Tarzan's Return to Pal-ul-don

Will Murray's new novel Tarzan: Return to Pal-ul-don was an enjoyable read this summer, along with Murray Lannister's Forbidden Planet, and Anthony Horowitz's Moriarty. I've often thought it was overdue for a semi-official return to the lost land of Tarzan's Africa in novel. There were countless forays into Pal-ul-don back in the Dell comics days, and more notably in the Manning strips. But hey, more recently, Pal-ul-don has only fleetingly been mentioned in some of the Dark Horse stories written by Bruce Jones, who BTW, grew up in the good old fifties era. The new and excellent ERB strips include one on Pelludicdar, another on Caspak, even a Niocene strip based on the Eternal Savage, and one based on The Cave Girl. But thus far, Pal-ul-don has bot even been touched. I've long had an idea for a comic of Tarzan visting Pal-ul-don, and another of Korak, with Kubert-style art. A few times, notably last year, I even tried to draw the Korak one. But my art was, truth be told...not very good.
     However, this nook should whet readers' appetite for a return to Pla-ul-don that is probably as near to being canon as possible. The plot has Tarzan as an officer in the RAF, who is dispached to an unkown region of Africa to search a missing female officer code-named Ilex. This proves to be the northern region of Pal-ul-don, which Tarzan had not explored on his previous venture in Tarzan the Terrible, and where he encounters new beasts and races. His plane is attacked by pteranodons and crashes in the thorn-desert just outside the Great Barrier swamp.  He befriends a chocolate-brown tusker, whom he eventually names Torn-Ear, saving him from a giant crocodile (a phobosuchus or saurosuchus). The noble pachyderm proves a loyal comrade throughout the tale.
     The non-canonical stories of the comics are assumed here not to have happened (or at least havn't yet): Tarzan has never before encountered pterosaurs in Pal-ul-don. However, early on, the narrator infers only some of Pal-ul-don's races have tails, and a bit later references a race of tailess "cave men" who have tamed the Gryfs. I was a bit confused by this, until a realized that he seemed to be referring to the Tor-o-dons, which I always assumed did sport tails! Russ Manning, at least, depicts the Tor-o-dons as having tails, both in his newpaper strips and in the adaptation he did for Dell comics. Manning's version makes sense, under the assumption that Pal-ul-don's other "pithocantrophic" races were descended from the Tor-o-dons. Even the bizarre flying men of Manning's  strips had tails ( evolved for the same purpose as a peacock), and as I've opined elswhere, these must have branched off from the other races at some point. Truth be told, I can't recall offhand if ERB described the Tor-o-dons as tailed or otherwise. On the other hand, if they did not sport tails then the new races Tarzan encounters in Return to Pal-ul-don, who also lack tails, would most likely be descended from the them.
    The first such race Tarzan encounters the narrator calls "turtle men,": a tribe of primitives who dwell on an island in center of great lake (called Jad-Brang-lul, or "the turtle lake", in the language of Pal-ul-don). They live on the flesh of lake creatures, primarily large tutrles, and craft their shells into a type of armor. They also ultilize giant turtle-like creatures as living barges, on which they back and forth from the mainland. The great turtles may be one of beasts that have developed on a unique evolutionary pathway in the isolation of the Land of Man; they seem to resemble the Cretaceus turtle archelon, but sport a great mace-like tail, similar to that of an ankylosaur. The "turtle men" themselves are primitive in appearance, not unlike the Tor-o-dons, but appear to be of a slightly higher type. They prove friendly enough and briefly become Tarzan's allies. As is the case with many races in ERB's canon, the turtle-men are at perpetual war with a truely bizarre race known as "spider people," who serve as the villains for the remainder of the tale.
     Chalk-white in color, diminutive, and capable of scuttling up trees and cliffs in the manner of their arachnid namesakes, the spider-men are distinguised by a strange extra digit on each of their hands. The large, and gruesome white spiders that infest the region serve this race as pets and provide the vemom for their dart-like missles. These darts are feathered either in white (which signifies paralysis venom) or scarlet (signifying death). Prisoners taken by the spider-warriors are drugged by the white-feathered darts, then bound in tough spider-silk, held captive in the cavaties of huge baobab and bottle trees. The spider-men have no true city of village, and dwell within a hollow portion  of a great cliff, where they worship a dreadful arachnid horror, which is revealed at the tale's climax. Prisoners who are taken there never return--until the arrival of Tarzan that is!
     Rather surprisingly, there is no contact in this tale with the Waz-don or Hod-don, the dominant races south of this bizarre region. However, one tailed race from the original, which didn't get enough description previously, and is entirely ignored in the comics, is well represented. This race is the Waz-ho-don, a an outcast "mixed race," as the two dominant races are bitter rivals, who dwell in the city of Bu-lur, or Moon City. Lietenant Obergatz lived briefly  among the Waz-ho-don in Tarzan the Terrible, but neither Tarzan, nor Jane nor Korak ever encountered them. I had an idea for a story involving this race at one time, but I never got to it. I pictured them having rather bluish skin, but Murray's description of Mu-bu-tan makes more sense: his skin is white like the Ho-don, and his fur is black like the Waz-don. Tarzan saves Mu-bu-tan from the fangs of a hungry jato, or saber-tooth lion-tiger, and the two become staunch allies on Tarzan's quest. However, it's true that alhough Mu-bu-tan is a major player in the novel, it's true we don't actually see his city, which is bit of a letdown.
    In regard to the saber-tooth, at one point Murray suggests, as I specualted in an article about evolution in Pal-ul-don, that jato, a hybrid feline, might in fact be a three way mixture of lion, smilodon, and tiger. There is also a savage battle between the elephant torn-ear and a Gryf. A similar Gryf-elepant battle happened at least once back in the Dell comics I think, both times serving examples of the triumph of the mammalian order.
      Illex, the missing officer, is finally found and recued. She proves to hold a connection with Tarzan's canonical past, one that I won't reveal here.
    All and all, a satisfying read for those yearing for the return to one of Burroughs famous lost worlds. Will Murray is known for his Doc Savage pastiches, notably Doc Savage: Skull Island, which features, of course, Kong and lots of dinosaurs.
     Note: The entire cover art panorama is not included on the current paperback edition, but a hardback edition is due out soon, which I hope will include it.
    

