August 24, 2025 and on this day seventy-two years ago in 1973, the Bob Lubbers illustrated and Dick Van Buren scripted Tarzan daily story arc, “Tarzan and the Octopus God,” began. The story ran for sixty-two daily episodes. It was followed by “Tarzan and the Insect Men.”
The tale features the evil Captain Cross, good natives, bad natives, Tarzan, and of course, a gigantic octopus, a creature which, god or no, helps Tarzan find justice for the deserving. Interestingly, Lubbers enjoyed drawing ‘good girl art” and was pleased when Dick Van Buren included an exotic woman in a story line, but there is not a single woman, exotic or otherwise, in a single panel of ‘Tarzan and the Octopus God’ unless of course, the octopus is female.
You can read the complete story at: https://www.erbzine.com/mag53/5339.html
The 100-word drabble for today, “Big Time,” is taken from Bob Lubbers comments about illustrating the Tarzan comic strip. He’d signed a three-year contract and illustrated the strip for a few months longer than that. His entire comments are available in a biography available at: https://www.erbzine.com/mag48/4855.html
The dream of a lifetime come true…the big time. . I dug in full bore, charged with inspiration. Seven-day weeks were not uncommon, but only nine to five. Dick Van Buren got the scripts to me on time and we were rolling. When he wrote exotic females into the scripts, it was fun to reprise some of the fun of those Fiction House cover girls. modified slightly. The stories could never be truly topical, but played in an amorphous, Burroughsian time period. Plenty of action, interplay with jungle animals, colorful backgrounds and as many exotic girls as Dick’s scripts allowed.
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