Sunday, September 14, 2014

The Inner World of Skartaris

Saturday, September 13, 2014


The Inner World of Skartaris or how another jerk rips off Edgar Rice Burrough badly.



In the savage world of Skartaris, life is a constant struggle for survival. Here, beneath an unblinking orb of eternal sunlight, one simple law prevails: If you let down your guard for an instant you will soon be very dead.
And comics,write a ton of total crap and your a goat.Baaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh,Mike Grell.Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!
First Appearance: Skartaris is a fictional Hollow Earth fantasy setting created by Mike Grell for the sword and sorcery comic book Warlord, published by DC Comics. Skartaris debuted in 1st Issue Special #8 (November 1975), where the character Travis Morgan, a US Air Force pilot, discovers a passage into this world through the Earth's North Pole. Subsequent to that first issue, the Warlord series tells of Morgan's adventures in Skartaris.
History: Skartaris is a land supposed to exist within the core of the Earth, and is the setting of the adventures of Warlord. Although it was originally believed that Skartaris existed within the Center of the Earth, Warlord would later discover that it actually exists within a separate dimension that is sometimes accessible from the rest of the world.Thats because neither Travis Morgan,nor his creator Mike Grell understood the Hollow Earth Theory.A theory,that was old,when ERB created the Pellucidar Series,by the way.Burroughs just couldn't pass up such a goofey place to his hero David Innes.If Edgar Rice Burrough was around today,the old,tired,insane nutball Hollow Earth Theory,would replaced with a dyson sphere,like I did my Terra-Prime premise.Said before and will say it twenty time again until goofball into Travis Morgan either wise up or just shut up.
Geography: It is bowl-shaped, and their sun never sets, but is always in the middle of the sky. Actually,its inner ball shaped.The bowl planets were seen in that goofy Flash Gordan movie.The properties of time are slightly skewed in Skartaris, due to its unique properties. Also... there are Dinosaurs.For once,I want to see savage world inhabited by Racoons.

Colonization: Originally, Skartaris was colonized by the immensely advanced early Atlanteans, who constructed great architecture and technology throughout the land. However, after Atlantis suffered the Great Cataclysm, and the majority of civilization was wiped out in what was essentially a massive nuclear war. Radiation mutated many of the survivors into almost unrecognizable humanoids, such as the Lizardmen, and the Skartarians were forced to slowly rebuild things and rebuild their world on their own. Funny in comics,radiation mutates stuff and dosen't kill like in REAL LIFE.Sorry,X-Men-your all dead.
Travis Morgan, the Warlord first encountered Skartaris when his plane was forced to crash over what he believed to be Yukon territory after an unsuccessful reconnaissance mission in Russia for the United States Air Force in 1969. Due to the strange rules of time in Skartaris, he first reappeared in the outside world as the Warlord in 1977, after what he believed to be only several weeks of adventuring.
Another strange rule is Travis Morgan grows a Oliver Queen beard,only platinum blonde.

Fun Fact: According to creator Mike Grell, Skartaris' name "comes from the mountain peak "Scartaris" that points the way to the passage to the earth’s core in Journey to the Center of the Earth." Grell also stated he never drawn a map of Skartaris. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, he said, "Anything that can happen in fantasy happens in the lore and it’s one of the reasons I always refused to draw a map of Skartaris. Year after year after year went by, and I was always hounded by the editors, 'When are you going to have a map?' The reason I refused was because once you draw a map, you establish boundaries. And why would you want to put boundaries on your imagination?"  
Dork Note: Well, someone must have eventually created a map, because it exists!
Duh.I think the guy was just too lazy.First thing,everyone in creating a fantasy series,you draw a map,so you place stuff,like the Hyborean Age.

Friday, June 6, 2014

10,000 B.C.

Saber-tooth cats, mammoths star in 10,000 B.C.




10,000 BC (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
10,000 BC
Ten thousand b c.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Produced by Roland Emmerich
Mark Gordon
Michael Wimer
Written by Roland Emmerich
Harald Kloser
Starring Steven Strait
Camilla Belle
Cliff Curtis
Joel Virgel
Nathanael Baring
Affif Ben Badra
Marco Khan
Tim Barlow
Narrated by Omar Sharif
Music by Harald Kloser
Thomas Wander
Cinematography Ueli Steiger
Editing by Alexander Berner
Studio Legendary Pictures
Centropolis Entertainment
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release dates
March 7, 2008
Running time 109 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $105 million
Box office $269,784,201[1]
10,000 BC is a 2008 American epic fantasy adventure film from Warner Bros. Pictures set in the prehistoric era. It was directed by Roland Emmerich and stars Steven Strait and Camilla Belle. The world premiere was held on February 10, 2008 at Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.[2][3] General release was on March 7, 2008.

Contents  [hide]
1 Plot
1.1 Alternate ending
2 Cast
3 Visual and sound effects
4 Production
5 Language
6 Critical reception
7 Influences of other works
8 Box office performance
9 DVD release
10 See also
11 References
12 External links
Plot[edit]
In 10,000 BC, a tribe of hunter-gatherers called the Yagahl live in a remote mountain range in the Urals and survive by killing woolly mammoths, which they call "mannaks." D'Leh, a young hunter, has a companion named Evolet, an orphan who was found by the tribe. D'Leh, while hunting mammoths, manages to kill one and wins the "White Spear." He also wins Evolet in marriage, but feels he deserves neither since he killed the mammoth by accident.

The village is led by a hunter who has proved his bravery by killing a Mammoth, and taking the White Spear. The people also strongly venerate an elderly woman, called Old Mother. Because of her different appearance to other humans in the village, it is assumed she is a Neanderthal, the "last of her kind," living with the Homo Sapiens of the village.

One day, D'Leh and several others are away when horse-raiders called the "Four Legged Demons" attack the Yaghal camp. The horse raiders enslave Evolet; D'Leh, Tic'Tic, KaRen, and Baku pursue them to save her. They enter a rainforest where they catch up with the raiding party. During the night, D'Leh rescues Evolet, but as they are trying to escape from the pursuing raiders, they are attacked by a large pack of terror birds. Tic'Tic gets wounded and Baku, Ka'Ren, Evolet are re-captured. Continuing on, they meet others whose loved ones were taken by the raiders. D'Leh and Tic'Tic befriend Nakudu, leader of the Naku tribe. He tells D'Leh of a prophecy: whoever talks to a Smilodon that they call the "Spear-Tooth" will help free their people. D'Leh had earlier saved the Spear-Tooth from drowning in a trap and it had spared his life. D'Leh realizes the prophecy was about him. Nakudu explains that his loved ones were taken in the "Great Red Birds," ships with large red sails, to the "Mountains of the Gods," from which no one has ever returned. They then come together with other tribes, who agree to form a coalition to pursue the raiders.

They find the ship with red sails holding Evolet and Baku. With no means to follow the ships, they journey through a vast desert, discovering an advanced civilization similar to ancient Egypt, ruled by an enigmatic figure known as "The Almighty," who is said to be the last survivor of his kind. It is implied in the script that he is a survivor of the fall of Atlantis, a civilization vastly more advanced than any other society at the time. The Almighty, who is regarded as a living god, possesses many thousands of slaves that he is using to build a huge pyramid complex in his honor. D'Leh finds an escaped servant of the Almighty and notices he is wearing a bracelet worn by D'Leh's father. D'Leh's father left his tribe for food and found the Naku tribe before being stolen by the raiders. In a night attack, the guards of the slaves discover D'Leh behind a pyramid. Tic'Tic dies from injuries sustained while killing the guards before they raise the alarm. Meanwhile, the Almighty's priests discover Evolet bears scars on her hand patterned after the "Mark of the Hunter," the constellation Orion. The priests believe it is part of a prophecy that whoever wears the mark of the Hunter is destined to kill The Almighty. D'Leh starts a full-scale rebellion among the slaves. They cause the mammoth herd used in building the pyramid to stampede, killing a large number of troops.

The Almighty offers Evolet to D'Leh in exchange for abandoning his rebellion. The Almighty says that if D'Leh takes his wife, his warriors can return, but the rest must be his slaves forever. D'Leh feigns acceptance of the deal which allows him to throw a spear at The Almighty and kill him, proving that he is not a god. During the ensuing battle, the raider obsessed with Evolet kidnaps her on horseback. Evolet grabs an arrow and stabs the warlord in the side, knocking them both off the horse. D'Leh rushes towards her, but the raider shoots her in the back with an arrow. D'Leh kills him and returns to Evolet, and she dies in his arms. The scene shifts to the tribe's wise woman as she breathes in deeply and then breathes out her last breath. The scene then returns to D'Leh still holding Evolet's body when she suddenly comes back to life, restored by the wise woman's sacrifice. They depart for home and bid farewell to the other tribes.

Alternate ending[edit]
In an alternate ending, the scene shifts forward many years into the future, showing Baku's retelling of the story by the camp fire. It ends with a child asking what had happened to the "Mountains of the Gods," and Baku responds, "They were taken back by the sands. Lost to time, lost to man."



up vote
11
down vote
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This pyramid building civilization has many similarities to both the ancient Egyptian civilization and also to the civilizations of Mesopotamia (which you probably mean with Persian-like). From those two the latter is/are actually a bit older and marks the beginning of city building. But nevertheless such large buildings as the Egytian pyramids or the Mesopotamian ziggurats didn't emerge before about 3,000 BC (neither did they in other parts of the world, like America) and in the time of the movie people were still wandering around in small tribes, much more like D'leh's tribe and all those he encounters on his way.

So I think this civilization is rather made-up by Roland Emmerich, though surely influenced by the ancient Egytian civilization (that already influenced his Stargate) and maybe a bit of the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations. But in this time it is an utter anachronism. Emmerich somehow used the fact that the records of this time are rather scarce as a possibility to be a bit creative.

It is actually hinted in the movie that this civilization is connected to Atlantis (which we all know was a civilization that was way ahead of time ;)), when it says that The Almighty and his followers come from a realm sunken into the seas and later when you shortly see a map that has a large island next to africa.

So in fact it has a strong link to a civilization that is rumoured (not by serious scientists however) to have existed in that time, but not to a real proved civilization at that time, though strongly influenced by later existing civilizations. And D'leh's tribe and all the other rather primitive tribes are a more accurate depiction of the civilizations at this time.

EDIT: As a side note, the ending of the movie can be seen as a more or less accurate allusion to the development of civilizations during that time: When the tribe D'leh met during his adventure gives him a bunch of seeds to thank him, D'leh's tribe starts planting crops intead of (or in addition to) hunting. And it was indeed around 10,000 BC (though varying by region) when nomadism was replaced by agriculture, which of course formed the prerequisits for permanent settlement (and thus modern civilizations).

