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Tarzan Moves to Idaho
ART BY ADAM ROSENLUND, COURTESY OF IDAHO COMICS GROUP
A Comic History of the Gem State
BY ALBERT FRANK ASKER
It is true that Idaho is not a major player in the world of comic book publishing.
In fact, usually any connections between comic books and the state of Idaho are ancillary, comical, or just downright weird. An old Sun Valley/Ketchum/Hailey phonebook, for example, lists Batman as a resident, which is nice to know, should we in the Gem State need to get in touch with the Dark Knight. Dive a little deeper into that rabbit hole and discover the Ernest Hemingway-Batman-Idaho connection, which is addressed more thoroughly in a book called Hemingway’s Guns: The Sporting Arms of Ernest Hemingway by Silvio Calabi, Steve Helsley, and Roger Sanger. The book answers the question of what happened to Hemingway’s gun—per the book, the family had it sliced up by a welder in Ketchum and the remnants buried. According to Roger Sanger, “the pieces that were buried in an Idaho eld in 1961 are probably still there. Now, however, they lie beneath the home of Adam West, television’s Batman.”
So, oddities aside, Idaho as a state doesn’t have a lot of obvious connections to the sequential arts medium, but boasts some noteworthy connections—including some very big contributions—made to the comic book medium by the people who live here.
Perhaps the most famous is Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, who lived in Idaho on three separate occasions in his life. First in the summer of 1891 (when he was 15), then again from 1898 to 1899, and finally from 1903 to 1904. During that time, he worked on his brothers’ ranch in Cassia County near the Raft River and Snake River confluence, about 30 miles from American Falls. Edgar owned and ran a stationary/photo business at 233 West Center Street in Pocatello, and helped his brother George with one of his gold dredges in the Stanley Basin on the Salmon River. The Historic Preservation Commission in Rupert displays a large commemorative sign which mentions the Burroughs Gold Dredges.
When the Salmon River venture didn’t work out, Edgar and Emma moved downstream to Parma, close to where Harry had one of the dredging barges. Edgar spent much of his time making up stories and poems, drawing and sketching cartoons. These creations brought little interest, and a long manuscript he wrote was stored away and forgotten until it was unearthed almost 100 years later and published as Minidoka: 937th Earl of One Mile. The Minidoka book was written eight years before his first published novel, Tarzan of the Apes. It was also during this time that he ran successfully for the position of alderman in Parma.
In early 1904, the Sweetser-Burroughs Mining Company folded after a fifteen year run. The only connection that he would have with Idaho after that was through his brother Harry, who returned to Burley to run a hardware store.
Eventually, Edgar’s first published work, Tarzan of the Apes, was serialized in the pulp publication All-Story Magazine in October 1912. The first book edition of the story was published in 1914. Tarzan of the Apes was adapted as a newspaper comic strip in 1929 and the character made his first comic book appearance in 1947, far from the vast desert of the Idaho landscape.
Idaho’s Comic Connections
• Dave Stevens, the creator of The Rocketeer, which rejuvenated interest in 1950s pin-up model Bettie Page, lived in Boise for a few years in the 1980s.
• Andy Garcia who wrote and drew Oblivion City and Seth Throb: Underground Artist for Slave Labor Graphics in San Jose, California.
• Scott Pentzer, Jason Hill, and Kevin Hill of Bishop Press in Boise published Rose & Gunn and Sade.
• Idaho native and multiple Eisner Award finalist Dennis P. Eichhorn’s autobiographical series Real Stuff was published by Fantagraphics of Seattle.
• Randall Kirby’s Bop! Comics, Mystery House Comics’ Shivertown by Jon Keithley and Shanae LaVelle, and the author’s anthology series Tarzan and the Comics of Idaho and Idaho Comics from Idaho Comics Group were also published.
• Terry Blas has worked for Marvel Comics writing their Reptil series in addition to Steven Universe, Dead Weight, and Who Was The Voice Of The People: Cesar Chavez.
• Joëlle Jones works for DC Comics and has worked on titles such as Batman, Catwoman, and her own creation, Lady Killer.
