Monday, September 23, 2013

Tarzan Vs. Skeletor



Joe Kubert will always be my favorite Tarzan artist from the comics, but he certainly isn't the only one to make his mark.  I quite like John Buscema's version of the character as well.  Buscema was an artistic god to me ever since I got a copy of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, and he seemed to be able to illustrate just about any type of story.  As much as I enjoyed his artwork on the more mainstream superhero titles, for me he really shined on titles like Tarzan and Conan.  He was great at mixing in fantastical elements with realistic looking landscapes and giving his characters a broad range of facial expression.

7 comments:

Brad Mengel said...

By the Power of Greystoke!!

Mike D. said...

I can see Tarzan holding up He-man's sword and belting out his Jungle call!!!!

Bob Greenwade said...

I think these two preceding commenters have the right idea.

On another topic, I just got back from Rose City Comic Con (largely to promote the Fan Film Project, which I've linked here) and came across a couple of interesting pairings:

Captain America and the Shadow. This was just two guys in excellent costumes who apparently knew each other walking along, with Cap in his WWII outfit (something like what was in the recent movie). This, I thought could be something along the lines of World's Finest, with Cap working in the light and the Shadow working the dark corners.

Superman and Men in Black. I was dressed as MiB for day two, and another fellow was in a black suit intending to be Clark Kent (the Superman logo was peeking through) but close the shirt and he looked very MiB. Then I thought about going over to a Superman cosplayer and announcing, "Department of Immigration, Division Six." Of course in a comic MiB would sort things out with Kal-El and team up to overcome whatever alien menace was happening.

Men in Black vs. Darth Vader. Similar backstory, except we'd be trying to arrest Vader.

Anonymous said...

I also had How to Draw Conics the Marvel Way when I was a kid. I think I spent more time looking at that book than I did reading comics sometimes. But no matter how much I did it couldn't overcome by complete lack of artistic ability. I did learn cool cinematic phrases like "worm's-eye view."

Ross said...

Definitely some more shadow appearances coming up. Hadn't though of pairing him with Cap, but that's a fun idea.

pblfsda said...

My ideal Tarzan artist for comics would probably be Russ Manning. Mike Grell did a pretty decent job on the newspaper strip. I don't who I'd pick for painted paperback covers. Frazetta's done versions of him that were too dark and Vallejo's version was too bright (although Neal Adams painted by Vallejo turned out really nice). Has anyone ever seen a Bob Larkin painted Tarzan?

Anonymous said...

You do know you have Skeletor's name misspelled in your home page index. Don't you?

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