In conjunction with the harder and harder gathering of food and the tribe's starving depicted at the beginning of the movie this provides a general look at the overall civilizational development and its reasons during this time period and gives the movie a somehow historically accurate main theme, with D'leh's particular adventure being just an anachronistic interlude for the sake of entertainment.
Cast[edit]
Steven Strait as D'Leh (an anagram for "Held" which is in German, Dutch and Afrikaans the word for "hero"[citation needed]), a mammoth hunter.
Camilla Belle as Evolet (an anagram for "t(h)e love"[citation needed]), D'Leh's love interest and the only survivor of a tribe which was killed off by the "Four Legged Demons" (fierce warriors on horseback). She is unique as she has blue eyes.
Cliff Curtis as Tic'Tic, D'Leh's mentor and friend.[4]
Joel Virgel as Nakudu, leader of the Naku tribe.
Affif Ben Badra as Warlord, leader of the "Four Legged Demons."
Mo Zinal as Ka'Ren
Nathanael Baring as Baku
Marco Khan as One-Eye, Warlord's main henchman.
Mona Hammond as Old Mother, the Yagahl wise old woman.
Joel Fry as Lu'Kibu
Reece Ritchie as Moha
Junior Oliphant as Tudu, Nakudu's son.
Kristian Beazley as D'Leh's father, who had lived with the Naku tribe and learned agriculture from them.
Boubacar Badaine as Quina, leader of another tribe.
Tim Barlow as The Almighty, a tall, blue eyed man who dresses in long white robes and a face-concealing veil. He is the last of three kings, and the last of the Atlanteans.
Omar Sharif as Narrator
Emmerich opened casting sessions in late October 2005.[5] In February 2006, Camilla Belle and Steven Strait were announced to star in the film, with Strait as the mammoth hunter and Belle as his love.[6] Emmerich felt that casting well known actors would distract from the realistic feel of the prehistoric setting. "If like, Jake Gyllenhaal turned up in a movie like this, everybody would be, 'What's that?' " he explained. The casting of unknown actors also helped keep the film's budget down.[7]

Visual and sound effects[edit]
The mammoths in the movie were based on elephants and fossils of mammoths, while the sabertooth cat was based on tigers and ligers (a lion/tiger hybrid).[8]
The sounds made by the sabertooth cat in the movie are based on the vocalization of tigers and lions.[9]
Production[edit]
Director Roland Emmerich and composer Harald Kloser originally penned a script for 10,000 BC. When the project received the greenlight from Columbia Pictures, screenwriter John Orloff began work on a new draft of the original script. Columbia Pictures, under Sony Pictures Entertainment, dropped the project due to a busy release calendar, and Warner Bros. picked up the project in Sony's vacancy.[10] The script went through a second revision with Matthew Sand and a final revision with Robert Rodat.[6] Emmerich rejected making the film in an ancient language (similar to The Passion of the Christ or Apocalypto), feeling it would not be as emotionally engaging.[11]

Production began in early 2006 in South Africa and Namibia.[6] Location filming also took place in southern New Zealand[12] and Thailand. Before shooting began, the production had spent eighteen months on research and development for the computer generated imagery. Two companies recreated prehistoric animals. To cut time (it was taking sixteen hours to render a single frame) 50% of the CGI models' fur was removed, as "it turned out half the fur looked the same" to the director.[7]

Language[edit]
Dialect coach Brendan Gunn was hired by Emmerich and Kloser to create "a half dozen" languages for the film.[13] Gunn has stated that he collaborated informally with film lead Steven Strait to improvise what the languages would sound like.[14]

Critical reception[edit]
The film received largely negative reviews from critics, stating that the movie is mainly visual and lacks a firm screenplay. Critics noted that the film is archaeologically inaccurate and contains many factual errors and anachronisms. As of June 24, 2013, the review aggregator at Rotten Tomatoes has reported that 8% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 145 reviews with the consensus: "With attention strictly paid to style instead of substance, or historical accuracy, 10,000 BC is a visually impressive but narratively flimsy epic."[15] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 34 out of 100, based on 29 reviews.[16]

Despite this, composer Thomas Wanker won a BMI Film Music Award for his work on the film.

Influences of other works[edit]
Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Daily News draws numerous comparisons between 10,000 BC and other films in the prehistoric and historic film genre, especially One Million Years B.C.[17] and Apocalypto.[18][19] A. O. Scott of The New York Times compared it to John Ford's film The Searchers and the animated film Ice Age.[20]

At the 2008 Wondercon, Emmerich mentioned the fiction of Robert E. Howard as a primary influence for the film's setting, as well as his love for Quest for Fire and the book Fingerprints of the Gods.[21]

The film was parodied in the opening scene of Disaster Movie.

Box office performance[edit]
In its opening weekend, the film grossed $35.8 million in 3,410 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking No. 1 at the box office, and grossing over $22 million more than the film in second place, College Road Trip.[22][23] As of April 29, 2008, it has grossed approximately $268.6 million worldwide – $94.6 million in the United States and Canada and $174 million in other territories[24] – including $17.2 million in Mexico, $13.1 million in Spain, $11.3 million in the United Kingdom, and $10.8 million in China. This also makes it the first film of 2008 to surpass the $200 million mark.[25]

DVD release[edit]
The DVD of the film was released on June 24, 2008 in single disc editions of DVD and Blu-ray Disc in the United States. Best Buy released a 2-disc limited edition along with the DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases. It was released on July 21, 2008 in the United Kingdom.[26] The film grossed $31,341,721 in DVD sales, bringing its total film gross to $300,414,491.[27]

See also[edit]
List of American films of 2008
100 Million BC – A direct-to-DVD film by The Asylum
One Million Years B.C. – A similar film released in 1966

I walked down to the local theater earlier today to catch the latest Harry Potter movie, not expecting to see anything related to prehistoric animals. So imagine my surprise when, during the trailers, I saw this:


It was a trailer for an upcoming movie called 10,000 B.C., directed by Roland Emmerich of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow fame. I vaguely remember hearing about this movie a year or so ago, thinking it interesting but quickly forgetting it. I definitely had no idea it was already in production.

Any movie that features a saber-tooth cat already has won my ticket. But judging from the trailer, it also features a terror bird and mammoths. Lots of mammoths.

It's not shooting for realism, if the trailer is any indication. By 10,000 B.C., saber-tooth cats could only be found in the Americas -- if they were still around -- and terror birds had gone the way of the dodo. There also are several scenes in the trailer featuring the construction of the pyramids, using mammoths no less. You think they'd overheat in the desert with those thick shaggy coats. Anyway, the Egyptian pyramids do not date back to the Ice Age, despite fringe theories to the contrary.

Personally, I have no problems with the inaccuracies, as long as the producers market the movie as a fantasy rather than a historical drama. (In that sense, the world of 10,000 B.C. would be much like the Hyborian Age of the Conan stories.) The sad truth, however, is the director has been known to pass off psuedoscience as the real thing in his previous efforts, so prepare for a lot of BS to accompany B.C.The problem is 10,000 B.C. should been called Stargate10,000 B.C.It reads more it beyonds to the Stargate reality,but dosen't.The whole Atlantis bit,could explained as something to do with Stargates Atlantis.

What's the plot? This is the description from the trailer on YouTube: "It was a time when man and beast were untamed and the mighty mammoth roamed the earth. A time when ideas and beliefs were born that forever shaped mankind. 10,000 B.C. follows a young hunter (Steven Strait) on his quest to lead an army across a vast desert, battling saber tooth tigers [sic] and prehistoric predators as he unearths a lost civilization and attempts to rescue the woman he loves (Camilla Belle) from an evil warlord determined to possess her."

A high-definition Quicktime version of the trailer also is available.

I'm excited about the movie even though I know little about it and I've been unimpressed with Emmerich's other films. But when a big-budget movie about dinosaurs and other monsters is in theaters, book publishers usually try to cash in by publishing novels and anthologies about the creature in question. So check your local bookstore around March 7, 2008, when the film is scheduled for release.


Also, just a little trivia, this may be the first big-screen film since Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger in 1977 to feature a saber-tooth cat. Yes, there were the Ice Age movies, but those were cartoons. The cats also featured in two truly awful direct-to-video films, as did a killer mammoth that was possessed by an alien lifeforce. All three aired on the SciFi Channel, known for its *cough* quality programming. *cough*

Update: Ain't It Cool News already has a review of the movie. Warning: Spoilers if you follow the link.
Posted by DoubleW at 11:45 PM

Return to Eden by Harry Harrison (1988)

Return to Eden by Harry Harrison (1988)

Note: This is the final book of the West of Eden trilogy, starting with West of Eden. Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the first book, reviewed below.
Paperback cover blurb
In West of Eden and Winter in Eden, master novelist Harry Harrison broke new ground with his most ambitious project to date. He brought to vivid life the world as it might have been, where dinosaurs survived, where their intelligent descendants, the Yilane, challenged humans for mastery of the Earth, and where the human Kerrick, a young hunter of the Tanu tribe, grew among the dinosaurs and rose to become their most feared enemy. Working in collaboration with an international team of scientific experts, Harrisoncreated a believable, richly detailed world rivaling Frank Herbert’s Dune and Jean Auels’s The Clan of the Cave Bear in the majesty of its scope and conception.
Now, in Return to EdenHarrison brings the epic trilogy to a stunning conclusion. After Kerrick rescues his people from the warlike Yilane, they find a safe haven on an island and there begin to rebuild their shattered lives. But with fierce predators stalking the forests, how long can these unarmed human outcasts hope to survive? The small band of humans have no choice but to confront their fate head on. And, of course, Kerrick cannot forget Viante, his implacable Yilane enemy. She’s been cast out from her kind, under sentence of death, but how long will her banishment last? For her strange attraction to Kerrick has turned into a hatred even more powerful than her instincts – an obsession that compels her to hunt down Kerrick and kill him.
My thoughts
Return to Eden is the “threequel” that can be easily skipped without any worries that you have left the story arc started in West of Eden incomplete. Most of the plot threads are resolved in the second book of the series, Winter in Eden. The result is the characters inReturn to Eden have nothing to do, and the book lacks any real plot, instead reading like a grossly bloated epilogue of the first two novels. Kerrick, having made the world safe for humanity, now focuses on raising his family and finding a home for his tribe. The Daughters of Life slowly build their peaceful society in the Amazon. And Viante, now an outcast, plots her revenge. These separate storylines are drawn out over a tedious 400 pages, coming together in the end in a whopping anticlimax.
By now the alternate world of the Yilane has lost its charm, and the lack of any real story makes this book a difficult one to read through to the end. The science, which was dated when West of Eden was first published six years previously, was even more dated when Return to Eden hit bookstores. And Harrison seems to have lost interest in the setting he created. The novel feels like it was written mainly to fulfill a contractual obligation to the publisher to turn out a trilogy. Unless you have a burning desire to learn about the ultimate fates of many of the characters to the first two books, there is no reason to pick up Return to Eden.
Trivia
  • The entire trilogy was recently republished, although I’ve never had any trouble finding the original books in used bookstores.
Reviews
  • The Dedly Blog (more an overview of the trilogy than Return to Eden)
  • Editors Note;Originally,when began to revamp my Old Toreus the Slayer,I thought up a similar format as Eden series,being ignorant of the series.Prince Toreus Rhann,existed upon an alternate world where,a Hyborean Age like civilization existed side by side with dinosaurs.I wanted a more exiting Pellicidar,with not a primative Stone Age Society,but a more advanced one lie scene in the Conan stories,with bits  of John Carters Barsoom.Flying ships,rifles,fantastic creatures,beautiful woman-the whole ERB bit.Being a Burrough fan,I wanted Toreus to be as always a Tarzan type,having adventures among lost cities.I kept the Pangea still existing with a Hyborean Age/Barsoom/Tarzan's Africa,but transported it all to a more plausable version of the Hollow Earth called a Dyson Sphere.

