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Tarzan - The Complete Burne Hogarth Sundays and Dailies Library #1
Tarzan - In The City of Gold (Vol. 1): The Complete Burne Hogarth Sundays and Dailies Library
Burne Hogarth is one of the most famous artists in the history of comic strips - at the peak with Alex Raymond ( Flash Gordon ) and Hal Foster ( Prince Valiant ). In 1936 he followed Foster on the massively popular Tarzan comic strip, and set a new standard for dynamics and excitement. This is the first of four exclusive volumes that will collect Hogarth's entire run, beginning with Tarzan and the Golden City .
Restored and reproduced in an oversized format, these editions will finally do justice to one of the most lauded illustrators of all time, whose work has been out of print for more than a decade.
Details of
Full-color restorations of the newspaper strips, reproduced in the oversized full-page format made popular by current collections of Prince Valiant and Popeye the Sailor .
Details of
Historical articles from Scott Tracy Griffin, author of The Centennial Celebration
Restored and reproduced in an oversized format, these editions will finally do justice to one of the most lauded illustrators of all time, whose work has been out of print for more than a decade.
Details of
Full-color restorations of the newspaper strips, reproduced in the oversized full-page format made popular by current collections of Prince Valiant and Popeye the Sailor .
Details of
Historical articles from Scott Tracy Griffin, author of The Centennial Celebration
- GenresComicsComic Book
208 pages, Hardcover
First published April 22, 2014
2 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
About the author
Burne Hogarth
97 books88 followersBurne Hogarth started young. Born in 1911, he was enrolled in the Chicago Art Institute at the age of 12 and an assistant cartoonist at Associated Editors' Syndicate at 15. At the age of 26, he was chosen from a pool of a dozen applicants as Hal Foster's successor on the United Features Syndicate strip, "Tarzan". His first strip, very much in Foster's style, appeared May 9, 1937. It wasn't long before he abandoned the attempt to maintain the original look of the strip and brought his own dynamic style to the Sunday comics page.
In 1947, Hogarth co-founded (with Silas Rhodes) the School of Visual Arts which became his new direction in life. He was able to pass his unique methods on illustration to his students in the classroom and, in 1958, to the readers of his first book, Dynamic Anatomy.
Hogarth retired from the SVA in 1970 but continued to teach at The Parsons School of Design and, after a move to Los Angeles, The Otis School and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. During his years teaching, Hogarth authored a number of anatomy and drawing books that have become standard references for artists of every sort, including computer animators. Dynamic Anatomy (1958) and Drawing the Human Head (1965) were followed by further investigations of the human form. Dynamic Figure Drawing (1970) and Drawing Dynamic Hands (1977) completed the figure cycle. Dynamic Light and Shade (1981) and Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery (1995) explored other aspects relative to rendering the figure.
After more than 20 years away from strip work and being hailed in Europe as "the Michelangelo of the comic strip," Hogarth returned to sequential art in 1972 with his groundbreaking Tarzan of the Apes, a large format hardbound book published by Watson Guptill in 11 languages. It marks the beginning of the sober volume of integrated pictorial fiction, what is currently understood to be a graphic novel.
Burne Hogarth passed away in 1996 at the age of 84.
In 1947, Hogarth co-founded (with Silas Rhodes) the School of Visual Arts which became his new direction in life. He was able to pass his unique methods on illustration to his students in the classroom and, in 1958, to the readers of his first book, Dynamic Anatomy.
Hogarth retired from the SVA in 1970 but continued to teach at The Parsons School of Design and, after a move to Los Angeles, The Otis School and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. During his years teaching, Hogarth authored a number of anatomy and drawing books that have become standard references for artists of every sort, including computer animators. Dynamic Anatomy (1958) and Drawing the Human Head (1965) were followed by further investigations of the human form. Dynamic Figure Drawing (1970) and Drawing Dynamic Hands (1977) completed the figure cycle. Dynamic Light and Shade (1981) and Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery (1995) explored other aspects relative to rendering the figure.
After more than 20 years away from strip work and being hailed in Europe as "the Michelangelo of the comic strip," Hogarth returned to sequential art in 1972 with his groundbreaking Tarzan of the Apes, a large format hardbound book published by Watson Guptill in 11 languages. It marks the beginning of the sober volume of integrated pictorial fiction, what is currently understood to be a graphic novel.
Burne Hogarth passed away in 1996 at the age of 84.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 14, 2022
This is very well drawn but the stories don't do it for me. I've come to realize I like the Tarzan stories rooted in the books, not the movies. These draw from the movies. Still, there's nothing really wrong with, just not my part of the jungle.
