Garzan the Magnificient! You know you have arrived when they start poking fun at you. Tarzan received the parody treatment once he made it to Hollywood. The thinly disguised Garzan appears here in the horror comic book, Chamber of Chills #19 (September 1953). This Harvey comic was written by an unknown author with art by Joe Certa and Jack Abel.
1953 is no longer the reign of Johnny Weissmuller but the territory of Lex Barker. He was the tenth actor to play him. The Tarzan deal was pretty well set by this time. Edgar Rice Burroughs had died three years earlier so no new Tarzan material was available. Tarzan was now a entertainment medium character as well as an icon. He still swung through the newspaper comic strips, comic books, Big Little Books, and movies. (His last radio show was only two years past and television was still thirteen years away.)
Like Dracula, Frankenstein, the mummy, Zorro, the Western sheriff, the brawny space man, jungle lords were a standard hero type of the comic book industry in the 1950s. Every comic company seemed to have one, usually with a name that started with a K or a J. Harvey Comics may be the exception. They would do a parody of Sheena with “Shirl the Jungle Girl” by Wally Wood four years later. Perhaps not having any jungle lords in their catalogue they felt better positioned to poke fun.
Garzan is a movie sensation. He is even one of the producers of the production.
Garzan strives for realism in his movies, with more and more dangerous action sequences.
A string of injured stuntmen are the result. When these men come looking for compensation, Garzan shuts them out.
The drive for more fabulous stunts ends in a stuntman falling from a great height. he is paralyzed for life. Garzan sends hush money to the family.
The injured men decide to take Mr. Garzan for a ride. They take him to an arena, where he will face the most realistic scene of his career….
Conclusion
This comic isn’t really about Tarzan as much as it is about Tarzan movies. Garzan is a cinema sensation but not a real jungle lord. The whole thing is, of course, about that final frame.