Winter in Eden by Harry Harrison (1986)

Winter in Eden by Harry Harrison (1986)

Note: This is the second book of the West of Edentrilogy, starting with West of Eden. Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the first book, reviewed below.
Paperback cover blurb
TWO BOLD CULTURES STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL…
WINTER IN EDEN
Harry Harrison, an acknowledged master of imaginative fiction, broke new ground in West of Eden. He brought to vivid life the world as it might have been, where dinosaurs survived, where their intelligent descendants challenged humans for mastery of Earth, where a young hunter named Kerrick grew among the dinosaurs and rose to become their most feared enemy.
Now, the awesome saga continues in Winter inEden… A new ice age threatens Earth. Facing extinction, the dinosaurs must employ their mastery of biology to swiftly reconquer human territory. Desperately, Kerrick launches an arduous quest to rally a final defense for humankind. With his beloved wife and young son, he heads north to the land of whale hunters, east into the enemy’s stronghold, and south to a fateful reckoning with destiny.
Not since Dune has there been a work of such majestic scope and conception – a monumental epic of passion, courage and triumph.
My thoughts
Winter in Eden starts almost immediately after the events of the first book, with the humans celebrating their victory in driving the Yilane from their shores. Kerrick, however, is troubled with the knowledge that it will be a short-lived celebration. The Yilane will return in full force, and despite their initial success, the Stone Age humans still are no match for the technologically superior reptiles. So Kerrick takes off on a journey to the Yialne homeland, hoping to find some way of single-handedly turning back their invasion.
Meanwhile, the Yilane Vinate is plotting her revenge against Kerrick, and hopes to lead the invasion force that will reclaim the lost territories. And while all this is happening, a group of peace-loving Yilane flee to the Amazon basin, where they seek to found a society radically different from that of the rest of their xenophobic species. Once there, they make a surprising discovery.
Winter in Eden is an entertaining sequel that nonetheless suffers from some of the “been there, done that” syndrome that plagues most sequels. This time, however, the story lets the reader to explore a larger portion of the world Harrison created, allowing the exotic setting to remain fresh. The story itself isn’t as well-paced as the one in the first book, so even thoughWinter in Eden is 100 pages shorter, it feels like a longer read. And the author had to once again rely on a dues ex machina ending to resolve the desperate situation he put his humans in. Many of the problems with the science in the first book remain in the sequel, althoughHarrison does introduce some interesting twists in evolution this time around.
Nitpicking aside, Winter in Eden remains a worthy follow-up to West of Eden. Most of the plot threads started in the first book are resolved in the sequel, so even if you never read the third book in the trilogy, you won’t be left feeling the story is incomplete.
Trivia
  • The entire trilogy was recently republished, although I’ve never had any trouble finding the original books in used bookstores.
Reviews
  • None

West of Eden by Harry Harrison (1984)

West of Eden by Harry Harrison (1984)

Paperback cover blurb
IMAGINE THE WORLD AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN…
THE WORLD WEST OF EDEN
From a master of imaginative storytelling comes an epic tale of the world as it might have been, a world were the age of dinosaurs never ended, and their descendants clashed with a clan of humans in a tragic war for survival.
It is the tale of Kerrick, a young hunter who grows to manhood among the dinosaurs, escaping at last to rejoin his own kind. His knowledge of their strange customs makes him the humans’ leader, the dinosaurs’ most feared enemy.
My thoughts
West of Eden is the start of a trilogy of novels set on an alternate earth where the dinosaurs never went extinct and have survived to the modern day. The asteroid (or comet) that killed off the great reptiles missed entirely, so mammals never got the chance to take over. One group of reptiles, the mosasaurs, have evolved into the intelligent but cold-blooded Yilane. However, humans also have evolved in North America, where the chilly climate has allowed mammals to out-compete the cold-blooded dinosaurs ofHarrison’s world. A coming ice age is forcing the Yilane to spread out to find new territory, resulting in a violent clash between the two species.
West of Eden is essentially a more literary take on One Million Years B.C., althoughHarrison would probably loathe hearing it described it as such. Nonetheless, through the genre of alternate history, he managed to figure out a way to place dinosaurs and cavemen side-by-side and still keep some measure of plausibility in the story (more on that in a bit). The plot isn’t as original as the setting, but it serves its purpose. Kerrick, the main character, is captured by the Yilane as a small boy after the intelligent reptiles wipe out his tribe. He grows up among them, learning their language, their customs and some of their technology, before he is rescued by the leader of another human tribe. The Yilane want to exterminate the humans, seeing them as little more than vermin. Only Kerrick’s special knowledge of the reptiles will be able to save the human race.
What works best about the novel is the Yilane. Harrison spent a great deal of time crafting the species and actually sought out the help of two scientists in designing their biology and their language. Females are dominant, with the males giving birth. Their entire society is defined by their cold-blooded physiologies: They have no concept of metallurgy, because their bodies can’t stand the heat of an open flame, so their civilization is instead based on millions of years of selective breeding and genetic manipulation of other organisms. They make fascinating villains. Still, from a purely scientific point of view, it should be pointed out that the Yilane are impossible given it takes a warm-blooded metabolism to support human-like intelligence. And the species seems a little too alien for anything that could have evolved on earth. Why Harrison chose to have them descend from mosasaurs rather than a land-dwelling dinosaur is a mystery to me.
Given the effort he put into his villains, it’s too bad Harrison didn’t spend any time fleshing out the rest of his alternate world. Instead of having dinosaurs evolve in new and weird forms after 65 million years of evolution, he just plops in creatures known from the fossil record, even if they were already extinct by the time the asteroid came crashing down. The same is true for the mammals, which have evolved into their ice age forms rather than into forms fitting the alien environments they live in. The dinosaurs of Harrison’s world also are depicted as sluggish and cold-blooded despite the fact that other science fiction writers had already embraced more modern theories about active dinosaurs by the time the author was penningWest of EdenHarrison shows a remarkable disinterest in paleontology given the subject matter of the novel, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of his research of the science came from reading a couple children’s books about dinosaurs.
That said, West of Eden still works as an old-fashioned adventure story with a good sense of wonder. The Yilane are appropriately evil (although they do have good individuals), and it’s easy to sympathize with the Stone Age humans who are trying to avoid genocide at the hands of a technologically superior race. The only let down story-wise is the deus ex machina ending. It’s a book worth reading, even if more science-literate readers will be left wishing Harrison had used a little more imagination in crafting his world.
Trivia
  • West of Eden was republished in 2004, although I’ve never had any trouble finding copies of the book in used-book stores.
Reviews
  • The only ones I can find spoil the ending, so I'm not linking to them.

At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1914)

At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1914)
Note: This is a review of the e-text version of At the Earth’s Core, so I don’t have a cover blurb. The book cover is from the Wikipedia entry about the novel.
What’s long and hard and full of Victorians? Why a giant drilling machine, of course.

OK, I’m really sorry for the corny joke, but At the Earth’s Core is a pretty corny novel. It was first published in 1914 and kicked off what was to be a lengthy seven-part series set on the inner shell of a hollow earth inhabited by prehistoric creatures and primitive tribes of humans and ape men. The author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, is best known as the creator of Tarzan, a character who would visit the hollow world in the crossover novel Tarzan at the Earth’s Core.

Pellucidar, the name Rice gave to his world, hasn’t enjoyed as much fame as Tarzan, but it has had a surprising amount of influence on pop culture over the years, more because of the unique setting than any merits of the novel.

At the Earth’s Core starts when the unnamed author stumbles across one David Innes in the middle of Sahara Desert. Innes is delighted to finally see another “white man” and relates to the author his strange story: He is the son of a wealthy mine owner who had funded the creation of a giant drilling machine invented by Dr. Abner Perry. Innes and Perry take the machine for a test drive, but soon learn that it’s kind of hard to make a U-turn through solid rock. The machine keeps drilling deeper and deeper, and the two men expect to die, but instead of hitting a molten core, the machine instead breaks through to open air. It turns out the Earth isn’t solid but rather a hollow sphere, with a prehistoric ecosystem thriving on the inner surface of the sphere in defiance of gravity. A tiny sun in the sky provides constant daylight and the horizon curves up instead of down.

Well, things happen, and Innes and Perry soon become prisoners of a race of intelligent pterodactyls called the Mahars. It will be up to Innes to lead the humans of Pellucidar in a revolt against their reptilian masters, and save the girl at the same time.

Had I read At the Earth’s Core when I was 10 rather than the older, cynical man I am now, I might have enjoyed it more. And yes, there are things to like about it. The setting is fun, and the novel is the first work of fiction to feature intelligent creatures evolved from prehistoric reptiles, paving the way for the Silurians, the Yilane, and the Quintaglio. I don’t fault Burroughs’ imagination, but his writing leaves much to be desired. His books are just badly written, with virtually no characterization, horrendous prose and giant leaps of logic in the plot. His heroes are so flawlessly good they can never make mistakes, and there is no situation they can’t fight their way out of, no matter how overwhelming the odds against them. His books get very boring very quickly.

There also is the blatant racism, although Burroughs is hardly the only early 20th century pulp writer guilty of that sin. Still, with few other redeeming values in the work, it sticks out like a sore thumb here.

I know many people have fond feelings for Burroughs, but that has more to do with nostalgia than anything else. My love of paleo-fiction only goes so far, so I won’t be reviewing any other the books in this series. I could barely make it through one – I can’t imagine trying to get through all seven.

All the books in the Pellucidar series are in the public domain. Update: Scratch that. It appears that only the first two novels are freely available. Below are all seven titles, with the Project Gutenberg links to the first two.

At the Earth's Core
Pellucidar
Tanar of Pellucidar
Tarzan at the Earth's Core
Back to the Stone Age
Land of Terror
Savage Pellucidar
Trivia

As I’ve already stated, the Pellucidar series has had a substantial influence on pop culture. The hollow world setting has been used in games, comics, other novels and even a handful of cartoons.More goofelly done in Mike Grells Green Arrow Clonan,in Savage Skartarus-a mixmaster blend of Two Gun Bob Howards Hyborean Age,JRR Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and Pellicidar.
The novel was turned into a 1976 movie of the same name staring Doug McClure. The actor would also star in another Burroughs adaptation, The Land That Time Forgot.Cheaply made ERB spoofs-guilty pleasure movies,so far the best you'll see of the material-so far.
There are a couple fun web sites about Pellucidar and Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first is ERBlist.com, which probably is the most comprehensive site about the pulp author. The other is von Horst's Pellucidar, which has more information about the setting.
Reviews

Friday, May 9, 2014

A History of Pellucidar Comics

A History
of
Pellucidar Comics
Written by David Critchfield and published online at this website on 12/25/98. It was published in the National Capital Panthans Journal #91May 2004, and reprinted in the book, The Gilak's Guide to Pellucidar in 2007. A small portion of this section appeared as Korak at the Earth’s Core in ERB-APA #97, Spring 2008.
Last updated 12/26/10.
All rights reserved. 

