the human and the animal natures. In the later books, this was forgotten in favor of increasingly mean spirited attacks on human nature, but the balance between Lord Greystoke strolling through Hyde Park with Jane on a Sunday and Tarzan ripping raw meat from a freshly killed gazelle* is an essential part of the appeal. Tarzan is yin and yang in a single body.

Another vital factor in this book being so good is Jane Clayton herself. She is badly missed by her absence after TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION. Not only does she give the Apeman a compelling, urgent motivation to go through all the hardship and danger he undertakes here (in later books, he often seemed to get involved in wars and crises out of boredom), but Jane herself is a very likeable character. For the past two years, she has been a prisoner of the Germans and the native tribes, but she`s kept her self respect and as much dignity as possible. As soon as she can escape, she does. Jane is half naked and unarmed, but in a short period of time, she`s making spears and building a tree house. The moment when she claps her hands in joy at managing to build a fire is a delight for the reader as well as herself. Jane provides a focus to Tarzan`s life that he himself  realizes very well, and her inexplicable absence from the later books accounts for much of their blank, inconsequential feeling.

There is another supporting character that keeps showing up during the story, a dark giant in a loincloth who doggedly struggles through the morass and vicious wildlife that gave Tarzan himself so much trouble. This stranger is carrying bandoliers of ammo and an Enfield rifle which he refuses to use until he reaches his goal. Longtime readers of the series will know who he is, of course, and his dramatic entrance at just the most critical moment is perfectly handled. The fact that Tarzan, his family and friends, love each other so strongly that they will hike through wilderness for years to find each other, is touching and rewarding for the reader to witness.

There is a lot more to recommend in this book. In Pal-Ul-Don, Tarzan encounters a false religion which he manipulates to his own ends, and the situation is handled much more defty than in later books. It should be noted too that, here the Apeman actually is Tarzan the Terrible in deed. Not only is he capable of rampaging through a mob of armed opponents, throwing them in all directions, leaping over low walls so quickly that no one is sure what happened to him, killing lions with a knife and so forth, but he`s remarkably callous. Twice, when he needs to inflitrate, he thinks nothing of killing a Ho-Don priest (who has done him no harm), cutting off the man`s tail and fastening it to his loincloth to pose as a Ho-Don. He also lops off the head of a slain warrior, taking it with him as a "recollection of the days when he had delighted in baiting the blacks of the distant jungle of his birth." (I don`t remember those scenes in the recent Disney cartoon.) There is nothing saintly about Tarzan, he`s no perfect Zen master.

 *There is a mention here of Tarzan supplementing his diet with fruit and berries, a detail neglected in the later books which seemed to have him thriving exclusively on raw meat.

WEBJED: BILL HILLMAN
Visit our thousands of other sites at:
BILL & SUE-ON HILLMAN ECLECTIC STUDIO
 Some ERB Images© and Tarzan® are Copyright ERB, Inc.- All Rights Reserved.
All Original Work © 1996-2004 by Bill Hillman and/or Contributing Authors/Owners
No part of this web site may be reproduced without permission from the respective owners.