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Thursday, December 26, 2013

Fa La La La La, La La La La

Doug:  So, what to do the day after Christmas?  For many of us, it was a White Christmas -- which means it's cold in case you don't relate.  What say we warm up with the High Priestess of Opar, La.  She made her debut in Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Return of Tarzan, and was featured again in Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (which I re-read this past summer; time well spent!).  Today we'll showcase a gallery of the mistress of the Fifty Frightful Men, as drawn by many of the heavyweights in comics and fantasy art.  Enjoy!

John Buscema
Joe Jusko
Frank Frazetta
Mike Grell
J. Allen St. John
Joe Jusko
Neal Adams
Joe Jusko
Roy Krenkel
Neal Adams (this is actually not La and is instead the cover image from Tarzan and the City of Gold, but well... you know.)

Joe Kubert
Russ Manning
Roy Krenkel
Thomas Yeates

Tom Grindberg
John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga

9 comments:

  1. Happy Boxing Day everyone!

    Nice La montage! Great images here. Gotta read one of these soon!


    - Mike 'drank too much eggnog' from Trinidad & Tobago.

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  2. Cheers all, yes today's graphics are a splendid way of recovering from the excesses of cheer yesterday.. Beautiful art.

    A fair amount of driving yesterday, some nice rieslings and kids around the Christmas tree.

    And, hmmmmm, 'Is that yet MORE snow outside I smell..?'

    Now that I've had some nice 'cheesecake' here, more coffee, slap on the headphones, spin up 'The White Album' and out again I go...!

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  3. Actually, you have two non-La images: that St. John cover also (obviously) features the queen of the City of Gold. Otherwise, I remember back when I was reading the Tarzan books as a pre-teen and then early teen, it occurred to me several times that maybe Tarzan made the wrong choice with Jane - I guess I always liked those dark-haired bad girls.

    Also, I remember reading somewhere that Grindberg was doing the Tarzan newspaper strip, but I don't think I've seen any of it until now, so thanks for posting that. He's another one of those underrated artists.

    And now that we've had this bracing, St. Stephen's Day (Boxing Day - bah!) dose of cheesecake, I think it's only fair that Karen should post some beefcake tomorrow...

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  4. The Tom Grindberg / Roy Thomas "newspaper strip" may only be available via on-line subscription. ERB.com and mycomicsshop.com both have links to more info if you are interested.

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  5. Yayaya! Love the Tarzan artists. Great Buscema drawing...also Kubert, Frazetta, Jusko. Interesting with that painting of La fighting a leopard--I spotted an earlier Buscema drawing in Savage Sword with her pose. He may have lifted it...not a criticism, as Jusko's a great artist--I have his book with all these Tarzan paintings. Neal Adams is not right for Tarzan in my opinion. Perhaps too refined in his drawing for manly Tarzan. And yes, I agree Grindberg is underrated. Good artist--perhaps not as original as the others here?

    Thanks for the art feast! It's a white Christmas here in Canada, but today everything is melting.

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  6. Garett, couldn't disagree with you more about Adams and Tarzan. For me, the Adams images are the gold standard for Tarzan paperback covers. Those were the covers on the books when I started reading them in the late '70s - I thought the covers in that same series done by Vallejo didn't hold a candle to Adams. Even the older, "classic" covers done by, say, Frazetta or Krenkel, fine as they are, don't come close.

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  7. Hey Edo, I didn't see the Adams or Boris Tarzan covers as a kid, just a few here and there over the years. So in the spirit of Christmas, I'll go take a closer look at them! : )

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  8. Roy Krenkel's sketch is the best of the bunch, IMO.

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