Tarzan at the Earth’s Core - Artist Rex Maxon (1892–1973) illustrated the novel, Tarzan at the Earth’s Core, adapted to comic strip format by R. W. Palmer for the United Feature Syndicate (UFS) daily Tarzan newspaper strip. Each strip consisted of four illustrated panels with text beneath. This sequence was numbered H-1 to H-96. The story began June 1, 1931 and ran until September 19, 1931.
Rex Maxon's Tarzan at the Earth's Core
The story was collected in the 1992 Italian book, 20.000 Leghe Sotto la Terra: Pellucidar e Gli Altri Mondi Sepolti (20,000 Leagues Under the Earth: Pellucidar and Other Buried Worlds) by Fabrizio Frosali.
The strips were also reprinted in Bill Hillman’s ERBzine beginning with issue #3085 on 11-19-2010 and finishing with #3095 on 12-24-2010. They can be read online atwww.erbzine.com/mag30/3084.html.

Dave Innes of Pellucidar (The Hawley Publications)was Pellucidar’s first appearance in a comic book; an adaptation of the first part of At the Earth's Core by ERB’s son, John Coleman Burroughs (1913-1979). It was the final twelve pages of a sixty-four page comic, Hi-Spot Comics #2, in November of 1940. This comic also included an adaptation of Jack London’s Seawolf. The full-color cover was an illustration of Innes holding the Earth with the iron mole stuck through the middle. There never was a #3 of this comic. It was reprinted in ERB-dom #9 in March of 1964. It appeared again in a fifty-six page Burroughs Bibliophiles booklet called David Innes of Pellucidar in 1968, this time including all thirty-two pages, some originally intended for other comic issues. There is a full page explaining this comic in The Edgar Rice Burroughs Library of Illustration Volume 2 published by Russ Cochran in 1977. The comic is also reprinted in that book.
Hi-Spot Comics #2  Burroughs Bibliophiles booklet


Tarzan in Pellucidar – Writer Rob Thompson took over the UFS Tarzan daily comic strip, and his first continuity was an adaptation of Tarzan at the Earth's Core. This ran during the winter of 1947-1948 in strips #2509-2640. The book version has Jason Gridley telling Tarzan the events that happened in the story, Tanar of Pellucidar. At ERB’s suggestion, Thompson changed this to At the Earth’s Core, and so there is a five-week flashback to bring Tarzan up to date. Another alteration to the original story is that the great dirigible, the O-220, is not used to enter Pellucidar. Instead, a Doctor Dana Franklin duplicates Abner Perry’s iron mole. The Doctor and his daughter, Doris, are part of the new prospector’s crew. Thompson’s story then follows the book pretty faithfully until after Tarzan, Jason, and the others escape from the Horibs. Instead of rescuing David Innes from the Korsars, he is rescued from a band of Sagoths. Then the group splits up, with Tarzan, Dr. Franklin, and Doris journeying back to where the iron mole is, and the others returning to Sari to enlist Ghak’s help in flipping the mole around to point to the surface. With Tarzan’s group is Ulan, a man from Clovi that was banished for speaking on Tarzan’s behalf earlier in the story. His exile does not occur in the original book. At this point, Thompson borrows events from Land of Terror. Tarzan and friends rescue a baby maj (mastodon) that is mired in a marsh. Its parents appear grateful and travel with them for a while. Then, the humans are captured by the man-eating giants of Azar. The mastodons return the favor and break the prisoners free and carry them to the vicinity of the iron mole. At story’s end, Doris decides to remain in Pellucidar with Ulan.
 Dan Barry (1923-1997) was the artist for this continuity, although Burne Hogarth (1911-1996) penciled the first few weeks. ERB complained about Hogarth dressing the people of Pellucidar in ornate turbans and robes instead of animal skins. In truth, Dian the Beautiful has never been drawn so completely clothed.
 These strips were reprinted in the U.K. comic book, Tarzan Adventures, as shown below:
q       The Mole – Issue #42 on 01/17/59 contains strips #2509-2523
q       Escape to Sari – Issue #43 on 01/24/59 contains strips #2524-2545
q       Tarzan and the Sagoths – Issue #44 on 01/31/59 contains strips #2546-2567
q       Prisoner of the Clovians – Issue #45 on 02/07/59 contains strips #2568-2589
q       Tarzan and the Snake Men – Issue #46 on 02/14/59 contains strips #2590-2611
q       Jason Gridley and Thoar – Issue #47 on 02/21/59 contains strips #2612-2644
q       Pellucidar Concludes – Issue #48 on 02/28/59 contains strips #2634-2640
Cover images of these are at one of Bill Hillman’s websites.
The entire story was reprinted in two issues of the Burroughs Bulletin. Strips #2509-2542 were reprinted in #21 in 1971, and #2539-2640 were reprinted in #36 in 1974. 
 The story was collected again in a New Zealand comic book in 1973 called Tarzan of the Apes Special Superadventure Issue.
The story was collected in the 1992 Italian book, 20.000 Leghe Sotto la Terra: Pellucidar e Gli Altri Mondi Sepolti (20,000 Leagues Under the Earth: Pellucidar and Other Buried Worlds) by Fabrizio Frosali.
The story was collected once again in Rick Norwood's magazine Comics Revue in issues #175-193.
Burne Hogarth daily strip
Tarzan Adventures #46  New Zealand comic cover


Possibly as early as 1964, Artist Jeff Jones produced eight comic pages plus a cover page of an adaptation of Tarzan at the Earth’s Core. Burroughs fan Henry Franke published these pages plus an additional Pellucidar comic cover by Jones, perhaps related to the strip, in The Mucker Magazine #14, February 2010. In the article, Franke speculates about the purpose of this presumably previously unpublished and unfinished comic.

Tarzan at the Earth’s Core - Gold Key Comics faithfully adapted the book, Tarzan at the Earth's Core, in the comic Tarzan of the Apes. Doug Wildey (1922-1994) is the artist. These three stories are titled:
q       Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (September 1968, #179) - The protoceratops is pictured and described in a one-page presentation included in the comic called Dinosauria.
q       Lost in Pellucidar (October 1968, #180) - The plesiosaur is pictured and described in a one-page presentation included in the comic called Dinosauria.
q       The Pirates of Korsar (December 1968, #181) - The ankylosaurus is pictured and described in a one-page presentation included in the comic called Dinosauria.
Tarzan at the Earth's Core  Lost in Pellucidar  The Pirates of Korsar

Marvel Comics negotiated with ERB for a Pellucidar newspaper strip late in 1970. Sadly this project never got off the ground but several sample panels appeared in Wonderworld #9 in August 1973. The sample strips were written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Ross Andru (picture below).
Proposed newspaper strip by Roy Thomas and Ross Andru

