Tag: Edgar Rice Burroughs

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With Further Ado #221: Book Review – Tarzan, The New Adventures

With Further Ado #221: Book Review – Tarzan, The New Adventures

Posted on by Ed Catto

Tarzan is one of those characters that has been illustrated by all the top artists in comics:  Foster, Hogarth, Manning,  Frazetta, Vallejo, Adams, Kubert, Buscema and so many more.  And that’s not even counting the more recent modern titans like Wheatley, Yeates and Jusko.

It would seem almost inconceivable that any fan could get excited by any more Tarzan artists. But that’s exactly what happened to me with Tom Grindberg’s work on Tarzan: The New Adventures. 

This hardcover volume collects the weekly strips that the Edgar Rice Burroughs group had been publishing on their site. They had developed weekly online comics that felt like they were torn out of the Sunday newspapers, but designed to capture some of the excitement of digital comics from decade ago. ERB created strips for so many of their properties – from popular characters like Tarzan (I think he had two strips actually) to lesser-known characters like the Mucker, in an impressive series by Ron Marz and Lee Moder.

Full disclosure: ERB is a past client and I like the company quite a bit. I touched upon these webseries a few years ago in a column here.

Here’s the official description from ERB of this collection: Continue reading “With Further Ado #221: Book Review – Tarzan, The New Adventures” →

With Further Ado #111: Wheatley’s The Witch of Everwhen

With Further Ado #111: Wheatley’s The Witch of Everwhen

Posted on by Ed Catto

Some people are just overflowing with talent, and when it spills over to other media, it’s a truly wondrous thing. Mark Wheatley is one of those people.  You may know him as an award-winning comics creator, a frequent exhibitor at San Diego Comic-Con & Baltimore Comic-Con, or as an industrious entrepreneur.  Knowing all those things about him, I was even more impressed when he told me about his newest project, a song & music video called The Witch of Everwhen.  Checkout the teaser trailer:

 

 

Wheatley is working out the details for the full-fledged Witch of Everwhen video debut. The announcement should be made soon, and you can keep up with it all here at the Mark Wheatley Gallery.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised because he’s created music videos before for previous projects like Dance with Your Brothers , Surrender and Earth’s Farewell.  But nonetheless, I had to find out more.

Ed Catto: This is a fascinating project – tell me how The Witch of Everwhen came about!

Mark Wheatley: I have been composing and recording music for as long as I have been writing and drawing comics professionally. In my early days looking for work in New York, while I was beating the pavement to show my portfolio to art directors and editors, I was also sending demo tapes to A&R reps at the various music companies. I was doing this right up until I landed my first monthly comic series, MARS.

The only musical “success” I had during that period was one of my tunes was picked for airplay on WNEW and one of their DJs was calling me to brainstorm how I would get more attention for my music. But when Marc Hempel and I signed our MARS contract [with First Comics], I decided that the time required to write and pencil a monthly comic was going to eat my life, and I stopped recording and sending out demo tapes. So, of course, two weeks after I signed the MARS contract Capitol Records offered me a three record deal, and I had to turn it down. A few months later, Columbia Records offered me a one record deal. Both of these offers would require me to also hit the road for live tours, so it was just impossible. After that, aside from recording some soundtrack music for radio and TV commercials, my musical efforts were limited to recording theme songs for my comic book creations. Continue reading “With Further Ado #111: Wheatley’s The Witch of Everwhen” →

With Further Ado #054: Summer Reading

Posted on by Ed Catto

I am worried that at this point in my life, the notion of leisurely reading on a summer day is more myth than reality. I still read a lot (too much?), but I don’t really seem to have those lazy-lay-about-days any more.  Still – summer’s in that home stretch, and I’m always optimistic.  Let’s not give up! And here’s a few new reading ideas for all of us:  Continue reading “With Further Ado #054: Summer Reading” →