Day of the Death-Dancers!

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TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE ANNUAL — Issue no. 2, August 1978

Book: Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle Annual

Issue No.: 2

Published: August 1, 1978 (more likely October 1978, see below)

Title: “Day of the Death-Dancers!”

Cover Price: 60¢

Format: Original paper copy

As the name implies, a Marvel annual is a special published-once-per-year comic book. Generally, at least in the late 1970s, Marvel annuals were oversized affairs (48 pages of story and ads, instead of the usual 32). And there was no publishing info on the annual other than the year (1978 in this case). So when it comes to figuring out what month an annual was released, it can be tricky.

The ever-useful Fandom.com Marvel wiki has this Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle annual listed as an August release. But, judging by some of the ads in this issue, I was guessing it was released later in the year. Since I love to play comic book history detective, I started comparing the ads (and the house hype page, “Bullpen Bulletins”) from this Tarzan annual to those in other books — at this time Marvel generally ran a lot of the same ads in all of their books for a given month, and the same “Bullpen Bulletins” would be in all the books published in a given month.

At the end of the day, I think this Tarzan annual probably didn’t come out till October of 1978, with the books with January ’79 cover dates. (I wrote about cover dates versus actual release dates back in the big 200th issue of Marvel Time Warp.) But I’m writing about Tarzan Annual no. 2 with the August books, because that’s where the Marvel wiki has it, and that’s what I build my reading list off of. Though I really should report these mis-dated books to the wiki folks at some point.

Portion of a mid-issue splash page from Tarzan Annual issue number 2. A giant snake is attacking Tarzan and two other guys. One of the guys is painted up like a skeleton. Caption reads, “Its eyes burn crimson as it sways in horrible confusion! The flame — the sacred flame that was to guide it to its prey — has been moved!” The guy not painted up like a skeleton says, “By all that is holy — it knows not where to strike!”

As for the book itself, I dig it. This is easily the best Marvel Tarzan comic that I’ve read. Which isn’t saying much — I haven’t been crazy about any Marvel Tarzan comics so far. The plot of this one, with Tarzan helping an orphaned princess avenge her parents and take the throne as the new queen, wouldn’t be out of place in a Marvel Conan story. There’s even an evil wizard and a giant snake, which move the story more into the fantasy genre that Conan inhabits.

But I am far from an expert on Tarzan, so I don’t know how unusual this kind of story is for him. The last issue of Tarzan’s regular 1978 comic book I read had the jungle lord visiting a lost world at the center of the earth, and I know that story is based on stories written by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, so fantasy and sci-fi are obviously not totally unheard of for Tarzan.

Also, Tarzan’s partner in this story is a big lion named Jad-Bal-Ja, and I can’t imagine anything much cooler than having a buddy that is also a big lion.

Next time — Another giant serpent story as Conan enters “The Lair of the Ice Worm”!

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