Tarzan Returns to the Earth’s Core - Artist Russ Manning (1929-1981) took Tarzan and Korak to Pellucidar in the United Feature Syndicate (UFS) daily Tarzan newspaper strip. This story began on 11/22/71 with strip #10093, and ran until 07/29/72 with strip #10308. Manning used the letter “M” to denote 10,000. For example, the strip on 11-29-71, which is numbered M-99 on the actual strip, is sequentially #10,099.
 In the story, Tarzan and Korak return a Mahar to Pellucidar. How the Mahar got to the surface in the first place was told earlier in a daily strip sequence called Tarzan and the Cult of the Mahar, which began on 03/11/71 with strip #9874, and ran until 07/31/71 with strip #9996. Cult of the Mahar does not take place in Pellucidar, but at the end, in strips #9980 through #9989, the Mahar tells Tarzan how he came to the surface. Every schoolboy remembers the end of the first Pellucidar book. Hooja substitutes a Mahar in the place of Dian the Beautiful, and sets David off in the prospector at the wrong angle. In the next book, Innes returns the Mahar to Pellucidar. According to the Manning story, this was just an illusion placed in Innes’ mind by the Mahar, which actually remained on the surface. 
 The Mahar story sequence did not run directly before the Pellucidar one; a story called Korak and the White Water Runner was between them.  
Manning discussed the comic and the technical issues of illustrating Pellucidar in a brief article in ERB-dom #53 in December 1971. He said that with Pellucidar’s upward curving horizon, there is never a clear sky to silhouette objects against. Also, with the sun directly overhead, nothing has shadows. 
The strip on 12/22/71, M-119, featured the founder of the Burroughs Bibliophiles, Vern Coriell, as a crewmember of the O-220.
 Many of the strips from the Pellucidar story were reprinted in the fanzine, ERB-dom, as shown in the following table. 
ERB-dom issue number and date
contains original strip number and date
80
February 1975
M-99
11/29/71
to
M-122
12/25/71
81
April 1975
M-123
12/27/71
to
M-128
01/01/72
82
June 1975
none
83
September 1975
M-129
01/03/72
to
M-148
01/25/72
84
November 1975
M-149
01/26/72
to
M-168
02/17/72
85
February 1976
M-169
02/18/72
to
M-188
03/11/72
86
April 1976
M-189
03/13/72
to
M-208
04/04/72
87
June 1976
M-209
04/05/72
to
M-223
04/21/72
88
September 1976
M-224
04/22/72
to
M-238
05/09/72
89
November 1976
M-239
05/10/72
to
M-248
05/20/72
 ERB-dom #82 didn't contain any reprinted strips. In that issue, editor Caz explained, We dropped “Korak at the Earth’s Core” in light of DC’s publication of Tarzan No. 238, “Return to Pellucidar” for only 50¢. By comparing it to ERB-dom #80 & #81 strips, you can see they dropped many of the original panels, but they did add color.
 I did compare the strips to the comic book. Not only were some strips dropped, but also new word balloons replaced old, and some of the panels were placed in a different order.Return to Pellucidar
 The DC Comics story, Return to Pellucidar in Tarzan #238 (June 1975) mentioned by Caz, reprinted the Manning strips, this time colorized. Forty-nine pages of the comic book are devoted to the story. It begins approximately with strip number M-98 and ends with strip number M-246. The panel featuring Vern Coriell is not included. The comic book’s cover illustration is by Joe Kubert. Also included in the comic is a one-page presentation Tarzan: Escape from Pellucidarcalled Beasts of Other Worlds. It has a picture and description of the tarag, Pellucidar’s saber-toothed tiger.
 The story begun in Tarzan #238 concludes with DC Comics’ Escape from Pellucidar, a fifteen-page story in Korak #60 (December 1975), now called Tarzan Family Giant. Here, as in Return to Pellucidar, the reprinted UFS daily strips have been colorized. This comic book contains three other stories:  “Forbidden Tomb,” “Carson of Venus,” and “Amazon of Barsoom.”
The strips can be read online because there were reprinted again, this time in Bill Hillman’s ERBzine from issue #2942 on 02/12/10 through #2965 on 04/30/10.
 The Tarzan and the Cult of the Mahar strips were colorized and reprinted in the DC comic book Tarzan #235 (March 1975) in a forty-seven page story titled: The Mahagga. These strips can also be read online because they were reprinted in Hillman’s ERBzine from issue #2916 through 2929.
Strips #10,289 through #10,308 were reprinted in Rick Norwood's Comic Revue issues #173-174.
 Plot Summary - Tarzan Returns to the Earth’s Core 
Tarzan and Korak are aboard the O-220 on a mission to return a Mahar to Pellucidar. With them are Lieutenant/Captain Hines, navigator Vern, helicopter pilot Makebe, and Mugambi and his Waziri warriors. Korak is excited about his first trip to the Earth’s core. The Mahar had been locked in a cell in the mountains where the O-220 had been hidden.
The dirigible enters Pellucidar through the polar opening. The crewmembers see Bhodes[1], Pellucidar’s moon.
Once in Pellucidar, a flock of Pteranodons attacks the dirigible, frees the Mahar, and carries off Korak. Tarzan and Makebe follow in a helicopter. The Mahar can communicate telepathically with Tarzan, and warns him to leave or Korak will be killed. Makebe lands the helicopter out of range of the Mahar’s telepathic powers. Tarzan plans a simultaneous air and land attack. He leaves on foot, and Makebe goes to get the O-220. Suddenly Tarzan is attacked and captured by Horibs riding gorobars[2].
Tarzan awakes in the Horib’s cavern of mud where Princess Dav-an[3], the daughter of David Innes and Dian the Beautiful, is also a captive. They are to be fattened, and fed to the Horib hatchlings. Tarzan is able to swim to freedom, taking the girl with him. Free, Dav-an insists on being taken to Sari but Tarzan must hasten back to the Mountains of the Thipdars to save Korak. They depart briefly but Dav-an encounters a lone Horib.
Tarzan hears her scream, and interrupts the capture attempt. He fights and kills the Horib. Dav-an realizes that it’s too dangerous for her to travel to Sari alone, and agrees to go with Tarzan to free Korak. They depart for the Mountains of the Thipdars riding the slain Horib’s gorobar.
A storm hits as they enter the mountain range. Tarzan leaves Dav-an in the safety of a cave, and continues alone. He finds the cavern of the thipdars just as the flock is leaving, fleeing in fright, from what, Tarzan wonders?
Tarzan finds Korak’s knife, but the cavern is otherwise empty. He returns to check on Dav-an only to find her gone. Then Mugambi and the Waziri arrive. Mugambi tells Tarzan his story.
Makebe had brought them to the mountains in the helicopter. The warriors searched for Tarzan and Korak on foot. Then they were attacked by flying dragons (thipdars) but fortunately the storm drove them off.
Tarzan returns to the dirigible to continue the search across the savage vastness of Pellucidar.
When the thipdar pulled Korak from the dirigible, he was taken to one of hundreds of caverns. He tries to escape but a Mahar paralyzes him with a mental blast. While the attacking Waziri and the O-220 distracts the Mahar, Korak slips away.
Korak comes upon another cavern where a Mahar is about to capture a girl. It’s Dav-an, although Korak hasn’t met her yet. He quickly attacks the Mahar, and then all, including the gorobar, tumble down the side of a cliff into a flooded river. The lizard, at home in the water, inflates itself with air, and carries Korak and Dav-an about fifty miles downstream.
The two are attacked by a Sagoth. The Sagoth falls, apparently a victim of a gunshot. Korak helps the Sagoth, bandaging the wound. Dav-an, fearing other Sagoths are nearby, and upset with Korak for saving the gorilla-man’s life, flees on the gorobar.
Korak follows the sound of gunfire. He comes upon a group of Sagoths attacking who he believes are men from the O-220. Who else would be bearing guns in savage Pellucidar? The Sagoths cause an animal stampede toward the holed-up riflemen. Korak alerts the shooters in time for them to seek shelter in the treetops. Then they elude the Sagoths, taking advantage of the dust stirred up by the passing stampede.
Korak sees that these are not his friends from the O-220 but are men from Sari, led by David Innes. They are searching for Dav-an.
Korak, Innes, and the Sarians decide to take Innes’ boat upriver to the Mountains of the Thipdars to find Tarzan. Innes reasons that using the O-220 will make his search for Dav-an easier. When they approach the moored Connecticut, they find her full of Sagoths armed with match-lock carbines[4].
The gilaks are taken captive and put to the oars of the Connecticut. Instead of going upriver, they go down it, stopping once to pick up another Sagoth party with slaves, including Dav-an.
When they reach the sea, two azdryths[5] attack. David Innes does not want to show the Sagoths how to use the ship’s cannon, giving that race the knowledge of superior weaponry. His daughter disagrees feeling that saving their lives is more important. The Sagoths release her from the oars and she dispatches two azdryths with two cannon shots.
Aboard the O-220, Tarzan continues the search for his son. He flies to Sari, only to find it under attack by Sagoths, now using canons. The O-220’s firepower is too much for the Sagoths, but the Sarian general, Roag, is a traitor in league with the Sagoths. Tarzan is shot, and Dian is taken prisoner.
Merely wounded, Tarzan captures general Roag.
The O-220 flies to the coast and finds the Sagoths marching empress Dian and the captured Sarians into captivity. They free the prisoners.
Meanwhile, Korak, David Innes, Dav-an, and other prisoners are taken off the Connecticut. They are seized by Mahars, and taken to Bhodes, Pellucidar’s moon. There, the Mahars lure them into a feeding pool. Just in time, the O-220 arrives to save the mesmerized ones. All are reunited, and Tarzan and Korak return to the ape-man’s jungle.

[1] Called the Dead World in ERB’s books
[2] Spelled gorobor in ERB’s books. Later in this story, it is simply referred to as the lizard.
[3] Princess Dav-an is a character created presumably by Manning. Abner Perry has a daughter named Tala in Dark Horse’s Tarzan: Tales of Pellucidar by Thomas Yeates.
[4] In strip M-216 Manning seems to make a mistake. The Sarians aboard the Connecticut admit to having been surprised by the Sagoths at night.
[5] Spelled azdyryth in ERB’s books, this beast resembles our ichthyosaurus, a fearsome ocean reptile.
Russ Manning daily strip sample


DC Comics took over Korak from Gold Key with issue #46 on 05/06/72. It contained Pellucidar: The World Within, a story by Len Wein with art by Alan Weiss. This began an adaptation of At the Earth's Core that continued in Weird Worlds.
Korak #46


Edgar Rice Burroughs Weird Worlds (DC comics) continued the adaptation of At the Earth's Core that started in Korak #46. Each of these comic books contained both a continuing Pellucidar and Barsoom story. The adaptation of At the Earth’s Core completed in issue #5 and Pellucidar began with issue #6. These stories were dropped after issue #7.  The Writer / Artist for each is as follows:
q       The Arena of Sudden Death--#1 September 1972, Len Wein / Alan Weiss
q       Slaves of the Mahars------------#2 November 1972, Len Wein / Alan Weiss
q       Temple of the Damned---------#3 January 1973, Len Wein / Alan Weiss
q       Jubal the Ugly One---------------#4 March 1973, Denny O’Neil / Michael Wm. Kaluta
q       Combat-------------------------------#5 May 1973, Denny O’Neil / Dan Green
q       Return--------------------------------#6 August 1973, Denny O’Neil / Dan Green
  q The Trap-----------------------------#7 October 1973, Denny O’Neil / Dan Green
The Arena of Sudden Death  Slaves of the Mahars  Temple of the Damned
Jubal the Ugly One  Combat  Return  The Trap


Tarzan in Savage Pellucidar (1975) is a forty-eight page graphic novel written by Mike Royer and drawn by Russ Manning that was published in numerous European countries. In this story, Tarzan enters Pellucidar in a submarine down through bottomless Loch Ness. There he fights Hooja the Sly One and the Sagoths as the Mahars try to regain their Great Secret.
Tarzan in Savage Pellucidar

