“Fangs of Death!”
TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE Issue no. 12, February 1978
Book: Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
Issue No.: 12
Published: February 21, 1978
Title: “Fangs of Death!”
Cover Price: 35¢
Tarzan, the iconic raised-by-apes jungle adventurer, has been appearing in comic books since the late 1940s. His first comic book series is a bit unusual as it was published by multiple companies. It started at Dell, then moved to sibling company Gold Key with issue no. 132. DC Comics got the Tarzan comic book rights and started publishing Tarzan in 1972, picking up the numbering from Gold Key, so the first DC issue no. is 207. This is pretty much the opposite of modern comics numbering, where it sometimes seems like there’s a new Stupendous Spider-Person issue no. 1 published every few months.
But when Marvel got the Tarzan comic book rights, they started their own numbering. Hence this being issue no. 12 and not no. 270 or whatever. The page one explainer in this issue just says “Stan Lee presents Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle.” No additional details, which is unusual for a Marvel book from this period, but I guess the assumption was that everybody knows who Tarzan is. And I guess even the kids today know who Tarzan is, as there are at least three Tarzan movies on Disney+.
The story for this issue is billed as “A tale of Tarzan’s youth, based on ERB’s Jungle Tales of Tarzan.” Not that I would have been able to check Wikipedia in 1978, but it informs me that Jungle Tales of Tarzan is a book of short stories, and I’m guessing this comic book is specifically based on the Tarzan story “The Lion.”
The lion in question is named Numa in this adaptation. He isn’t having any luck hunting zebras, so he goes after Tarzan’s ape tribe, known as Kerchak, and kills a young ape named Mamka. But Tarzan convinces the apes that they must not let Numa actually eat Mamka, because if he finds it easy to eat one ape, Numa will be back to eat more apes.
After the apes successfully foil Numa’s meal by retrieving poor Mamka’s body, Tarzan decides to prank the apes in a way that will test the apes’ defenses. He disguises himself in a lion hide and pretends to be Numa, back for more prey. But now the Kerchak apes are indeed prepared, and they almost kill Tarzan before they realize he isn’t really a lion. And even after they figure out it’s Tarzan, several of the apes are still angry — they don’t find his ruse at all humorous. But the ape Taug defends Tarzan, and young Tarzan learns a lesson about going too far with a prank. And he also learns that he has true friends like Taug among the apes.
One more meta note — Marvel’s Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle wasn’t the only entertainment property of the late ’70s with this title. At the same time that Marvel was publishing Tarzan comics, CBS was airing Filmation’s Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle animated television show Saturday mornings on the CBS network in the U.S.
Next time — Spider-Man teams up with an X-Man!