Book: Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
Issue No.: 13
Published: March 28, 1978
Title: “The Changeling”
Cover Price: 35¢
Like the previous issue of Marvel’s ’70s Tarzan book, this one is billed as a “tale of Tarzan’s youth” and adapted from one of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Jungle Tales of Tarzan short stories — specifically “A Jungle Joke.” It’s a sequel of sorts to the story presented in the previous issue as it again features Tarzan dressing up like a lion. In the earlier story he was dressing as a dangerous predator in an attempt to teach his ape friends to be more vigilant. In this one, he is pretending to be a lion to trick a tribe of jungle people (Tarzan calls them Gomangani) into thinking he is a shape-shifter.
Tarzan isn’t just tricking them for fun, despite the “joke” of the source material’s title. The Gomangani are cruel, and they’re attempting to capture a lion so they can torture and kill it. Though Tarzan and the lion aren’t friends, Tarzan respects the lion and hates anyone who is cruel to animals. Which is a completely reasonable attitude.
The story is fairly brutal. Tarzan basically feeds one of the tribespeople to the lion early on. And later in the story, Tarzan lets the lion loose on the tribespeople’s village, and a bunch of them get mauled and at least one gets dragged away as take-out food for the lion.
Despite good artwork (from John Buscema, Rudy Mesina, and George Roussos) and top-notch lettering from Tom Orzechowski, I found it difficult to enjoy this story. The people of the Gomangani tribe are, of course, Black, and their depiction here involves a fair amount of casual racism. The tribespeople are cruel and dumb, and instead of referring to them as tribesmen or even natives, the narration keeps just calling them “the Blacks.” It’s insidious.
It’s also the kind of thing that even well-meaning white people weren’t necessarily aware of in the 1970s. And I suppose that, given the source material was published in the 1910s, it could have been a lot worse. But regardless, it still sucks the fun out of the story when I’m reading it in 2022.
Next time — Spider-Man and the Thunder God team up to fight the cosmic-powered Living Monolith!