The Amulet, the Power, and the Hero (11/12/76) – This story appeared in DC Comics issue #66, again called Tarzan Family Giant. The comic has three stories: Korak, Barsoom, and Pellucidar. Elliot Maggin wrote the Pellucidar yarn. The artist was Gerry Talaoc. The beginning of this story is very similar to the second book of the series. Cogdon Nestor discovers a telegraph chattering away in the Sahara Desert. It tells him of the further adventures of David Innes in Pellucidar. Innes returns to the savage world with the iron mole loaded with books, blueprints, and supplies. Once in Pellucidar, the story bears no resemblance whatsoever to Burroughs’ books. A village, too civilized to be in Pellucidar in my opinion, is being terrorized by Mahars. The villagers feel defenseless because their Amulet of Power has been stolen. Armed with swords, Innes and the chief go the Mahar’s eyrie and win back the Amulet. Turns out there were only two Mahars. It also turns out that the Amulet is just a worthless tricket and is discarded. The story wraps up, like a Burroughs book, with the end of the “framing device”. Here again it’s similar to the book, Pellucidar. Cogdon Nestor has received a reply from the writer Burroughs. “Story True.”
Pellucidar: The Amulet, the Power, and the Hero
Dead Moon of Pellucidar - Writer and artist Russ Manning took the ape-man to the Earth's core in the UFS Tarzan Sunday comic strip in a story that ran for a year and spanned fifty-three parts from #2448 on 02/05/78 to #2498 on 01/28/79. These strips were reprinted by Blackthorne Publishing in Comic-Strip Preserves Tarzan #3 in July 1986, although reduced in size to 4" x 6". They were reprinted again in ERBzine #2137 on September 10, 2010 .
A Horib from Dead Moon of Pellucidar  Comic-Strip Preserves #3 cover
Plot Summary
    The great dirigible, the O-220, lands at Tarzan's African estate. Tarzan greets Captain Hines. Tarzan explains that the telegraph that David Innes set up (see the end of At the Earth's Core by ERB) in the Sahara transmitted a cry for help. There is a danger in Pellucidar that threatens the entire Earth. Fifty Waziri warriors are part of the crew for this mission. At first, they call the dirigible a "cloud elephant."
    As the O-220 moves north, its radio picks up news that earthquakes are striking all continents. Tarzan knows that this is related to the danger in Pellucidar. They speed toward the northern polar opening.
    Inside Pellucidar, they use the dirigible's special weapons to break up a battle between Horibs and lidi-riding warriors from Sari. Tarzan speaks to Reyna, the leader of the warriors, and finds out that an earthquake destroyed the city of Sari. Shortly after that, David Innes vanished. Reyna carries an urgent message to von Horst, chief of Lo-har. Tarzan dies on the lidi with Reyna's warriors while the O-220 follows above.
    They arrive at Lo-har, a city of caves, to find that von Horst is a bitter man, caring little for anything. Sagoths killed his mate, La-ja. An earthquake strikes Lo-har, nearly trapping Tarzan, Reyna, von Horst, and the warriors from Sari in a cave. Von Horst finally agrees to go with the group to Sari. On their way there, they are attacked by Horibs. Tarzan's group tries to outrun them. Then they come upon more Horibs attacking mammoth-riding warriors. Tarzan cleverly moves the battle up the mountain, drawing the Horibs into a cold rain where the reptiles become sluggish. He captures their leader. The mammoth-riders and Horibs join Tarzan's growing legion of mismatched warriors.
    They arrive at Sari and find a worried Empress Dian the Beautiful. As a storm dumps rain on Sari, Sagoths attack, receiving mental communications from Mahars hidden above in the clouds. The Sagoths kidnap Tarzan and Dian, carrying them at a trot to the Land of Awful Shadow. From there, Mahars carry them up to Pellucidar's moon, called the Dead World, and into a feeding temple. Tarzan saves a mesmerized girl who walks into the water toward a Mahar. The Mahar carries Tarzan into a cave where he finds hundreds of Mahars in a crystal cavern and a jewel suspended in the air (Pellucidar's moon may be hollow as well). The Emperor David Innes is there. The Mahars are forcing him to visualize surface world cities. Then the Dead World, completely made of crystals, begins to vibrate and causes an earthquake exactly where the Mahars directed it. San Francisco is destroyed. Then the Mahars try to enter Tarzan's brain.
    Meanwhile, the odd army of warriors from Sari and Lo-har, as well as Horibs and mammoth-riders are lead by Reyna and von Horst in pursuit of the Sagoths that captured Tarzan and Dian. The army comes to the Land of Awful Shadow, and while most of the gilaks sleep, Reyna asks von Horst to show her the exciting games that surface people play in the dark. Suddenly the Horibs revolt and attack them. A fierce battle breaks out and just when it looks like the Horibs will triumph, the O-220 arrives. The Horibs surrender. The entire army minus the mammoths and lidi board the great dirigible and fly to the Dead World.
    Meanwhile, Tarzan's indomitable will power allows him to break free of the Mahar's mental hold. Mahar reinforcements arrive. Collectively they concentrate their thoughts on the jewel, and power builds within it. Reyna's army enters the crystal cave to find Tarzan and David Innes being blasted by the mind rays of the Mahars. The Waziri warriors fire on the Mahars but the reptiles send a mental blast that halts the warriors' guns. Sensing the power of the crystal weakening, Tarzan sends his own mental attack at it. The crystal shatters, and the victory cry of the bull ape is voiced by the ape-man. The Mahars flee the crystal cavern. As the O-220 is getting ready to depart for the outer world, Tarzan asks von Horst if he's coming with them, but von Horst seems to be very interested in Reyna.
Commentary (and a few quibbles on details)
    Russ Manning's artwork is very good on this strip. He does well on pretty ladies. Reyna is one hot warrior-maiden, always ready to die in glorious battle, and looking mighty fine while doing it in her two-piece fur-trimmed fighting bikini, and Empress Dian the Beautiful is drawn as lovely as is her name.
    Manning's story is also very good. There's plenty of action. How can you go wrong with Horibs, Sagoths, and Mahars?
    Hines was the navigator on the original rescue mission to Pellucidar as told in the book Tarzan at the Earth's Core. He's Captain on this mission. Perhaps Zuppner, the original Captain, was unavailable or retired. This was also true in Manning's prior story in 1971, Tarzan Returns to the Earth's Core, told in the daily comic strip. Two other minor characters from that prior strip appear in this one: the Waziri Mugambi and the helicopter pilot Makebe.
    Gorobor is spelled incorrectly here as gorobar, just like it was in 1971. Abner Perry has inexplicably become Abner Dean.
    In this story, the Horibs speak the language of Tarzan's mangani, unlike in the book where they speak the common language of Pellucidar.
    As the Sagoths carry Dian into the Land of Awful Shadow, she cries, "No...No! Not into the awful shadow! It is death to enter the darkness." In the books, her brother Dacor is married to Canda of the tribe of Thoria who live in the Land of Awful Shadow. In this comic, everyone is in superstitious dread of the place.
    Dian is pretty much afraid of everything; quite unlike the way Burroughs portrays her. Here's one of several examples, "Oh...It's so dark!...And terrible! Tarzan! I'm frightened!" She's particularly annoying in strip #2474.
Many thanks to Dennis Wilcutt for sending me copies of these strips.

 Strip numbers and dates are listed below. 
       2448                    02/05/78
2449                    02/12/78
2450                    02/19/78
2451                    02/26/78
2452                    03/05/78
2453                    03/12/78
2454                    03/19/78
2455                    03/26/78
2456                    04/02/78
2457                    04/09/78
2458                    04/16/78
2459                    04/23/78
2460                    04/30/78
2461                    05/07/78
2462                    05/14/78
2463                    05/21/78
2464                    05/28/78
2465                    06/04/78
2466                    06/11/78
2467                    06/18/78
2468                    06/25/78
2469                    07/02/78
2470                    07/09/78
2471                    07/16/78
2472                    07/23/78
2473                    07/30/78
2474                    08/06/78
2475                    08/13/78
2476                    08/20/78
2477                    08/27/78
2477*        09/03/78
2478                    09/10/78
2479                    09/17/78
2480                    09/24/78
2481                    10/01/78
2482                    10/08/78
2483                    10/15/78
2484                    10/22/78
2485                    10/29/78
2486                    11/05/78
2487                    11/12/78
2488                    11/19/78
2489                    11/26/78
2490                    12/03/78
2491                    12/10/78
2492                    12/17/78
2493                    12/24/78
2494                    12/31/78
2495                    01/07/79
2496                    01/14/79
2497                    01/21/79
2498                    01/28/79 
*There are two #2477s. The strip numbers for the second one and all subsequent Tarzan strips through #2603 are off by one.

Blood Money and Human Bondage – This story ran in Marvel Comics’ Tarzan Lord of the JungleThe Writer / Artist / Inker for each is as follows:
q       #15 - August 1978: David A. Kraft / John Buscema / Klaus Janson – The story starts in this issue, but it doesn’t take us to Pellucidar until issue # 17.
q       #16 – September 1978: David A. Kraft / John Buscema / Klaus Janson
q       #17 – October 1978: David A. Kraft / John Buscema / Klaus Janson – Finally Pellucidar!
q       #18 – November 1978: David A. Kraft / John Buscema / Klaus Janson
q       #19 – December 1978: David A. Kraft / Sal Buscema/ Klaus Janson
q       #20 – January 1979: David A. Kraft and Bill Mantlo / Sal Buscema / Bob Hall
q       #21 – February 1979: David A. Kraft and Bill Mantlo / Sal Buscema / Rudy Nebres
q       #22 – March 1979: Bill Mantlo / Sal Buscema / Jim Mooney
q       #23 – April 1979: Bill Mantlo / Sal Buscema / Pablo Marcos
q       #24 – May 1979: Bill Mantlo / Sal Buscema / Bob Hall – contains the story’s epilogue and the beginning of the next story

Plot Summary - Blood Money and Human Bondage 
A local African villager is pursued by Arab slavers. Tarzan kills the Arabs. He then finds a group of foreigners supposedly tracking the rest of the Arab group, but their true mission is unknown. Tarzan joins them temporarily.
Meanwhile Arabs from the same group raid a village. They take the Princess Ayesha and her surviving villagers to the mountain camp of the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred. There they are put to work opening a sealed cavern.
Tarzan discovers the foreigners he’s partnered with are ivory poachers and thieves. The foreigners attempt to hang glide into the Mad Arab’s mountain stronghold. Tarzan and a mangani follow them, also using gliders. The ape seems to have no trouble flying his.
The Mad Arab’s slaves have opened the Sacred Cavern. Within, Alhazred completes a ritual that opens a portal to Pellucidar. He enters the portal with his men, the Princess Ayesha, and the foreigners, who pretend to be on the Arab’s side to save their lives. Tarzan follows into Pellucidar as the portal closes.
Ayesha walks ahead of the group, and is attacked by hyenadons (sic). A young Pellucidarian hunter saves her. Together they flee Alhazred’s group, and escape on the youth’s trained thipdar. Bullets wound both the young hunter and the thipdar during their flight. The dying beast manages to fly them to the Dead World, the moon of Pellucidar.
Tarzan is attacked by cannibals riding flightless birds (perhaps dyals). He escapes by diving off a cliff, one thousand feet down to a river. He swims to shore and finds it full of Korsars. The Cid talks him into joining their ranks. The pirates are attacked by a sea monster (perhaps an azdyryth). Tarzan kills it, and the Cid announces they are now blood brothers.
The cannibals join forces with the Mad Arab believing Alhazred is the “one whose coming was foretold.” They set out on the river in the cannibal’s boat. Catching up to the Cid, they attack the pirates. Alhazred takes a bullet in the face but it doesn’t even faze him. The Korsars manage to repel the cannibals. Tarzan dives off the boat when the Cid doesn’t want to pursue them.
Back on land, Tarzan happens upon a lair of Horribs. The fight results in the reptile-men all slain, and Tarzan continues his search for the Mad Arab. Then he is captured by Sagoths. He is tied up and placed on the back of a thipdar behind a Sagoth. Once in the air, Tarzan manages to dislodge the Sagoth. He is still tied up but is able to pilot the thipar with the reins in his teeth. He enters the Land of Awful Shadow and comes upon a city.
On the Dead World, Ayesha and the hunter are taken to the Mahars’ feeding pool. Killing one Mahar and wounding another, Ayesha saves the hunter and herself. Later they discover the Mahars’ sound cannon. The Mahars intend to use this weapon to wipe out the human races of Pellucidar.
Below, in the Land of Awful Shadow, Alhazred and his party of bickering foreigners and cannibals arrive at the city. He is drawn to the sonic crystal, the power source for the sound cannon.
Ayesha directs the sound cannon at the Mad Arab back on Pellucidar’s surface. She is discovered by the Mahars. During the fight, Ayesha smashes the weapon.
Tarzan discovers the defeated army of Amoz. He takes command and leads them against the pyramid city. The defending Mahars seem to have the upper hand when suddenly a stampede of animals disrupts the confrontation. It seems that the beasts of Pellucidar are being drawn to the crystal.
            At last Tarzan finds the Mad Arab as he is before the sonic crystal. An epic fight ensues. At the end, both Alhazred and the crystal are destroyed. Ayesha and the hunter, whose name is Dangar, fall in love, and ride a Thipdar to join the others in the defeated Mahars’ pyramid city.
In the epilogue, the portal to the surface has somehow materialized just when it’s needed. Ayesha decides to remain in Pellucidar with the man she loves. The Cid arrives and wishes his blood brother good luck, then Tarzan and the surviving foreigner pass through the portal. Back on the surface, Tarzan seals the entrance to the Sacred Cavern with a blast of dynamite. Pellucidar is safe from the greed of men.
            There is a mistake, or departure from ERB’s Pellucidar, in issue #20. A Mahar is enraged because Ayesha kills its mate. Mahars, of course, are all female and reproduce using artificial methods.
    Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab, is a name coined by H. P. Lovecraft for himself when he was a young writer and was the name of the author of the Necronomicon in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
#15  #16  #17
#18  #19  #20
#21  #22  #23  #24

