Hal Foster’s Tarzan. The Complete Sunday Comics 1931-1937
Before Superman and superheroes came to dominate American comics, there was an age undreamed of. Pulp fiction was gaining in popularity, and it occurred to advertising agent Joseph H. Neebe that there might be a market for comic strips based on action and adventure rather than comedy. He approached Edgar Rice Burroughs (who had just set up shop in what would become Tarzana, California) about licensing his Tarzan character as a comic strip. Burroughs, who was already aiming to make movies based on the Lord of the Jungle agreed, but this still left the question of who would draw the comic.
Enter Harold “Hal” Foster—a Canadian illustrator who had little interest in drawing comics. However, with times being tough (and about to become tougher when The Great Depression hit), Smith got the comic off the ground by drawing the daily strip in 1929. He would later return, reluctantly, to draw a full-color Sunday strip in 1931. And yet, over the next few years, Smith began to believe he could take the comics he crafted and turn them into the high art he’d wanted to create.
However, Foster grew increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the scripts he was given. He was also unhappy with the increasingly inadequate flat fee he was paid when the writers were given a percentage of the profits. He eventually left Tarzan for a more lucrative deal with King Features, where he was given more money, creative control, and the ability to write and draw his own adventure comic, the equally revolutionary Prince Valiant.
This history is detailed in the introduction to Hal Foster’s Tarzan. The Complete Sunday Comics 1931-1937. However, it understates just how important these comics were to the medium. Legends like Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, Bernie Wrightson and Jack Kirby all cited Hal Foster as a major influence on their own comics. And without the success of the first Tarzan newspaper comics fueled by Foster’s work, it is possible that the action/adventure comics and the later comic books might never have come about. For that reason alone, this volume is well worth studying on a scholarly level.
Another reason is Foster’s command of anatomy, which was impressive and unlike anything appearing in the funny pages at the time. Foster took his research seriously and lamented that some of the writers he worked with failed to consider things like what kind of trees were likely to line an African river. Alas, his dedication was not appreciated by his employers and one of the chief reasons Burroughs considered Foster the best artist to handle Tarzan was that he was very good at drawing attractive women. (This skill, it might be noted, was honed by Foster’s work as a commercial artist, drawing women in lingerie in catalogs in the days before photography became inexpensive.)
On that note, there is no publisher rating for this collection. The amount of sex and violence within it was shocking for its time, but there’s nothing that would be inappropriate for a teenage audience today. There are a few bare male backsides and one naked boy who comes to Tarzan’s aid in one story, but nothing more overtly sexual than various queens of lost cities informing Tarzan that he is now theirs.
It should also be noted there is some material in these comics that has not aged well. There are multiple instances of the white goddess trope, with superstitious African natives taking in a white woman as their leader. Thankfully, Smith does not present these characters as the offensive caricatures that were commonplace in other comics of the time, but the four-color recreations for this book do feature some Asian characters with dimly yellowed skin.
One final warning. At $200 this volume may be a bit expensive for a library collection. Serious collectors of Tarzan lore and comics history should consider this a must-have. However, unless one’s library has a special collection devoted to Platinum Age comics or something similar, this one may be a bit of a budget breaker.
Hal Foster’s Tarzan: The Complete Sunday Comics 1931-1937
By Dian Hanson
Art by Hal Foster
TASCHEN, 2026
ISBN: 9783754402641
Related media: Book to Comic
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+)
Creator Representation: Canadian,