August 21, 2023
So I finished up Tarzan - In The City of Gold (Vol. 1): The Complete Burne Hogarth Sundays from Titan books. Honestly, strip reprint books are hard to review. There are a lot of things to look at, and sometimes the sum of the parts can be more or less than the whole. So I'll just take a look at what I think are the salient parts.
The physical book: The book itself is pretty nice. I believe it's tabloid size, not broadsheet, but it's certainly big enough to do justice to Sunday pages that were so much bigger than we have been used to seeing them in more than a half a century. It's hardcover (without dustjacket) and the binding seems pretty good. The reproduction of the strips is decent. At times it seems a bit fuzzy and at times the colors are muted. The biggest problem, especially for my old eyes, is that if the text is on a red or orange background it's incredibly hard to read. Now that may have been an issue in the original. Or it may not. But it's definitely an issue here and plays in with the fuzziness of the line.
Art: Hogarth is a master and the artwork is excellent. I'll be the first to acknowledge that Joe Kubert is my favorite Tarzan artist (we're talking comic art here, not covers or spot illos). He gave Tarzan, and particularly the jungles, an earthy feel that made it look humid, dank, sweaty and dirty. Hogarth's jungle is pretty clean, but it's definitely not as pristine as Hal Foster's or Russ Manning's. The only real issue with the art is the reproduction isn't as crisp as one would want.
Story: And here's the rub. The stories here are pretty bad. I'm well aware that these are over 80 years old. And there are limitations in the form because you want to end each page on a cliff-hanger to get the reader to come back next week. But they just aren't very good. First, this is not the same Tarzan as the Burroughs novels. He's similar. But there's no Jane. Not a mention. And it's not pre-Jane Tarzan, because then he shouldn't be actively hanging out with different groups of white folks. The stories suffer from a lot of Burroughs' faults (coincidence, love at first sight, deus ex machina) without any of his strengths. And while, again, I recognize that these are old and times change, it's super hard to see the poor down-trodden Boers who have been taken advantage of by the wicked and wily jungle natives.
This is a nice package. It's going to look great on your shelf or your coffee table. And it's excellent to page through and check out Hogarth's art. He really was an excellent comics artist. But it's a rough go to sit down and read this for the stories it contains.
The physical book: The book itself is pretty nice. I believe it's tabloid size, not broadsheet, but it's certainly big enough to do justice to Sunday pages that were so much bigger than we have been used to seeing them in more than a half a century. It's hardcover (without dustjacket) and the binding seems pretty good. The reproduction of the strips is decent. At times it seems a bit fuzzy and at times the colors are muted. The biggest problem, especially for my old eyes, is that if the text is on a red or orange background it's incredibly hard to read. Now that may have been an issue in the original. Or it may not. But it's definitely an issue here and plays in with the fuzziness of the line.
Art: Hogarth is a master and the artwork is excellent. I'll be the first to acknowledge that Joe Kubert is my favorite Tarzan artist (we're talking comic art here, not covers or spot illos). He gave Tarzan, and particularly the jungles, an earthy feel that made it look humid, dank, sweaty and dirty. Hogarth's jungle is pretty clean, but it's definitely not as pristine as Hal Foster's or Russ Manning's. The only real issue with the art is the reproduction isn't as crisp as one would want.
Story: And here's the rub. The stories here are pretty bad. I'm well aware that these are over 80 years old. And there are limitations in the form because you want to end each page on a cliff-hanger to get the reader to come back next week. But they just aren't very good. First, this is not the same Tarzan as the Burroughs novels. He's similar. But there's no Jane. Not a mention. And it's not pre-Jane Tarzan, because then he shouldn't be actively hanging out with different groups of white folks. The stories suffer from a lot of Burroughs' faults (coincidence, love at first sight, deus ex machina) without any of his strengths. And while, again, I recognize that these are old and times change, it's super hard to see the poor down-trodden Boers who have been taken advantage of by the wicked and wily jungle natives.
This is a nice package. It's going to look great on your shelf or your coffee table. And it's excellent to page through and check out Hogarth's art. He really was an excellent comics artist. But it's a rough go to sit down and read this for the stories it contains.
February 28, 2016
Tarzan is King of the Jungle, but he is also prone to adventure! Be it defending a hidden city from invaders, protecting the settlers from natives, uncovering a Chinese civilization in the jungle, being mistaken for the Missing Link, or battling warrior women, Tarzan uses his brains and brawn to triumph!
