Initially this was supposed to be part of the bonus section in my Don Heck tribute about his work on Wonder Woman but then I decided that an artist of the caliber of Russ Manning deserves at least one full post to himself.
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Now I am not saying that my reading taste is especially eclectic ( which anybody who follows this blog over a certain period of time can attest to because I am most often very fond of comics or runs most comicbook afficionados wouldn´t touch with a ten foot pole ) but as far as the comicbook adaptions of Tarzan are concerned I stray from the norm.
Apparently most people prefer either Burne Hogarth or Joe Kubert while I was always a Russ Manning fan. My movie Tarzan was Johnny Weissmüller and my comic Tarzan was drawn by Russ Manning. I guess I just have a thing for a clear style and his slick linework, strong composition and dynamic storytelling appealed to be before I even knew why I liked it.
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When I started my comicbook reading career superhero comics hadn´t the stranglehold on the industry they have now so they were just a small part of the cake. Marvel Comics had just started a few years ago and here in Germany they only published a handful of series so everyone could afford to read the complete Williams Verlag line. Because of that comicbooks served all kind of genres from horror to fantasy, funny, science fiction, western, funny, pirates etc. Russ Manning worked in a few of these fields but he´s most famous for his association of Edgar Rice Burroughs´ Lord of the Jungle - he drew most of the TARZAN and KORAK pocketbooks I read as a kid - as well as his own creation the science fiction classic MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER for Gold Key Comics which will be Today´s main feature.
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And not because I think the series is more important but because I found more original art for MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER than for the TARZAN and KORAK series. Also regular visitors know that I like to include the colored versions of the original art pages in my BLACK AND WHITE posts and that was much easier for MAGNUS because with this series you have issue numbers. Not that there are not Gold Key Comics of TARZAN and KORAK with Russ Manning art which are numbered. But while most original art from MAGNUS includes the number of the issue and which page it is the same is not true for Russ Mannings work on the Lord of the Jungle books.
Which very often included newspaper strips and Sunday pages. Anyway, I have always liked the bigger idea behind MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER which was way ahead of its time warning of the dangers of placing too much trust in machines and especially robotics. We now live in the year 2020 which was the far future when I was a kid so I am wondering if the year 4000 will be anything like it was depicted in this comic. A lot of the technology in these comic pages has already been realized - or even turned obsolete - so who knows how the year 4000 will be ? Not me since I won´t be around. I´m only happy that I got to live to the year 2020.
As usual I tried to stay with the original coloring as far as I could but in some cases the scans I found online were so bad that I had to resort to the reprints by Dark Horse Comics. Which are I think available in softcover and in hardcover. So there is no excuse if you got the Russ Manning itch.
There also was MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER series from Valiant Comics that was part of their first wave and if there is one comic where I regretted that my brother had it on his pull list instead of me having it on mine it´s that one. If you see some of the issues in dollar bins at some comicbook convention and you haven´t already read the series please do give it a try.
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Who knows ? You might enjoy it. But now to Russ Manning´s glorious art.
magnustism
Now I am not saying that my reading taste is especially eclectic ( which anybody who follows this blog over a certain period of time can attest to because I am most often very fond of comics or runs most comicbook afficionados wouldn´t touch with a ten foot pole ) but as far as the comicbook adaptions of Tarzan are concerned I stray from the norm.
Apparently most people prefer either Burne Hogarth or Joe Kubert while I was always a Russ Manning fan. My movie Tarzan was Johnny Weissmüller and my comic Tarzan was drawn by Russ Manning. I guess I just have a thing for a clear style and his slick linework, strong composition and dynamic storytelling appealed to be before I even knew why I liked it.
When I started my comicbook reading career superhero comics hadn´t the stranglehold on the industry they have now so they were just a small part of the cake. Marvel Comics had just started a few years ago and here in Germany they only published a handful of series so everyone could afford to read the complete Williams Verlag line. Because of that comicbooks served all kind of genres from horror to fantasy, funny, science fiction, western, funny, pirates etc. Russ Manning worked in a few of these fields but he´s most famous for his association of Edgar Rice Burroughs´ Lord of the Jungle - he drew most of the TARZAN and KORAK pocketbooks I read as a kid - as well as his own creation the science fiction classic MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER for Gold Key Comics which will be Today´s main feature.
And not because I think the series is more important but because I found more original art for MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER than for the TARZAN and KORAK series. Also regular visitors know that I like to include the colored versions of the original art pages in my BLACK AND WHITE posts and that was much easier for MAGNUS because with this series you have issue numbers. Not that there are not Gold Key Comics of TARZAN and KORAK with Russ Manning art which are numbered. But while most original art from MAGNUS includes the number of the issue and which page it is the same is not true for Russ Mannings work on the Lord of the Jungle books.
Which very often included newspaper strips and Sunday pages. Anyway, I have always liked the bigger idea behind MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER which was way ahead of its time warning of the dangers of placing too much trust in machines and especially robotics. We now live in the year 2020 which was the far future when I was a kid so I am wondering if the year 4000 will be anything like it was depicted in this comic. A lot of the technology in these comic pages has already been realized - or even turned obsolete - so who knows how the year 4000 will be ? Not me since I won´t be around. I´m only happy that I got to live to the year 2020.
As usual I tried to stay with the original coloring as far as I could but in some cases the scans I found online were so bad that I had to resort to the reprints by Dark Horse Comics. Which are I think available in softcover and in hardcover. So there is no excuse if you got the Russ Manning itch.
There also was MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER series from Valiant Comics that was part of their first wave and if there is one comic where I regretted that my brother had it on his pull list instead of me having it on mine it´s that one. If you see some of the issues in dollar bins at some comicbook convention and you haven´t already read the series please do give it a try.
Who knows ? You might enjoy it. But now to Russ Manning´s glorious art.
magnustism