Review: The John Carter Movie

As all ERB fans are well aware as of this writing, the John Carter movie is relaesed in theatres. Plans for this live-action movie has been around since the late eighties. Finally, in March of 2012, Burroughs fans finally got our wish.

Was it worth the wait?

Pretty much. With high tech CGI at their disposal, now filmakers are truely able to give the story the treatment it deserves. I still wonder what it might have been like had it really been made back in the eieghties, when stop-mtion woould still have had to have been relied on for banths, thoats, white apes, and perhaps even tharks (though those would more likely have been played by human actors, and thus have come across as terribly fake). Or perhaps of the proposed animation version had actually been realized. As it is, though, we are able to see the Martian world as envisioned by Burroughs truely roar to life on the screen. The thoats, apes, tharks and banths are as close as possible to living, breathing creatures. Well, not the banths--we just get a glimpse a few dead ones (maybe they'll in the sequal--if there is one, which I'll get to in a minute). I really appreciate today's affects for their magic in creating what was heretfore possible only in Burroughs' fertile imagination.

As for the story itself, there are are certainly omissions, though its sufficient as a treatment of Princess of Mars (which would have made a better title than simply "John Carter," especially for non-Burroughs fans). The introduction of Woola the calot is well-crafted, but it would have been better had the kept the scene where he saves Carter from a pair of white Martian apes. Speaking of which, the apes do feature prominately in the later arena-battle. One thing got me to thinking. Unlike in the book, the movie's apes don't much look like primates, let alone resemble the African gorilla, as Carter describes them, perhaps because the idea of primates evolving on Mars would diminish credibility. That's okay, of course, except you still have to explain the presence of the Red Martians. They're humans, after all, and therefore primates. There are other liberties as well. I don't recall that thoats sported horns. Of the movies' creatures, Woola is perhaps the best-realized, sort of a sleek cross between a bloated caterpillar and a pug-dog with a lolling blue tonque.



I am pleasently surprised that they did manage to show the early scene when Carter comes upon the thark incubator, complete with the thark infants hatching. The movie also does not forget that, in the world of the novels, Burroughs himself is part of his own created "universe," and is merely the "editor" of the stories; the opening and closing scenes do more than justice to this aspect of the series. The role of the Holy Therns is explicit even from the start, one thing that some fans have already found fault with, but seems to work okay.



More than that, I won't say concerning the movie's plot, though it's a fair facsimile of the book. The actress playing Dejah is simply gorgeous, as she should be. JC's hair is longer than in the iconic paintings by Frazetta and Whelan, more like the more recent actors who have played Tarzan.

The ending certainly leaves the gates open for another one, not to mention the entire series.

But my real question is: will it happen?

We're lucky, really lucky to finally see this, and for that alone we should be grateful. However, there is already talk on the internet about this being a flop, and others have responded that the charges are premature at best, and, unfortunately, a lot of people may have actually wanted such a big, Disney-sponsored franchise to come crashing down, as a way of showing that they hadn't fallen for all the hype. Whether the film is a hit or a flop is still a bit iffy at this point, as reportedly, it's been most successful oveseas.

But that's not really what matters.

Imagine for a moment a faithful ERB adaptation that really broke box office, generating tons of cash, and a huge demand for merchandise. That's what ERB really needs. And I think it's fair to say that no such miracle hasn't happened with this movie, whether it's fair or not (I'd opin not). A mere moderate hit, I fear, will be unlikely to even generate a sequal that isn't a straight-to-DVD hack job. Maybe they could have made it a bit clearer to non-Burroughs fan as to what was going on--by voice-over maybe, having JC explain his story to the audience. He did, after all, narrate the books.

The thing is, though, that now in Tarzan's 100th year, and in conjunction with the movie, the ERB estate has greenlit multiple John Carter comics series fromm Dynamite even a new, (though somewaht PC) Tarzan reboot. There are also a number of promising-looking ERB graphic novels, all by talented writers and artists, from Dark Horse, due out before the year's end. It would be wonderful if all this went over hugely, but I'm not all that optimistic.

I'll be blunt: what ERB really needs is demand. And demand requires a blockbuster.


http://www.themovieguys.net/2012/03/13/movie-review-john-carter/

Above is the link (you'll have to cut and paste 'cuz I still don't know how to links work in here) about the negative press regarding John Carter. This one is definitely on the side of the film.

Now if we if we could just get At the Earth's Core made into a cgi movie.

Again, I fear that'll depend soley on this movie's success.