Back to Pellucidar - Artist Gray Morrow and writer Don Kraar took Tarzan to Pellucidar in the Sunday funnies of the UFS strip. This story ran for fourteen weeks during the fall and winter of 1987.
As the story opens, Jason Gridley and his family are living in Sari, not in Tarzana as one is led to believe by what Innes says at the end of Back to the Stone Age. Another surprise is that Jana, theRed Flower of Zoram is a blonde. Hair dye must be one of the innovations brought about by Abner Perry. 
The great dirigible, the O-220, has been brought out of mothballs and refitted for another mission to Pellucidar. A group of explorers from the surface have inadvertently started an influenza epidemic, against which Pellucidarans have no natural defenses. The O-220’s mission is to bring the city of Sari medical supplies to combat the illness.Back to Pellucidar
Several crewmembers have some experience in Pellucidar. Hines, the navigator on the original rescue mission, is Captain on this one. Hines was also the O-220’s Captain in Russ Manning’s Sunday funnies story, Dead Moon of Pellucidar in 1978. I wonder if Don Kraar was being consistent with Manning on purpose or was he continuing an error. Dorf is back as well, a mate on the first mission, now a Lieutenant. And of course, Tarzan is on board.
Upon arrival in Sari, Tarzan finds out that the Mahars have recently begun to rise up against the human races again and are gathering in a mountain stronghold. Also new to Tarzan, is Jason and Jana’s daughter Mia.
A man named Brock heads the expedition that brought the disease to the Earth’s core. Because Innes wouldn’t let him exploit Pellucidar’s resources, Brock has been dealing with the Mahars. Looking for a way home, Brock’s explorers hijack the O-220 with Jana and Mia onboard. Tarzan and others pursue them on Ja’s ship, The Connecticut[1].
Although Burroughs described the Mezops as similar in appearance to our Native Americans, Morrow has Ja looking like Ming the Merciless.
Ja’s island home is misspelled as Anaroc in strip #2933, and then is misspelled a different way as Anorac in the very next and remaining strips. The correct spelling is Anoroc, which, according to “Septimus Favonius” from the Burroughs Bulletin, is the backwards spelling of Burroughs’ Corona typewriter.
The Connecticut is attacked by an azdyryth[2], which is dispatched by cannon fire.
Then they fall under attack by a ship of Korsars led by none other than The Cid himself[3]. The Waziri repel the pirates using automatic weapons. The Connecticut is sorely damaged, and Tarzan’s crew abandons it and continues the journey to the Mountains of the Thipdars on the Korsar vessel.
Just two comic panels at sea and then it’s “Land Ho,” at the swamps of the Horibs. This was a significant sea voyage according to the known maps of Pellucidar. Leaving Sari, the ship must have sailed down past the Unfriendly Islands, through the nameless strait, and then across the Korsar Az to reach the stomping grounds of the Horibs.
Yes, no Pellucidar comic can resist writing Horibs into the story. The grotesque yet cool reptile-men attack Tarzan’s party. The team is assisted by the sudden appearance of warriors from the tribe of Zoram, led by Thoar, Jana’s brother.
With Thoar is his one-time[4] traveling mate, the Sagoth Tar-gash.
Tarzan’s party finds the O-220 moored deep in the Mountains of the Thipdars. Tarzan gains access by climbing one of its mooring cables.
Inside the Mahar cavern, the reptiles are not that grateful to Brock for delivering the dirigible to them; they eat him! And then, Jana, with little Mia in her arms, enters the feeding pool, mesmerized.
Tarzan recaptures the O-220 and arrives in the Mahar cavern in the nick of time. He fights and kills the Mahar queen.
Although I’ve made light of inconsistencies with the Pellucidar books, this comic is a fun read and the artwork is outstanding. All the cool Pellucidar races make an appearance: Horibs, Mahars, Sagoths, and Korsars; you can’t go wrong with that!


[1] We last heard about The Connecticut in Russ Manning’s 1971 UFS daily comic strip Tarzan Returns to the Earth’s Core.
[2] Another common misspelling is this sea sloth’s name, which when spelled correctly contains two “y”s. Writer Kraar does no better here than Russ Manning did with it in 1971.
[3] In the book, Tanar of Pellucidar, The Cid was chief of the Korsars. He erroneously believed himself to be Stellara’s father.
[4] See the book, Tarzan at the Earth’s Core.
Strip numbers and dates:
2928                    09/27/87
2929                    10/04/87
2930                    10/11/87
2931                    10/18/87
2932                    10/25/87
2933                    11/01/87
2934                    11/08/87
2935                    11/15/87
2936                    11/22/87
2937                    11/29/87
2938                    12/06/87
2939                    12/13/87
2940                    12/20/87
2941                    12/27/87

At the Earth's Core - Artist, writer, and fan Mike Cody began adapting At the Earth's Core for the fanzine, Edgar Rice Burroughs News Dateline, in issue #42 in May of 1991. Except for issues #53 and #65/66, he produced two pages of the story in each magazine through #67/68 in June 2001. The story remains unfinished. Cody also provided the cover illustration for issue #42 and a poster from the comic in issue #52
Mike Cody's comic from ERBND#51


20.000 Leghe Sotto la Terra: Pellucidar e Gli Altri Mondi Sepolti (20,000 Leagues Under the Earth: Pellucidar and Other Buried Worlds) – This 1992 Italian book by Fabrizio Frosali is a history of hollow Earth adventures, focusing primarily on the comics. The book has a great cover illustration by Pino Rinaldi. It also has a foldout color map by S. D’Amico tipped inside the back cover (map #18 on my listing). The first 33 pages of this 158-page book discuss subterranean adventures in comics, literature, and film and are amply illustrated in black and white. This is followed by a Pellucidar portfolio by Frank Frazetta. Next comes a complete reprinting, in Italian, of the first two Pellucidar appearances in the newspapers, Rex Maxon’s Tarzan at the Earth’s Core and Burne Hogarth and Dan Barry’s Tarzan in Pellucidar.
Italian collection  click for larger version


Odyssey (Part I) - Artist Gray Morrow and writer Don Kraar took Tarzan to the Earth’s core again in the Sunday funnies of the UFS strip. These strips were reprinted in ERBzine #2121.
In Part I of this story, Jason Gridley teleports to Tarzan’s African estate to seek his help. He tells a strange story. David Innes was in contact with John Carter on Barsoom through the Gridley wave. Perry’s teleporter, using the tenth ray of Barsoom, instead of teleporting Innes to Barsoom, caused Innes and Carter to exchange places. In addition, the ray has caused the Mahars to mutate and the people of Pellucidar to loose their homing instinct. Gridley and Tarzan teleport to Pellucidar. Perry shows them the city of Sari, complete with skyscrapers and smog.
Meanwhile, John Carter has gone to the Mountains of the Thipdars in the airship, Dian, commanded by Ja of Anaroc (spelled Anoroc in ERB's books), to fight the Mahars. The airship is attacked by thipdars and crashes. On the ground, the survivors are captured by Sagoths. Carter is taken before the Mahar Queen who wants to learn his method of traveling between worlds.
Jason Gridley, Tarzan, and Perry leave Sari in another airship, The Clementine, to rescue John Carter. Outside the Mahar grotto, Perry has devised a scheme to pump flammable liquid into the nests where lie the Mahar eggs. Tarzan runs the hose into the grotto. He finds the Mahar Queen attempting to force her will on Carter. A fight ensues, but the Mahars are no match for the team of the King of the Apes and the greatest swordsman of two worlds. Carter kills the queen, and Tarzan ignites the liquid that the airship’s engines have finished pumping into the caves. The Mahar eggs are destroyed by fire.
The Mahar threat ended, Tarzan agrees to go with Carter to Barsoom to straighten out the havoc caused by the tenth ray. The Barsoom adventure is told in Part II of Odyssey.
Strip numbers and dates for Part I are listed below. 
3296                    10/16/94
3297                    10/23/94
3298                    10/30/94
3299                    11/06/94
3300                    11/13/94
3301                    11/20/94
3302                    11/27/94
3303                    12/04/94
3304                    12/11/94
3305                    12/18/94
3306                    12/25/94
3307                    01/01/95
3308                    01/08/95
3309                    01/15/95
3310                    01/22/95
3311                    01/29/95
3312                    02/05/95
3313                    02/12/95
3314                    02/19/95
3315                    02/26/95
Odyssey - Tarzan dangling from a rope above the city of Sari

Tarzan versus Predator at the Earth's Core (Dark Horse Comics) was written by Walter Simonson and illustrated by Lee Weeks. It was published in four comic books in 1996 and collected in a 104-page trade paperback in October 1997. In the story, Tarzan receives an urgent message from Pellucidar via Gridley wave. Help is needed at the Earth's core. Tarzan takes Jane, his Waziri, and army troops and flies in through the polar opening. There they find the alien Predators hunting new prey among the savage beasts and warriors of Pellucidar. They see Tarzan as a worthy trophy. Many familiar characters are present: Muviro, David and Dian, Abner Perry, Jason and Jana, and even a cameo by ERB himself! The four individual parts are titled:
  1. Worlds Within Worlds - January 1996
  2. The Killing Ground! - February 1996
  3. The Ancient of Days - March 1996
  4. The Law of the Jungle - June 1996
Worlds Within Worlds  The Killing Ground!  The Ancient of Days  The Law of the Jungle
Predator trade paperback

Tarzan: The Savage Heart (Dark Horse Comics) was written by Allan Gross and illustrated by Mike Grell. The story was told in four comic books from 04/07/99 to 07/30/99. The story answers the question: what would Tarzan do if Jane were killed? Tarzan is sick of civilization; even his beloved Africa is tainted by man's hand. This is the device to get Tarzan to Pellucidar for adventures in the Paleolithic land. The first half of the first book takes place on the surface and is colored in dark browns. When the iron mole breaks into Pellucidar, everything is in bold color. Tarzan encounters many of our favorite Pellucidar beasts: the sithic, ryth, thipdar, and ta-ho. A couple of old friends also show up: D'arnot and Abner Perry. Author Gross uses some of the plotline from his book, Farewell Pellucidar (see Pastiches). An interview with artist Mike Grell can be found in the summer 1999 Burroughs Bulletin.
      


Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan: Tales of Pellucidar is three stories told in a single comic book: Dark Horse Presents #143, May 1999. The first two chapters are written and drawn byThomas Yeates. Chapter 3 is written by Steve Bissette and drawn by Yeates. The story chronologically follows The Savage Heart described above and begins with Tarzan already in Pellucidar. The ape-man and Abner Perry's (comic book) daughter, Tala, encounter the strange Mealian tribe and then struggle to survive a rare Pellucidarian storm.
Tales of Pellucidar


The team of artist Gray Morrow and writer Allan Gross produced a series of four Pellucidar stories for the UFS Sunday Tarzan strip. Each was told in sixteen strips. They ran from 05/30/99 (#3537) to 08/13/00 (#3600). The stories are well constructed with plenty of action, and the artwork is very good.
q       Tarzan and the New Atlantis – Jane is insistent that Tarzan clean out the shed before taking off on a new adventure. Amidst the clutter, they find an Oparian tablet with Tarzan’s likeness on it. Tarzan and Nkima go to Opar’s secret treasure vault to clear up the mystery. There they find another mystery: a statue of Tarzan. Suddenly Tarzan and Nkima are transported through a mysterious portal to Pellucidar. They arrive inside a temple where beastmen are worshipping a statue of Tarzan. A beastman tells Tarzan that they have awaited his coming for a thousand generations. Now the ancient prophecy will be fulfilled, and Tarzan will free the slaves from their island prison. Tarzan finds some interesting artifacts in the temple dating back to before the ancient Atlanteans allowed their knowledge of technology to degrade. The beastmen’s rulers live on the mainland in New Atlantis. A spy reports Tarzan’s coming to Queen Varla. She brings her army to the island. Tarzan uses one of the artifacts he found, a hand grenade-like explosive. Under Tarzan’s leadership, the slaves win their freedom. Back in the temple, an Atlantean examining one of the explosive artifacts accidentally sets it off, and the transporter is destroyed, and with it, Tarzan’s way home. Tarzan shows the Atlantean rulers how to operate their long-dormant robots, in order to till their fields for them and to rebuild their temple. Queen Varla wants Tarzan to remain with them, with her, but Tarzan explains that there is someone waiting for him to return. He departs in a canoe with Nkima. Strip numbers and dates are listed below.
3537        05/30/99
3538        06/06/99
3539        06/13/99
3540        06/20/99
3540 (again) 06/27/99
3542    07/04/99
3543        07/11/99
3544        07/18/99
3545        07/25/99
3546        08/01/99
3547        08/08/99
3548        08/15/99
3549        08/22/99
3550        08/29/99
3551        09/05/99
3552        09/12/99 
q       The Face in the Swamp - Tarzan saves one of the Gorbuses who committed suicide in his previous life. Tarzan and Nkima encounter a group of Gorbuses. Morrow drew them just the way ERB described them: white skin and hair, red eyes, and two long canine tusks curving downward toward their chins. One of them claims he doesn’t belong in the inner world, and the others are trying to take him away. Tarzan rescues him and carries him off. The Gorbus is afraid of the swamp. Like in Back to the Stone Age, the Gorbus, Akhi, uses some English words.  Gross reveals a little bit more of this strange race. When the Gorbus looks in the swamp water, his reflection is not of the hideous cannibal, but of his former self, Archibald Hastings, passenger on the RMS Lusitania in 1915 when a German U-boat torpedoed the ship. In this comic, Hastings forced his way onto a lifeboat and watched many others perish. He couldn’t live with that, and later committed suicide. The group of Gorbuses catches up to Tarzan and Akhi. Akhi runs off, leaving Tarzan to fight the Gorbuses by himself. Akhi is tormented by his actions. Once again, he runs off while others die, just like on the Lusitania. As Tarzan fights, the group falls into the swamp water. It’s like acid on their skin. Between the deadly waters and even deadlier water beasts of Pellucidar, the Gorbuses perish. Tarzan is grabbed by an ichthyosaur and pulled under. He cannot break free. In a moment of bravery, Akhi dives into the swamp water and rescues Tarzan. Back on the shore, Akhi dies and his body is transformed from a Gorbus back into a human. Tarzan remarks to Nkima that although men can be cruel, they can also be brave and make amends. This is a somber story, but one with a moral for us all. Strip numbers and dates are listed below.
3553        09/19/99
3554        09/26/99
3555        10/03/99
3556        10/10/99
3557        10/17/99
3558        10/24/99
3559        10/31/99
3560        11/07/99
3561        11/14/99
3562        11/21/99
3563        11/28/99
3564        12/05/99
3565        12/12/99
3566        12/19/99
3567        12/26/99
3568        01/02/00
q       The Roof of the World - Still in Pellucidar, Tarzan and Nkima leave the swamp. Suddenly a stampede of thags coThe Roof of the Worldmes upon them. They escape being trampled by dangling over a cliff while the thags, unable to stop their forward motion, plummet to their deaths. Tarzan discovers that they were being driven by Horibs. He recognizes one of them as Bagdar, from his previous visit to the Earth’s core. Bagdar tells Tarzan that they are hunting meat for a journey to the roof of the world. They have discovered a tunnel to the surface. Tarzan is taken captive. Also a prisoner is Roxie Gardner, a woman from the surface. They begin the journey through the tunnel. Tarzan notes that the dropping temperature is causing the cold-blooded Horibs to become sluggish. He chooses this moment to escape. Meanwhile, Roxie is about to be fed to a brood of Horib hatchlings. Tarzan frees her just as Bagdar arrives. Suddenly the tunnel begins to collapse. Tarzan and Bagdar work together to prevent the hatchlings from being crushed, however, the cave-in propagates, and Tarzan, Moxie, and Nkima back out of the tunnel. The path to the surface world completely collapses, sealing in the Horibs. Strip numbers and dates are listed below.
3569        01/09/00
3570        01/16/00
3571        01/23/00
3572        01/30/00
3573        02/06/00
3574        02/13/00
3575        02/20/00
3576        02/27/00
3577        03/05/00
3578        03/12/00
3579        03/19/00
3580        03/26/00
3581        04/02/00
3582        04/09/00
3583        04/16/00
3584        04/23/00
q       Flight From Pellucidar - A saber-toothed tiger attacks Tarzan, Nkima, and Moxie, now sexily Flight From Pellucidarattired in a cavewoman bikini. Tarzan kills it with his bow and arrow, and Moxie hears his cry of the bull ape for the first time. After dinner, they encounter a group of ape-men who say they will lead them to their plane, but actually plan to feed them to the wolves. The ape-men travel through the trees and bring them to Moxie’s plane. Using the combined muscle of the ape-men plus a wooly mammoth, the plane is freed. Tarzan speaks to the mammoth using the language of his mangani. Moxie says, “Umgowa! Umgowa!” Tarzan explains, “Elephants don’t understand ‘umgowa.’ You’ve been watching too many of those old movies. When we get out of Pellucidar, I suggest you try reading the books. They’re more accurate.” The wolves attack. Moxie is bitten, but the three manage to get the plane started and take off. Wounded but okay, Moxie is surprised to see that Tarzan can fly. They fly out of Pellucidar using the southern polar opening. Out of fuel, Tarzan is forced to bring the plane down on the snow and ice. Leaving Moxie and Nkima in the plane, Tarzan walks through a blizzard and collapses just as Moxie’s companions’ camp is found. The last scene is of Tarzan and Moxie recovering in a hospital. There’s more humor and inside jokes for ERB fans in this Sunday strip than I’m used to seeing. The story is well told with plenty of action and the artwork is good. Strip numbers and dates are listed below.
3585        04/30/00
3586        05/07/00
3587        05/14/00
3588        05/21/00
3589        05/28/00
3590        06/04/00
3591        06/11/00
3592        06/18/00
3593        06/25/00
3594        07/02/00
3595        07/09/00
3596        07/16/00
3597        07/23/00
3598        07/30/00
3599        08/06/00
            3600    08/13/11

James Van Hise submitted a story outline for a Tarzan adventure in Pellucidar to Dark Horse Comics in 1996. It was called The Dark Moon of Pellucidar. Dark Horse did nothing with it. Van Hise published the outline in ERB-APA #74, Summer 2002 and his own, The Burroughs Newsbeat Special #2, August 2006.

Tarzan and the Sea God of Pellucidar – In 2005, ERB fan Aubrey Stallings commissioned a short, eight-page comic from artist Harry Roland. Stallings’ only request was that it contain Tarzan rescuing Jane from a octopus. Later, in 2010, this comic’s name was changed to Sea God of Doriabar and published in Edgar Rice Burroughs the Second Century. You may buy one at Amazon.com.
Harry Roland's comic

The Warlord
Can't get enough Pellucidar comics? Try DC's Warlord. The original series ran for 133 issues from November 1975 to 1989. InShowcase Presents the Warlord Volume One 2009, issues #1-28 were collected in a 528-page black and white collection, Showcase Presents the Warlord Volume One. The book is still available as of this writing. The Warlord is creator Mike Grell's sword and sorcery comic book set inside the hollow Earth, Skartaris. Similarities to Pellucidar include: a hollow Earth chock-full of prehistoric beasts and half-naked women, an eternal noonday sun that appears bigger than the surface world's, an upward curving horizon, and time runs very differently.
David Critchfield wrote an article about The Warlord in ERB-APA #105, May 2010. Lee Strong wrote one in the National Capital Panthans Journal #164, June 2010. Check out ERB fan Scott Dutton's Warlord website and creator Mike Grell's website.



Sources:
q       ERB-APA #67, Fall 2000 article by Ken Webber
q       Some of the cover scans are from these Bill Hillman sites:
  • Bill Ross ERB Collector Presents Who’s Who Behind the Comics DARK HORSE I
  • Korak DC Comics
  • Tarzan Marvel Comics 1 - 15
  • Tarzan Marvel Comics 16 - 29
q       Tarzan in Savage Pellucidar by Ken Webber published in ERBANIA #82, 2000
q        Allan Gross Interviewed by Ken Webber published in the Burroughs Bulletin New Series #43, Summer 2000
q       Russ Manning: Burroughs Artist by Ken Webber published in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Fantastic Worlds edited by James Van Hise
q       Burroughs Bulletin #21, Spring 1971 and #36, April 1974
q       Tarzan in the Land of Foreign Books by Peter Geissler from ERB-APA #89, Spring 2006
q       The Gold Key Tarzan Adaptations: A Brief Bibliography by Tom Stock from the National Capital Panthans Journal #54, April 2001
q       Tarzan of the Comics by Matthew H. Gore
q       Bill Hillman's ERB-dom Index
q       Bill Hillman’s John Coleman Burroughs Tribute Site
q       Comics VF.com
q       Who’s Who Behind the Comics: DC The Tarzan Family by Larry G. Burrows from ERB-APA #50, Summer 1996
q       Russ Manning: A Bibliography by Robert R. Barrett from ERB-APA #37, Spring 1993
q      ERB-dom issues #53, and #80 through #89
q       Email from Pete Ogden to ERBCOF-L dated 12-23-07
q        Dreadful? Writer and Other Comments by D. Peter Ogden from ERB-APA #103, Autumn 2009
q       Tarzan of the Funnies by Robert R. Barrett published by Mad Kings Publishing (2002)
q       Charles R. Rutledge provided information and a cover scan for Tarzan of the Apes Special Superadventure Issue
q     Bill Hillman’s Tarzan Adventures UK comics website 
q     Thanks are due David Billman for his suggestions about this section.



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von Horst's Pellucidar established 12-25-98