Written by Don Garden, Tarzan in the City of Gold begins Burne Hogarth’s legendary run as artist for the newspaper serial and the first volume in Titan’s attempt to reprint all of Hogarth’s comic strip library. The oversized book is full color and contains the finish of “Tarzan in the City of Gold” and the complete runs of “Tarzan and the Boers—Part 1”, “Tarzan and the Chinese”, “Tarzan and the Pygmies”, “Tarzan and the Amazons”, and “Tarzan and the Boers—Part II” which ran from May 9, 1937 to April 28, 1940.
I grew up with Tarzan and images of Tarzan, and it is hard to imagine that when this story was released, the character of Tarzan was only twenty-five years old. Written by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912 and published in book form in 1914, Tarzan of the Apes created a modern folk hero. The character of Tarzan evolved over time but early versions of the character from these novels and strips like this collection helped craft an icon.
As revealed in the beginning of the book, Burne Hogarth had a lot to live up to. He followed the critically acclaimed Hal Foster who left the series to focus on Prince Valiant and many felt that Burne couldn’t match Foster. Burne instead turned Tarzan into his own and really brought style and class to the character. It really is the Tarzan you imagine and remember.
The book does have some writing problems going for it in that, these are serialized stories that were meant to be read daily in the paper. The stories call upon the reader for the most part to remember “when we last left Tarzan” with little refreshers, but the fact that each day is a page long story leaves it quite stuttered. It isn’t really something that is necessarily something you can sit down and read at great lengths without seeing repetition and pacing issues.
There is also the general underlying Tarzan problem (and a problem of many comics, novels, and films of the time) of the xenophobic approach to foreigners. The portrayals of the natives are often racist and Tarzan also encounters other cultures which seem like bad stereotypes at points. It was the culture and acceptable at the time but might be hard for some modern readers to enjoy…and as bad as some of the portrayals are, Tarzan isn’t the worst offender in this category.
Tarzan in the City of Gold is worth checking out if you are a fan of the classic character or you enjoy old newspaper strips. Older readers might enjoy the flashback of going back to the day when you anxiously awaited to see what the characters of your daily papers were doing, and younger readers can see how papers have changed over the years. The collection looks great and probably is better than some of the original quality, so for Tarzan buffs, it is a must!
Written by Don Garden, Tarzan in the City of Gold begins Burne Hogarth’s legendary run as artist for the newspaper serial and the first volume in Titan’s attempt to reprint all of Hogarth’s comic strip library. The oversized book is full color and contains the finish of “Tarzan in the City of Gold” and the complete runs of “Tarzan and the Boers—Part 1”, “Tarzan and the Chinese”, “Tarzan and the Pygmies”, “Tarzan and the Amazons”, and “Tarzan and the Boers—Part II” which ran from May 9, 1937 to April 28, 1940.
I grew up with Tarzan and images of Tarzan, and it is hard to imagine that when this story was released, the character of Tarzan was only twenty-five years old. Written by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912 and published in book form in 1914, Tarzan of the Apes created a modern folk hero. The character of Tarzan evolved over time but early versions of the character from these novels and strips like this collection helped craft an icon.
As revealed in the beginning of the book, Burne Hogarth had a lot to live up to. He followed the critically acclaimed Hal Foster who left the series to focus on Prince Valiant and many felt that Burne couldn’t match Foster. Burne instead turned Tarzan into his own and really brought style and class to the character. It really is the Tarzan you imagine and remember.
The book does have some writing problems going for it in that, these are serialized stories that were meant to be read daily in the paper. The stories call upon the reader for the most part to remember “when we last left Tarzan” with little refreshers, but the fact that each day is a page long story leaves it quite stuttered. It isn’t really something that is necessarily something you can sit down and read at great lengths without seeing repetition and pacing issues.
There is also the general underlying Tarzan problem (and a problem of many comics, novels, and films of the time) of the xenophobic approach to foreigners. The portrayals of the natives are often racist and Tarzan also encounters other cultures which seem like bad stereotypes at points. It was the culture and acceptable at the time but might be hard for some modern readers to enjoy…and as bad as some of the portrayals are, Tarzan isn’t the worst offender in this category.
Tarzan in the City of Gold is worth checking out if you are a fan of the classic character or you enjoy old newspaper strips. Older readers might enjoy the flashback of going back to the day when you anxiously awaited to see what the characters of your daily papers were doing, and younger readers can see how papers have changed over the years. The collection looks great and probably is better than some of the original quality, so for Tarzan buffs, it is a must!
December 29, 2014
Tarzan — In The City of Gold (Vol. 1): The Complete Burne Hogarth Sundays and Dailies Library by Don Garden is a 3 year collection of all Hogarth’s newspaper strips. This is the first of four volumes.
