I’ve been a Tarzan fan for years, though truth be told, it’s been years since I’ve read any of the original Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books. At my suggestion, my Science Fiction book club recently read “Tarzan of the Apes”. Sadly, only I and one other member bothered to read it. Others were relying on memory (or the Weissmuller movies), or simply chose to not read at all.
All the pity, as TotA is a remarkably imaginative. Who couldn’t thrill to the possibilities! Running around the jungle, fighting jungle animals for survival, clad only in a loincloth and a hunting knife, a rope, and a bow and arrows – the way man was meant to live!
Maybe that’s the problem. Despite such strong role models as Sheena Queen of the Jungle, Jana Jungle Girl, and Leopard Woman, I know of no females who ever really found the appeal of the Tarzan stories.
Tarzan eventually married Jane and for a time lived in England, claiming his royal title as Lord Greystoke. They had a child, Jack. One day, while attending a zoo or a circus (it’s been 30 years and the details are a bit fuzzy), Tarzan and Jack see some of Tarzan’s former Great Ape playmates locked up in cages. Again I forget the exact details, but somehow this becomes the catalyst for young Jack to leave home and return with his new Great Ape friends to the jungles of Africa.
The Great Apes had trouble pronouncing the name “Jack,” so hence forward, Jack was known as Korak, Son of Tarzan. Even when Korak met with humans who presumably could have pronounced his name correctly, he introduced himself as Korak Son of Tarzan, always name-dropping his much more renowned father (who was, after all, Lord of the Jungle).
I always gravitated to Korak Son of Tarzan. I did not have the good fortune to be born in the jungle and raised by the Great Ape from infancy, but I could conceivably run off to the jungle now, by choice, and live out my adolescent fantasy.
Plus, according to the Gold Key comic book series, Korak Son of Tarzan had great hair.
REQUISITE SPOILER ALERT for those of you who plan to read this story yourself.
This particular story, published in June 1968, involves giant carnivorous frogs terrorizing an African village. Thanks to High School biology, I know frogs eat bugs, so if they grew to giant proportions, they would have the razor-sharp shark teeth as on the cover. Everything makes sense so far.
After a couple very exciting plot points, the villagers have gathered at the top of the falls to sacrifice a goat, hoping to appease the giant carnivorous frogs. Korak Son of Tarzan sneaks into the tent of the evil witch doctor, pulling a candle stub from his loin cloth for light (where else was he going to carry it? After all, he didn’t have a Batman utility belt.). He finds… a giant carnivorous frog costume! The evil witch doctor has used the real giant carnivorous frogs to camouflage his own nefarious schemes. When the evil witch doctor returns, Korak Son of Tarzan confronts him, and marches him out in front of the villagers. The evil witch doctor twists free, and flings an angry poisonous snake at Korak Son of Tarzan!
With his lightning-quick hands, Korak Son of Tarzan grabs the angry poisonous snake and wrings its life from it, while the evil witch doctor dives into the white frothing water, and does not bob to the surface. Did he perish on the jagged rocks, or did he escape to torment Korak Son of Tarzan another day?
Apparently, the evil witch doctor had been carrying the angry poisonous snake in his loincloth. I can’t really explain this. It does raise the question: did the evil witch doctor carry a poisonous snake in his loin cloth because he was evil, or was the evil witch doctor evil because he carried an angry poisonous snake in his loin cloth? Regardless, I have a pretty good idea why the snake was so angry.
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