Jungle Heat!

Hey, there's a new Tarzan movie out now, "The Legend of Tarzan," and it's supposed to be pretty good!  I'll go catch the matinee this afternoon.

Saturday afternoons when I was a kid, the local TV station ran all the MGM Tarzan movies between seemingly interminable car dealer commercials with the screaming Yahoo dashing down the lot drawing prices on the car windshields. 

Surprisingly, I never read the original Edgar Rice Burroughs books until I was in my late thirties.  I read the first four, and then sort of lost interest before our hero started going to lost civilizations and all that.

And yes, not to ruin the joke, but the reason Tarzan didn't have a beard is that he used his knife (which compensating tool and a loincloth he, er, acquired from a hapless passing native as a young ape-man) to shave because he'd discovered he was a different animal than his simian companions and wanted to accentuate the difference!   You can never know too much trivia, it could win you money on TV or free drinks.

There have been, of course, a world of Tarzan illustrators since the early 1900's, and my favorites include Frank Frazetta--

--Burne Hogarth

--and Joe Kubert!

Bob Lubbers drew a nice scene for the newspaper strip--

--And I'll rerun my version for any of you who haven't seen it, or maybe would like to snicker at it again!

See ya later, swingers!!