Tarzan — In The City of Gold (Vol. 1): The Complete Burne Hogarth Sundays and Dailies Library by Don Garden is a coffee table book featuring the early comic strips. While the title is similar to the Tarzan and the City of Gold, the story is different.
For me, the story is secondary to the art when it comes to these type of books (a very close second, nevertheless…). While the adventures of Tarzan are always exciting, and especially in this format leaving you wanting for more, I found the story (which included time travel at some point) to be somewhat lackluster.
I really enjoy these big format books which bring the comics to life. Much of the art in the panels is very detailed and rich, the format (which should be bigger) really brings out the fine detail in the artwork and makes the panels immensely enjoyable.
That being said, I wished the book would have been bigger to show off more of the art. While the hardcover is a decent size (12” cover I believe), there artwork is merely “bigger” than the original reprint but nowhere near the size of the original art.
This is a book which is well worth the cover price to any Tarzan or Hogarth fan. The non-glossy pages are a great choice for this collection and the reprints look very good on them.
For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
Tarzan — In The City of Gold (Vol. 1): The Complete Burne Hogarth Sundays and Dailies Library by Don Garden is a coffee table book featuring the early comic strips. While the title is similar to the Tarzan and the City of Gold, the story is different.
For me, the story is secondary to the art when it comes to these type of books (a very close second, nevertheless…). While the adventures of Tarzan are always exciting, and especially in this format leaving you wanting for more, I found the story (which included time travel at some point) to be somewhat lackluster.
I really enjoy these big format books which bring the comics to life. Much of the art in the panels is very detailed and rich, the format (which should be bigger) really brings out the fine detail in the artwork and makes the panels immensely enjoyable.
That being said, I wished the book would have been bigger to show off more of the art. While the hardcover is a decent size (12” cover I believe), there artwork is merely “bigger” than the original reprint but nowhere near the size of the original art.
This is a book which is well worth the cover price to any Tarzan or Hogarth fan. The non-glossy pages are a great choice for this collection and the reprints look very good on them.
For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
August 12, 2014
Review written for and published by Portland Book Review on August 7th:
A pop culture phenomenon, Tarzan has amused and entertained since Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first book was published in 1912. The novel’s popularity spawned many more novels, movies, and comic strips. In Tarzan in the City of Gold, Titan Books has collected the entire comic run illustrated by artist Burne Hogarth. The book displays the illustrations in the full-page, full-color spreads as they were originally published. It also includes an essay at the beginning introducing Burne Hogarth, and providing a brief history of Tarzan.
Tarzan in the City of Gold is well-designed and colorful collection of comics; perfect for readers searching for the nostalgia of following Tarzan’s adventures in the newspaper. Thanks to the introductory essay, this book also functions well as an introduction for new initiates to the fandom. Because the book is reproducing comics originally printed in the newspaper, many of the images are slightly blurry, and colors overlap into strange areas due to the printing processes of the time. Despite this, and partly due to the large size of the individual images and the bold line art, the comics remain easy to follow. This book is a great collection for Burne Hogarth enthusiasts, and a good introduction into one of the many iterations of Tarzan.
A pop culture phenomenon, Tarzan has amused and entertained since Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first book was published in 1912. The novel’s popularity spawned many more novels, movies, and comic strips. In Tarzan in the City of Gold, Titan Books has collected the entire comic run illustrated by artist Burne Hogarth. The book displays the illustrations in the full-page, full-color spreads as they were originally published. It also includes an essay at the beginning introducing Burne Hogarth, and providing a brief history of Tarzan.
Tarzan in the City of Gold is well-designed and colorful collection of comics; perfect for readers searching for the nostalgia of following Tarzan’s adventures in the newspaper. Thanks to the introductory essay, this book also functions well as an introduction for new initiates to the fandom. Because the book is reproducing comics originally printed in the newspaper, many of the images are slightly blurry, and colors overlap into strange areas due to the printing processes of the time. Despite this, and partly due to the large size of the individual images and the bold line art, the comics remain easy to follow. This book is a great collection for Burne Hogarth enthusiasts, and a good introduction into one of the many iterations of Tarzan.
January 31, 2016
This oversized collection begins Burne Hogarth's run on the Tarzan color Sundays, when Hogarth took over for Hal Foster in 1937. Hogarth's no Foster, but he does a good job and the storylines are mostly interesting, although his battle scenes tend to feel a little similar. Lots of fun.
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March 21, 2018A very nice collection of all the Sunday Tarzan strips that Burne Hogarth drew. His artwork brought something unique and dangerous to Tarzan. Reading them for the timeless stories one cannot help but be drawn right into the panels, right into the picture. This collection is a beautiful return to the golden age of Sunday Funnies!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews