#edgarriceburroughs - Every Day With Edgar Rice Burroughs - July 31, 2025

 July 31, 2025 and on this day eighty-four years ago in 1941, the Rex Maxon illustrated and Don Garden scripted Tarzan daily story arc, Lost on an Island began. The story may anticipate the television series, LOST, about an airplane crash with survivors – lost on an island. In the comic strip, a passenger ship hits a mine and the survivors are lost on an island.

The story arc ran for 110 episodes and you can read them all, beginning at: https://www.erbzine.com/mag47/4768.html

The 100-word drabble for today, “There Can Only Be One,” was inspired by the story arc and by other stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs – stories that take place on an island. The title of the drabble may or may not have been used in the Highlander film and television franchise.

The survivors, having made their way to shore, watched their mine-damaged ocean liner, sink. Tarzan helped one of the women from the lifeboat. She said, “A tropical island, Beautiful. I wonder if it’s inhabited.

Tarzan nodded, “Perhaps, perhaps not.”

“I read about an island with a cave girl, Nadara, and Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones. Another book had a hero named Billy Byrne, a reformed mucker from Chicago, and a third about a girl named Marcia Sackett. Perhaps, one will be on this island to help us.”

Tarzan said, “No, they won’t.”

“Why not.”

“It’s my comic strip, so it’s my island!”